Accidental Evil (2 page)

“Okay,” Ricky said. He reached in his pocket and pulled out two quarters. He set them on the table. “I’m going to make these two quarters pass through the table.”

“You better not waste fifty cents, or your mother will show you a trick with her foot and your ass,” their father said.

George laughed. Mary, who had wandered over to stand next to the table, swatted her husband on the shoulder.
 

Ricky pushed the quarters together and waved his hands over the pair of coins. From his angle, George saw a flash as Ricky picked up one of the quarters with a slight fold of his hand. This wasn’t a new trick. George had seen this one a week before. He was going to object, but he thought that this might just be the warmup to the real trick.

“Now I say the magic words. Simsala-bim-bamba Saladu Saladim,” Ricky said. He moved his hands to the side with a flourish. The coins were gone. “And now,” Ricky said. He reached under the table with both hands. When he pulled his hands out from under the table, they were palms up. In the center of each palm, he was holding a quarter.

“Whoa,” Vernon said.
 

“They were in your hands,” Mary said.

“Mary!” Vernon said.

Ricky didn’t seem flustered. He only smiled at his mom.

“We were all thinking it,” she said. She turned back for the stove. “If you’re going to have a trick, you’ve got to give the people something to believe in, don’t you? It’s not good enough to be good with your hands, you have to give them some other explanation for what’s going on, don’t you?”

“But that’s not the…” George started. Ricky kicked him under the table.

“Why not do it with one quarter and then keep the other hand on top of the table, so we think that it’s still there?” she asked.

Ricky shrugged. “Maybe.”

“He’s trying to show us that he can palm the coin with either hand,” Vernon said.

“Why don’t you show them…” George started again. This time, Ricky stopped him with a sharp look. Their father didn’t see it. He had turned sideways in the booth so he could put his legs up on the bench and lean back against the wall.
 

“Who cares if he can palm a quarter?” Mary asked. “People want to see magic, not dexterity. You have to give them something to believe in.”

“Okay,” Ricky said.

“You’re the worst audience,” Vernon said. He closed his eyes and laced his fingers together on top of his belly.

“I’m just being honest,” Mary said. She turned to Ricky. “Your family will always be honest, even when nobody else will.”

“Okay,” Ricky said.

“I’m going to set up an assembly line,” she said. She disappeared into the pantry and came back out with a box of small canning jars. “We’ll do this last batch in no time and then we’ll eat dinner.”

George groaned. He knew the process all too well. The next hour would be filled with lava-hot “Blue Bree” goop, boiling water, and scalding metal lids.
 

With his eyes still closed, Vernon sighed. When he pushed his way up to his feet, the boys automatically followed. There was no sense in trying to avoid the inevitable.

[ Working ]

J
UNE
30

S
ARAH
HAD
her elbows propped up on the counter and her hands cradling her face. She watched with a blank stare at the choppy water. There were no boats out on the lake. No boats meant no customers.

She watched as Ricky came down the hill and then skidded his bike to a stop on the gravel. He parked it behind the maple tree now. Last year’s sloppy parking had cost him a front wheel. Ricky waved to her as he crossed the lot on foot. She heard the side door open and shut. He joined her at the counter. Ricky was a nice boy, but a dork. Sarah was only one year older than him, but the difference seemed much greater. He still acted like he was in junior high or something.

“Any customers?” he asked.

She sighed and pushed up. Sarah shook her head. “Too much wind. Too much chop.”

“Maybe we’ll get some after-dinner people,” he said. Ricky turned to the wall and took the clipboard down from the hook. He wouldn’t find anything there. Out of pure boredom, she had already done all the maintenance chores for the day.

Ricky flipped to the next page.

“We could drain that condenser thingy,” he said.

She shook her head. “Joey said we can’t do that early. He said it’s like taking out the trash when the bag is only half full.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Ricky said.

“That’s Joey for you.”

Ricky put the clipboard back on the hook and slid open the glass lid of the freezer. She glanced over to see the humid air turn into a white fog as it rolled down towards the ice cream.
 

“You’re gonna ice it up,” she said.

Ricky flipped it shut.

“What’s the point in being here if I can’t make any tips?” Ricky asked. “Joey doesn’t pay enough to make it worthwhile.”

When Sarah turned her eyes back towards the window, she jumped back with surprise.

Their boss—Joey Dawn—was poking his head through the order window.

“You can always give up your spot,” Joey said. He gave them a big, carnivorous smile. Sarah folded her arms across her chest. Joey had a little New York gangster in his voice, even though he had grown up just a mile down the road. Sarah figured that he came by his accent from watching too many movies.

Ricky shook his head. “I’m just looking for something to do, sir.”

“That’s good. Stay hungry, kid,” Joey said. He put his arm through the window. “Why don’t you grab a broom, come out here, and knock down some of these spiderwebs?”

Ricky and Sarah looked at each other. He didn’t have to say anything for Sarah to know what he was thinking. She was thinking the same thing.
 

“Uh, Joey, your mom said to leave the spiders be. She said that if we get rid of the spiders we’ll have flies everywhere.”

“She said that, huh?” Joey asked. He sounded more like a gangster each second.
 

Ricky nodded.

“How ’bout you listen to me since I’m the one what signs your checks, huh?”

Sarah blinked hard and fought to keep a straight face. He had to be kidding, talking like that, didn’t he?

“Yes, sir,” Ricky said. He reached behind the drink refrigerator and grabbed the big push broom. It would be useless for knocking down spiders, but Sarah thought that might be a good thing. Ricky headed for the door.

Joey pointed to Sarah. “You get some of those little baggies and fill them halfway with water. Pin them up in the eaves and it will scare away the flies.”

“Okay,” she said. She had seen the trick before, but it didn’t work. She wasn’t about to argue with him. What was the point?

Joey withdrew from the window and Sarah uncrossed her arms. She puffed out her cheeks and exhaled through her nose. She had worked hard to cultivate a good, healthy crop of pragmatism. It was much better to do a useless task than argue about it and jeopardize her cushy job scooping ice cream. Business wasn’t always going to be this slow, and tips would easily make up for the terrible hourly wage that Joey paid. She would fill bags and pin them up. Eventually, Joey’s mom would make them take the bags down and the spiders would return. Then everything would go back to normal.

She filled six of the little bags at the sink and lined them up on the counter. Before going outside, she grabbed her hat from the rack. She didn’t mind spiders, but didn’t like the thought of one dropping into her hair.

When she got out to the deck, Ricky was halfway up the ladder. He was swinging the heavy broom over his head at the massive webs.

“You know there’s a smaller broom in the closet, right?” Sarah asked.

Behind them, a bicycle streaked down the gravel. The bike was headed right for the rocks that divided the short lawn from the water’s edge. The rider—Sarah’s friend, Lily Hazard—jumped from the bike and let it fall in the grass. She ran to meet Sarah on the edge of the deck.

“Your brother just quit!” Lily said between gasps.

“Quit?” Sarah asked. Her face registered her complete shock. If there was one job in Kingston Lakes that was more coveted than the ice cream shop, it was working at the stables. Her brother had mucked stalls all winter for free just to be considered for the position.
 

“You have to go talk to him. Maybe if he apologizes, they’ll let him stay.”

Sarah leaned on the railing and tried to imagine that conversation. She wouldn’t even know where to start. Her brother was older, angrier, and a million times more stubborn than she was. He would never listen to her.

“What happened, do you know?”

Lily looked down and scraped her teeth against her lower lip. “I mean, I don’t know for sure, but they put down Big Jack today.”

Ricky rested the broom against the railing and joined the girls. “Big Jack?” he asked.

Sarah sighed and shook her head. She looked out over the lake. The water was usually a perfect blue, reflecting the sky. Today, with the wind, the surface was dark. Out in the middle, they said that the water was a hundred feet deep. Looking at the troubled surface, Sarah could imagine that it went down a mile or more.

Sarah took off her hat and put it on top of Ricky’s head.

“Tell Joey I had to go, okay? If he gives you any trouble, tell him it was lady problems. That always shuts him up.”

She left them on the deck and trotted up the gravel drive towards the street.

[ Stable ]

Sarah’s arms swung with her stride as she walked up the shady road towards the stables. She had only been in the bunkhouse once, but she was pretty sure that’s where she would find her brother. Sarah ran her hand up the railing as she climbed the tall stairs to the second floor of the barn. It was hot up there, despite the overcast day and stiff breeze.
 

In the row of six beds, her brother had chosen the last one. It was closest to the window that overlooked the woods. Jeffrey was packing his shirts into his canvas bag.
 

She put her hands on her hips. He glanced up at her and then opened the drawer of his nightstand. He had toiletries in a plastic bag, a book, and a baseball. Those were all the things he had deemed crucial to take with him on his brief career as a ranch hand.

“You can’t quit,” she said.

“Already did,” he said. His voice was flat and low. He was in perfect control. She knew that wouldn’t be the case if she really pressed him.

“Dad won’t let you come back if you quit.”

He zipped his bag and straightened up. “I’ll be eighteen in three months. It doesn’t really matter what he wants.”

“You don’t have any money.”

Jeffrey shrugged. He lifted his bag and put the wide strap over his head. It crossed his chest like a bandolier. With that and his cowboy boots, he was a sixshooter away from looking like he belonged in a gunfight.

“I’ve got five-hundred in my donkey bank.”

“I don’t need it,” he said.

She shook her head. “Take it. You can pay me back when you get on your feet. Where are you going to go?”

“I don’t care. South, I guess. Maybe I’ll go to Florida and look up the cousins.”

“They don’t live in Florida anymore,” Sarah said. Jeffrey never did pay much attention to their relatives. They didn’t know their mother’s family, and Jeffrey had nothing but contempt for their father’s people.

“Then I’ll keep going south until I find a nice warm beach to crash on,” he said. “You don’t need money to sleep on a beach.”

“If there’s a beach nice enough to sleep on, they’re going to run off some trashy homeless teenager. And you have to eat, don’t you?”

Jeffrey never raised his voice to his sister. He saved his shouting for their father. With Sarah, he only got quieter when he wanted to emphasize.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Drop it.”

Sarah approached him and lowered her own voice. “You promise me that if you get in trouble or run out of money, you’ll call.”

He stared at her.

“Promise me. No pride, and no thinking it will get better if you tough it out. You get in trouble and you call.”

He didn’t say anything. She knew what he was doing—he was waiting for her to break down and beg. She wouldn’t do it.

“I’ll promise if you don’t tell Dad that I left.”

She blinked slowly. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her. The concession was a bargain.

“Yeah,” she said. “I won’t tell Dad unless he asks.”

“Don’t tell him at all.”

She turned away. “If he asks, I’ll tell him.”

“Fine,” he said. “I gotta go.”

He maneuvered around her and left the door wide open on his way out. She followed him down the tall stairs to the dirt parking area. Sarah saw Carla Gault waiting in the shade in her rusty shitbox. When Carla saw Jeffrey get to the bottom of the stairs, she cranked the engine. A mixture of oil-smoke and rust puffed out from the tailpipe.

“Jeff,” Sarah said. She put her hand out and touched his arm. Her brother had always been bigger than her, but now he was a different person. He was like a moving rock under those work clothes. She wondered if his feelings had hardened in the same way. “What happened to Big Jack?”

He turned back and gave his head a shake. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Jeffrey took his bag from around his neck as he walked. He fed it through the rear window of Carla’s shitbox and then climbed into the passenger’s seat. The car settled lower to the dirt as it accepted his weight. Carla didn’t hesitate. As soon as Jeffrey was aboard, she took off, leaving a plume of dust behind.

Sarah put her hands on her hips and sighed. She had a terrible feeling that she had seen her brother for the last time.

[ Girlfriend ]

Sarah didn’t walk as quickly when she left the stables. She was in that awkward time when Shari would be at the house but her Dad wouldn’t be back from work yet. It was the worst time. As she walked by the white, three-rail fence, she noticed how empty the field looked. When she’d walked up, she hadn’t noticed that Big Jack wasn’t there under his maple tree. Now that she wasn’t so focused on her brother, the absence felt like a hole in her chest. The giant horse had been a fixture there nearly her whole life. She couldn’t imagine that he was gone.