When the Saints (19 page)

Circumstances being, I’d like to add, that he married a selfish fucking bitch.

“Your mother name you West?” Jackie asks.

“Jackie!” I shove him on his stool.

West refreshes Jackie’s drink. “West’s my last name.”

“Wait.” I slap the bar with both hands. “Say what?”

“Never mind. I go by West.”

“No, not never mind. Don’t make me jump over this counter, Ronnie or Gene or whoever you are.”

“Gene?” He cringes.

“He don’t look like a Gene,” Jackie says thoughtfully. “More like a Rick.”

“Rick?” West folds his arms across his chest. “Christ. Really?”

The door opens and an old woman in a plastic yellow sun visor comes in. She hangs up her sweater and waddles over to the bar, stares at Jackie as if he’s behind glass.

“You’re Mary Saint’s boy,” she says. “I heard your father passed.”

Jackie drains his drink in one swig, turns his glass upside down on the bar and starts turning it in circles.

She reaches over and puts her hand on his shoulder. “You tell your mother we’re praying for her grandson.”

Jackie’s face flushes crimson. “Thank you,” he finally mutters.

I
T’S DARK BY THE TIME WE GET BACK TO JUBILANT, BUT
Jackie insists we show Bird the money. While we’re sitting in the drive-through ordering burgers, he admits he hardly ever steps foot in the blue house.

“I can’t stand to see Bird like he is,” he says. “He can’t stand to see me, neither.”

When we pull in the driveway, Jackie waves to Bird in the window and Bird gives him the finger. It’s the wrong finger, but Jackie gets the message.

“See,” he sighs.

Bird smells the food as we’re coming in the door and wheels himself to the table. The three Musketeers rip the bag of food apart. Bird gets mustard and pickles all over his face and won’t let me wipe it off.

“Bird, I got something to tell you,” Jackie says. “Daddy’s gone. He died.”

Bird keeps chewing.

“Do you understand what I’m saying? Daddy’s dead.”

Bird swallows the whole burger, looks up and swings his head left to right.

“Okay?”

Bird picks up the cardboard tray that held the drinks and rips it in half. He lets the pieces fall on the floor and stares at them. Then he starts rolling his wheelchair over them, back and forth, saying, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”

“You know he loved us, right? Even though he was an asshole. You know how I know? He left us a whole pile of money. Look at this.” Jackie pulls out one of the stacks and dangles it in front of Bird’s face.

Bird stares at the money, drooling.

“We can do anything now. We can go fishing again like we used to. Me and you. Whatever you want to do.”

Bird wheels over to the wall and rips off some wallpaper. “Josie.”

“She’s with her mother,” Jackie tells him. “Remember? She’s with her mother and her sister in Alberta. They moved to the country so they could have a horse to ride. They got a yard so big they can run in a straight line till Tuesday.”

“Josie and Michelle.”

Jackie hands me the money. “I can’t do this.”

I can feel the heat rising off his back.

“It’s all right,” I tell him. “I’ll stay.”

He heads straight to the door and a second later I hear the Tercel peel out. I sit with Bird until he forgets about Josie and Michelle and wants to play cards. I get the others seated at the table with him and we play a few hands.

I’ve got a bad feeling rolling around my insides, and after twenty minutes of trying to ignore it I tell Bird I have to go check something. I get up from the table, grab the money and beat it down the road to the trailer. All the lights are off and a note on the fridge says Ma and Janis are at the hospital visiting Poppy. I pick up the phone and dial Jackie’s place. Jewell answers.

“Is Jackie there?”

“He’s not here. I thought he was with you.”

“Jewell, I need you to come pick me up at the trailer.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Right now!”

“I can’t. Jackie has the car.”

“Shit!”

“I’ll borrow my neighbour’s car. Stay there.”

I hang up, stash the money in a loose ceiling tile above Janis’s bunk. Then I lock up and wait down at the curb. After fifteen minutes, Jewell comes roaring up in a pink Mary Kay car.

I jump in and she swings the car around, accelerating so fast we dip into the oncoming lane.

“He grabbed Grandpa’s guns from the garage this afternoon, said he was going to try and sell them. I can’t imagine they still shoot.”

“There’s a Ruger in the Tercel,” Jewell says. “Jackie duct-taped it under the seat.”

The last Soulless River I drank sloshes in my stomach as she picks up speed. She doesn’t even have to ask where we’re headed, guns it to the other side of town, cuts the headlights and idles up to the foot of Troy’s driveway.

“Call the police,” I tell her. “Use the pay phone at Frosty’s then come right back.”

Before she can argue, I get out and sprint up to the house, trying to remain in darkness. Through the front window, I see broken glass all over the living room carpet. Jackie must have busted in. I climb over the windowsill, avoiding the jagged shards, then crouch low and make my way to the kitchen.

There’s a small mound of marijuana sitting on a scale out in the open. Above it on the wall is that “Footprints” story printed on a plaque, the one that reassures shitheads like Troy that Jesus always has his back. I hear voices and slide a knife out of the wooden block on the countertop. I follow the sounds up the carpeted staircase to a lamplit master bedroom.

As I reach the doorway, I see the woman who turned the rifle on me seated on the floor. She’s wearing the same pink bathrobe. Next to her is a tattooed man with buzzed blond hair. Troy. The wiry little prick is nothing like I pictured. I step into the room and there’s Jackie standing over them, holding a pistol to Troy’s head.

“Jesus Christ, Jackie!”

They all look up in alarm. Troy’s grey eyes are working the angles of the room, flying through possibilities. His white shirt is unbuttoned and the thin, pale chest is rising up, down, up, down. The woman leans forward like she wants to take her chances,
stand up and make a run for it, but Troy puts his hand on her leg like it’s all under control.

Jackie cocks the trigger. “Go find Swimmer,” he tells me.

I race around the upstairs, checking the closets and under the unmade beds. I trip going back downstairs, pull myself up using the wall and limp the rest of the way down. I check all the first-floor rooms then open the door to the basement and call Swimmer’s name. It’s quiet. I find the chain for the light bulb and hop down on my good foot.

There’s a pile of dirty laundry on the concrete floor next to the washing machine. I see a little striped sock in the mess of towels and sheets and drop to my knees, rummaging wildly through the pile, tossing things aside until I uncover a child-sized T-shirt. I stare at it a second before I grab it and hold it up to the light. Smurfs. I stumble to my feet, half crawl back up to the main floor and scream, “Jackie! Let’s go! The cops are on the way!”

No response. I put my weight on the bad foot and let the pain shoot up my leg as I run upstairs to the master bedroom.

Troy and his woman are breathing fast and shallow, like dying animals. Jackie has the gun pressed hard to Troy’s temple and Troy’s eyes are squeezed closed, head turned away from the barrel. There’s a large tattoo on his neck of a snake eating a bird.

“JACKIE, DON’T DO IT!”

A horn honks once outside and I run to the window. Jewell sees me waving and lays on the horn. Jackie grabs my arm and pushes me out of the bedroom. My ankle throbs as we sprint downstairs and out the front door. There are sirens in the distance, getting
closer. I suddenly remember I had a kitchen knife in my hand. I don’t know where I dropped it. I should have wiped off the handle.

“Get in!” Jewell screams.

Jackie and I dive into the back seat, slam our doors as she starts backing down the driveway, fishtailing on the rocks. Just before the nose of the car swings out onto the road, Troy runs out of the house and hollers, “THE KID AIN’T HERE, JACKIE, ‘CAUSE I FUCKING BURIED HIM!”

Jewell struggles to stay under the speed limit. “I told the cops I heard gunshots coming from Troy’s address. Then I hung up.”

“Stop here and let me and Tabby out,” Jackie says. “Go straight to the hospital and find Poppy’s room. Pretend you were running an errand in town and dropped in for a visit.”

“Ma and Janis are there now,” I tell him.

“Good.” Jackie grabs Jewell’s shoulder. “Listen to me. Tell Ma to head back to the trailer, and keep Janis with you. If the cops show up looking for me or Tabby, tell them you’ve been at the hospital all night and that as far as you know both of us are in Solace River.”

“What happened back there?” Her voice breaks.

“I’ll tell you later.”

Jackie and I get out and skulk along the woods to a dark side street where he left the Tercel. He drives us back to the trailer and we sneak inside, keeping the lights off.

“Call West,” Jackie says. “People saw us at the Four Horses earlier. Get him to tell the cops we had too much to drink and crashed at his place.”

West barely says hello before I spit out what Jackie just said.

“Tabby, what are you getting me mixed up in?”

I give him the short version.

“You have to tell the police you saw Swimmer’s shirt.”

“How can I? Jackie and I will get charged for break and enter.”

West lets his breath out. “This can’t be good. I mean, why’s the kid not wearing his clothes?”

“They must have put him in clean ones. Think about it. If Troy did something to hurt Swimmer, he’s not going to leave the evidence in plain sight.”

“Maybe he ain’t that smart.”

“He’s smart enough to have gotten away with this so far, smart enough to get away with what he did to Bird.”

Ma walks into the trailer and I hang up without saying goodbye. Jackie starts to tell her what’s going on when two police officers pull in and knock on the door. Ma waits for Jackie and me to hide in the bathroom before she answers the door. We hear her ask the cops if they’ve come with news about Swimmer. They say they’re looking for me and she tells them I’m with my boyfriend in Solace River, asks why on earth they’re looking for me when they should be out searching for Swimmer. I forgot Ma had to lie for Daddy so many times she got pretty good at it.

When the cops leave, she draws the curtains, lights a few candles then opens the bathroom door. Jackie tells her he broke into Troy’s house, but leaves out the part where he had a gun to Troy’s head. I retrieve Daddy’s money from the kids’ room and drop it on the table. Ma takes one look at it and trails off mid-sentence.

“Daddy buried it under the garage,” I tell her.

“For Christ’s sake,” Ma says, holding a hundred-dollar bill close to a candle flame. “There’s dried blood on this one.”

“He probably just cut his hand,” Jackie says. He guides her into a chair and divides the money into three rough piles. “Let’s count it up.”

We add in silence, the exaggerated shadows of the stacks growing ever higher on the wall.

“Fifty-eight,” I announce after half an hour.

Ma pushes two piles into the centre. “Fifty-six.”

Jackie punches all the numbers into Janis’s Hello Kitty calculator.

“How much is it?” Ma demands.

Jackie shows her six digits on the little plastic screen.

“Oh, Lord.” Ma stands up, sits, stands up again and walks around to double-check the curtains are closed. She sinks back down on her chair and stares in shock at the filthy hundred-dollar bills spread out over the tablecloth.

Jackie puts his hands on her shoulders. “Let’s buy you a house. You can take the kids to live there. We’ll get a place big enough for Bird to have a room too, get him out of that shithole.”

Ma takes his hand in hers, then reaches across the table and grabs mine. Even by candlelight, I can see that all of our fingers are soiled black.

T
HEY’VE UPPED
P
OPPY’S SEDATIVES AND HAVE HER ON
suicide watch. She told Ma she’s going to stay alive at least long
enough to murder whoever took Swimmer. They had to remove her TV because she kept seeing Swimmer’s face on the news. She had a conniption when Jewell tried to wake Janis to leave, so Jewell let Janis stay sleeping in the extra bed. I go over in the morning to pick her up. When I enter the room, Janis is feeding Poppy a doughnut by hand.

“Would you tell me what the hell is going on?” Poppy asks me.

“Later.”

A nurse is ordering people around in the hallway and Poppy says, “Hear that dog barking out there? If she steps foot in here, she’ll be walking out without a face. She was Bird’s nurse. I caught her forcing food down his throat, yanking him in and out of bed like a fucking rag doll.”

“Don’t say that word,” Janis says, picking crumbs off Poppy’s chest. “Jesus is listening.”

“What word?” Poppy says. The skin underneath her eyes looks scaly. “No, he ain’t.” She watches me limp over to an armless chair. “What happened to you?”

“Fox-hunting accident in the countryside,” I say in a bad British accent. “My steed and I took a rather nasty spill.”

“Hilarious.”

“I’m just trying to lighten the mood.”

“Well, don’t.”

“Fine.” I sit and put my ankle up on the metal bed stool. “Then I won’t tell you we found the money. Or that we’re going to move you to a nice hospital in Solace River.”

“There ain’t no nice hospital in Solace River.”

“Then we’ll get you their best private room and redecorate.”

“You going to redecorate the food too?”

Janis pulls the doughnut away. “Stop your complaining or we’ll leave you here.”

“You sound just like Ma when you say that,” Poppy tells her.

“That’s who takes care of me all the time,” Janis says. “Swimmer talks like Grandma when he says ‘goddamnit.’ I bet he’s saying it a lot if the bad people won’t let him in their fridge to get string cheese.”

Poppy’s face constricts, and I push myself back up.

“How much money was there?” Poppy asks me.