Just North of Nowhere (23 page)

Vinnie's prowler poked its nose from forest dark into daylight, into someplace Vinnie had never seen anything like.

The house looked as thought it had started as a pile of lumber stacked against a heap of rocks at the far side of a level spot on the hill. If that had been its fetchings a hundred years ago, the building hadn't improved much. The walls were leaning boards. They’d grown warped and mossy through decades of wind, rain, and heaving freeze. As an afterthought, someone had nailed junk shingles over top to keep out snow and the worst of the rain.

That was the house.

The house was an island in a sea of crap. It was as though a low-flying scrap yard had crashed on this hillside.

Vinnie sat dumb, seeing and not. Jagged metal, flat sheets and breaking curls, beams and rods, wood and plastic, stuffing, old insulation, glass, fabric and ceramic, other substances Vinnie couldn't identify, rolled in a frozen seascape of trash. Afloat on it was the usual: beds, crates, bits of cars, trucks, bikes and other vehicles, furniture, appliances, potted plants and artificial limbs and scooters, teevees and butter churns. The stuff rose, poised, slipped and teetered, was all arrested in shadow and bright sun. A fire hydrant – the usual three-red feet of it – topped an additional dirt brown twenty feet of pipe. It lay like a stunned serpent amid a spray of wire coils and steel barrels. The unusual stuff: Tantalizing parts of airplanes had bobbed to the surface, props, tails, wings and struts, fuselages, landing gear, canopies and bubbles. A locomotive whistle and smokestack breached the slick face of shining mud and, a dozen feet from it, the black iron slats of a cowcatcher raked the air like dinosaur ribs. To Vinnie it seemed as though an antique engine was going down, sinking, that much, only, showing. A walk-in safe, door and hinge, was poised for a downward plunge nearby. At the edge of the woods, a dish antenna, half buried like a baby giant's bright red spoon, was taking a mouthful of old earth. Books, papers, newsprint and slick magazines going to moldy ruin, stacked, bound and tumbled, lay everywhere; rusting tin, bleached gray palates and lath, propane cylinders and other tanks, formed rolling plankways across the stalled waves.

On the far side of the clearing, a church steeple, leaned precariously over the space. To Vinnie, the bleached cone of wood and shingles seemed unfinished, or
so
far finished it was coming undone.

A stink of human waste and animal droppings, garbage, musk, mildew, rust, used oils and leaking gasses, offal, decay, sweaty bodies, burning rubber and melted plastic, a hundred odors, natural and not so, seeped into the prowler as Vinnie gaped at Vern's home. A fog of small flitting things hummed, buzzed and set up an insect chatter to go with it. The squad car's engine sounded foreign.

From points around the clearing, the family emerged from the trees. Once clear of the forest, the naked children stood like mud-guardians. They stared cold-eyed at the automobile.

They belong
, Vinnie thought.

The small woman stepped from the cabin door. She wore the same light cotton dress as she had in town. Two raw little ones ran to her. The mister, still woolen despite noonday heat, squeezed into the clearing from beyond the leaning steeple.

“Jesus, Kid. How long you people been here?”

“A year. More. Maybe less.”

Vinnie turned. He hadn't expected an answer. Except for grunting directions, the kid hadn't said anything since they'd left town. Now he sat up, staring at his home, as though he'd forgotten how shitty it was.

Gram was nowhere to be seen. Nobody smiled. Vinnie counted kids:
one, two, three...
to eight. Vern made nine.

“Get out, Vern.” Vinnie said. The kid didn't move. Vinnie stepped out, set foot on the muck. “Afternoon!” he called across the clearing.

The others stared.

“Your boy here,” he patted the roof of the vehicle, “has been taken into custody for assault and theft.”

Somewhere, something whimpered.

“Vern is yours, ain’t he?” Vinnie asked, no one having offered so much as a go-to-hell. He made a show of taking in the lousy place, the stinking air. “Can't see why he'd want to claim you if he wasn't.” An insult might get someone talking, he figured.

Didn't.

“Who the hell's in charge,” he said, walking toward the house. “You are?” he said to the man. “You?” he said to the woman. Two kids pressed closer to her. He didn’t ask them.

“I am.” The voice came from above, strong, no bullshit.

Vinnie shaded his eyes against the sun. The old woman, Gram, descended a rope ladder that twitched with her effort from above near the shack. Vinnie's eyes followed the ladder upward, eighty, a hundred, hundred and twenty feet to where it disappeared into the green and black canopy.

“After the Father is, I'm in charge here.” She clambered down, all jerking knees, elbows and twitching limbs. “These'ns are the family, Mr. Officer,” her voice filled the clearing and echoed into the trees. “My responsible.”

Gram slid the last few feet, landed with ease. She wiped her hands on her apron as though she’d just dusted a parlor piano. “Some coffee?” She said. “Men like coffee.”

Close up, she was damn-near as tall as Vinnie.

Coffee was sick-sweet mud.

The family stood by the prowler while Vern sat sulking in the back.

Gram Kingsolver didn't tell an end-of-the-world story; she didn’t speak to much of anything. She verified that, yes, she’d gathered these helpless, hopeless ones over the years. Yes, they were family, “a family from the Father, not a family of the flesh, oh no.” She affirmed that part of Vern’s story, yes, and she wanted to know, were there charges against the boy.

“Hell yes, there’s charges!” Vinnie made a show of sucking coffee, slurping bigger than he swallowed.

Gram cocked an eyebrow.

“Excuse,” he said. “Don't mean to curse, but your Vern is charged with taking money, robbery, assaulting a Samaritan...”

A second eyebrow cocked opening Grams eyes like two caves of light. She pointed it into the back seat.

“Vern kicked the woman that gave him a meal. Then he stole money from her cash register.”

Gram turned her lights on Vinnie.

“That. And, of course, he gave false statements to an officer of the law.”

She narrowed but stayed on Vinnie.

“That was me.”

The light turned into a deep stare.

“What he's been saying is, well, a little screwy.”

She stared.

“Crazy. What he's been telling me, I'm finding a little hard to credit. He's lying, of course!”

The family eyes flickered, one at another, then settled on the prowler parked in the shade. Vern slouched in the back seat.

“He's been saying?” the old woman asked. She looked at the little man in wool. The man looked at the woman. The woman gripped one of the mud-kids. The naked child held a mossy something to its cheek. “What's he been saying?”

“You folks, coming from outer space, the end of the world.” Vinnie gave a snort, “And this,” he stretched his arms out, “this here being a new world, some Earth other than what was.” He chuckled, then laughed through the silence around him.

The eyes flicked from one to the other, then to Gram.

“Uh-huh,” Gram said.

“Yep,” Vinnie said.

Stares.

“He's a juvenile and short of making a legal fuss over twenty bucks there's nothing I can do about his offenses, except apprise you of them and hope you'll. . .” He searched for the word. “Hope you’ll take it under advisement. Act accordingly, you know.”

Silence.

“God-fearing people. And all.”

“We been advised.” Gram bent over, peered in the rear window. The kid didn't move. Gram straightened. “We shall act in accord.”

Vinnie opened the rear door. “Get,” he said.

Slow and sulky, Vern Dobbins got.

Two days later, Bunch dragged the kid to Vinnie’s breakfast stool at the American House.

“Goddamn kid’s peeping Miss Cristobel!” Bunch booted the kid to where Vinnie was about to take his first bite. “Staring in, and her naked in bed, lying there like she sleeps, you know?” He made to swipe the back of the kid’s head.

“Cripes,” Esther yelled from the kitchen, “get that Goddamned kid outta here, Vinnie!”

Vinnie threw down his napkin and gave Bunch his worst eyeball. Bunch glared at the kid, then at Vinnie’s pie.

Kid's jaws clenched. ““Let it all go to shit,” he said, “I ain't going to no new Earth world, not with them, I ain't!”

“Cripes to you, kid!” Vinnie said. He gave Bunch a good stare. “And why don’t you tell me just how the hell you caught him, Bunch. He was peeping Ms. Chiaravino, huh?” Vinnie’s command voice filled the place, like the manuals said. “How'd you happen there to grab him? And how do you know how it is she sleeps? Huh?”

“You gonna eat that pie?” Bunch said.

The kid and Vinnie didn't talk on the way out County H. Nothing to talk about. Vinnie knew the way. Except for his ill-considered outburst the other day at the Hall, Vinnie didn’t give advice or make dispense lessons out of facts. Took after his dad. Daddy Sheriff never had much to say about right, wrong or things in the middle. Not to suspects and not to Vinnie. Preaching criminals was the judge's job. Vinnie had been mom's job – and mom left when Vinnie was just a little shit. Daddy Sheriff was for lickings. Lickings followed any of his truly stupid pranks – bonehead plays anyone with half a brain knew were chickenshit dumb but that he'd gone and done anyway. Like the time he and Big Cowl Dengler had potted the streetlights on Doghouse Row with Cowl's 15th birthday .22-long rifle. Twelve lights – six each –
and
it took them twenty shells!

There were some narrow matters: lying about where he'd gotten that quart of slivovitz when he was 15, or when he was taken, cheating on a history test, those matters, Daddy Sheriff left to Mom. When Mom left, the Sheriff figured what to and what not to do as
per
the situation, decided each case on merit, figured what made sense. Simple.

The Sheriff and Vinnie didn't say much. Even living in the same house, alone together the last twenty-some years, the conversation was “pass them potatoes, there” or “who you like for the playoffs, then?” Couple other things.

Cripes, Vinnie had come out okay on the other side of it all! Nope, this was just a bad kid.

A hundred yards or so shy of the kid’s home clearing, Vinnie slammed the brakes. He turned to look.

The kid looked back.

“And where the hell's your for real folks?” Vinnie said. He’d yelled, actually, as though the question were the reasoned-over final point of an hour's discussion. Vinnie pointed to the clearing, ahead. “These ain't, so where
are
they?”

“The hell knows?” the kid shouted back. “What's it? Somethin' matters to you?”

“Nah,” Vinnie yelled, and stomped the gas. The prowler slewed into the clearing.

The clearing was busy. The kids were dressed, not clean, but covered head to foot anyway and moving place to place. Nobody stood droop-eyed or planted, mouth hanging. The woman was flushed red and sweated. She wore layers of clothing, now, as though she carried everything she owned on her skin. She – the whole bunch, actually – looked like he figured he did when the Sheriff caught him somewhere sudden and with no warning. Even if he wasn't doing anything he'd always gone a little goofy knowing daddy was there like-that. Vinnie watched from behind the wheel for a full half-minute before stepping out. Sweat them a little, he figured.

Gram stepped from the shack. “You brung the young man, I calculate.” She peered at the cruiser's sun-washed windows. “That's good. We thank you.”

Vinnie nodded. The junk in the clearing was...what? Vinnie tried to put a word to it. It was all there, just more arranged.

Packing
, he said to himself,
they're hauling-ass
. “Finally get breakfast in peace,” he said, not loud enough to be heard. He patted the roof of the prowler. “Want to know what Vern did this time?” he called out.

Three-o-Goddamn-clock in the morning and Vinnie heard car-glass shatter in the street. In front of the cop's house – a fully stupid move. A half-second later the prowler's siren let fly. Red-and-blue swept the curtains.

Vinnie jumped like a doofus citizen, tripped over his pants getting into them and busted his own front door latch getting out of the house. Thank cripes, the Sheriff was off to the county seat for month’s-end court.

The kid sat on the hood of the screaming car.

Up and down the street, neighbors were silhouetted in their windows.

“You are
going down!
” Vinnie yelled slapping off the siren, the flashers. “
This
time, you are Goddamn going to jail!” Another second, and he changed course. “Goddamn! The hell you are! The hell you
Goddamned
are!” It was Thursday night, Friday morning. The lock-up – bed, cot and mattress, wall to wall, on the floor and in the crapper – was filled with snoring Norwegians. One of these weeks he was just going to
not
lock up the Sons of Norway after their darts riot, he'd let them wander off and alone without each-Goddamned-other. Maybe he'd have room for
real
criminals, Thursday nights, Friday mornings for Cripes’s sake.