Wire Mesh Mothers (38 page)

Tony held Mistie’s hand and they trotted up the sidewalk, past house after house after house after the entrance to a small RV park after house.

Tony stopped. She let go of Mistie’s hand. She looked at the little stone house beside her. The black vinyl numbers on the white, door side mailbox read, “1851.”

No
no
no
no
!

The teacher was half a block behind, wheezing audibly. Tony left Mistie on the walk, and ran back. She grabbed the teacher’s arm and tried her best not to twist it off. “I think we’re lost. We’re on the wrong block.”

The teacher was sweating heavily. She ran the back of her hand across her forehead and nose. “We are? I don’t think so. I’ve been watching the numbers. That brick house is 1831. The one next to it is 1833. Your dad should be the second one after that.”

“Should be,” said Tony. “Should be, but it ain’t.”

She retraced her steps and stopped in front of the driveway to the RV park. The entrance was chipped tarmac. It led back to a wide gravely circle. Around the circle were camper trailers on cement and motor homes with their wheels locked between cinder blocks. Cars in various stages of disrepair were pulled off onto the bald lawn patches between campers.

Mistie was beside Tony now. “Are we through running?” she asked.

A row of galvanized mailboxes were nailed to a post by the entrance. Each had a number painted on the little front doors. “1835.” “1837.” “1839.” “1841.” “1842.” There were several more; she quit looking.

“Are we through running?” repeated Mistie.

Tony yanked open the mailbox belonging to 1837. There was no mail inside. She slammed the door shut. Hot prickles were jumping under her skin, and she said, “Don’t come with me.”

She strode forward, every nerve blazing, every hair standing at dreadful attention. A man with a long ponytail and no shirt, squatting by his motor home and banging on a Harley with a wrench, called out, “Hey, there, girl, you lost?”

“Fuck off, grease monkey, it’s way past your bedtime,” said Tony.

“Oh, yeah, we need another one like you ‘round here,” said the man.

Tony watched the numbers. They went chronologically around the circle, and she was coming in from the right, the high side. She counted down each shit-ass tin can. 1845, 1843, 1841, 1839.

1837.

It was a camper. A beat up, sorry-ass, rusting camper with a splintered picnic table near the door. Beside the table sat a
woodie
wagon with two flat tires.

I could be wrong, Tony told herself. I ain’t wrong much, but I could be wrong. Phone book misprint, the teacher said. Maybe there’s more than one Burton
Petenski
in
Lamesa
. Maybe he uses this dump as some kind of front, so he can use another name over at the ranch.

There were lights on in the camper. Well, maybe just one light, the place wasn’t big enough to need more than one. Tony stepped up on the block porch and knocked on the door.

“Tony?” The voice was from behind, the teacher’s voice.

“Go back to the street,” said Tony. “This is just a mistake, that’s all.”

She pounded her fist on the door, and inside she could hear a grumbling, a thumping, and then the door handle was wiggling back and forth.

Got to be wrong. This is not the right place.

The door jerked open; the whole camper vibrated. Tony held her breath.

There was a man in his undershorts, his hand on the knob and the other hand clutching a beer. A Bud.
Mam’s
favorite kind of beer. He had thick black hair and a black beard. A thin man, he had a major gut that hung over the elastic of the shorts.

“What the hell do you want, little girl?” he growled.

“You know me?”

“Should I?”

Tony said, “Let me in. Don’t make this worse than it is.”

“What…?”

Tony pushed her way past the man and slammed the door.

The interior of the trailer wasn’t much better than the outside. There was some furniture, a refrigerator and stove, and a table that folded into the wall when it wasn’t being used. A bathroom stall door hung open. Tony could see the little shower and the clogged toilet from where she stood.

“Burton.”

“What? What do you want?” His eyebrows went up and down over his face, dark waves on a stormy countenance.

“I’m Angela.”

The man froze, then tilted his head. He put his beer down on the folding table. “No shit.”

“No shit.”

“Love your ranch. Dad.”

“My ranch? What are you talking about?”

Tony looked over the table. Hanging on a little wire rack were two guns, a rifle and a revolver. Burton might not have done much, but by damn, he’d replaced the gun he’d lost to Mam.

“Get the hell out of here, Angela,” said Burton. “I didn’t ask you to come here. I got my own troubles.”

“So I’m trouble?”

“Could be. They see me with a kid, they might kick me out. I’m signed up as a single.”

“What about your ranch?”

“What ranch?”

“You sent me a birthday card when I was thirteen. You wrote on it, ‘how you like my ranch?’ There was a photo of you on a fence with the ranch behind it!”

Burton sighed and dropped onto a single hard-backed chair by the stove. “Oh, God Angela. I wasn’t drinking then. I had a good job, at a ranch outside of here. The Triple-Bar. Worked there nearly six months. I just called it mine for fun. I liked it. Then I got fired.”

“Why?”

“
Drinkin
’.”

Tony’s chest hurt. She leaned over to pull in some air, but little came. “I can’t believe it. You. God, you lied to me.”

“You just misunderstood. Now go home, Angela.”

“It’s Tony!”

“Get out of here. Go home to your Mama.”

It was in her hand before she even knew she had jumped on top of the folding table and snatched it down off its rack. And oh, this one had bullets in it. She
knew
. She could feel them inside like she could feel the little snake-like babies inside her last year. Solid, expectant, anxious to come out. She aimed at Burton, and his eyes grew as round as big, brown longhorn cow piles.

She fired. She fired again. Burton, hit directly in the chest, fell back off his chair to the food-littered floor. He didn’t have time to complain about it like the deputy had.

Tony took Burton’s beer and poured it over his body. She turned on his gas stove and lit a rolled up magazine, then moved the torch about the place, touching things she knew would burn right away. The curtains on the window, filmy, cheap things like Mistie’s pink nightie. The bedspread on the little love seat. The rug by the sink. Burton’s thin-ass boxer shorts. Burton’s thick black hair, which puffed and lit and fell to the floor by the dead man’s head. A toupee.

Figured.

T
here was a gunshot from inside the camper. Kate cried out, and ran several steps forward, then stopped. Who had the gun? Who was shooting?

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

Mistie began to cry.

A man who had been tinkering on his Harley-Davidson raced over, wiping his face with an oily towel. “That was a shot!” he said. “Who’s
shootin
’?”

Kate said nothing. She listened, but there were no more shots. “Stay there,” she ordered Mistie, and slowly approached the cinder block step.

“I wouldn’t do that, lady!” said the motorcycle man. “That
Petinske
fella can be mean as a badger when he’s drunk.”

Neighbors were gathering out on the circular drive, most in various stages of dress. “Somebody call 911!” said a woman. “That was a gunshot, I heard it!”

“I called already!” said a voice from the doorway of a Wilderness RV. “On their way. Ya’ll back up, what you got, a death wish?”

“Tony!” screamed Kate.

“Back up, woman, he can come out like a bull any minute!” said the motorcycle man. “We know how he can get!”

“Tony’s in there!”

The motorcycle man grabbed Kate by the arm and tried to pull her backward but she twisted free. “Let go! Tony’s in there!”

He threw up his hands in resignation. “Go get him, then, be my guest.”

The camper door opened, slowly. At first there were small tendrils of smoke curling out from inside, and then Tony was in the opening, stepping down onto the cinder block step, then down onto the ground, a revolver in her hand.

“Got him good,” Tony said simply. There was blood on her hands.

“Tony, what?” Kate took a step forward, and stopped as Tony began swinging the revolver back and forth. “Was it your father?”

Tony’s lip curled, a half-smile that chilled the back of Kate’s neck. “Oh, yeah, it was Burton
Petinske
. That’s who it was.” She looked past Kate to the gathering of neighbors, and waved the gun at them. “What the hell you lookin’ at? Fuck off! I’ve killed two today, and I’m just getting started!”

The neighbors flew away from each other like leaves on a winter wind. Some went back to their campers. Others moved behind cars, but continued to watch the spectacle.

“Tony, they’ve called the police,” said Kate. “It’s over.”

Tony looked at the barrel of the gun, smiled, and then pointed it at Kate. “Men and women,” she laughed sourly. “None of them are any good, are they? Mamas, Daddies, they’re all fucked up. You’re right that it ain’t a gender thing. But that don’t leave a whole hell of a lot, does it?”

“Not everyone’s like that,” said Kate. “Not everything” “You want it in the head or in the chest? I hear new niggers don’t want to fuck up their pretty faces when they die, so they would rather have it the chest.”

“God, Tony, don’t talk like this.”

“We’re all
goin
’ down, teacher. ‘Course, Baby Doll, she’s okay. Hey!” Tony turned to the neighbors behind their various cars. “Listen to me, whatever happens, don’t let this little kid go back to her Mama or Daddy. They’re messin’ her up real bad. You hear me? I’m giving a deposition here. It’s the truth. You promise me?”

None of the neighbors said a thing. Nobody moved.

Tony shook the gun at one car. “You promise me?”

A little old lady with loose dentures said, “I promise you.”

Tony nodded. Then she said, “Mistie, you’ll be okay.”

Kate looked beside her. Mistie was not there. “Mistie?” she said.

Tony whipped about, staring at the faces of the neighbors, and in the shadows of the scrub trees. “Mistie! Don’t you be hiding now!”

Mistie did not answer.

Then Kate noticed the camper door, wide open and the smoke billowing out, harder, faster.

“She went inside?” Kate screamed. Both Kate and Tony ran for the door, but Tony knocked Kate back and Kate landed with a twist of her bad leg. She cried out.

“I’ll get her,” said Tony, “just stay the fuck back!” She disappeared into the camper.

From behind, a wailing of sirens, the lightning flashes of police lights. Neighbors in the drive hurried out of the way as four cruisers forced their way into the driveway and bucked to a halt. Police heads popped up from both sides of the cars, all holding weapons, all pointing them at Kate and the burning camper.

“Put your hands up and walk this way, slowly!” one uniformed man called.

“Tony’s inside, and Mistie!” shouted Kate. “Save them, they’re in the fire! Hurry!”

“Hands up, now!”

Kate put her hands up. She noticed her unshaved pits.
Fuck it!

“Forget me!” screamed Kate. Her food stomped the ground. “Goddamn it, get Mistie and Tony!”

One policeman rushed up and snatched Kate’s raised arms. He twisted them abruptly and painfully behind her back. Another police went to the camper door and kicked it open wider. He coughed in the onslaught of smoke.

“Get out here, now!” he called inside.

New sirens, higher pitched. Red lights instead of blue. A fire engine roaring up beside the police cars.

Suddenly, Tony appeared at the camper door. Her hair was
singed
, her face blackened. Her voice, raspy with the damage to her lungs. “I can’t find her!” she wailed. And then she put one hand to her face and sobbed, while the revolver dangled by her side. “I can’t find Mistie! She’s dead in there! She’s dead ‘cause of me!”

“Get down here, now!” said the police by the camper. “That place is an inferno, you don’t want to….”

“Yes, I do!” said Tony. She threw the revolver as hard as she could throw it. It flipped end over end and landed at the flat tire of Burton’s
woodie
wagon. And then, Tony turned, entered the camper and slammed the door shut.

“Damn it!” shouted the cop. He leapt onto the block porch and tried the handle. Tony had locked it.

“Tony!” screamed Kate.

“Stupid ass girl,” said the motorcycle guy.

“Mistie!” Kate twisted in the grasp of the policeman, and he jerked her arms up behind her, driving a vicious shard of pain through her back. “Get in there!”