Wire Mesh Mothers (24 page)

The air was warmer and stickier in Alabama than in Virginia. Tony pushed up the sleeves of the WWJD sweatshirt and felt the heavy air stroking her skin. In the darkness on the other side of the street where a street light had burned out something fell over, rolled, then stopped. A dog, Tony guessed, sniffing around for cats. Let it come near her, and she’d take care of it like she did the animals on Rainbow Lane. That would be fun. She hadn’t taken a dog apart in weeks.

There was a phone booth on the corner of the “Catfish
Delite
” parking lot. Tony pushed through the folding glass door and stepped inside. There was no phone book hanging on the chain, and the light in the ceiling didn’t work. The phone itself, a clunky silver apparatus, was tacky with bits of chewed gum and other crusted substances. Tony gingerly lifted the receiver, tapped zero, and Leroy’s number. After speaking her name on request to the computer-operator, she waited, one foot shaking on the floor, one hand scratching the top of her head.
Come one come on.

The line was busy. Tony slammed the receiver down.

That’s okay, I know Buddy’s number. Nobody talks on the phone at Buddy’s house. Nobody likes Buddy or his family and nobody ever calls ‘em.

After three rings, a gruff male voice answered. “Low?” It wasn’t Buddy but some other man, one of the uncles, cousins, or in-laws who crashed at Buddy’s house on an ongoing, rotating schedule.

“Hey!” Tony tried to interject before anything else was spoken. “Say yes!”

But the man couldn’t hear Tony’s words or didn’t care that he did, he grumbled at the request to accept charges and the line went dead.

“Screw it,” Tony swore. She tried to remember Little Joe’s number, but couldn’t. It had a nine and five and two and something else. Whitey’s phone had been disconnected last month because Whitey’s mom was mad about a $300 900-number bill Whitey had racked up on a Tarot-reading line and refused to pay the bill.

Tony leaned against the phone booth wall and watched as a car pulled out of the restaurant lot, and another pulled in. She licked the flavor of salty air off her lips and let out a long breath. She dialed Leroy again. Again, busy. She slammed the receiver down and leaned against the booth wall, arms crossed. Where the hell did Leroy’s family have to go? Maybe Leroy was in jail and they were visiting him. They’d be sitting behind a clear plastic window talking into a single phone and Leroy would be on the other side, beat up from the other inmates who thought he was sweet-pants. Leroy’s mom would cry, of course. Maybe even Leroy would cry. Tony wondered what Leroy crying would sound like.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve….
Tony counted to one hundred and then tried Leroy’s again. Someone answered on the fifth ring. Dee Wee.

Okay, Dee Wee, don’t be a shit, this is Tony calling, you’ll hear me say my name, you just say yes.

“Will you accept charges?” asked the computer-operator.

“Uh, huh, okay,” said Dee Wee. “What’s charges mean?”

“Dee Wee!” Tony fairly shouted, then lowered her voice. “Dee Wee, it’s Tony, hey, what’s up?”

“
Nothin
’,” said Dee Wee. “Tony, where you at? Leroy said you was gone.”

“I am gone, Dee Wee. Put Leroy on the phone.”

“I think he’s watching T.V.”

“Put him on the phone, Dee Wee. Do it.”

Pause. “Well, okay, but don’t get mad if he gets mad for me bothering him.”

A clatter, clunk, silence except for background shuffling and mumbled voices. Then clattering again, a click, and “Fuck it, Tony, where the hell are you?”

Tony felt her soul soar at the irritation and the intensity of Leroy’s voice. Things back home had to be pretty damn good for him to sound like that.

“I can’t say where I am, Leroy. But I’m not in Virginia, that’s for sure. I’m really far away.”

“Where’d you go after…after, you know? I thought you got caught or shot or something and taken into custody. You ain’t calling from Emporia jail?”

“No. Is that what you hoped would happen? You and Buddy and Whitey and Little Joe all
takin
’ off in the car and
leavin
’ me behind? You hoped I’d get caught and take the fall for your asses?”

“No.”

“Why’d you run off without me?”

“’Cause of what happened in the store, idiot. We didn’t have time to wait for you, Tony, you know that! We wait, and somebody would get us all. We knew you’d probably be okay on your own. You’re good at stuff on your own. You’d either shoot or hide, but you wouldn’t let nobody take you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Maybe they thought that about Tony. Maybe they’d talked about her like that after the Exxon robbery. She was the toughest of the Hot Heads, after all.

“Yeah,” said Leroy. “That’s why, since we didn’t hear
nothin
’ from you in three days, we thought you was in the jail, getting tortured or something so you’d confess on us.”

“I’m not caught.”

“Good. Where are you?”

“Told you, I can’t tell. But what’s the news? Did we make the TV.? Radio? We made the newspaper, didn’t we?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Leroy. “Mrs. Martin was on the TV. news two nights in a row now.”

Tony felt the chill of excitement run her veins. “Yeah? What did she say? What did she look like?”

“She looked like shit, what do you think? She was in shock or something,
standin
’ in the middle of the wrecked up store with the crap we knocked down all over the place. The reporters had a couple
mics
in her face and she said, ‘They killed him, right in front of me, shot him dead!’ They said, ‘Who shot him?’ and she said ‘some kid with lipstick on his face!’”

“What’d she say about us, about the rest of us?”

“
Nothin
’ much. Just that we knocked stuff over, tore stuff up, stole some stuff. She mostly talked about Whitey and his gun.”

“I had a gun! I put it in her face, up close! That was me up there with her!”

“Yeah, I know….”

“I was the one threatened her, why didn’t she tell the news about me threatening her? She only told on Whitey?”

“She didn’t exactly tell on him, she told about him, she didn’t really know who it was, said it could have been any of a bunch of teenagers who come into the store. Police have been
investigatin
’, going house to house….”

“I was the one with bullets in my gun!”

“Whitey had a bullet. He shot that guy.”

“But he wasn’t supposed to have a bullet. I didn’t think there were any bullets in there, they all rolled behind the stove.”

A loud sound of exasperation, then, “What? You gave Whitey a gun with no bullets?”

“Just shut up, I didn’t think it would matter. I wanted the one with the bullets, I wanted to shoot up the place after scaring Mrs. Martin, but then Whitey shot first.”

“Stupid asshole little girl!”

“You wouldn’t say that to my face if I was there.”

“Yes I would. You bring a gun with no bullets?”

“Yeah, and it’s done, okay? They know anything yet? Who’d the police talk to so far? Are they showing sketches on T.V.? Drawings of what we looked like?”

“Just one of Whitey, but it don’t look like him. Some farmer in a tractor who drove by the Exxon when we were there said he saw a car go out of the lot like a bat out of hell, but didn’t know what kind it was, just that it was big. Said the sleet was in his eyes. Thought it was green or light blue.”

“They didn’t have a sketch of me?”

“No. Get over it. There’s a reward for information about us, though. $100,000 dollars if we get caught and convicted. Mrs. Martin quit the store. It’s closed until further notice, sign says.”

Tony took a deep breath, blew on it out on the glass of the phone booth, and drew a
frowny
face in the steam.

“When you comin’ back, Tony?”

“Probably never. I got places to be. People to be with. Wish I could be there to see everything
happenin
’, but I can’t. I’ll call you, though, check it out. Check on the progress.”

“If they catch Whitey, they’ll catch us. He’ll talk like a fucking parrot on a stick.”

“Maybe. Nobody was supposed to get killed, though. Tough shit, huh? And I ain’t telling where I am.”

“I’ll get the phone bill end of the month. I’ll know exactly where you’re
callin
’ from. Police get the phone record then they can follow where you’re at….”

Tony hadn’t thought of that. She slammed the receiver down into the cradle and left the booth.

Half a block past the “Catfish
Delite
” was another motel, “Gulf Towers Motel,” and several small houses on both sides of the road, an alley, a poorly-lit intersection. She crossed over and continued on the same street.

Maybe they’d see Alabama on the phone bill, but they would know Texas. It would be okay.

There was a trailer park on the right, then a small shop selling fishing tackle and boat equipment, a long grassy ball field surrounded by a chain link fence, and then the end of the road. A solid privacy fence of wooden slats blocking Tony’s view from whatever lay on the other side.

A sign, painted in red on the wood, said, “Martin’s Mobile Bay Marina. 3429 Perry Road, Mobile.” Tony followed the fence to the barred gate, and stared inside. There were boats bobbing on water, tied up in what seemed like little stalls. Rows of boats, painted with names that were hard to read in the faint beams of the tall pole lights. Some of the boats had fishing nets stretched to dry across their backs. Others had large seats with harnesses and large poles. These, Tony knew for sure, was for catching and holding on to big fish. No little catfish hooks here. She wondered what they’d use for bait. Eels? Snakes?

Another thumping off road behind her, and she turned about to see nothing but shadows, ragged, roadside trees and the dark.

“Get the fuck out of here, whatever you are,” she said.

Nothing answered. Nothing moved.
It’s just Alabama
, she thought.

Tony wondered if
Lamesa
was anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico, and if Burton ever got to go fishing. He would own a big boat, of course, bigger than any here at Martin’s Marina. Tony and Burton could take a day off from managing the farm hands and go out on the water and toss back some brews and smoke a few cigars.

The end of the privacy fence was a half-block down. Tony hurried to the corner. She wanted to put her feet in the Gulf and know what it felt like. At the end of the marina was another row of small houses. The first, surrounded by a weedy yard and scrub trees, had a seagull-decorated mailbox that read, “Martin, 3427 Perry Road.” This had to be the owner of Martin’s Marina. Crappy little house for someone who had such a big business.
 

Behind the house was the huge stretch of black water, small waves pulsing up and back and reflecting lights from the Marina and the back porches of the little houses down the lane. Other lights, farther out, dipped and swayed on boats and ships. Moonlight, dull and blue, streaked the water’s surface.

Tony sneaked around the Martins’ house, between a boxwood hedge, past a plastic child’s slide and swing set and down to the water in the rear. The Martins had their own dock, stretching out twenty-some feet over the water, but no boats were tied there
. They must keep their boats in the marina. Afraid somebody from Virginia will come along and sink it just for fun. Ha!
Tony walked onto the dock, glancing once over her shoulder to see that no one in the family was looking out through their back windows. No one was.

The dock was warped but solid. At the end was an Igloo cooler, upended, and some fishing nets hanging on the posts on either side. Lying on the planks were three oars, one cracked down the middle.

The air was cooler over the water, and Tony pulled her sleeves down. She stretched her arms out and took in the space and the salt water and the situation. She was the master, she was in control. She was going where she wanted to go, seeing what she wanted to see, making people sing her tune and dance her steps. Fuck them all. She’d set in motion some real trouble back home, and now she could sit back and enjoy it. She was Tony
Petinske
. Her father was Burton
Petinske
of
Lamesa
, Texas. Like the prodigal son in the Bible, which she’d heard about when she was in third grade and went to Bible Class as part of Weekday Religious Education during one school year, Burton would probably kill a fatted calf for her and they’d have a whoop-ass Texas barbecue.

She took the pistol from her jeans pocket and thought of firing one into the water to celebrate. Maybe with luck she’d hit a fish or a crab, if there were crabs in the Gulf. But that would awaken the natives. She didn’t want to push her luck, as lucky as she was.

She put the pistol on the deck, then lowered her jeans and held onto one of the posts. She swung back over the water and let go a stream of hot pee. She then lowered herself and splashed the pee off her privates by cupping water with one hand. It was bitingly cold and felt great. Her jeans were hoisted up, and she turned back toward the yard.