No Good Brother

by Tyler Keevil

  ‘I’ll go,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘This fool can’t go anywhere – he’s a wanted man.’ Then, as if it had just occurred to me, I added, ‘Say – why don’t you come with me, Sam? We can pick out the food, take a look around town.’

  ‘Can I, Mom?’

  ‘Tim will take care of you.’

  While Sam went to get changed, Maria took me aside and gave me the keys to her truck – or Delaney’s truck – and put a piece of paper in my hand. Her prescription slip. She folded my fingers over it and held them.

  ‘You can get it from the medical centre.’

  ‘Will they let me?’

  ‘They know Sam, and I’ll call ahead.’

  I nodded. ‘See if you can talk some sense into him, will you?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ she said. She kissed me, aiming for my cheek but getting me half on the mouth, which actually made me blush.

  Sam and I hopped in the truck and set out back along the track. It seemed even more uneven going down and the shocks on the Sierra bounced us around as if we were running choppy waves in a boat. The trees created a tunnel around us and in places the track got so narrow that the branches scraped along the paintwork, making that distinct shrieking sound, like nails on a blackboard.

  We turned off it onto the paved road, which was part of the state park, and Sam said, ‘Jake and Mom – did they used to date?’

  ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘Back in Vancouver?’

  ‘That’s right. The North Shore.’

  ‘I was born there.’

  ‘I know you were.’

  She leaned on the door with her elbow, propping up her head, looking right at me. I had my eyes on the road and I was grateful for the excuse.

  ‘But I don’t remember much,’ she said. ‘We moved around a lot – first across town to Killarney, then out to Hope for a while to live with my gran, and then down here.’

  She made a face, making it clear what she thought of that.

  I asked, ‘Do you have citizenship?’

  ‘My mom has both, so she applied for me.’

  ‘I’d forgot she was born in the States.’

  ‘I heard her say it’s the only reason Patrick keeps her. He gets a partner visa.’

  ‘Convenient.’

  ‘For him. He needs it for his business.’

  She twisted a strand of hair around her finger once, twice, three times, and then let it fall. The gesture jolted me. Again it was like Sandy. So much just seemed to be embedded in her, like an imprint.

  ‘Why’d you really bring that horse down here?’ she asked.

  ‘Delaney – Patrick – hired us to.’ But she knew that. She hadn’t been asking about that. ‘And I think it was a way for Jake and your mom to meet up again.’

  ‘Couldn’t they have just called each other?’

  ‘People don’t always do things the smart way, or the easy way.’

  She snorted – a bit like a horse herself. ‘People are crazy,’ she said.

  ‘We’re all crackers, all right.’

  We had us a good laugh about that, and I turned out of the park, onto Highway 12, heading north.

  The highway led straight back to the overpass at the outskirts of Elma, where we’d turned off the night before. We scooted beneath it, and a little beyond the building supply yard we hung a left on Main Street, cruised past a Chevron station, and came to the Summit Pacific Medical Center. It had a glass-and-metal façade and decorative wooden siding, and looked as if it had been built recently. We were approaching an ‘Emergency Entrance’ sign at the roadside.

  Sam said, ‘You can turn in here.’

  I’d almost passed it, but I hit the brakes and screeched on in: the place only had the one entrance, apparently. The drive wrapped around the front of the clinic in an oval shape. At the centre of the oval stood a flagpole, flying the Stars and Stripes, flapping all forlorn in the cold. We passed beneath a concrete awning – held up by big supports – and came to the visitors’ parking lot. I found a spot and asked Sam if she wanted to come in.

  I said, ‘I wouldn’t want to leave you here in the lot on your own.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m always on my own.’

  ‘You ain’t when you’re with me.’

  ‘I better come in anyway. They don’t know you.’

  We walked to the entrance together. The glass doors swung inwards automatically, opening into a foyer with tile floors and a few chairs and benches. It had that hospital smell: bleach and disinfectant. On our right was a reception desk and Sam led me past that, waving idly at the young woman on duty, and down a hall to the little shop and in-house pharmacy.

  Behind the counter stood a middle-aged guy with a goatee and a long, braided ponytail, gone to grey. He greeted Sam by name and seemed friendly enough, but with me he turned distant, stony-faced. For a member of the medical profession he wasn’t exactly congenial.

  Sam said, ‘We’re picking up Mom’s prescription.’

  ‘Who’s this?’ he said warily.

  ‘He’s Tim.’

  ‘A friend,’ I said, holding out the prescription slip. ‘Maria said she’d phone ahead.’

  ‘Well, she didn’t,’ the guy said. He took the slip and studied it. ‘But she signed it, at least. And if Sam vouches for you, I guess it’s all good.’

  He went to get the prescription and came back with a white paper bag, folded down at the top and held in place with a sticky label. He handed it to me without really acknowledging me and told Sam to say hello to her mother.

  As we walked back out, I said, ‘That fellow didn’t seem to cotton to me.’

  ‘He probably assumed you were one of Patrick’s friends.’

  ‘Mr Jenkins did, too.’

  ‘At least they’re nice to me and Mom. They feel sorry for us, I guess.’

  ‘Funny how they all know about him.’

  ‘He doesn’t really try to hide it.’

  As we crossed the parking lot, I glanced at the bag in my hand, but the label didn’t say anything about the contents. I assumed it would be Valium or some kind of diazepam, which mixes bad with booze, and would explain the way Maria had crashed out. I didn’t ask about it, and didn’t have to: in the truck I tossed the bag on the seat between us and Sam took it up, holding it at eye level to study, like a scientist checking the results of an experiment.

  ‘Methadone,’ she said.

  She said it disdainfully, as if to let me know she understood what it meant. I told her Maria had said she was trying to go clean, and that maybe the methadone was part of that.

  ‘She’s been trying for a while.’

  ‘Do you pick up your mom’s prescriptions a lot?’

  ‘She has a lot to pick up. And this is close to our school.’

  I thought of that. Her walking down after school, by herself, to pick up her mom’s methadone from Mr Chuckles in there. I actually didn’t have a hard time imagining it.

  ‘You’re in what? Grade four?’

  ‘Five. My birthday’s in August, and September is the cut-off.’

  I put the truck in reverse, and looked over my shoulder as I backed us up. ‘How much do they dole out at a time? A month’s supply?’

  ‘Two weeks.’ As I wheeled us out of the medical centre, she added quietly, ‘But it won’t last that long.’

  Sam directed me towards Everybody’s, the supermarket where they got their groceries. We followed Main Street across town, and turned at Seventh, past a few blocks of bungalows and a squat little credit union. Everybody’s could have been Safeway, or Thriftway, or any of the US chain stores: a big beige building with a flat roof, and a red awning jutting out the front.

  Inside we got ourselves a trolley and I let Sam push it down the aisles, which she did with reckless zest and abandon, practically power-sliding around the corners. I kept getting the sense that the other shoppers were peering at me slantwise, assuming me to be some no-accoun
t thug, but that might have been paranoia on my part.

  Maria had given us a list of things to pick up, but the list only had five items on it: milk and cereal and cigarettes and red wine and Tylenol. The essentials, I suppose. We got all that, along with a case of Olympia and a bottle of Lunazul tequila. I also told Sam to grab whatever kind of snacks she wanted and she tossed an assortment into the cart: all-dressed chips and bacon rinds and beef jerky and generic cola. In the homeware aisle she found an entire dinner set, of all things, and dropped that in the trolley, just as casual as can be.

  ‘I’m tired of eating off those stupid paper plates.’

  ‘Okay, cowgirl,’ I said. ‘Done. Let’s see if we can find us a barbecue, now.’

  They didn’t have any disposable barbecues, seeing as it was February. Only my kid brother would think to hold a barbecue in the middle of winter. In the hardware department, between the edgers and hedgeclippers, they had charcoal barbecues in flat packs. We loaded one onto the bottom of the trolley along with a sack of briquettes and a bottle of lighter fluid.

  After that we went to stock up on meat. The meat section spanned three full aisles, lined with shelves of hamburger chuck and lamb chops and chicken legs and drumsticks and whatnot. They had fresh, they had frozen, they had everything you could imagine. It was a regular abattoir. We wandered through that together, bewildered by all our options.

  ‘Jake wanted steak, and ribs,’ I said, to simplify things. ‘For his speciality dish.’

  ‘What does whisky-grilled mean anyway?’

  ‘It’s a way to do back ribs on the barbecue, with a fancy sauce. It’s a pain in the ass to prepare but it tastes damn good.’

  It had also been Sandy’s favourite, but I didn’t say that. On the next shelf we found racks of baby back ribs, sealed in Styrofoam trays. I put two of those in our cart and as we wheeled on, towards the beef, she asked, ‘Is Jake as tough as he acts?’

  ‘Nobody’s as tough as they act.’

  ‘Are you tough?’

  ‘I ain’t tough at all. I leave that to Jake. I’m the good one – a big softy.’

  I patted my belly for emphasis, like Santa Claus.

  ‘Is that why Mom trusts you?’

  ‘I don’t know if she does.’

  ‘She trusts you with me.’

  We stopped again in front of the steaks. They had T-bone and sirloin and ribeye, and a bunch of those cheap frying steaks that taste like liver. Sam picked up a T-bone and studied it, as if checking it for quality. The plastic clung to the meat, vacuum-packed, and you could see the streaks of blood beneath.

  ‘Did Jake really threaten Patrick?’ she asked, still staring at the steak.

  ‘They had words.’

  ‘What does that mean? Had words?’

  ‘It means they argued. Sometimes you say things in the middle of an argument.’

  ‘These look good,’ she said, and held the T-bone out to me. ‘How about these?’

  ‘Sure – get four of those.’

  She stacked them in the cart. After she did, she glanced over her shoulder, as if to make sure nobody else could hear us. It was very theatrical, and would have been uncommonly endearing, except for what she said next, in a hushed, solemn voice.

  ‘Patrick kills people, you know.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I saw it. I saw him shoot two men.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  She looked around, by way of changing the subject. ‘Hey – can I get an Archie?’

  She skipped over to the magazine rack, and started rooting through them. I followed, more slowly, digesting what she’d just told me. I didn’t doubt the truth of it, and felt more than a little wamble-cropped and sick in my guts. I stood and stared dumbly at the comics as she pulled them out, considering each in turn. She held up a Betty and Veronica Double Digest.

  ‘How about this one?’

  ‘Get a couple. Hell, get ’em all.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s your un-birthday, isn’t it?’

  She giggled, and started piling up comics.

  ‘It’s my un-birthday,’ she said to a woman coming down the aisle.

  The woman smiled tolerantly.

  We loaded the groceries back in the truck, and since that was what we’d come in for I had no excuse to linger in town with her. I cruised back down the main street, doing thirty, with the heat cranked and the radio on, playing an old Willie Nelson track. Sam had one of her new comics open on her lap. Archie was chasing after Veronica, as usual, with hearts swirling around his head.

  ‘Your mom get you into those?’ I asked.

  ‘She used to read them, too.’

  ‘I remember. So did we, back in the day.’

  ‘The old ones are the best.’

  ‘Maybe that’s where you got cracker from.’

  I was talking in an idle way, while dwelling on what she’d said inside. I didn’t know if I ought to bring it up, but I also figured I might not get another chance to talk to her alone.

  ‘The men you saw him shoot,’ I said. ‘Where was it?’

  ‘At the ranch,’ she said nonchalantly, and turned a page. ‘Down by the bunkhouse. I saw from my bedroom window. They thought I was asleep. It was, like, midnight.’

  I didn’t ask anything else. I figured that was enough. But after reading on for a few moments, she said, ‘They’d been arguing. I heard the arguing and got up and as I reached the window I saw the flashes and heard the bangs.’

  ‘Does he know you saw?’

  ‘He came up to my room. I sat up and told him I’d heard noises. I thought, if I just lay there and pretended to be asleep, he’d know I was faking.’

  ‘Smart.’

  She shrugged, folded her comic shut, and looked out the window. She’d been talking pretty calmly, but her knee was going up and down, trembling, almost imperceptibly.

  ‘You tell anybody else you saw it?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even your mom?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I didn’t ask why she’d told me. About a mile on, she nodded at a parking lot by the roadside as we passed. She told me that one of the equestrian trails she rode came out there. Hikers and bikers used it, too. She asked me if I still wanted to go riding later.

  ‘That would be swell,’ I said.

  ‘Swell.’ She smiled at the word. ‘You sound like Jughead.’

  ‘I probably read too many of those damn things, when I was your age.’

  ‘Do you still have them?’

  ‘Sure. Most of them were my sister’s, so I kept them all.’ That seemed a weird way to put it, so I explained, ‘Our older sister, she died. She died in a car accident, ten years ago.’

  Most people, when I tell them that, tend to get all awkward and strange and not know what to say, or else say something idiotic like, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ But Sam just looked at me in that open and honest way kids have, and said, ‘You must miss her so much.’

  And then she did the damnedest thing: she reached over and patted my bad hand.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I didn’t find out until later all that had transpired in our absence, but knowing Jake and Maria I suspected their discussion would have been somewhat lively. Perhaps because of that, upon our return I had the impression of a charged atmosphere hanging about the house, as if some tempest had descended on the place, and only recently abated. As I pulled up I honked the horn to announce our arrival, and Sam and I stomped up the steps carrying our bags of groceries.

  Inside, I heard Jake and Maria talking in low voices (the words weren’t clear) and that stopped when we pushed open the front door. They were sitting at the big oak dining table, side-by-side, and Maria still hadn’t changed out of her tatty bathrobe. It looked as if she’d been crying, and Jake had a split lip. He touched the blood with his tongue, bashfully.

  ‘Hey guys,’ I said, as if she wasn’t near tears and Jake’s lip wasn’t b
leeding and everything was perfectly normal, just peachy. ‘We got the barbecue.’

  Maria smiled weakly through a haze of menthol smoke. She looked relieved. She got up and came straight over and grabbed Sam in a hug and held her like that a long time – an unaccountably long time, really – and asked Sam if she’d had fun, if she’d enjoyed herself.

  ‘Mom,’ Sam said, wriggling away.

  ‘Did you get my prescription?’

  I held out the paper bag. She took it and wiped at her eyes with the heel of her palm (she’d started crying again when she hugged Sam) and told us she needed to freshen up, and have a morning shower. She took the bag upstairs and a second later I heard water running.

  I looked at Jake and he just held out his hands, as if to show they were empty – like a poor man asking for alms.

  ‘We got your ribs,’ I said.

  ‘And a dinner set,’ Sam added.

  Jake smiled. For her, he had a smile.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, pushing himself up. ‘You really went the whole hog.’

  He came over to help us unpack the groceries. It gave us something to do, at least. But it didn’t take long. When the chips and snacks were away in the cupboards, and the meat and beer in the fridge, we hovered in that space, quiet and uncertain. Sam sat at the table and buried her head in her Archie comic, hiding behind it. I tried to catch Jake’s eye but he stood and gazed intently at Sam, either avoiding me or struck anew by the wonder of her.

  ‘Do you guys still want to go riding today?’ she asked, without looking up from her magazine – as if it didn’t really matter to her one way or the other.

  ‘Does a chicken have lips?’ Jake said.

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, it means yes. It’s a weird saying that means hell yes.’

  A few minutes later, Maria came back downstairs. She’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt and her hair hung down her back in a damp, rumpled curtain. She wiggled her fingers at us and breezed over to the fridge and fished out a beer, an Olympia, and cracked it.

  ‘Mom,’ Sam asked. ‘Can I take Jake and Tim for a ride?’

  ‘Of course, honey.’

  ‘We’ll only be an hour. Otherwise they’ll be saddle-sore.’

  ‘You go right ahead.’