Nick and June Were Here

by Shalanda Stanley

  I didn’t say anything and he pushed me to my knees, the tiny rocks on the pavement pushing back into them.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  The news of this would reach Creed before I did. June would get out of the hospital soon. She’d find out. She’d know she was wrong about me. I couldn’t be who she wanted. My face burned and it felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. I opened my mouth, trying to take in more breath. I’d wanted the chance to be the guy she thought I was.

  When we were in the fifth grade, we went on a field trip to the zoo and June got separated from the group. Somehow we’d lost her after the otter exhibit. The parents and teachers took kids and split up, trying to find her. I snuck away from my group, because they were moving too slow and I had an idea of where she might’ve gone. I’d noticed that she hadn’t wanted to leave the monkey cages when everybody else did. I found her sitting on a bench in front of the cages, staring at one of the monkeys. The monkey was so still, looking back at her. I’d never seen one sit so still. June looked sad, like she was about to cry.

  I sat next to her on the bench. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She didn’t look at me, just kept staring at the monkey.

  “I think he knows,” she said.

  “Knows what?”

  “That he’s never going anywhere.”

  I felt sad, too, even though I didn’t really understand why. I scooted closer to her on the bench. All I really knew was that I wanted to get closer to her.

  It was the same way even now. There was so much I didn’t understand, but being closer to June made it easier. I thought about that day at the zoo a lot, wondering if that was why June was drawn to me, why she sometimes looked sad when she looked at me. Maybe I was like the monkey.

  * * *

  The bunk beds were crammed into a room too small for thirty-six boys to sleep in, but Durrant Juvenile Correctional Center made it work. The snores, the coughs, every time someone rolled over—everything made it impossible to sleep. Even if I could block out all of the noise, my mattress was so thin that the springs pushed into my back, so even with my eyes closed, I couldn’t forget where I was.

  I’d been there a few days. Because I was a minor, they had to keep me there until the trial. There was nothing else to do but replay that night in my head and count all the ways I’d screwed up my life. The memories ran on a loop, right next to the image of June’s face in the hospital when she’d said she was proud of me. What hurt the most was that I wouldn’t be able to take her to Hank’s this summer.

  My court-appointed lawyer had come to visit me the day before. He looked my age. I could tell juvie made him nervous. I almost asked him if this was his first case.

  “You’re going to be tried as an adult,” he said.

  He acted like he’d delivered unexpected news.

  “Based on your priors and the possession of the gun, you’re being charged with a Class B felony.”

  They’d searched my car and found the gun I kept in the glove compartment. Benny made us each keep one in case it was needed for intimidation purposes, but I never took it out.

  “You’re looking at a minimum of five years. The maximum penalty is fifteen.”

  “I thought my priors couldn’t be used against me.” That was one perk of committing crimes when you were a kid.

  “In Arkansas, if the crimes are similar, prosecutors can push to have them included if they want to enhance the charge in the adult case. It establishes a pattern of behavior.” He opened the file he’d brought with him.

  “But they won’t give me fifteen years,” I said.

  His look said I was wrong.

  “For trying to steal a car?”

  “You work at Benny’s Garage?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “For how long?”

  “Almost four years.”

  “And you’ve been arrested three times now, counting this time, all for the same crime.”

  “You have my file right in front of you. You know everything.”

  His look said he knew he didn’t. “The prosecutor is trying to make an example of you. Everyone in Creed knows who Benny Robertson is, what he does.”

  I kept my face still. Everyone knew who Benny was, and nobody had ever cared before.

  “Are you aware that in the last five years, four other employees have been arrested and convicted of grand theft auto?”

  “Yes.”

  “And one of them was your father, correct?”

  “I’m aware.”

  He lowered his voice. “If something bigger is going on here, then you need to tell me. For your sake.”

  Something bigger was going on. I was the fall guy. I wasn’t getting out of there, and if I wanted even the minimum sentence, I’d have to rat on Benny. I thought about Tommy and all of the other boys who worked for Benny. Ratting out Benny would be ratting them out, too.

  The lawyer looked frustrated. “Benny has a lot of underage boys working at the garage.”

  “Was that a question?” My temper rose. I knew it wasn’t this guy’s fault that my life had burned around me, but he was the one in front of me.

  “No,” he said. “Are you being coerced into stealing cars for your employer?”

  “No.”

  “Are you being paid to steal cars for your employer?”

  “No.”

  “To your knowledge, does the garage sell stolen car parts?”

  “No,” I bit out.

  “Do you realize you’ll be thirty-two when you get out of prison as a convicted felon?”

  His words punched me in the stomach.

  Fifteen years. I was seventeen. By the time I got out of jail, I’d have spent almost half my life there. I wondered who I’d be then.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And you don’t have a problem with that? Because I would.” He leaned close to me, like he was going to tell me a secret. “I wouldn’t give years of my life for a man who wouldn’t do the same for me. Benny Robertson has never been arrested. Isn’t it time the right person gets punished?”

  “No one made me do it,” I said. “I broke into the car. It was my gun.”

  He stared at me in disbelief. “The prosecutor offered protection for the other guys working there, on any information you supply on old cases,” he said. “He only wants Benny. Now, anything they do after today is on them.”

  “So if I tell you what you want to hear, they’ll let me out of here?”

  “If you take the deal, you’ll be guaranteed the minimum sentence,” he said.

  “I’ll still get five years?”

  “With good behavior, you could be out sooner, but you’re not walking away from this without jail time, not with your other offenses and the possession of the firearm. The judge would never go for it.”

  Five years or fifteen. That was what it came down to. I thought about June, what she would do when she found out. I felt sick to my stomach. I was the monkey in the cage and I wasn’t going anywhere.

  * * *

  It was visiting day and Aunt Linda was on the list. I was equal parts excited and scared. I wondered if that was how my dad felt when we came to see him. I really wanted to see her, because I missed her, but I didn’t want to see her disappointment or the look of resignation that was bound to be on her face. She’d predicted this. I’d almost told her not to come, but I was dying to know how June was doing and if she was home from the hospital. I’d gotten phone privileges the day before, but I’d been too chickenshit to call June. I was worried that she didn’t have her phone and I didn’t want to risk talking to her parents. Every time I talked to them, her dad especially, I was scared I’d hear the regret in their voices, like they were sorry they ever let me get close.

  On visiting day, they put us in the cafeteria, one boy
to a table. The other seats were for family members. There were always a lot of wasted seats at my table. Aunt Linda came in the room and I stood. At the first sight of her face, I knew something was very wrong, more than just the fact that I’d been arrested again. She looked stricken.

  She got to my table.

  “Dad?” I asked.

  I hated the hopeful sound in my voice, but if something had happened to someone, I needed it to be him and not John.

  She shook her head. “Billy is fine,” she said, her voice tired.

  “Who, then?”

  It wasn’t June, because June was safe. She was at the hospital or she was home. It was John. It hadn’t been just a dream that I’d had the other night. Aunt Linda was coming to tell me that John was dead. He’d been killed in Afghanistan.

  At first she didn’t say anything, only put her arms around me, and I let her, for just a second.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  John was gone. That was why I hadn’t heard from him. A dead guy couldn’t write emails or make phone calls.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “A package came in the mail yesterday.”

  A package. A package had made her face look like that.

  “Your mom called me a few days ago, the day after you got arrested.”

  My mom almost never called, and when she did, she didn’t talk to Aunt Linda. She always said she could feel Aunt Linda’s judgment through the phone.

  “She was so upset. It was hard to understand her. She said to expect a package.”

  “What was in it?”

  “Your uncle Hank had a heart attack.”

  I pressed my hands flat on the table and realized that I was no longer standing. It felt like someone had let all the air out of the room and then lit a match inside my gut.

  “Your mama was so upset,” she said. “It was hard to understand her. Even though they didn’t see each other much, those two were close.”

  Nothing made sense. Aunt Linda felt bad for my mom. That was how fucked up things were.

  He’d had a heart attack. They were close. Hank understood my mom in a way no one else did. He’d tried to help me understand her, too. He was the only reason I didn’t hate her.

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  But didn’t I know the answer to that?

  “He died, baby,” she said, confirming my suspicion.

  She covered my hands with hers where they still pressed against the table.

  “He’d been setting fence posts,” she said. “It was John who found him.”

  I couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. It felt like cold water being thrown on me and suddenly the fire was out. It was a mistake.

  “John’s not home. There’s a mistake.”

  Hank wasn’t dead and John wasn’t home.

  “John is in Afghanistan,” I said. My voice was calm and it surprised me. Maybe it was because I knew this was impossible. “I don’t know why my mom is doing this, why she called you, but she lied to you. I don’t know why. She likes drama, but John isn’t home, so Hank can’t be dead.”

  “I know this is hard to take in,” she said. “I don’t know why John was there. Your mom just said he was back. He found Hank right after it happened. She said John did everything he could to try and save him. He gave him CPR and then he hauled him in Hank’s truck and got him to the hospital all by himself.”

  The nearest hospital was an hour away.

  “He did all he could do,” Aunt Linda said again. She shook her head over and over. “John didn’t take it good. At all. Your mom said they had to call the police to the hospital when it was time to take the body away. Said they had to pull John off of Hank.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before now? I’ve been here for days.”

  “This was the first day they’d let me come out here. I wasn’t telling you something like this over the phone.” She had tears in her eyes. “Your mama tried calling you the day it happened, over and over, she said, but she couldn’t get you.”

  She couldn’t get me, because I was getting arrested.

  “There isn’t money for a coffin or a funeral,” Aunt Linda said. “And your mama didn’t know what else to do.” Aunt Linda looked ashamed, like this was her fault. “The county morgue gave her a good deal to cremate him.”

  The truth hit me in the gut. The package was Uncle Hank. The fire was back again.

  “She mailed his ashes?” I asked. My voice rose an octave and I cleared it. “She mailed him to Creed?” I asked again. I was repeating myself, but I had trouble wrapping my mind around what she was saying.

  “She thought he should come home. He came today. Priority Mail.”

  But the Ozarks were his home. They sent his ashes by Priority Mail. How did everything fall apart in such a short time?

  “Your mom didn’t see the point in waiting. She said she wanted it taken care of.”

  My mom didn’t like leaving things undone. Once her mind was made up to do something, you couldn’t change it.

  Uncle Hank had never wanted to leave the mountain, though. Ever. The first summer I’d stayed with him, he’d showed me and John the place on the hill, the one in the painting that hung on Aunt Linda’s wall in her kitchen. It was the place he’d stood when he knew he’d made the right decision to leave Creed.

  “This is it,” he’d said.

  “What?” I’d asked.

  “From this spot, I can see the cabin and the forests and everything behind it. The first time I stood here, I knew this place was where I was meant to be. This is the spot,” he’d said.

  Now he was a package. The man who’d showed me a different way was dust in a box in my aunt Linda’s kitchen. My mom had mailed him to Creed. She had to have known that he wouldn’t have wanted that, that he had never wanted to come back. But maybe she didn’t.

  “I thought I’d buy an urn, a pretty one,” Aunt Linda said. “We could put him on the mantel. Isn’t that where you’re supposed to put a person’s ashes?” she asked.

  I couldn’t answer.

  “Maybe when you get out we can have a ceremony or something,” she said. “We can borrow one of the preachers in town.”

  She didn’t know it was going to be at least five years. I’d planned on breaking the news to her today.

  “Mayb—”

  “Stop,” I said.

  I needed her to stop talking. The fire in my stomach was spreading quickly, moving up my throat. She waited for me to say something else but I was afraid to open my mouth.

  “I’m so sorry, Nick,” she said finally. “I know what he meant to you.”

  “Where’s John now?”

  She shrugged. “Your mama thinks he went back to Hank’s, but she’s not sure. He left the hospital before the cremation.”

  “Is June still in the hospital?” I asked.

  Aunt Linda looked confused by the change in conversation but then said, “She’s been spending nights at home. I think they’re getting ready to release her soon.”

  June knew where I was, then.

  “There’s some money in a box under my bed,” I said.

  “Nick, I do—”

  “I know you were planning on getting a roommate, but that was down the road, and the rent is due in a couple of days.”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “It’s not okay,” I said. “Nothing is okay anymore, but let me take care of this one thing. It’s not a lot, less than five hundred, but it’ll help you get by for now.”

  “You’re always taking care of everyone else.”

  “You take care of me, too,” I said.

  I wanted to thank her for always doing right by me, for taking me in when I didn’t have anywhere else to go, but I was worried if I did, I’d tip her off that I was sa
ying goodbye, so I just said, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For all of it.”

  “You’re welcome, baby.”

  The guard across the room gave the signal. Time was up.

  We hugged and I tried to memorize everything about her, how soft she was and how even though her perfume was cheap, it smelled sweet on her skin. She walked out of the room and I didn’t look away, even though I wanted to, even though it would’ve been easier to.

  Five years or fifteen. Uncle Hank was dead and John was home and nobody had told me. Nobody had called or said shit to me. Uncle Hank was dead. John had been with him. Five years or fifteen.

  Nothing made sense. I looked out the window to make sure the sky was still blue.

  I went back into the rec hall and got in line to use one of the phones. We could use them during our free time, but we only got ten minutes. I wanted to call John and ask him what had happened, demand to know why he was back early and why no one had thought I’d want to know.

  I was pissed. The anger surged through me, and I was grateful for it. Anger was easier to handle in here. I’d have to be sad later. I was mad at John for coming home months early and not thinking I’d want to know, mad at him for being the one with Hank at the end. Mad at my mom for sending Hank’s ashes home. Hank had never wanted to leave the mountain. Never.

  I picked up the phone.

  Five years or fifteen.

  I thought about calling my lawyer and telling him my mind was made up, but I figured he could find out when everybody else did.

  Instead I called the one person I knew who would help me do something this stupid. He answered on the second ring and accepted the charges.

  “Shit, man. Do you know what this call is going to cost me?” Tommy asked.

  “I’m good for it,” I lied.

  “How is everything?” he asked.

  Tommy had a tone to his voice that only boys who’d been to juvie before had. He’d asked about ten questions with that one.

  How’s the food this time?

  Is anybody messing with you?