Going Underground (11 page)

“The family is suing my parents because the car was in my dad's name.” Livia says this fast, like she needs it all out of her, and right now. “He says they'll get everything and we'll have to file for bankruptcy. We're not buying anything new because there's no point. It'll all get sold and given to those people.”

Jeez. At least nobody sued us. Nobody wanted to—none of the parents even wanted charges filed, but that was up to Kaison the Evil, not them, and he didn't care about the truth.

It could have been worse.

It could have been worse?

First time I ever considered that possibility.

“I'm sorry,” I manage, then stumble around getting the rest out. “You know, what she did, what Claudia did—that's nothing about you.”

“I know that here.” Livia taps the side of her very pretty head. “Here,” her finger slides to her heart, “it's harder. I wasn't in the car, but I knew she was drunk when she drove off, mad at my dad, as usual.”

Yeah, she's definitely been needing to let all this out. I can tell by the way her words are boiling up and spilling over, and I can see the tears filling the corners of her big eyes.

“You can't make somebody stop drinking and drugging.” I gesture toward Harper's house. “People do what they're going to do.” Kaison with his smug face and bad comb-over flickers through my brain. “Trust me on that.”

Livia nods and looks down. Destroys another few dirt clods. She's breathing in quick gasps.

We sit quietly for a while after that, then Livia tells me how many times her parents tried to help her sister. How many times she tried to help. When she cries, I want to put an arm around her shoulder, and finally I scoot closer to her and do put my arm around her, even though I stink like tuna fish, mustard, dirt, and all.

She doesn't gag, and she actually slows down on the tears a little, and leans into me. In the afternoon sun, her dark hair looks like sparkly silk, and she smells so much better than Marvin I don't even have words to describe it.

“It doesn't seem real, any of it.” Livia's voice is quieter now, and her words are coming out slower. “The people Claudia killed. Claudia being dead.” She glances toward her sister's grave. “It's hard to think about her in a box under the ground. She's my sister, you know?”

I don't know. I can't really imagine how much that hurts, but I can tell from her face that it's hollowing out something way down inside her. That sensation, I totally get. Stuff in my life sucks, too, but for the first time, I'm realizing that the bad stuff, the really bad stuff, it happened three years ago. I've had time to get over the worst of it. Livia hasn't had hardly any time.

“When I'm upset and can't calm down, I listen to music.” I slide my arm off her shoulders, reach to the pocket without the tuna can, pull out my iPod, queue up one of my mellow playlists, and offer her an earbud. “Like I told you, I'm obsessed. I've got days of stuff on here, most of it memorized. When I sink into the sound, the words, it keeps me from thinking too much.”

She takes the bud and puts it in. A second or so later, she says, “ ‘Hey Jude.' Beatles. I like the Beatles. Claudia thought they were lame.”

I let her take the other earbud, then the iPod. She sits, totally still except for the finger she's using to scroll through my collection, which is a lot bigger than Marvin's now. She picks out “Shiny Happy People” by R.E.M. and closes her eyes.

“One, two, four,” Fred says into the new silence in the cemetery.

I put my finger to my lips.

Fred bobs her head once, fluffs up as much as possible, and lowers her head in a definite parrot sulk. I'm glad Livia's fingers aren't on the cage anymore, because Fred would abandon her unusually generous behavior and chew one off at the knuckle.

When the song's over, Livia takes out the earbuds and gives me back my iPod. “Thanks. That really did help. Your collection is amazing—and you're a good listener.”

“I didn't used to be. I think I've learned it working here.”

This time when she smiles at me, I feel twice as awful and twice as guilty, like I did when I sicced my parents on Cherie. Trying to figure out some way to say that, I come up with, “Listen, I don't work here because I'm some morbid jerk-off.”

Livia laughs. “I know that, and I know you live close. It probably saves a lot of gas, working just down the road from your house.”

Yeah. She's letting me off. I want to go with that, to let it pass, but that would make me a giant shit head, and I don't want to treat Livia that way. “Harper pays more than minimum wage and I get a lot of time to myself—but that's not why I picked this place. Some crappy stuff happened in my life a few years ago. I—I got in trouble.”

It wasn't my fault. It wasn't fair.

That wants to fly out next, but I hold it back. How many criminals and convicts cue that tired old refrain every three seconds? I'm not going to be that guy.

Livia looks surprised, but not panicked or like she's considering bolting off the pile of grave dirt. “So, what did you do?”

“I … I … uh. Okay. That's hard to talk about.” The mouth's moving, but my brain and the rest of my body go on total lockdown. My muscles get so tight I wonder if muscles can crack, and I can't say any of it out loud. I've never said it out loud, and here, now, I can't, but I can force out, “Look. You probably don't want to be here talking to me.”

It's the best I can manage. I'm such a frigging coward.

To be really sure she gets it, I add, “Other people around here—well, the black mark on me might be sort of contagious.”

Her eyes go wide. “Uh, like my sister murdering two kids and a pregnant woman? Come on, Del. What did you do?”

My mouth opens, but my mind is blank, and it's all I can do not to start crying like a total, stupid baby. I clamp my lips shut and try to breathe, digging my fingers into the dirt until some of the pile rains back into the grave.

“It's okay.” Livia's voice cuts into my panic, but I'm staring into the grave instead of looking at her. “Just tell me when you're ready. I can wait.”

I'll never be ready.

Did I say that out loud? I might as well have, with the look she's probably seeing on my face. “If you don't want to know about me, better not look me up online.”

I'm famous. I'm infamous.

“I won't.” She looks guarded now, but not upset. “My dad would be watching, anyway. Kind of makes everything complicated.”

“
Cerote
,” Fred mumbles, still sulking like a rejected toddler.

The sound of her bird voice makes me jerk my head up and look at the cage, then at Livia.

Livia shakes her head. “I wasn't sure before, but now I am. Your parrot's swearing in Spanish. She just called me a turd.”

“Me,” I say, laughing and hating the tin-can sound of it. “She's calling me a turd, not you. Definitely for me.”

The rest, I can't say.

You have no idea.

You don't need to come back here.

You don't need to hang around me.

All the things it's so easy to say to Cherie—with Livia, I can't.

“Don't bother trying to warn me about yourself, okay?” Her smile is better than the reds and pinks of the setting sun. “Just get to know me, and let me get to know you, and I'll make up my own mind.”

Yes
.

And then my brain points out—this isn't so different from Cherie. I'm telling her not to hang around me, and she's telling me she'll make up her own mind. With Cherie, it all feels horrible, but with Livia …

Yes
.

Out loud, I force myself to tell the truth. “You probably shouldn't talk to me when you come here.” I stare at the dirt pile now because I can't look at her. “Not until I can get my sh—uh, stuff together enough to tell you everything, so you don't regret even knowing me.”

She doesn't say anything, but she's smiling that little smile, and giving me the I'm-strong-and-I'm-not-backing-down look.

“You shouldn't come talk to me when you visit your sister,” I say again. “I mean that.”

“We'll see,” she says, and she leaves it at that.

I'm Pretty Sure Angels Laugh at Rooster Whisperers

(“Almost Lover”—A Fine Frenzy, who probably never whispered to a rooster.)

Who am I?

Before Good-bye Night, that answer was easy. I would have told you
I'm Del Hartwick, the baseball kid.

Why am I here?

Before Good-bye Night, I would have said,
to play baseball, to love Cory, to go to college and become a doctor and specialize in sports medicine and see what I can discover
.

What's the point?

Before Good-bye Night, I would have said,
only freaks have to ask a question like that
.

I had all these friends and all these ideas and all these plans. I had all these things I could do, all these places I could go, and all these people to go with me. I was somebody—or at least I thought I was.

Now, if I end up dead, only a few people would notice. Livia made dinner for me, and she's come back every night for a week, just to sit and talk for a few minutes before she goes to her sister's grave. She might miss me. My folks would give a care, and Marvin would get upset. Branson and Dr. Mote would feel weird in some professional way, and Harper would notice for a while at least, until he drank me away.

Cherie.

Jeez.

Cherie would make my death a personal tragedy and set up shrines at my grave (or memorial site if I get cremated), but she'd get tired of that in a few months. She'd move on because she'd have to move on, because people like Cherie have to have … I don't know. Something they're obsessed with and attached to. A dead guy wouldn't be enough.

All in all, if I died, I think Fred would have the biggest problem.

When parrots grieve, they stop eating and drinking and molt and stand around with their head and their wings drooping. It'd be hard to keep her alive. I've been writing a bunch of stuff in a notebook I labeled THE BOOK OF FRED—everything she likes and hates—and tucked some recordings of my voice in the pockets to help her and whoever takes care of her in case something bad happens. I hope Livia would take Fred, but that might be asking too much of anybody not dedicated to birds.

Plus, I don't think anything bad will happen. Right now I'm living on the theory that the really bad stuff in my life has already happened. No matter how many times Dr. Mote asks, I don't ever think about hurting myself or anyone else. Even though the best life I can have now will be crap compared to my original plans and those dreams I still can't let go of, I'm thinking if I just keep doing “the next right thing” (I got that from Branson), my life might not suck completely.

In fact, I've been writing down some plans for my future to show Branson:

1.   Open my own cemetery. The dead don't care about criminal records.

2.   Win the lottery and buy a fake college degree off the black market.

3.   Talk Harper into letting me sell caskets at the funeral chapel on the off days.

4.   Keep asking to apply to schools until somebody gets sick of reading my mail and lets me in, then make it through vet school, too, and just help birds as a volunteer, like dad.

5.   Go out with Livia, marry her, and let her support me while I open a bird sanctuary for used and secondhand parrots.

Well?

You got any better ideas?

I really like the vet school option best, and I'm sure there's room for two rooster whisperers in the world. Only, I think I'll be a parrot whisperer and work on birds of prey as a second specialty. Hawks and eagles are amazing, the way they sail high over everything, wings wide, swooping through the sky like kings of the air. They have all the room and solitude in the world, but they aren't lost in space. They own it.

Unlike chickens, who only own what we give them.

Dad has given his current rooster a sixteen-by-twenty fenced and covered lot just behind our back porch, with a divider down the center so he can close off half the pen and regrow grass on one side or the other every few weeks. Clarence the former fighting rooster also has a hay-lined ten-nest chicken condo, with an insulated green tin roof and a cedar ramp up to the front door that reminds me of a pirate gangplank.

“Come on, big fella.” Dad's voice is low and supercalm as he edges through the door of the lot. Dad's carrying a bucket of cracked corn, and he wants Clarence to let him in without attacking him. I'm standing on the porch at a safe distance, watching in case Dad needs any help. It's November now and cool this morning, with almost no clouds in the sky. The air feels sharp and fall-winter, and digging graves won't be such a misery.

The rooster glares at dad with his one good eye, all his feathers puffed out. I'm pretty sure poofy chickens are bad, just like poofy parrots. Feathers all ruffled out are a bird's way of saying,
Back off, you big human monster
.

“How do you think it's going?” I ask Dad, keeping my voice as low and calm as Dad did, even though I'd rather advise my father to run like hell.

“I'm starting to win his trust,” Dad murmurs, sticking his hand into the cracked corn and scattering some yellow pieces on the grass at his feet.

The rooster flips his head down and rattles his wings.

Dad spreads a little more corn.

The rooster launches himself straight at Dad's face.

Dad drops the bucket, catches Clarence in mid-flog, holds on to him for a few seconds, and waits until the rooster stops squawking and struggling. Clarence can't hurt Dad that much because Clarence doesn't have any spurs. People who fight roosters usually cut off their real spurs and fasten metal claws on their legs for the fight, so the whole show gets more bloody.

Sick, I know. Clarence has got to be scarred inside and out from all that crap.

“It's okay,” Dad tells him, scratching underneath the bird's comb as it makes menacing noises deep in its rooster throat. “We'll keep at it. We'll just try again. Sooner or later you'll figure out that all your wars are over.”

The rooster makes a bunch more noises, and if we had a rooster translating machine handy, I think it would read,
Screw off
.

Dad named Clarence after an old angel in an old movie, hoping to give the bird the idea that it's okay to be a cream puff, that he can just take it easy, that he doesn't have to fight every second of every day.

I don't think Clarence has seen that movie.

But my father is the patron saint of all lost animal causes. If he can't get Clarence calmed down enough to go to some farm and do his roosterly duty, Clarence will end up living behind my house in his high-end chicken condo until he dies a natural, quiet, and spoiled death. Not such a bad way to go, really, except I figure he'll miss some of what it means to be a rooster. That's sad, but it's not Clarence's fault.

Maybe Dad will rescue him some hens soon. That might give Clarence a little motivation to straighten up and strut right.

“Do you ever think you and Mom might be addicted to rescuing animals, Dad?”

“Thought it and acknowledged it.” Dad puts Clarence down, dumps the rest of the scratch, and gets out before Clarence can fire up again. “It's definitely an addiction.”

Like my music. Only Dad acts like being addicted to animal rescuing is a good thing.

And it is. I guess.

“Are you leaving for work soon?” Dad asks.

“In a few.” I stretch and lean against the wooden railing on the porch, watching Clarence dig into the corn. “We only have two graves to prepare for funerals tomorrow, so we're in good shape.”

Dad puts his empty bucket next to the fence. “Don't forget to give your mother a kiss.”

“I never do.”

Especially not since all this crap happened, and the three of us stopped having meals together and hanging out as a group. It's like my family's all still together, but sort of going our own separate ways, too. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be when there's just one kid and that kid's almost grown, and he doesn't really have some big shiny set of goals you're supposed to push him to achieve.

When Dad gets to the porch, he puts his arm around my shoulder and squeezes me to him, then lets me go and glances back at Clarence. “Sooo, this new girl Livia. You spending some time with her?”

His tone's light, but the question is completely serious. “She comes by at work, but we still haven't had—you know. The talk.”

“And you're sure she's seventeen.” A statement, not a question, but the worry in his voice makes me sad.

“As sure as I can be without seeing her driver's license.” When I meet Dad's eyes, I see the ton of nervousness wanting to explode out of his brain. “Okay, fine, I'll ask to see her driver's license.”

Dad doesn't tell me not to do it. “Bullet and a target,” he says, nodding.

Dad always lets me play my iTunes mixes when we're driving, and he's got a big collection of his own. Sometimes, we end up liking the same stuff, and “Bullet and a Target” is the title of a song we both like by Citizen Cope, a singer Dad calls “the best artist nobody knows.”

After he heard it the first time, he thought the same thing I did—that it sounded exactly like what happened to us with Kaison, that we got between a bullet and a target, and there was no way we could get away without getting hit.

But what you've done here is put yourself between a bullet and a target …

Now it's become a code between us that means
be careful
. Don't put yourself in a dangerous position, because you know the shooting's going to start sooner or later.

“I'm staying out of the line of fire,” I tell him.

“I think I'm happy for you, son.” Dad's not looking at me. He's staring up toward the blue fall sky. “I hope she keeps coming around once everything's out in the open. You deserve good things, Del. Do you believe that?”

I focus on the maimed, confused one-eyed rooster pecking at the corn Dad dumped in the chicken lot and I nod, but I'm not sure anybody really deserves anything they get. I don't think life and the world work like jobs and a paycheck—do your duties, get the money you've earned. If it worked that way, then I'd have to figure out what crappy thing I did to earn where I am, and I've tried doing that. I really have.

“I guess so.” True enough, but a little lame, and part cop-out.

“Mr. Branson got in touch with us about the hearings again, since they're just what, four or five months from now.” Dad's trying to sound offhand, but he's not doing a very good job. “Your mother and I are discussing giving testimony, but we wanted to run it past you. How do you feel about that?”

How do I feel?

About ripping all this shit open and seeing my face on the news and in newspapers again? About hearing what people will call me, and getting the hate mail? About being terrified that Kaison or Kaison's ghost or Kaison's “moral successor” in the DA's office will find something else to charge me with if I open my mouth?

I feel just great about it, Dad. How do you feel?

“I'll be okay with whatever,” I say, wondering if I sound like I'm lying, then wondering if I am lying. “You and Mom can do what you want.”

Bullet and a target. Bullet and a target.
Bang!

Dad's not giving up that easily, because he never does, not on anything, even crippled, hateful old roosters who need psychoanalysis not to bite the hand that feeds them—literally. “But what do
you
want, Del?”

The lump in my throat surprises me, and I find something else to stare at before Dad sees how much I want to cry. I'm way too old to cry now. What good does that do?

After thinking about it and chewing over lots of different words, I tell the truth again, this time not lame or copping out, but 100 percent truth and nothing else. “I don't want any more bad stuff to happen. That's really it, Dad. No more bad stuff.”

Dad waits a second or two, then smiles at me. The smile looks sad. “We can't control everything that happens in life.” His voice sounds quiet, and it gives me the shivers like my brain's hearing the words as some kind of creepy prophecy. “Sometimes … sometimes the bad stuff just shows up knocking and we have to answer the door.”

Picnic in the graveyard.

This is our second one, so maybe it's getting to be a theme with Livia and me.

Livia and me.

I think I like that.

Livia and Del.

God help me, I'm going to be Marvin and start etching her name on everything in fat, sparkly hippie letters. Kill me now.

She shows up with warm baked ham sandwiches, potato wedges she cut and fried herself, apple slices, and brownies she made last night. I spread one of Harper's tarps under a big oak in the rough section of the cemetery, the section with no graves, and cover it with an old quilt. Livia laughs as she pours us sparkling water in plastic cups with stems, and we eat shivering in our coats in the cool, bright sunlight, sometimes talking and sometimes just watching the fall day be beautiful and perfect.

My work's done, Harper's already sleeping it off in his house, and Livia and I are full and sitting next to each other on the blanket. The sun feels warm on my arms and face. For a second, I think about baseball and softball and the days before everything happened.

What's weird is, I'm not thinking about Cory, at least not in the way I used to. I cared about her a lot back then, and probably if I knew her today, we'd still be close—but that was a long time ago. It was all a long, long time ago, and Livia is here, and she's now, and right this second, that's all that matters to me.

“So this music thing you've got,” Livia says, pointing toward the iPod poking out of my jeans pocket. “How long have you been cramming songs onto that thing?”