Nick and June Were Here

by Shalanda Stanley

  Dad had been convicted of grand theft auto for the third time, and now it’d be twenty-two years, three months, and two days before he’d see sunlight from outside a fence. When he went away, that was when me and John had gone to work for Benny. Dad was in deep with Benny and it was up to us to pay him back. We didn’t know what would happen if we refused and we thought it was best not to find out.

  Everyone in town knew who Benny was and what he did and that if you wanted your oil changed, you took it somewhere else. They also knew that all of Benny’s guys ended up in jail eventually. That wasn’t how I wanted to leave town, but for most guys like me, that was the only way we got out. It was just where we went after high school. I’d already been to juvie twice.

  Deep down, June knew that. John had, too. That was why he’d joined the army on his eighteenth birthday. He had been deployed a year later.

  “Stay out of trouble,” he’d said.

  He quit Benny’s for me before he left, but he hadn’t counted on our mom meeting Larry and leaving town for good. Mom was a waitress at the Blue Hill Diner and Larry was a truck driver who came through town from time to time and always sat in her section. He was a big tipper and Creed didn’t have many of those, so he made an impression.

  John didn’t know that I’d have to move in with Aunt Linda, our dad’s sister, or that Aunt Linda would need help making rent. And if I was telling the truth, I wasn’t good at staying out of trouble. I didn’t know the right way to get the things I needed. It just made sense to keep working for Benny. I knew guys made real money working for him, but I wasn’t as careful as I should’ve been. John hadn’t been in basic training a month when I was arrested for the first time.

  I’d lived with Aunt Linda for a couple of years now. Mom took off right after John left for basic training. I tried not to be mad at her for leaving. Some days I managed it. Logically, I understood. She saw her chance to get out of here and she took it. Aunt Linda didn’t see it the same way. “What kind of mama leaves her boy?” she’d ask me. But I’d known it was coming. Since I was ten, she’d been taking off, a summer here, a winter there. She was like a runner training for a marathon. Like she was adding one more mile at a time, she left and stayed gone for longer and longer, until she’d built up the stamina to leave for good.

  She wasn’t a bad person. More than once she’d bought art supplies with food money, but nobody had ever put her first. When she finally met someone who did, she didn’t want to let him go.

  Now my unofficial job title was the Car Thief of East Third Avenue. Lately I’d thought about quitting like June wanted. We were free from my dad’s debt and I had some money saved. I almost had quit once or twice but then Aunt Linda would come to me and say, “They’re cutting the lights off today if I can’t pay the bill,” and I’d do what had to be done. On my side of town, guys didn’t wait to grow up to take care of their families. That was something I couldn’t make June understand. Even though we grew up in the same town, we didn’t live in the same world. There was a dividing line in Creed and I lived on the wrong side of it.

  Quitting always seemed like some lofty dream anyway. I couldn’t remember life before Benny’s Garage. Me and John were practically raised there. There were marks on the inside of one of the storage room doors, tracking our heights over the years.

  Our lives were divided between the garage and Hank’s cabin. We were very different people in each place. At first it was hard for John to adjust to being at Hank’s in the summer, because Hank treated us like kids. He didn’t expect John to make decisions. John had to decide everything when we were in Creed. Mom was always working, and before Dad was sent to prison, he was in and out of county jail, so John was left in charge. It was a pretty sweet setup. We didn’t have a bedtime. Nobody made us brush our teeth. We even drank Coke with breakfast.

  * * *

  Tommy Henderson was standing outside the garage with a smile too big for his face. I could always judge how bad it was at the garage by the size of Tommy’s smile. The bigger the smile, the worse things were. It was a coping strategy. Tommy was the only Tarantula that I still hung out with. He was a year older than me and lived in my neighborhood. His dad had run off two years ago. Tommy came to work for Benny right after that. Benny collected all the fatherless kids in town.

  Tommy motioned for me to stay in the car. Opening the passenger-side door, he said, “Finally. Benny’s pissed. He’s been trying to get you for over an hour. He wants us to go to Macomb tonight.” He plopped down in the seat. “I’ll ride with you. It’ll save us some time.”

  We drove to Macomb, a town forty-five minutes away. The deal was two cars a month and the only rule was that we didn’t steal in Creed. “We don’t shit where we eat,” Benny said.

  I drove around until dark, scouting, with Tommy talking nonstop about some girl named Lanette that he loved. Tommy loved a lot of girls.

  “What happened to Avery?” I asked.

  “Aww, man. Her mom met some dude from Benton and they took off.”

  Her mom was smart.

  We found what we were looking for just after the sun went down. There was an older-model Cavalier parked next to Lake Murray. It looked like it’d been there awhile, because it had flyers advertising different things stuck under the windshield wipers. I made a couple of loops around the lake and then parked down the street. Older cars were easier for a lot of reasons. The locks were easier to pop. They were simpler to hot-wire, and had no alarm systems. In Creed, Benny never had trouble moving older parts.

  Reaching under the seat for my tools, I said, “Don’t start timing me until I get to the car.”

  Tommy grinned. We were competitive. My best time was four minutes and thirty-eight seconds, seven seconds faster than his best time. John held the record among all of Benny’s boys, four minutes, and if anybody was going to break it, it was going to be me.

  Tommy scooted into the driver’s seat when I got out. He’d follow me back to the garage.

  I looked around for anybody watching, but this time of night on this side of town, the only people around were trying to score or the homeless. Neither cared if I stole this car. I walked up to it, trying not to think about what June had said about me not having to do this. It wasn’t good to be distracted.

  The lock pick was light in my hands. I slid it between the window and door, lifted, and I was in. I dropped into the seat like the car was mine and leaned down, popping the steering wheel column open. I found the wires I’d need, my dad’s words running through my head. You can’t just go grabbing at shit. All the wires are live. I stripped the wires like I’d done a hundred times. I rubbed them together and the car came to life. I looked around to see if anyone had paid attention to the cranked car but no one had.

  You’re gonna be better than me. It was John’s voice this time. Sometimes I imagined that John was with me when I did jobs. He’d appear in the seat next to me, like he was already a ghost, reminding me what I needed to do next.

  Checking the mirrors, I pulled out onto the street and clocked Tommy pulling out behind me. I used to keep track of how many cars I’d stolen, but lately I’d lost count. I’d been stealing cars before I had a license to drive them.

  The road always felt different after doing a job for Benny. I felt every bump in my stomach, noticed every broken streetlight, each passing car. When you drove a stolen car, you had to remember everything you knew about driving. All of the rules mattered, but some were more important than others. Make sure you didn’t follow the car in front of you too closely. Come to a complete stop at stop signs, none of those rolling ones. Put your blinker on a hundred feet before making a turn. Working brake lights were very important. That was what got my dad the last time. It was a broken taillight that got him pulled over, his third strike.

  I checked the rearview mirror to make sure it was Tommy behind me and no one else. I missed his blabbering. I
t was too quiet and too easy to think about all the things I tried to avoid thinking about—the future being my biggest worry. June and Bethany were taking off as soon as they could and I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t want June to go, but she wasn’t asking my permission and she was never mine to keep. I’d always known that. It still hurt. That was the main reason I wanted to bring her with me to the Ozarks this summer, to spend more time with her before she left Creed and never came back.

  Part of me wanted to go with her when she left, but there was only one other place I could see a life for myself and that was in the Ozarks with Hank. This summer I was planning on asking him if I could stay for good. I’d been thinking about it for a while. That might be my only real chance at breaking free from Benny. I’d be 250 miles from Creed and Benny’s Garage. I could start something new there. Maybe if June could see that a person could have a life there, she’d be able to see a life for herself there, too.

  Crossing into the town limits, I passed Plywood Sawmill. It was one of four mills in town. It was where Uncle Hank had worked before he left. In Creed, trees were big business. The sawmills were where guys like me who didn’t end up in jail went to work. If you couldn’t get ahead with your education, you did it with your back. Sawmills were dangerous, though. No one had been killed in a long time, but more than a few men walked around town with limps.

  When I pulled back into the garage, Benny was standing just outside his office, his arms crossed. His face was in a scowl, but that was his usual look.

  He looked over the car as I got out. “You did good, kid,” he said.

  I tried not to let it feel good but I couldn’t help it.

  Tommy came inside the garage and tossed me my keys and then lifted the car’s hood. A couple of guys came over and they started stripping it.

  Benny pointed at the paint on my shirt. “You were with that girl today when you couldn’t answer your phone?” he asked. He liked asking questions he already knew the answers to. “That explains the last text I got from you. Don’t let her distract you from what you need to be doing. She’ll be out of here soon and you’ll still need a job. So unless you want to work at one of the mills, don’t let your dick make your decisions for you.”

  I clenched my fists at my sides, wanting to punch his words back into his mouth. I closed my eyes and imagined myself punching his words back into his mouth.

  “I know what’s important,” I said instead. “I won’t forget.”

  I wished I didn’t need Benny, but I did. Tommy needed him. A lot of people did. Benny filled a gap that no one else in town did. People liked to look down on him and all of us who worked for him, because everybody knew what was up, but Benny stepped in when we didn’t have other options.

  He walked around the car, inspecting the guys’ work. “Even though you went with him, this doesn’t count as your car,” he said to Tommy. Tommy didn’t say anything back, just nodded, looking younger than he had earlier. Benny had that effect on him.

  I usually stayed and helped break the car down, but that night I just wanted to get the hell out of there. As soon as Benny went back into his office, I said, “Hey, Tommy, I’m gonna slip out. I’ll make it up to you later.” Tommy grunted something from under the hood that I took as a yes.

  My aunt Linda’s house was a couple of blocks from the garage. It was a three-bedroom brick house that looked exactly like all the other houses on the street, except for the shutters. Everybody’s shutters were different colors. It was the one thing you got to pick when you moved in.

  Aunt Linda’s car was in the driveway when I pulled in. I was surprised by this. She worked the late shift at the hospital on the cleaning crew.

  The screen door creaked when I opened it, and she turned to face me. She was in front of the stove, working on something. She usually left supper for me so all I had to do was warm it up.

  “I didn’t expect to see you before I left for work,” she said. She had a huge grin on her face, like this was a good surprise.

  “I ducked out of Benny’s a little early.”

  “Well, ain’t I the lucky one,” she said, her smile showing her one dimple.

  My aunt Linda used to be beautiful. I’d seen pictures of her and my dad when they were kids, before their worry lines weighed down their faces, before they had so much to worry about.

  I dropped a kiss on her head. She smelled like bacon and fried eggs. Aunt Linda cooked breakfast no matter the time of day.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  “I am.”

  “Grab us a couple of plates,” she said.

  We rarely got to eat a meal together. I usually didn’t get home until after she’d left for work and I was gone in the mornings before she got home.

  She brought everything to the table. “School will be out soon,” she said, piling bacon on my plate. She phrased it like a question.

  I nodded. She didn’t mention graduation because we both knew that wasn’t happening. I didn’t have enough credits. I would’ve quit already, but school was a place to see June and I could use Mr. Nelson’s art room.

  “You going to Hank’s again this summer?” she asked. She asked this every spring.

  “Yes.”

  “What are your plans after that?” she asked.

  I almost choked on my eggs. It was our first direct conversation about the future. She’d been tiptoeing around this topic for a while, though, always adding, “What are your plans after that?” anytime she wanted to know what I was doing that day.

  “It can only go one way if you keep working for Benny,” she said.

  The way it went for my dad. Aunt Linda wasn’t stupid. She knew who Benny was and what I did. She never questioned me, though. She couldn’t afford to.

  “I’m figuring it out,” I said.

  “Well, don’t figure me into your plans.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I appreciate you helping out around here, but don’t keep working there for my benefit. I’ll figure something else out. I was thinking about getting a roommate. My friend Susan is planning on leaving her husband soon and she’ll need a place to stay.”

  I’d been dreaming about moving to the Ozarks for a while now but didn’t know how to put what I wanted into words. Or maybe I was scared to say it out loud, because then it’d be real. Maybe she’d sensed this. Maybe I didn’t hide what I was thinking as good as I thought I did. Either way, I didn’t know if I should be relieved that I wouldn’t have to worry about her or sad because her financial stability depended on her friend Susan’s divorce.

  “You can go off on your adventure,” she said, scooping eggs into her mouth. Then she leaned in close, until I could smell her perfume over the food, a weird mix of lilac and grease. “It won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t come back.”

  She leaned back in her chair and the kitchen light caught her eyes. That was the only reason I saw the tears in them. She was up and turned from me before I could react.

  “Aunt Linda, nothing has to be decided tonight,” I said.

  She grabbed the washcloth from the sink and started wiping down the counter, not looking at me.

  “You’ve got to get out of here,” she said, her voice a whisper, like she was talking to herself instead of me. “Places like this aren’t good for people like you. If you don’t leave soon, Creed will grab on to you and never let you go, or worse.”

  Like my dad.

  “You need to follow Hank’s example,” she said, pointing at one of his paintings hanging on the kitchen wall. “He’s been really good for you boys, showed you a different way.”

  The painting in the kitchen was of the view of his cabin from the hill behind the workshop, where you could stand and see the cabin and the forest behind it. From that angle, the Ozarks looked like an infinity pool, but instead of water it was
trees. He would stand on that spot and say, “A man can really get lost up here.” He’d say it like it was a good thing.

  Most of Uncle Hank’s paintings were landscapes. I’d only ever seen one that wasn’t. I’d spotted it my first time there. It hung on the back wall of his workshop.

  It was a painting of him and my mom when they were younger, standing in front of a house they never lived in, a two-story brick house with a picket fence.

  “Paint is easy to manipulate,” he explained. “You can make anything you want happen.”

  During that first summer with Hank, me and John helped him fix the fences that surrounded his property. As much as a couple of kids could help, anyway. Over time, we built rockers, picnic tables, nightstands, you name it. Sometimes I wasn’t sure what we were working on, just put my hands where he told me and followed the steps he laid out for us. At night, I’d be so exhausted I’d fall asleep as soon as I lay down—and sometimes before, Uncle Hank waking me up at the dinner table and telling me to go to bed. He always made sure we had plenty to do.

  I looked forward to going back every summer because I craved the feeling of everything having a purpose. If you wanted to eat, you had to hunt. If you needed a place to sit, eat, sleep, you had to build it. “There’s no time for idle hands in the mountains,” Uncle Hank would say.

  Last summer was the only one I’d spent with Hank that John wasn’t there for. That was probably why we’d fought so much. Me and Uncle Hank were a lot alike, which wasn’t always a good thing. I thought about the last thing I had said to him and my gut twisted. I had a lot to apologize for before he would even consider letting me move up there.

  Aunt Linda scraped the food she hadn’t eaten into the trash can. “John will be home this summer.”

  It wasn’t a question but she said it like one.

  “Yeah, he’s supposed to be,” I said, handing her my plate.