The Odds (9 page)

Joel slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the coffee table. “How long can we eat on that?”

Meg stared at it.

She thought the answer. A week. She was a good quartermaster, her father had always told her. He had smiled at her and told her she was peerless. Peerless had its pros and cons. People tend to need peers.

“Where did it come from?”

“I found it.”

Meg wrestled with herself. She determined to get to the bottom of her brother’s lie, but later, later. She grabbed up the money and started out for the Giant Eagle.

She bought ten boxes of a cheap pasta that was on sale, two for one. She bought cheap bottled sauce (one jar), bread, bologna, milk, juice. They would want cereal. One box of generic was all she could afford. She had done the math in her head. When she checked out, it came to $20.23. She was about to put back one box of pasta when the man behind her gave her a quarter. “Keep the change,” he said winking.

“Thank you.” People were so nice. Luck. She’d always had luck.

“It’s nothing.”

The bags were heavy to carry—she had to keep rearranging—but it was going to be summer soon, and for a while they had food.

   JOEL WATCHED TELEVISION with Laurie and Susannah while Meg was gone.

Laurie asked him, “What are you thinking about?”

He said, “Nothing,” but his mind was spinning. He told himself no way was he going back to that place. Mac and Zero would go up there eventually, let them help the guy. But he
knew
all kinds of things, things Mac and Zero wouldn’t know—how to clean the wound, how to prop the guy so he could walk.

He couldn’t go back.

But if he waited, there might very well be two dead guys up there.

He should just go ahead and call the police.

He jumped up suddenly, and when he did, Laurie sprang back in fright on the other end of the couch. Susannah didn’t react.

“What happened?” Laurie asked.

“I have to get my pants.”

She said, “I’ll hang them for you. You always just toss them over the line.” She slid off the couch, halfway crouched over, like the little old lady in some fairy tale, then inched herself upward as she went to the basement door. Susannah watched her go.

Joel began to suppose. If I got water for him, what container would I use? If we didn’t have peroxide, what would I substitute? The television program was just stupid, with people walking into rooms and making faces and talking about sex, sex, sex. On the screen was a series of gestures and possibilities he had already internalized. The “Oh, no!” The “I’m sorry.” The repetition was a kind of sedative. Surprise still looked on Saturday the way it had looked on Tuesday.

Laurie came back up from the basement and asked, “What did I miss?”

“Nothing,” he said. He had no idea or interest in what was happening on the tube. His sisters were different. Laurie and Susannah seemed to be able to look at each episode as if it mattered and as if something fresh would be revealed if only they stuck with it.

Meg came home with food, saying, “Sandwiches for lunch.” She began to put groceries away. She seemed happy.

Before lunch, Joel roamed the house and located a little bit of peroxide in the brown bottle under the bathroom sink, a very little bit. In the basement, pretending to check on his pants, he found a gallon plastic water bottle that had once held distilled water, something Alison must have had. He took the lid off and smelled for bleach, insecticide, couldn’t smell anything, filled the bottle and tucked it away next to the dryer. He looked in the back of the cabinet under the kitchen sink where Alison occasionally kept whiskey. Yep, a quarter of a bottle, still there. So he
could
do it, if he had a mind to.

“What are you looking for?” Meg asked.

“Thought there might be dish soap we never found.”

“Sorry. I got food. Try … shampoo. There’s a little bit.”

“Oh. Good idea.”

He went out to the backyard and tossed a small blue ball at the basketball rim that hung on the garage, no basket. Partly what kept him going was the neatness of it, that he knew what he would do
if he
did it. He liked problems. In this neighborhood, you could get into a lot of trouble being good at stuff. Russell and Ryan (not to mention Mac and Zero) counted his successes against him.

Meg had bought sandwich makings. He could make two to go. With mustard. Adults favored mustard. If he went. If he took rags and a bucket and some soap, Meg and Laurie wouldn’t question why he was going out. He could take a lot of water that way. Maybe sneak in the sandwiches, whiskey, peroxide in a bag of rags.

And a saw. He needed a saw. Because he remembered exactly a program he’d seen on the education channel about World War I injuries and how they were treated.

If he knew how to do things, wasn’t that a sign that he should?

   AFTER LUNCH, MEG HAD THE windows open in the kitchen and she was singing. She had the impression Joel wanted something; he seemed to be hanging around as if about to ask a question. “I’m sorry I didn’t have enough for detergent. As it was, some guy gave me a quarter. It was nice of him. Funny how people are, sometimes, just generous.”

He didn’t say anything, so she kept talking, more to stay connected with him than anything else. “Laurie went over to the Coles’ house because she called them again and they said they’d use her a little while this afternoon. She’s a hustler. I’ll go shopping again.”

Joel grunted. “I’m going to do car washes again, if that’s what you’re trying to say. I’m not a good hustler, okay?”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me where you found the twenty,” she said. “I’d feel better if I knew.”

“It was just blowing on the street.”

“Don’t lie,” she said sharply. “If you stole it, we have to return it.”

“I’m not lying.” After a while, he said, “I found it in the park.”

“Oh, well,” she laughed in spite of herself to imagine money just blowing toward them. “That’s a good trick. I wish I had that trick of needing something and it just comes to me.”

“You do,” he said. “The guy gave you a quarter.”

She nodded. “I do feel something sometimes. I’m going to concentrate on getting a job.”

He went upstairs for a while. She wondered again if he was sick. When he came back down, she said, “I don’t want to fight. We need to stick together.”

“Right. I know.”

She went out into the yard to check a couple of items washed earlier in the residue of dishwashing detergent and now drying on the line. It was amazing how little detergent you really needed. Most people were wasteful.

The house they lived in was an odd little thing, set back from the street a little. On either side of her were larger houses that had been split into apartments. She didn’t know any of the neighbors on either side. She doubted any of them knew her or noticed the absence of Alison. Still, as she moved about the yard, she tried to look purposeful and content so as not to raise suspicion.

Since it was still a little damp out, the clothes hadn’t dried. Meg turned in the small yard to look back at the house. It was hard to see inside, but she thought she made out Joel opening the refrigerator. And then she thought she saw him tie up the bread bag, dive down low. Did he feel he had to be sneaky about it? Was he that hungry? If so, their provisions wouldn’t last a week, and she was wrong to let the others talk her into staying, living on nothing.

She toed the ground. Their little patch of grass was more weed growth than anything else. Dandelions, though. You could eat them, she knew about that, but she wasn’t sure how to cook them.

It was nice out. Really spring. Her heart lifted. She didn’t want to argue with Joel, so she took up the broom and swept at the sidewalk, trying to be a good role model, always busy. When she got back inside, he wasn’t there. Quickly, she looked in the fridge and determined he’d taken enough for a couple of sandwiches at least. It was those shitheads he hung out with, then! There his sisters were with almost
no money
and he was feeding other people. Anger took hold—her head started to pound from the blood rushing to it. Partly she felt stupid, conned. There she’d been, feeling concern for her brother when he was basically stealing from his sisters for those no-good boys who were her age and bad news, worthless, worthless.

She ran out the front door without even taking a key and saw Joel way up the street, cutting through an alley that went over to Brighton, a pail of water slopping at his side, a whole sack of things in his other hand. He was headed for the really bad section. He didn’t look back and he walked fast. He was carrying more than he needed if he was really planning to wash cars. She became aware of the mechanism of him, the way his body propelled itself.

She guessed where he was going—that empty house those boys played in that she’d forbidden him to go to. There had to be rusty nails in there, dirt, an invitation to disease in each corner. There was no choice but to reverse things before he got in with those kids. She’d take on Mac and Zero, let them laugh at her, let her brother hate her for it.

She passed houses that were broken up into apartments and houses that were tiny like theirs—little narrow two-story frames with four rooms, two up and two down, cut by a central stairway. All of them were over a century old. It was a historic area; Joel knew all about it. Some houses were renovated and others untouched, like theirs. The house in Greenfield that Alison had sold out from under them was more ordinary, but larger.

Meg followed Joel up to the bad section where most of the houses were abandoned, hundreds of them, maybe even up to the thousands. Bums and addicts came here. You could never guess for sure which were occupied, who was where. It gave her the shivers.

She almost told herself, Let him go today, have it out with him later. She watched him slipping into the door of the house she’d feared he was going to.

She walked through high weeds to the back door, her stomach churning. As she geared herself to step through the door, she thought about how it was all coming apart and she wasn’t going to be able to act as mother and father both. She’d end up in a fight with Joel; the other boys would make fun of her. She was shaking, thinking, she’d ask for foster care on Monday at school. Somebody else could take over, bad or good. They wouldn’t be starving.

Flies buzzed, droned, came at her. She waved them away, slipped in.

“Shhh,” she heard.

With a sick heart, she climbed the steps in the semidark. She knew something was terribly wrong even before she got to the top. The heat, the smell, the insects told her that.

She screamed when she saw all the blood, the dead man. Over in the corner to her left was Joel.

Joel. Bag. Man. In that order. Joel, bag, man.

“Who’s that?” the man said.

Everything stopped. The square of light glanced off his hair. She saw who he was.

He was hurt.

She couldn’t take her eyes from his—startling blue eyes, beautiful eyes. Quickly, she managed to take in the rest: his dark hair, his scowl, the way he leaned over his leg, the dirt, the surroundings.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

“I’m hurt pretty bad,” he said. “Your brother was trying to help me out.”

Meg, trying to make herself breathe, looked at the dead man and back to the other. “You killed that man?” she asked. Her voice was a whisper.

“Accident. He tried to kill me.”

“I’ll … I’d better call the police.”

“No, please, no. If you could just help me,” he cried. “Just help me get out of here.” He breathed hard. He met her eyes. “If you—please believe me.”

“But you’re hurt.”

“It doesn’t matter. I need to get to my car.”

“That’s what he told me, too,” Joel said. “There’s somebody after him.”

“I don’t understand. If you didn’t … .”

“It’s because … I didn’t do what they wanted and … They’re going to kill me. That’s what they do.”

“But wouldn’t the police—?”

“No. They wouldn’t.” He took the smaller bottle of water and drank. He drank the whole thing down without stopping. It seemed he wasn’t going to be able to breathe when he put the bottle down. He gasped and winced. “You better get out. Don’t tell anyone. I’m going to try to move on my own. Just go.”

“You can’t,” she said.

“I can’t stay here.”

“But—”

“There’s no way you could understand what I’m up against.”

Joel said, “I tried to talk sense into him, too.”

Meg moved forward and put an arm around Joel, who shifted slightly but didn’t shrug her off. “You didn’t shoot that man, then?”

“I turned the gun away from my own heart. You ought to go. It’s dangerous.” He closed his eyes for a second, but when he sank back to lie down, the movement seemed to hurt his leg.

“His leg is shot, and it’s fractured, all out of line,” Joel said. “I think I could fix it so he could move.”

The man’s eyes flickered with hope. “How could you?”

Meg tried to read the man’s eyes. She kept a hand on Joel. “He’s good at stuff like that.”

“Then, how—? What’s this?” he pointed to the bag.

“Whiskey and sandwiches,” Joel said. “Some other stuff.” His voice sounded proud.

“Your parents? Would they be able to—? They know where you are?”

Meg and Joel looked at each other, but didn’t say anything for a moment; then Meg said, “They’re away, I’m afraid.”

The man opened the bag and took a long drink of whiskey. Then he doused some, not a lot, on his leg. He winced and held the expression for a long time.

Joel said, “No. Water. You should have used water.”

The man shook his head. Meg watched, fascinated—it was like something she had seen in a cowboy movie when they used to have the channel that did old films. Then the man tore into the sandwiches. His face was all contorted and he swallowed without chewing. It reminded her of an animal eating.

“How should his leg be cleaned?” Meg asked Joel.

The man looked up.

“Water, I know that much. Then setting it.”

“Could you do that?”