Volt: Stories (16 page)

5

From the kitchen table, Miriam heard a rapping on the front door. It would not stop. She hurried into the foyer, opened the door to a child she barely recognized as the elder McGahee, his eye swollen shut, nose crooked, mouth and chin and throat coated with blood, the neck of his yellow shirt stained brown with it. His feet shifted as might a drunk’s, one arm hung as if it had no bones. His seeing eye pleading, Miriam peered beyond him, scanned the empty drive and yard and field, then helped him inside.

She sat him on the couch, dabbed at the blood with a warm washcloth. The boy did not flinch, didn’t seem to feel at all.

“Who did this?” Miriam asked, in a whisper.

The boy’s lips, shredded and swollen, parted, though no words came out.

“Was it your daddy?”

The boy struggled to swallow, then, ever so slightly, nodded.

Sheriff Farraley arrived within the hour. She examined the boy, her face twisted in disdain. “Gracious,” she growled, inspecting the bruises down his arm. Gently, she lifted the boy’s shirt, cringed at the sight. Angry welts, raised and infected, cut the child’s back. Miriam saw the welts, too, and suddenly she felt nauseous, found herself backing away.

“Where’s Evelyn?” the sheriff asked Miriam.

“Evelyn?”

“She’s a nurse, ain’t she?”

Miriam tried to still herself, tried to not let it show on her face. “She’s gone to the city. For school.”

Helen eased down the boy’s shirt. “Your daddy done all this?”

A whimper escaped from the child. Tears welled in his open eye. He seemed to be staring at Miriam, muttered something she couldn’t comprehend. Then he tried again, clearly saying from one side of his mouth, “Yes, ma’am.”

Veins popped at the sheriff’s temples. “It’s all right now,” she soothed. “Ain’t nobody going to harm you no more.”

They wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in the back of the squad car. The sheriff told Miriam she’d take him to town, would have the pastor and his wife take the boy to the hospital, look after him for the night. Then she’d go see about Seamus McGahee.

Miriam watched them leave, then returned to the kitchen. It reeked of spoil, and there to her dismay sat the trays of breakfast she’d made two days prior. She grabbed a trash bag and dumped the food, trays and all. All around, the house lay in shambles. What they must’ve thought, Miriam considered, the place stinking, mud across the floors.

She filled a bucket with steaming water, added pine cleaner, and began to mop the kitchen tiles, then the hall to the foyer. By the pantry she paused. She leaned her mop against the wall, stared at the pantry’s closed door.

Miriam whirled back into the kitchen, treading over what she’d just mopped. She found her purse on the counter, her phone inside. She dialed Evelyn’s cell number. She listened to the ticking of its ring, and then Evelyn’s voice saying she couldn’t come to the phone. Miriam hung up. She dialed again with the same result. Then again.

Miriam returned to the hall and took up the mop and continued to clean, the loop ends trailing muddied water, her eyes set fast to the boot tracks smeared across the floor.

Miriam stared at the truck’s door. She’d barely slept, was starving. Like a child gathering her nerve to leap into a quarry pond, she shut enough of herself down to grab the handle. Quickly, she opened the door, climbed inside. For months the truck had sat dormant. The engine coughed, then sparked with a roaring shudder.

The sky hung overcast, the roads damp. She passed the McGahee house, dark and still like something abandoned, then veered onto the road to town. She found the pastor in his office, and soon they sat across from each other in a booth in Freely’s Diner.

They gabbed about the change in the weather, about deer season approaching and the price of grain. The pastor ordered chicken-fried steak, said nothing about the McGahee boys, not the missing one, not the one at his house.

Others came in, Tom Duffy and Merle Hamden stopping at the end of their table. The pastor teased them about their weight, and Merle stood sideways and asked Miriam if he’d win a prize at the fair. Then Samuel Franklin was there, too. He sat beside Miriam, telling about a man from Mountford who was teaching his son to drive stick, and accidentally lurched his John Deere into a cow pond. When he left, Samuel squeezed the ball of Miriam’s knee, gave her a wink.

They finished their breakfasts. Tin signs hung above Pastor Hamby’s head, rusted signs for ginger ale and cigarettes.

He tore the corner of his napkin. “How’s Evelyn?”

“She’s tough,” Miriam said.

He sighed, his face slackening. “I worry about her. This town’s full of old people. No place for a young person with half a brain.” He sipped his coffee, eyeing her over the rim. “Got something tricky to ask you, Miriam.”

A chill spread through her.

He set down his coffee. “Mavis Delforth’s running a clothing drive for that church in Hollins Bay, asked if we could rustle up some donations.” With heavy eyes, Pastor Hamby explained he thought Miriam might gather up her mother’s clothes, how it might help her put some things to rest, help her get on with living.

Miriam was troubled by the relief she felt, but nodded.

The pastor set a huge hand over hers. With a solemn tone, he added, “Your mama always dressed so nice for a country woman.”

Miriam went straight to her mother’s closets. She cried as she worked, carefully folding dresses, stacking pants and blouses, loading them neatly into boxes, then sealing them with packing tape.

Things vanished. People vanished. Clouds gave way to sun gave way to night. Only feelings, like spirits, endured, branded to the back of our eyes, laced into our marrow. Miriam lifted a sweater to her face, blue and soft and threadbare at the elbows, still holding a hint of her mother’s scent. Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine her mother on streets of gold, washed in ethereal light, couldn’t even imagine her mother wearing this sweater, which had been her favorite.

Miriam could only recall her mother as she’d seen her that day at the morgue, a sheet to her chin, her eyes sewn closed, another sheet to cover the hole in her skull. She considered this life and the next, decided Heaven and Hell were just where the living chose to put you once you passed, then eased her arms into her mother’s sweater and lifted a box to carry downstairs.

The next morning, Miriam drove into town, her truck packed with boxes to be delivered to Pastor Hamby. But then she passed the church and cemetery, turned onto Gunderson Road. A mile later, she drifted onto the on-ramp for the interstate.

Traffic was light as she sped through vast flats of farmland. After twenty minutes, the auto plant and its stacks emerged. She passed an enormous cathedral with its acres of parking, and then came the homes, countless homes of similar design, and more cars, driving fast but tight, and Miriam took the ramp marked for the city center.

A billboard for the college loomed from an overpass, a young woman gleefully hurling a graduation cap into the air. Miriam saw signs, arrows, for the college, and passed them all. Stoplight after stoplight, she considered turning back. But then she was there, the courthouse an enormous brick building taking up much of the block.

Miriam passed through the metal detector. A portly woman with bright orange hair waved a wand down her front, glanced at her license. She followed the throng to a signboard listing cases and courtrooms in red lights. She found the case: STATE V. FARNER, 3A.

Miriam rode a crowded elevator to the third floor. It let off onto a landing, camera crews setting up, a blond-haired woman holding a microphone, a black man taping cables to the floor. Miriam wove through them all, found room 3A.

She entered with all the others, entered like anybody. The back half of the courtroom consisted of long benches. It felt like church, and Miriam took a seat on the aisle and near the door. People politely shuffled in past her, and soon the benches were packed and folks crowded the back and along the sides.

Miriam wondered who they were, all these people in their private lives who woke and dressed and drove here, and passed through the security to see a trial. She didn’t recognize a single face. For a moment, she felt this must be the wrong room. But then, at one of two tables facing the judge’s bench, Miriam noted an attorney she’d met once, months ago, a frumpy woman hunched and shuffling papers.

The air hung stagnant. Miriam’s eyes ached. She hadn’t eaten breakfast. Her stomach panged, and she pushed up her sleeves and fanned herself with her wallet.

A door at the side of the room opened, and the crowd turned at once. Miriam craned her neck. In shuffled a young man in pressed jeans and a plain gray sweater, the sweater loose over his frame, his hands gathered at his crotch, wrists cuffed. One officer walked ahead of him, one behind, and they led him to the far table, where he sat beside a balding man in a wrinkled suit.

Miriam didn’t know much about him. She heard his sister and mother lived out in Haney, heard they had to move after what happened. Clean-shaven, his hair parted at the side, he looked a bit like the young man who played organ at the church. Looked like the boy who’d load your hay or change your oil. Looked like anybody you might think you know.

She’d imagined this moment so many times, how she’d feel seeing him, the pain, the hatred. Watching him now, she felt only a hollow sadness. The bald lawyer whispering in his ear, Miriam realized she’d learn how he became what he was that day, and judgment would be passed. Then she became horrified, as if she, too, were on trial, and like a mirror thrust before her Miriam recognized her own face was unwashed, her hair barely combed. She reeked of pine cleaner and wore the jeans and old sweatshirt she’d worn for days.

Savage heat flushed her face. Her ears buzzed. Miriam rose and spun into the aisle. An officer by the door, a silver-haired man with a misshapen lip, held up a palm.

“Judge’s coming,” he lisped. “Go out, you can’t come back.”

Evelyn’s apartment was the attic of an old gabled house, the only house on a street lined with larger, newer buildings. The house had once been grand, but now sat shabby, nests in its gutters, shingles missing across its roof. Miriam climbed the fire escape, knocked on Evelyn’s door. Waited, knocked again. The apartment’s windows hung out over nothing, too far from the stairs to peek through.

Miriam returned downstairs and walked around to the grand stone porch and rang the bell. Lights inside shone through the door’s frosted glass. Miriam heard someone shuffling with the locks, a woman’s voice asking her to be patient.

The door opened and there stood Mrs. Jamison, who owned the house, frail and stooped, her ashen skin crinkled like wet paper.

“Mrs. Jamison,” she said. “It’s Miriam Swenson. Evelyn’s mother.” The old woman dressed in a skirt and a heavy wool sweater, wore patent-leather shoes. Miriam tugged the hem of her sweatshirt, as the woman’s eyes grazed her up and down.

Mrs. Jamison grinned, her dentures stained the color of tea. “Yes, yes,” she said. “Come in, dear.”

Miriam stepped inside, but didn’t move from the doorway. “I’ve come to see my daughter.” She pointed upward. “Don’t have a key. Was hoping you’d let me in.”

Mrs. Jamison waved a hand. “Sure, sure,” she said, turning. “Let me get the keys.” She toddled off toward the back. The house lay quiet but for the ticking of a tall wooden clock. Pale blue carpets covered the polished floors. It reminded Miriam of a dollhouse, with its delicateness and shadows.

The old woman called for Miriam. Miriam crossed into a room with a long oval table and newspapers stacked head high all along one wall. The woman struggled carrying a paper grocery sack. Miriam took the sack from her. It was filled with mail, envelopes and catalogs, a little package set on top.

“Didn’t know what to keep or throw away,” Mrs. Jamison said. “Not that that’s for me to decide.”

Miriam stared into the sack.

“Kept it all since Evelyn went home.”

Miriam, a bit confused, nodded. “Thank you.”

“Good, good,” Mrs. Jamison chirped. She retrieved a ring of keys from her sweater’s pocket. “She’s coming back soon, then?”

A deluge of thoughts flooded Miriam’s mind. “She’s going back to school,” she said, at last, watching the woman’s narrow lips.

“Oh, wonderful,” Mrs. Jamison gushed. “It’ll be so nice to see her. I’ve missed our little chats. She’s a wonderful old soul, that Evelyn.”

Mrs. Jamison let Miriam into the apartment. Alone, she roamed the attic, one long room of brick walls and exposed beams. A bottle of diet soda, filmed with dust, sat out on the counter. In the refrigerator she found a sack of moldy carrots, a brown head of lettuce, a rancid tub of cottage cheese. When she turned on the kitchen tap, rust-water spat until the stream ran clear.

At the far end of the room sat the bed, its covers undisturbed. Miriam sat on the bed and dumped the sack of mail. Just bills, junk mail. Miriam held the wrapped package, decided to open it. Inside was a box of checks in Evelyn’s name, vanity checks depicting the planets in their orbits around the sun.

Outside a tall window stood a giant locust tree, its wet branches black, its leaves shimmering gold against the gray. Miriam watched the boughs sway and called Evelyn’s cell phone, listened to her daughter’s voice-mail message, cherishing each spoken word until the beep and the white silence.

Miriam woke on Evelyn’s bed, the tree outside etched into the night. She left without locking the door behind her, drove the near-empty city streets, passed semis on the highway, the slipstream pulling her toward the centerline. Coming into town, the half-light of dawn bled over the rolling hills. As Miriam pulled into her drive, the risen sun spilled a silvery sheen over her bald field.

Miriam crossed the wet yard. Up on the porch, two dogs stirred, knocking into her legs, wagging their tails. Their coats were caked in mud, cockleburs matted into Wooly’s tail. Miriam crouched and petted them. They licked her face, trembling, their skins loose.

She knew they must’ve been on their own, must be famished. The dogs followed her into the house, whining as she hurried into the pantry. She found cans of beef hash on a high shelf. Then she glanced at the sugar, the flour.