Lamentation (13 page)

“We don’t have any soup kitchens or shelters in town,” I said. “Maybe he’s over in Pittsfield. But that’s a long haul just for a place to sleep. I know he crashes at some of these motels on the Turnpike when he gets enough money.” I gestured out the window. “There is this one girl he used to hang around with, Kitty something.”

“Kitty?”

“That’s how he introduced her to me. Kitty. Used to bring her around a lot. Shit, this was, like, a couple years ago. I normally don’t pay attention to any of his friends, they come and go so fast, but she seemed to mean more to him than most of the ones he runs around with.”

“Girlfriend?”

“I’m not sure guys like my brother have girlfriends. Anyway, she stopped coming by. Hardly a prize, as strung-out as him. She had a room in a boarding house over in Middlebury. Middle of fucksake nowhere. Had me drop her off there once.”

“Who lives in a boarding house? What is this? The 1940s?”

I shrugged.

“Why haven’t you checked there before now?”

“Because it was three fucking years ago,” I said. “I doubt she even still lives there.”

“I thought you said it was two years.”

“I don’t know, Charlie. Maybe it was two. Maybe it was a year. It’s been a while, though. I haven’t given it much thought until now. Why would I? I have my own fucking life, y’know?” Out the window, a bum
struggled to keep from slipping as he pushed a shopping cart across the icy parking lot. “You don’t understand what’s it’s been like dealing with my brother.”

“I think I have a good idea.”

“He’s like a child. You can’t take his plans or his friends seriously. Everyone he hangs around with is like that. They all live in a fantasy world, as whacked out as he is.”

Charlie’s phone on the table started to vibrate. He checked it, glumly muttering, then hopped up and extracted a wad of bills from his hip pocket. “Gotta run. Call me this afternoon. Let me know what you find.” He left a ten-spot, slipped on his work coat, then shoved the last bite of bacon and burger down his gullet. “And I mean it, if you want to crash at my place, got an extra bed and everything.”

I nodded my appreciation. He double knocked on the table and hurried out the door.

Buried deep in the valley cuts, Middlebury oozed so much backwoods’ backwater it made Ashton seem like a bustling metropolis. Small, spread-out dairy farms and gummed-up slaughterhouses, broken-down harvesters rusting in untended fields, distant houses where the top floor lights never went out. Murders of big black crows perched high in treetops, suspiciously eyeing strangers. They’d wait for the shotgun blasts to echo in the distance, before scattering in fifteen different directions.

At the end of a tortuously long, one-lane road that carved through granite gullies and dense thicket in the rugged northern outback, Middlebury’s town center comprised a tiny grocery market, a gas station with one pump, and a restaurant that closed at two in the afternoon. That was it. Even by rural standards, Middlebury was Hicksville.

The people who lived in Middlebury fell into one of two camps: radical militia types who didn’t like the government telling them what to do, so they stockpiled firearms and refurbished land mines, collected canned goods by the crate-load, burrowing deep underground, prepping for doomsday. You’d spot them on patrol, making rounds, trolling compound perimeters in camouflage fatigues, sporting subterranean tans
like extras from
The Hills Have Eyes
, hoping for some poor bastard to mistakenly wander onto their property.

Then there were the rehabilitated.

I knew of at least two halfway houses and one transitional living facility. I guess they thought by sticking addicts in the middle of nowhere it would be harder for them to score dope or get drunk. But if my brother had taught me one thing about addiction, it was that when an addict wants to get high, ain’t hell or high water going to stop him.

Back when I’d try to fix my brother, a doctor mentioned these homes as possible landing points, should Chris manage to stay sober long enough to warrant transitional housing. He never made it past twenty-seven days.

I wouldn’t have known the boarding house existed at all, had my brother not roped me into dropping off his girlfriend late one night. Took forever. The farther the road stretched, the longer I knew it would take to get back, and the more enraged I’d become. The girl, Kitty, tried being friendly, attempting to strike up a conversation, undeterred by my lack of response. Which only made me seethe more. What could she and I possibly have to talk about?

Who’d choose to live in a boarding house anyway, especially one so far off the beaten path? Public transportation didn’t run in these parts. These people never had their own car. It was like self-imposed exile. Hell, even the
idea
of a boarding house struck me as odd, like a leftover relic from a World War II love story, a sailor down on his luck in an old film noir. Who couldn’t get their shit together enough to at least rent a goddamn motel room on the Turnpike?

I steered down the wooded drive, and the boarding house, a once-grand, two-story American Colonial, rose into view. I’d dropped Kitty off in the middle of the night that first time, and I hadn’t gotten much of a look. With its sprawling acreage and tree-lined entrance, the home might’ve passed for a plantation in the 1700s, if shutters weren’t dangling by their hinges, and weeds and vines hadn’t choked everything. Tall, white columns framed a long rocking porch, where, despite late-afternoon, frigid
winds, five old ladies sat shawled in rocking chairs. Wrapped in cheap-looking coats, hidden beneath Goodwill hats, each smoked a cigarette with frail, palsied hands.

When I exited my truck and slammed shut the door, the women collectively jumped, before clustering together and staring, wide-eyed.

As I drew closer, I realized I’d been mistaken. These weren’t old women—they were girls, barely out of their teens.

The porch door flung open, and a big-boned, sturdy, middle-aged woman bundled in flannel and dungarees, bulled down the unpainted steps. “You can’t be here!” she barked, marching toward me, meaty paws rolling over a dishtowel.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said.

“Well, this ain’t the place to be looking!” She grabbed my elbow and began dragging me off the grounds.

“Hey!” I said, trying to shake free. “What are you doing?”

She didn’t answer, didn’t stop, just plowed ahead like a determined, gruff tugboat. When I planted my boots and refused to take another step, she clamped onto my forearms and drove her shoulder into my flank, like she planned to check me into the boards. I’d had enough.

I shoved her away. “Get your fucking hands off me!”

The girls on the porch gasped, trembling like Amish virgins who’d never seen a man before.

“Go inside, girls,” the woman said, calmly but firmly, as though practicing a rehearsed fire drill.

The girls remained frozen, gawking with spooked eyes, skittish as underfed alley cats. I wondered if this was a home for mentally handicapped people or something.

“Go inside,” the woman repeated, only this time more firmly, and, one by one, the timid things shuffled through the door like pious church mice.

I felt bad, although I didn’t know why. I hadn’t done anything wrong. This woman had practically assaulted me. Still, I felt the need to explain myself.

“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” I said. “If you could tell me—”

“You made a big mistake coming here. You have ten seconds to get in your truck and drive off before I call the cops!”

“Call the cops? For what? Asking if somebody is home? What the hell is your problem, lady? I’m just trying to find my brother’s ex-girlfriend. He’s missing. I thought he might be staying at the boarding house with her. Or that she might’ve at least seen him.”

Lips pursed, hands at the ready like she was prepared to take a swing at me, the woman cocked her head, curiously. The anger slowly drained from her red, pudgy face. “Boarding house?” she said, dropping her shoulders. “What do you think this is, 1940? This is a battered women’s shelter.”

“Oh, shit.” Showing up in a giant, rumbling truck, storming up the walkway, barking that I wasn’t leaving. The exact scene these women needed sheltering from. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Now you do. So, please, leave.”

I showed my hands. “Listen, my brother really is missing.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, “but you still need to leave.”

“He has a drug problem.”

“That’s terrible. A lot of these girls are fleeing that world. But I need you to leave, now.”

“They just found a friend of his dead at the TC truck stop. He’d been murdered. I don’t know where else to look. Please. Help me.”

The wind whipped around us as the last glimmer of light disappeared behind the tall trees.

“Can we sit in my truck for a few seconds and talk?” I immediately backtracked. “I’m really not looking to cause any problems. I’m a nice guy, I swear. Maybe you know my brother? Chris Porter? I dropped off his girlfriend here once. A long time ago. Like, maybe two years. It’s why I thought this was a boarding house. That’s what they told me. And I believed them.”

“Son, I’m sure you’re a nice guy. It was a misunderstanding, okay? No hard feelings. But you have to leave. I can’t tell you who’s here. Don’t you know that’s the whole point of a house like this? Nobody should know it exists. Why else would we be in the middle of nowhere? I
don’t know who would’ve asked you to bring them here, since that girl should’ve known that.”

“Her name was Kitty.”

The name must’ve registered, because her expression instantly changed, though for better or worse, I couldn’t say.

I pulled out my wallet. I carried business cards for hauling that Tom had had printed. They showed a cartoon man in a hard hat, standing beside a dump truck, giving an enthusiastic thumbs up. I hated the damn things, but passed one along anyway. She reluctantly plucked it from my fingers, squinting down at the goofy logo.

“I know you can’t tell me if she’s here.” I started backing up to my truck. “But maybe you can have her call me? I swear, I’m telling the truth. I’m not some domestic-abusing jerk or anything like that. I’m just a guy looking for his brother. I’m worried about him. If you see Kitty, give her my card, okay? Use it to check out who I am first. Call the Ashton PD. They’ll verify everything I’ve told you.”

As I threw my truck in reverse, I saw her tuck away the card and stalk back into the house. She didn’t wave goodbye.

Driving back, darkness strangling the countryside, no moon, not a single star in the winter sky to guide my way home, I lit a cigarette and watched my breath cloud in the glowing dashboard lights.

I felt terrible for how I’d acted at the women’s shelter, like some knuckle-dragging troglodyte. I started rehashing all my other stupid missteps and cringe-worthy lapses in my life, which is how things happened: one mistake begetting another, building a lifetime’s worth of regret—a snowball effect.

I realized now why I’d snapped at Charlie over lunch. He was right. I hadn’t been doing my best to find Chris. I knew I resented my brother, but I didn’t appreciate just how much I’d grown to hate him. I hadn’t bothered trying to track down Kitty or any of his other friends because a part of me wanted him to stay gone.