When the Saints (13 page)

I
GET UP FROM THE PLASTIC CHAIR AND WALK IN BEHIND
the garage. That old truck’s still sitting back there, rusting away. I kick a path up to it through the scratchy brush. A crow sitting on the back fender doesn’t hop down until I’m three feet from it.

The weeds that barely tickled the truck tires have almost grown over the hood. I part them and haul open the door, climb in onto the dirty leather seats. As soon as I slam the door shut and place my hands on the wheel, I smell Terry Profit’s breath. I push down on the handle, but it sticks and I have to elbow it as hard as I can. The door flies open and dumps me onto the grass. I lay there cursing as the crow stares down at me from a crabapple tree.

“What the fuck are you looking at?”

It doesn’t flinch. I pick up a piece of pipe lying in the grass, scramble to my feet and smash out the centre of the windshield before busting the side mirrors and headlights. I spin around to swing at the crow, but the branch is empty.

From up here, the house looks even more wretched. The roof is shifted so far over to one side it’d slide right off if I blew on it. The rotted eaves are hanging off in sections where they haven’t
already fallen. I wish the whole thing would collapse right now, sink into the ground and disappear forever.

I find a good throwing rock, run a few steps and whip it up at one of the broken upstairs windows. I miss, find another rock, and on the second try shatter the glass completely. Stray cats come flying out from all directions. I start picking up whatever’s lying around the yard and chucking it until I’ve broken every window on two sides.

Then I set my sights on the bottle tree. Various bottles that held various liquids are still shoved onto branches, stunting the growth of leaves. Ma said that soon after she moved in here Grandma Jean came over with a box of empties and a superstition about evil spirits diving down the bottlenecks, getting trapped in the glass and frying up in the hot sun. Too bad the demon was already inside the house with his gnarly, stinky feet up on the sofa. The tree’s no bigger than I am and I easily pick off the bottles. I line them up by the door then blast them one by one against it, christening the sinking ship.

I’m sweaty and panting as I stumble into the house, kick over some kitchen chairs, grab the rooster clock off the wall and smash its face into the cupboards. I put all my weight against the refrigerator that’s all leaned over in the hallway with its door hanging open, but it won’t budge. Finally, I give up and slump down on the floor next to it.

“Tabby? What’s going on in there?”

I spring to my feet as West pokes his head in.

“Don’t come in!” I trip over all the stuff I knocked over and push him back outdoors.

“I went to the house and you were gone, so I figured you might be here. I was just wondering if you might want to grab some lunch.”

I walk back to his truck and get in. He follows and we sit staring through the windshield at the house. After a while, some of the cats re-emerge from the bushes with their tails raised. One of them slips back inside through a hole in the side wall and the rest follow.

“I called the town office,” West says. “It’s still yours.”

I turn to look in his eyes and see the same copper swirls that were inside my marble. I focus on them until my fists unclench. Then I look back at the caved-in facade of the house, the wisps of curtains billowing in and out of the upstairs windows.

W
HEN
I
TURNED EIGHTEEN, THEY KICKED ME OUT OF
Raspberry and stuck me in a halfway house. The supervisor who was supposed to live with us only stopped in once a week to make sure we hadn’t burned the place down, which would have been easy since it was practically made of cardboard. If someone coughed in the next room, it sounded louder than if they were sitting right next to you. The carpets were stapled to the floor and the windows were covered by clear plastic curtains stained yellow from all the nicotine. There was only enough hot water per day for one person to bathe, and if you tried to be that person, everyone else would bang on the door and scream for you to get the fuck out so they could take a shit.

The women who lived there were harder than the hardest
bitches at Raspberry. Especially Simone. Simone had four kids living with different relatives and she never talked about them, never visited them. She used to freebase at a flophouse and come back ranting about how the cops were the worst criminals out there, how they stole her fur coat and raped her in a paddy wagon. When she was in really bad shape, she pulled out her hair and carved up her arms and legs with knives. There were big clumps of dyed red hair all over the place. She flipped between being sickly sweet to me, almost motherly, and threatening to murder me in my sleep.

“You looking for a job, Tobey?” she asked me one night.

Sometimes I was Tammy or Abby.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

“I know this motel owner. He only pays four bucks an hour, but he hires under the table.”

She took me straight down to meet Enzo. He showed us how the chambermaids emptied the ashtrays and wiped the pubic hairs off the toilet seats, where to dump the empty wine bottles and used condoms. He said he’d try us out for a day and see how we did. He gave Simone the room next door to clean and assigned me to another way around back.

I’d never been in a motel room. I poked around a bit, wondering what kind of people stayed there. The vacuum cleaner looked as if it was made in the 1800s and the towels were bleached stiff as boards. There was a Bible in the drawer that someone had taken a ballpoint pen to and made crazy notes in the margins. There were little doll-sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner and I hid a few of them in my pockets.

As I was stripping the sheets from the bed, Enzo came in
and shut the door behind him. I heard him unzip his pants, but before I could turn around, he got hold of my wrists. I tried to kick him off, but he leaned on me with all his weight and pinned me to the bed. I screamed and bit at his hand as he tried to cover my mouth with it and used the other to work my jean skirt up, yank my underwear to the side and jam himself inside me. Once he stopped thrusting, I told him I was calling the cops.

“You think they’ll believe you? Your friend, she lies to police all the time. Don’t be stupid.” He buckled his belt. “You clean rooms for me and, for a little while every day, you and I will have our time together. I’ll pay you seven dollars an hour, three dollars more than I pay the other girls.”

He left, and I wailed into the pillow until I was hollowed out. I stared at the small round bloodstain on the sheet and watched my arm reach out, rip the sheet off the bed and throw it in the trash. When Enzo came back an hour later, I was scrubbing the sink in the bathroom just like he showed me. I looked at both our faces in the mirror and, in a voice I didn’t recognize, said, “Ten dollars an hour.”

Once I’d made a hundred and sixty dollars, I ran away from the halfway house and Enzo. For a long time, I couldn’t look at a man when he took his clothes off. I’d close my eyes or stare at a wall. It even happened sometimes with Jared Smoke, who looked like a god when he was naked. The first touch of his skin on mine and my hands would clench into fists.

I
TURN MY HEAD AND STARE AT WEST.
H
IS MOUTH IS
parted just a little and he’s snoring as usual. I lift the sheet and see his penis slumped to one side, the skin of his scrotum comically darker than the rest of him. I reach my hand out and let it hover a moment. The trail of hair is soft and warm. He’s got a freckle pattern on his chest that looks like a bird sitting on a branch. I connect the dots with my finger. There’s a little scar on his jaw and another above his right eyebrow. I kiss it, and he opens one eye.

“You’re the best person I ever met, West.”

“Christ,” he murmurs. “You must have met all the wrong people.”

I roll on top of him and we lock eyes for a few seconds. Then we’re all mouths and limbs everywhere and my skin feels as if it’s melting into his as I let him inside me. I’m building up to a blinding orgasm when there’s a knock at the front door.

“The hell?” West cranes his neck, trying to see sideways out the window. He gets up on his knees for a better look. “Shit. It’s my cousin. Stay here.” He hauls on a pair of jeans, zips the fly and heads down the hall.

I don’t know what to do, so I just stay still and listen to his muffled voice say, “Hey, Danny, come on in.”

Danny is heavy-footed.

“What’s going on, West?”

“Not much. Did you get your bike running?”

“Tommy says you’re shacked up with some woman. Says you gave her your truck.”

“Tell Tommy to fuck himself.”

“Have you been talking to Abriel?”

“No,” West answers. “And keep your voice down.”

They turn as I appear half dressed in one of West’s button-up shirts.

“Tabby, this is my cousin Danny.”

Danny is tall with sandy hair, could be mistaken for West but for a wider face and small, bloodshot eyes.

“You look alike,” I tell them.

“Yeah.” West scratches the stubble on his cheek. “I don’t know who got the shit end of that stick.” He’s trying to look casual, but I can see him gripping the counter behind him. “Want some coffee, Danny? If not, I got stuff to do.”

“You kicking me out?” Danny asks.

“Not if I don’t have to.”

Danny picks up the salt shaker off the table and rolls it around in his fingers. “Abriel wants to talk to you.”

“Abriel has a phone.”

Danny smacks the shaker down, taps a smoke from his shirt pocket pack and sticks it in his lips. He lights it and blows a smoke ring that hangs in the air. He looks me up and down as he pokes his finger through the hole. “How about you let me have a go with her? See if she’s worth it.”

West pushes himself off the counter, but before he can grab him by the throat, Danny turns and bangs out through the screen door, slamming it so hard he almost knocks it off the hinges. West runs out in his bare feet. I follow and see him yelling something, saliva flying from his teeth, but the sound is swallowed as Danny starts up his motorcycle. West flips the bird as the Honda Shadow tears off down the street.

“What was that all about?” I ask.

West wipes the spit off his mouth. “I got something to tell you.”

He steers me back into the house and starts making coffee, which he never does. He pours us each a cup and motions to the table, sets the mugs down and sits across from me. He smooths his eyebrows with his fingers, takes a sip, places his hands on his knees to try to stop their bouncing.

“Tabby, I’m married.”

U
NTIL ABOUT A MONTH AGO,
I
WAS LIVING IN A SORT OF
commune making necklaces and key chains to sell at a weekend flea market. People paid a lot for them because the teenage boy who worked our table was irresistible. He was about fifteen years old with dimples and long, shiny black hair. He’d offer to try the necklaces on middle-aged women and their mothers, tying the leather ends around their saggy necks and tilting his hand mirror at different angles, whispering silky compliments in their ears. The women would walk away in their mint green slacks, smiling and stroking their new feather pendants while he counted their money.

I watched this happen over and over from where I was originally selling hubcaps at a table nearby. How I got doing that was, this tattoo artist I was living with had a buddy who offered to take me out to the countryside near the Miramichi. He said, “Come on, we’ll start a business together.” I imagined a little country store with quilts and pots of honey, but we wound up selling old junk and watching black-and-white Alfred Hitchcock
movies all day. I can’t even recall the guy’s name. Victor, maybe. Vince? Everyone called him Scrounge.

Anyway, I’d been at the market for a few weeks when the necklace kid came strolling over. He brought me a hot black tea in a paper cup and asked me about the different hubcaps. He started telling me about the commune where he lived, and when I had a million questions about it, he offered to bring me out and meet everyone. I went with him after work and we got drunk on dandelion wine with ten or so others. They were living in a big old cabin and several outbuildings. The cabin was strung with patio lights and had a moose skull mounted over the door. They had a well and a few generators. Most of the people living there were potheads with university degrees. I couldn’t figure out why they’d choose this over sitting at a desk somewhere with free heat.

Still, it was better than what Scrounge and I had going on. We were staying at the tiny, low-ceilinged house of his grandmother’s sister. Every room was filled with her “children,” dolls of all kinds arranged into scenes of birthday parties, sock hops, chess matches—and, more disturbingly, hair-pulling cat fights, a funeral for a dead baby and what looked like the intervention of a freckle-faced boy standing with his head bent in shame before a semicircle of former friends.

I asked the old lady which doll was her favourite and she scowled. “I don’t play favourites.” I winked at her, said, “Sure you do.” She turned red from her neck all the way up to her forehead, hobbled quickly out of the room, slamming through the saloon doors into her kitchen, where I heard her pouring Black Seal rum into the measuring cup she used as a drinking glass.

So when the commune said I could stay if I didn’t mind making key chains and shitting in an ice cream bucket, I told them, “Making key chains and shitting in random places happen to be two of my God-given talents.” They thought I was joking.

The kid’s real name was The Kid. I didn’t believe him, so he showed me his birth certificate. His full name was Billy The Kid Billyboy, so I could see why he went with The Kid. He could shimmy up onto the roof in seconds. You’d be standing next to him then hear a whistle and he’d be up there grinning down at you. He could also do roundhouse kicks, burp the whole alphabet and get you to agree to just about anything. He was the only person at the commune who didn’t start every sentence with the word “when”: “When Robbie gets back,” “When I get out west,” “When I get my money.” He was an expert on hot-air balloons because his grandfather used to operate one for a tour company. The old man would take vacationers up and sail them over farmhouses and rivers, stand mute in the corner working the propane valves while couples kissed and snapped photos with expensive cameras. The Kid got to go up sometimes after hours on Sunday evenings. His grandfather would hoist him on his shoulders to get him up even higher, show him all their land being swallowed by pavement.