Shades of Mercy

by Anita B. Lustrea

  “Honestly, I don’t know why Mick even gets up in the morning,” Joseph said. “Who cares if there’s no food? We barely have shelter. I still don’t understand why he doesn’t drink his life away like half the other men. Dad fights it, you know. He tries hard to not to give in to the lures of whiskey, but he’s only human. A human with a broken spirit. Some mornings he’s passed out on the floor, and you can’t raise him no matter how hard you yell or try to shake him awake. You know he’s not just a heavy sleeper, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I hate that he drinks,” Joseph said. “I hate that they all do. But I don’t blame them. Not if their lives have been like mine and Mick’s. Not if they had to go through what we do.”

  I was reeling from the barrage of words, trying to escape the meaning accompanying the words Joseph was spewing. “What else do you endure?”

  Joseph shook his head and closed his eyes tight. By the time he opened them and met mine, his tanned face had reddened. His shoulders heaved as he tried to get better breaths.

  “Another day, Mercy. Another day. Maybe Mick should tell you.”

  Joseph and I continued picking in silence. At lunch, he told Bud and Ellery and Mr. Pop about his new job offer and apologized for not being able to come back for a while. Mr. Pop stood to shake Joseph’s hand and pat his back and then insisted that we set down our forks and offer a thanks to God.

  Joseph would later tell me that day was the first and second time he’d prayed. Certainly, the first time he’d ever been prayed for. Definitely the first time anyone had thanked a god for him and his God-given talents. It was the first time anyone’s family made him feel worthy.

  But Joseph didn’t let on about this as we worked that afternoon in the farm stand, though he did manage a bit of goofing off, making me laugh with his dead-on mimicry of every last customer we had that day.

  As we walked back toward Ellery’s waiting truck—the truck that would drive Joseph back home to the Flats and whatever horror really awaited him there—Joseph apologized.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “For being harsh about your dad. He is a good man. It’s just hard.”

  I looped my arm through his and stopped short of telling him I knew. Instead, I said, “I love Mick and Mr. Pop does too. ‘Like a son,’ Mr. Pop told me just before we saw him and Old Man Stringer, just before this whole mess.”

  Joseph’s boyish bicep tightened under my grip. The anger rising once again.

  “So you know what that means?” I asked.

  “That you’ll work hard to get him out of jail.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Mr. Pop will, Uncle Roger will, we all will. But it means something else.”

  Joseph and I stopped on the gravel, just shy of where the rounded, white potato truck waited with its hood up. Ellery was clanging on something.

  “It means I love you and Mr. Pop loves you. If Mick is like a son to Mr. Pop, then so is his brother.”

  Joseph smiled the tiniest bit.

  “And I know that Mr. Pop is far from the perfect father. I mean, half the time he loves me like a son and forgets I’m his daughter!”

  Joseph laughed.

  “But when Mr. Pop loves someone, it means he’s for them. Never against them. He’s for you, on your side.”

  Joseph nodded. “And I’m sorry I was mean about your uncle,” he said. “If he wasn’t coming up, honest, I don’t know what we’d do. Nobody has money to hire a lawyer. I mean, besides Glenn, maybe, and he’s gone. So we all appreciate your uncle Roger, no matter what I said earlier. I want Mick out of jail. Whatever it takes. I want this mess over. And I don’t want Old Man Stringer to die.”

  Joseph’s eyes watered up a bit. “Old Man is my friend,” he said. “He’d come take me out during the day. Did you know that? It was like he understood. Of course, he did. Mick would never have hurt him.”

  I hugged Joseph. “I know that. We all do. And when Uncle Roger gets here, he’ll make sure the police and the judge do too.”

  “Ready to go there, Joe?” Ellery said, adding the slam of the hood for punctuation. “Turns out that rumble we heard this morning was nothing at all. Tightened a few screws and she’s good to go. Like eating pie.”

  “I’m ready,” Joseph said. “But now I’m in the mood for pie.” He turned to me and put up a hand.

  “’Bye, Joe. Thanks for your help today. Say hi to the chef for me tomorrow.”

  Joseph smiled, a smile I now recognized as being so like his brother’s. Though I’d loved the pristine porcelain smile that so often emanated from Mick whenever I saw him, seeing it echoed in Joseph made me realize behind that smile was the reality that all was not quite right in Mick’s world. Once I’d thought if he’d come with me to college, if we’d get married, and get him off the Flats, all would be okay. But in Joseph’s same smile, I saw how wrong I’d been.

  Chapter Twelve

  I awoke to the cat, pouncing on something in the corner. That mice roamed our house at night was just part of farm life. I learned this long ago, probably the first time I squealed out in fright at the dash of the little bit of black in front of my playpen. Around that time, I’d also have learned that having a cat who insisted on skidding across floors, crashing into walls, and diving under beds or dressers or desks or wherever else the clumsy thing had tried to hide was also part of that life.

  “Lickers,” I said. “Let the poor thing be.”

  Mother, of course, encouraged Lickers’s mouse-hunting skills. While many folks, even farmers pestered by the presence of mice, would balk at the weekly delivery of a dead mouse by a proud cat, Mother rewarded Lickers with a fresh bowl of cream whenever Lickers produced one.

  “One less mouse in the house is always worth a treat,” Mother would say before giving the cat a pat.

  But I saw it differently. No matter how many mice Lickers caught, there were others waiting to take its place. Did it really make a difference? One less mouse? With all the troubles in the world?

  I felt under my mattress for The Catcher in the Rye. Uncle Roger would ask what I was reading, and I realized I hadn’t been reading much of anything this summer. At first, I’d taken to going to bed either dreaming of Mick and our magical future together, but now I’d taken to staring at the ceiling, replaying the events of the day, wondering what had gone so terribly wrong, and asking God to step in and rescue Mick and to heal Old Man Stringer. So far, God had done neither. Old Man stayed in his coma and Mick stayed in jail. Even my plan to send Tommy down for a visit, with an update on what was happening, had failed miserably. It nearly landed Tommy in jail himself.

  When the deputy had asked Tommy to empty his pockets, Tommy had emptied his pockets, including the folded note I’d made for Mick. I’d redrawn the tiny fort and the woodchuck tunneling toward it. While I’d hoped to convey a secret message to Mick, about us once again being together, a message like the one he’d sent me, the deputy saw it as Tommy’s message for Mick, one of more the jailbreak variety.

  By the time Tommy got back to the farm to tell me the story, after Tommy had managed to convince the deputy that it was a joke from back when they were in grade school meant to cheer him up, Tommy was in stitches. Tommy had Ellery laughing; even Bud cracked a smile. Maybe one day I’d be able to look back on it and laugh, but then it only tore at my heart a bit. It only reminded me that Mick sat alone in that cell, feeling abandoned, and there was nothing, well, little, I could do about it.

  I rolled over and looked at my closet door. Last night Mother had come up after supper, pulling out my few blouses and skirts and two of my dresses. Since we’d do no outdoor chores today—not even any work with the broccoli or peas—but would instead mill around the house while we waited for the sound of Uncle Roger’s new Buick to crunch up the driveway, Mother said she wanted to see me in a skirt again. I had no idea why it mattered so much to Mother what I wore, but it did. Seemingly more lately. I’d catch her sighing and shaking her head each time my dungaree-clad legs would
skip down the stairs. Though Mother had traded in her fancy life in town for a scruffier one on the farm, she was still more interested in seeing me become a lady in dresses than a farm girl in slacks.

  Mother had hung two choices for me today. I could go with the starchy white blouse tucked deep into the wide-twirling, tan skirt or I could choose the baby blue dress, the one with the white collar and matching white cardigan that made me think of clouds in the sky. Neither looked as good as my blue jeans and checked blouse, but those weren’t options for when Uncle Roger came. At least they weren’t as ridiculous as the new cherry print dress with layers of scratchy crinoline Mother had bought me for the festival.

  I chose the dress, slipping it on while once again chiding Lickers who had begun licking her paws on my bedspread. She’d already ruined one piece of furniture in my room. I didn’t need her leaving marks on anything else now. Lickers eyed me. Sometimes her gaze was worse than Mother’s.

  “I look all right, Miss Kitty?” I gave the dress a twirl, which proved too much a lure for the cat. She pounced on my pleats before landing on all fours.

  “None of that nonsense when Uncle Roger gets here, please. You’ll find yourself sleeping in the potato house tonight. All right. Let’s go, Lickers.”

  I grabbed my book, no longer caring if Mr. Pop saw what I was reading. I guessed he’d no longer care anyway. With a real friend in jail and a real girl run off and real grown-ups raging mad, my reading about Holden Caulfield’s fictitious escapades in New York City surely couldn’t matter much.

  “The problem,” Uncle Roger was saying as I stepped back into the dining room with the tray of lemonade Mother had sent me for, “is that he’s Maliseet.”

  Mr. Pop laughed. “Baby brother, it took you all those years in school to tell us that?”

  Uncle Roger thanked me for the glass I set in front of him and then shook his head. “I mean, of course, that the laws that protect you and me and Mercy here just don’t always get applied equally. The judge says he won’t even get around to setting bail for a few weeks. ‘Things I got to check out first,’ he told me. It’s baloney, of course. And unconstitutional as all get out. But up here, it’s what goes. And who’s going to challenge it?”

  “You are,” I said.

  Uncle Roger looked at me and smiled. To see this man smile was to understand how he’d done so well in life, how he’d managed to make and keep friends on both sides of the political aisle, and how he would be able to defend a Maliseet boy and not make one enemy in town. There was just something about the way his white but slightly overlapping teeth shone on his otherwise plain face and how the smile lines from his bright blue eyes spread all the way to his graying temples that gave this man what Mother called presence.

  “Roger may not be as handsome as my Paul,” I’d once overheard Mother say, “but the man commands a room.”

  And he did. Though Uncle Roger only stood an inch or two taller than Mr. Pop, you’d have thought he had a foot on him.

  “I am going to challenge it, Mercy,” Uncle Roger was saying. “But the process takes weeks. Sometimes months.”

  I tried to calm my nerves by reminding myself that Uncle Roger had defended people in rough circumstances and taken on the most unlikely cases and had won. Many times. But it didn’t work here. None of those other cases and causes had involved Mick.

  “This just isn’t right,” I said. “He didn’t do anything. How can they just keep him there?”

  “Because, as I just said, Mick is Maliseet. And there’s a man in the hospital, and people think Mick put him there.”

  “So what do we do?” Mother asked. “What can we do for Mick, at least, while he’s there?”

  “I’m going down to visit him this afternoon. They’re still not allowing any outside visitors, especially after that Tommy boy tried to sneak in something. What was that, a jailbreak note?” Uncle Roger raised an eyebrow at me. I simply cleared my throat.

  “But,” Uncle Roger continued, “they have to let him see his lawyer, Maliseet or no. They can throw up all sorts of other phony roadblocks for other people, but they have to let me in.”

  “Can you tell him anything from us?” Mother asked. “Or can I drive to the Flats and see if his mother has a message for him?”

  Uncle Roger nodded.

  “I’m happy to pass along any words of encouragement or hope or love that any of you have to offer,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll be desperate to hear it.” This time Uncle Roger winked at me. I wondered what Mother had told him. And what she’d told Mr. Pop, for that matter.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Uncle Roger said, “I’d love to see if I could take a thirty-minute nap, spend another thirty minutes to pull my head together, and then we’ll be on our way.”

  “We?” Mr. Pop asked, motioning to himself.

  “Well,” Uncle Roger said. “I was hoping Miss Mercy would be willing to drive into town with me. She and I need to catch up.”

  I tugged at the ties of my scarf. I wanted to just let the thing go, let it fly right off into the wind that swirled around us as Uncle Roger and I headed toward town in his Roadmaster. Top down. Uncle Roger had honked at Old Bill Wilding as we passed his so-called golf course. While normally his place—full of broken down gas pumps and a plethora of lawn ornaments, not to mention five or six stray chickens scratching around—caused cars to slow and stare, this time it was Old Bill Wilding’s turn. And who could blame him? When I had first seen the smooth mint green and the wave of white along the sides of this car, I couldn’t peel my eyes away either. The Carmichaels’ shiny red Riviera had nothing on Uncle Roger’s beauty. But the width and curves of this car’s outside couldn’t even compare to the thrill of a ride inside. I’d grown too used to the lurching of the potato truck and even the dull bounces of my father’s trusty Ford sedan, but this was luxury. In every sense of the word. Of course, a convertible in Maine—where a person could expect little more than a handful of top-down-perfect days—was extravagant enough. But the flashes of chrome, the shine of the dash, the smoothness of the leather seats made me feel like a movie star.

  I tucked my scarf behind my ear to hear Uncle Roger.

  “Did you want the radio on?” he asked.

  I smiled and nodded. Of course I did. If he could get a station.

  Uncle Roger took a quick look at the floor and moved his foot toward a button. He pressed a few times until we landed on WABI, out of Bangor. It fizzed in and out, but behind the static and amid the wind, I could hear music, faint and beautiful playing through.

  “So I’d like you to tell me,” Uncle Roger yelled over, “about Mick’s constitution.”

  “I thought you said it didn’t apply to him.”

  Uncle Roger laughed. “Right you are. I meant: What do you think sitting in jail will do to him? To his spirit?”

  I thought about what Joseph had told me. “His brother told me this wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to Mick.”

  “I suspect that’s true,” Uncle Roger said.

  “So if that’s true, I guess Mick’ll be okay. His spirit, I mean.”

  “Glad to hear that. I’m still going to work as hard as I can to get him out. But you understand the complications, right?”

  I pulled at my scarf and nodded.

  “And you understand that there’s a possibility I won’t be able to get him out and that there could be a trial. For murder, or attempted at least.”

  I nodded again. But I hadn’t actually understood that. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I never entertained the slightest possibility that Uncle Roger wouldn’t be able to get the judge to understand that this was all some huge, horrible mistake and that Mick should be let go immediately.

  “And if there’s a trial, I might ask you to testify on Mick’s behalf. Your father has already agreed to. As has your mother and Bud and Ellery. They will all be what’s called character witnesses. But you would be especially important. Mr. Pop tells me you know Mick better than anyone.”<
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  “I suppose I do. At least outside the Flats. But you should ask his brother, Joseph. He really knows him best.”

  Uncle Roger shook his head. “Can’t do that. Maliseet opinions don’t matter much, do they? Truth be told, your father’s word is going to be the most powerful. But as part of the esteemed Paul Millar’s household, yours will carry lots of weight too.”

  Uncle Roger paused and breathed in deeply through his nose, as though he needed Maine’s piney air to strengthen him. He glanced toward Mt. Katahdin’s peak before returning his eyes to the road and continuing.

  “The only thing,” he said, “will be that I need you to keep very quiet about your relationship with Mick. You two have been friends since you were babies, practically. And everyone knows that, which is fine. But if anyone asks you about the true nature of your relationship at this point, well, of course tell the truth, but just state it factually, no romantic embellishments.”

  Now it was my turn to stare off at Mt. Katahdin. How I wished I was in the potato truck so I could drive toward it, park at its base and climb up its craggy trails. “Any bit closer we can get to heaven seems to help,” Ellery had said when I confessed that the side of Katahdin was a better place to talk to God than church. But it wasn’t so much praying I longed to do on the mountain as simply escaping.

  I did my best to play the coy teenager Molly had tried to get me to practice being. “What do you mean, romantic embellishments?”

  Uncle Roger laughed. “Your father said you’d deny this. Even to me.”

  I closed my eyes. Tight. “Mr. Pop said I’d deny what?”

  “That you’re sweet on Mick.”

  “Why on earth would Mr. Pop think that?”