Lucky's Girl (14 page)

An exhausted looking Abby sat at one of the tables, while the Rev was a few feet away, tending to one of the grills. Mason was sitting across from his mom.

Jerry ambled though the crowd, saying hello and nodding to all the good people of Elton Township, but soon made a beeline to say hello to the Rev, Abby, and Lucky. The Rev turned from the grill and hit him with his giant smile. “Well, howdy-do, officer Kaminsky!”

Jerry grinned. “Howdy yourself, Rev, how you doin’, Abby?”

Abby looked up from the table. “Abiding by the laws of God and man, Sherriff. Would you care for some burnt hotdogs or some such?”

Jerry declined. “I think I’ll abstain and spare myself the heartburn. You know, ‘spare the hotdog and spoil the Maalox. Or something.”

Abby laughed and stood up from her side of the picnic table, offering Jerry a big hug. Jerry smiled from behind his shades and embraced her warmly. “See that’s more like it.”

He turned around and gave the Rev a big hug, and sat down next to Abby and across from Mason while the Rev continued to attend to the grill.

He looked square at him. “Didja pack em’ in today, Lucky?”

Lucky continued to eat but didn’t look up. “I think we did pretty good, some new faces. What do you think, Mom?”

Abby frowned. “Well I wish you’d go by your real name, not
Lucky
. It sounds…”

The Rev guffawed. “Sounds cool to me, all James Dean, and Brando before he started looking like I do now!”

Abby giggled. “You’re still James Dean in my book, sweetie.”

Jerry turned his head to Lucky. “What do you think, Lucky, is your old man a James Dean or a Marlon Brando?”

Mason answered but his mind didn’t seem to be on the conversation. He was clandestinely watching something else. “I might have to plead the fifth on that one, Officer Jerry.”

Jerry couldn’t help but notice that Lucky appeared really amused by something which had nothing to do with either his parents or the cop sitting across the table. He kept glancing out to the highway. Jerry kept his shades on but surreptitiously watched the road with his peripheral vision. It took a moment, but he spotted it: it was a late model white Acura driving back and forth past the church. Jerry knew that car because it was the only one around here. It belonged to Ted Tellefsen’s girl, Christie.

Jerry didn’t give the game away. “So, Abby, what was the casserole of the day for the picnic?”

Abby chirped, “Macaroni and cheese baked with bacon bits and fried onions for a bit of zing!”

Jerry switched his secret gaze over to Lucky. The boy was no longer smiling, making a conscious effort to avoid looking at the highway. Jerry knew the Rev’s son was now watching
him
with his peripheral vision.

Jerry upped the ante. “So where’s your girlfriend today, Lucky?”

Lucky flinched, his eyes quickly darting over to the Acura driving back and forth past the church.

Guilty
.

The Rev asked, “I think I saw Mary and her dad too, isn’t that right, Mason?”

Lucky fumbled with a pair of sunglasses. His motions were jerky, the motions of a man who was trying not to be discovered.

He quickly put on his sunglasses. “Hey guys, I gotta run. Good seeing you, Officer Jerry!”

Sunshine and light, and way more than meets the eye, thought Officer Jerry Kaminsky.

CHAPTER 5

Mary felt her breath coming short and sharp, her heart hammering like that of a tiny bird’s. That’s what she felt like, a tiny bird in a cage, one which lives but a few seasons then dies. Tiny and pretty, blown on the wind, the rocks beckoning below.

When she’d been younger she’d followed Mason whenever he’d go on his long walks in the woods. She hadn’t been spying on him. No. Never. She’d just get scared when he was away. She hadn’t known what to do. Sometimes she would just sit in the corner of her tiny room, holding her legs while rocking back and forth. She would get on her knees, praying for him to come back to her, crying and crying. She’d even tried holding her breath, holding her hands at her neck cutting off the air, but it didn’t make him reappear. She’d got her dad’s polaroid and had taken some pictures of him while they were together, hanging them up in her room, but Mason told her she shouldn’t do that; her dad might start to get the wrong idea. She didn’t know what the wrong idea meant, but she hadn’t done it anymore.

She’d removed the pictures from the drawer and had taken them with her.

She needed him. She couldn’t remember anything of her life before he’d come to her that first time. She knew it had been cold and empty and alone, but he’d come and saved her. But those cold, empty and alone feelings were returning. They would take her and she would die. Or something worse than that – having to exist forever without him.

Mary knew that she could never fully own him, any more than a person could own the sun. They could claim it as theirs but others would still feel its light. It hurt her terribly when he had sex with other women, but he was the sun. It hurt her when she was required to have sex with Kenny, but he was Mason’s favorite.

In Mason’s life Kenny came first.

That was okay and she knew it could be much worse. Kenny was a good person and was gentle when she came to him, never rough or demanding.

Last year when Mason had gone to the prom with Christie Tellefsen she knew her time might be coming to an end. She’d cried more tears over that than when her own mother had died. She knew her place, knowing she could lose it. Her place was to be Mason’s, but only when he had finished with all of his other duties, including sleeping with other women. She could live with him sleeping with Christie as long as he would come back to her, but then he’d spoken her greatest fear.

Tonight he would take Kenny to Christie’s house. Tonight Christie would become part of what Mason had called his Tribe, and hadn’t said whether Mary would be welcome anymore.

So she’d walked in the woods alone, carrying his picture to their secret place. On the far side of Elton Lake there was an old rowboat they used to go to Grove Island. She rowed across, the oars making the familiar shushing sound in the black water. She looked out over the lake, seeing no one. She was alone: no one knew she was here.

This is what life had been like before Lucky had made me his; this is what life would be like if he were to leave me. Alone, silent.

She dragged the boat up onto the bank, then made her way to the center of the little island. The place was like a small hill jutting out of the lake, topped with a stand of white pine and a small clearing around the Big Tree in the very center. This was their secret place, where Lucky’s God spoke to him. This was where they did the secret things, things she couldn’t fully remember.

In the Bible the prophets could heal the sick and speak in tongues. Jesus could raise the dead, cast out demons and turn water into wine. If God could do this then God might listen to her. But she didn’t know if God would listen to girls like her.

She took out Mason’s pictures, setting them in a row on the giant gnarled roots of the Big Tree.

Silence.

No birds, no animal sounds, no wind.

She could hear her breath louder than anything else here. It became louder and louder until it was crashing in her ears. She felt lightheaded, falling to her knees in front of her shrine. It sounded like a rock crusher as her knees touched the ground at the base of the monolithic tree, her mouth opening to kiss the elephantine bark, her heart an enormity of thunder in this void of sound.

She hadn’t remembered losing consciousness, or know how an entire day had passed, only that his God had answered her prayers.

Mason wouldn’t leave her because she was carrying his child.

***

Six in the morning was grey, dark, cold and wet: Jerry Kaminsky was getting into the unused little rowboat tied to the unused little pier at the back of his property. As a Yooper he was supposed to be intimately familiar with these things, but he wasn’t. Even as a regular Michigander he was supposed to know these things but he didn’t.

So there was a lot of clumsy slapping at the water, accompanied by cursing-grunt-pissing and moaning as he pointed his little craft at the far end of Elton Lake to the odd little tributary connecting it to the river. In the dark fog enveloping the river he’d already been cursed out twice by invisible and previously silent fishermen for scaring off the fish with his damn-fool thrashings. But he was the sheriff of this little town and today his business carried him on this odd little errand. Just a hunch, just cop instincts honed on the streets of Detroit and applied to the place most unlike Detroit in the state.

He knew where he’d find his man because he was in the same spot almost every single day. Most days, Jerry drove out to the highway, crossed the bridge and there was Frank McCord. In his rowboat, almost every single day. And he was almost as happy-looking as the other townsmen had been happy-sounding when Jerry huffed and puffed and splashed up to his rowboat.

“You know that I eat the fish I catch out here, don’t you Jerry? I pay for vegetables at the grocery store, but it’s fish from the river most days?”

Jerry held up a hand for a moment while he coughed and wheezed. Then he lit up a cigarette and coughed some more.

Frank shook his head. This wasn’t getting any better. “Does Elton Township pay you to go fishing in uniform, Jerry?”

The sun was beginning to melt away the fog near the tributary. It was colder than the river for some reason and this part was always foggy in the morning.

Jerry exhaled hard. “Unofficial police business, Frank, or you know I sure as shit wouldn’t be out here, I’d be up on the highway dispensing DWIs.”

Frank remained silent, just looking over at Jerry, waiting.

They sat for a moment, Jerry gathering his thoughts but finding that he couldn’t, and confused by that fact.

Jerry looked down one more time, and exhaled. “Mason James.
Lucky
.”

Frank continued to look at him. Not speaking, not looking away.

Jerry nodded. “There. I said it.
Why
was that so hard?”

Frank reeled in his line, slowly, letting it hang at the surface of the water.

“It’s been that way since he could walk or talk. Did you know that I used to go there? To the church. I even sang a little. I’m not a big believer, I just really loved the Rev and Abby.”

Some men are people of few words but Frank McCord was a man of almost none. This was more than he’d ever heard Frank say all at once. That Frank used to go to a place full of sound and motion was surprising.

“You never told me that, Frank.”

Frank reeled his line back in and gently cast it out, just a whirr and a hiss of the line spooling out. He didn’t say any more. Jerry was going to need to prompt him.

“What do you mean when you say ‘It’s been like that since he could walk and talk?’”

Frank exhaled, wiping sweat from his face. This was a place he didn’t want to go to. “It’s like you can’t breathe, not until you agree with him. Not until you see the world his way.”

Fucking crazy
.
Batshit insane
.
Paranoid
.

Jerry tried to hide the expression on his face. He cleared his throat and spat. “I had no idea why people thought so highly of him. He’s just a kid, maybe a good looking one, but just a kid nonetheless.
But then I talked to him that first time
. And you know what? He’s a jerk with the same bullshit view of life that any boy his age would have, just really blown out of proportion.”

Frank just nodded.

Jerry continued. “I pulled him over for speeding. There’s no way he didn’t have weed in that truck. But I let him go, I didn’t search him. Even though every instinct told me that this kid needed to be taught a lesson.”

Frank raised a skeptical eyebrow. “He needed to be shown who’s boss?”

Jerry shrugged. “Kids that age are bold. It gets them in trouble, even the good kids. You’re really doing them a favor if you remind them of that.”

Frank didn’t nod. He didn’t shake his head either.

Jerry continued. “It’s a cop thing. Give ‘em a little scare and they shape up. That’s a whole other discussion though, and yeah it varies from kid to kid. I’d never do that with Kenny because he’s just a nice kid.
Lucky
though, I don’t get it.”

Frank nodded. “What don’t you get, Jerry?”

The officer shrugged, genuinely confused. “I get that he’s the preacher’s son in a town with nothing but the church. I get that he’s good looking and charismatic. What I don’t get is why…”

He trailed off, his brain disconnecting from his mouth. He felt a panicked need to end this conversation, to be somewhere, anywhere, else than here.

Frank looked concerned. “Jerry? Don’t stop, get it out there.”

Jerry shook his head and looked down. “I’m sorry, Frank, this was a mistake, I should get going… those tickets aren’t gonna hand themselves out.”

As soon as he said it he felt better, relieved that he’d decided against a silly suspicion based on nothing. He exhaled, big, like he’d put down a heavy load. All better now.