When the Saints (7 page)

I follow him and say, “Miss Saint should be easy to find, but if you want to make it easier by giving me an address or a phone number, I’ll put you down as a false lead. I’ve been watching that garage for two days now, and I think you know what I mean when I say that I wouldn’t want to have to disclose what goes on in there. The cops are only interested in Poppy at this point.”

It’s a stab in the dark, but Jody’s must be the base for something shady, because Lyle blinks like crazy for a few seconds then goes into his truck and scrawls something on a piece of paper. He comes back and shoves it at me. “I don’t know anything about what she’s been up to and if she says I do, she’s a fucking liar.”

He glances in the rear-view at least four times as he pulls away. I stand watching until the roar of his souped-up engine fades down the road. Then I go back inside and slide in across from Janis.

“That was easy,” I say.

She slurps her straw on the bottom of her empty glass. “Mama said that Lyle’s about as bright as the hooks on Grandma’s bra.”

I glance down at the table. The Tater Dots arrived while I was outside and now they’re just a plate of crumbs. I sigh and scoop some up with my fingers. “Grandma’s still alive?”

“You just talked to her last night. Wasn’t no ghost.”

“Oh, right. I thought you meant my grandma.”

“Great-Grandma Jean? She choked on a Mars bar and died at the table.”

“You were there?”

“Nope, it wasn’t our table. She never lived with us. She does now, though. She’s in a box in our trailer.”

“What?”

“They took her to the fire place and burned her up so she looked like dirt. Once Swimmer was driving his Dinky trucks through her on the kitchen floor. We had to scoop her back into the box, and now there’s a few Cheerios in there with her.”

“Janis, you are a source of information.”

M
A IS WAITING FOR US OUTSIDE THE TRAILER.
S
EEING
her shocks me all over again. She looks like she’s wearing an old-lady costume. When Janis runs inside to show off to Swimmer about her fingernails, I fill Ma in on what happened.

“Lyle Kenzie is small-time,” she says. “Don’t let him scare you.”

“He doesn’t scare me. I scared him. Who is he?”

“I used to think he was her boyfriend. She was checking in with him all the time. But I think he’s a contact.”

“Pills, pipe or needle?”

She averts her eyes. “I don’t know exactly. It don’t make her see things or nothing like that, and she won’t do it in front of the kids. But she needs to have it. That’s what she always says. She needs to have it, just like food. She says she wishes she never got it in her blood because now she can’t get through the day without taking something.” She shakes her head. “I’ll never understand it.”

We stand there with our arms crossed, staring down at the dirt.

“There’s something I got to show you just down the road.” Ma says. She looks at me kind of funny and lights a cigarette, takes three or four hauls on it before crushing it out with her heel. She goes to the door and tells Janis we’ll be right back, locks it with her key. We start walking, Ma and me, and it’s sort of like the reunion I’d once imagined: me all grown up and Ma with grey in her hair, strolling down a sunset road.

“I’m taking you to your brother.”

“Which one?”

“Bird.”

“Bird! Really? What I remember most about Bird are the whoppers he’d come up with. Like that time you asked him where he got that brand new gold watch with the price tag still on it and he said he found it in the empty ice cooler out back of the Kwikway. Or when he said he failed math because the teacher added up his marks wrong. Remember how he used to kiss people’s mothers on the hand when he met them?” I laugh. “Does he still have all that long blond hair?”

I keep rambling until Ma stops short in front of a little blue house and puts her hands on my shoulders. “Now, Tabby. Don’t you say nothing about it.”

“About what?”

She goes up the stairs and in through the screen door, and I follow. We enter a dank room with wallpaper that’s been ripped to shreds in two-inch-wide strips at waist height along every wall. The ceiling fan is missing two paddles and the cord that makes it spin is so long it drags on the brown shag carpet. Three men are sitting around a table drinking rye. The one with his back to us is
slumped in a wheelchair. The man on his right has an eye patch and a good eye that won’t hold still, and the squat, fat man on the left doesn’t seem to be wearing any pants.

“Hey, Birdie!” Ma trots over, scoots in behind the wheelchair, leans down and kisses him on the cheek.

I come at the table from the other side so I can see his face. He has a scar that runs from his left temple all the way across to his right jawline. It looks like an eel, all grey and rubbery. There’s a bald spot on the back of his head with a flaky rash on it and his fingernails are bruised black, as if he slammed every one of them in a drawer. He’s drooling all over his shirt front.

Ma pats his head. “What are you boys doing? Getting in trouble?”

“Nothing,” the fat one says. Now I see he’s not even wearing underpants. Just a T-shirt, like Winnie-the-Pooh.

“This is Tabby,” Ma tells him. “She’s Bird’s sister.”

“Hi, Bird,” I say, trying to hold a smile. “Do you remember me?”

His tongue dangles out of the corner of his mouth as he shakes his head side to side.

“That’s okay,” I say finally.

He keeps his eyes on me as he slowly reaches his arm out, grabs hold of an edge of wallpaper and tears it off in a long line. Ma leaves the room to check the cupboards, and the rest of us go mute until she comes back and sets a bowl of soup down in front of each of the men. She ties a dishrag around Bird’s neck and starts to feed him with a plastic ladle. After he slurps a few mouthfuls, she taps the elbow of the man with the eye patch
and says, “Go ahead and eat your soup, Stanley. Tabby won’t bite you.”

When they finish eating, Ma washes the dishes while I dry. She tells me Bird’s not fit to live on his own, but he won’t go to a facility. She tried to take him once and he spit on the nurses and broke a television set. “I asked around and heard about these two living here with an older brother. Bird gets a disability cheque every month, so I told the man we could pay a little rent and I’d help out with the cleaning and meals. Bird moved in the next week and the brother said he was going on a fishing trip. That’s the last we seen of him.” Ma dabs the cloth on some soup spills. “I stayed here for a little while, but then I had to move to the trailer after Poppy took off. Now I go back and forth all the damn day trying to keep everyone fed.”

I hear a loud noise and poke my head in the other room. Winnie-the-Pooh has a hold of Bird’s wheelchair handles, trying to dump him out onto the floor. I tell Ma and she takes her time finishing the dishes before going to break it up. She comes back in with a Game Boy device in her hand.

“I’m taking this away from them for good. It’s a fight in a can.” She shows me the video screen. “See these bars falling down? You got to move them around real fast to make them fit together before the next ones come.” She keeps demonstrating until I ask if it’s time to leave.

When we’re finally outside, I take a big breath of air and walk away as fast as I can.

“Why didn’t you warn me, Ma?” I yell. “What the hell happened to him?”

“He got jumped. Lost the use of his legs and half his brain. Some days I think he’s better off. The way he was going, someone would’ve killed him by now.”

“Who jumped him?”

“It started right after we moved here, some pissing contest. There was probably a woman involved, ‘cause you know there always is. Bird was getting even with somebody every other month. Now he’s fine most of the time, except for when the cards come out. He gets a temper when he can’t keep the rules straight. I just feel bad about his little girls. Their mother took them away out west after he got out of the hospital. Every once in a while he’ll ask where they are, but mostly he forgets about them, which is best for everybody.”

“How is that best for
any
body?”

She doesn’t have an answer. “It’s a hard life, Tabby. I always blamed your father for everything, but it’s been just as bad with him gone.”

“Should I even ask about Jackie?”

“Jackie’s around. He’s hell-bent on finding out who did this to Bird. But he’s doing all right, works construction, don’t even smoke no more. His girlfriend says he watches fishing shows and goes to bed early most nights.”

“Can I call him?”

“Of course.”

“He doesn’t speak through a voice box or have a glass eye or anything?”

“Well.”

“What?”

“He’s about to become a father.”

“Jesus. You scared me.”

“You don’t think that’s scary?”

B
EFORE
I
SETTLE IN ON THE SOFA FOR THE NIGHT,
I
GIVE
West a call from the telephone in the kitchen.

“I’m going to go see my other brother, Jackie, tomorrow night,” I whisper. “If you don’t need your truck right away.”

“I guess not.”

I fiddle with the mustard-coloured phone cord. “I lied. I never drove a Mustang.”

“Mustangs aren’t that great.”

“I have a five-year-old niece, Janis. She likes your name.”

“Oh yeah?”

I try to think of what to say next. “Your voice sounds good on the phone. Just like angel food cake.”

“Angel food cake does sound good. Maybe that’s for dessert after my roast.”

I
T’S TEN MILES TO
J
ACKIE’S.
H
E’S THROWING A PARTY TO
welcome me. When I pull up, all his friends turn and wave. I get out of the truck and Jackie leaps down from the deck. He takes his cap off like we’re in church or something. The black hair plastered to his forehead is still thick and shiny as ever. Ma used to say Jackie stole all the good genes, but I’m not sure there were any. He just looks like he came from some other family. He’s got suede grey eyes framed with thick lashes. When he was born, Daddy took one look at him and accused Ma of fucking around.

“Scabby Tabby.” Jackie punches my arm.

“Black Jack.”

He does up a couple of buttons on his flannel shirt before he picks me up off the ground in a bear hug. “It’s some good to see you, girl. I thought you were history.” He turns and yells up to the deck, “Everybody, this here’s my big sister, Tabby. I don’t want to see her without a beer in her hand for the rest of the night.”

A petite brunette greets me at the top of the stairs with a cold one, but Jackie grabs her arm. “Not that piss,” he says. He fishes in the cooler and tosses me an Oland’s instead.

“I’m Jackie’s girlfriend, Jewell,” she says. “It’s so nice to meet you.” She’s tiny everywhere except for the baby bulge under her tight ivory dress.

“You are not my girlfriend,” he says, pinching her ass.

She glares at him. “You want a wife, keep it up. I’ll make you put a ring on this finger so fast it’ll make your dick spin.”

In the same breath she starts chirping away to me about the weather and Jackie excuses himself to get barbecue sauce. I notice the woman who did Janis’s nails is standing on the other side of the deck. She sees me at the same time and waves.

“You met Tabby the other day, right, Kim?” Jewell says to her.

“That’s right.” The woman finishes chewing a mouthful of potato chips. “How’s your little niece doing?” she asks me. “I didn’t clue in that the two of you are Jackie’s people until you mentioned Poppy.”

“Thanks for that tip on Lyle.” I pull the paper out of my purse. “He gave me this.”

She walks over and takes a look. “Don’t know it. But you should bring Jackie with you if you go. I wouldn’t trust Lyle.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s Lyle.” She picks up a lock of my hair and rubs the ends between her fingers. “Is the humidity fucking with your hair? When I first moved to Jubilant, I swear, I almost shaved my head.”

Before I can ask anything else about Lyle, she walks down off the deck. I watch her rummage in the trunk of a car and pull out a
whole salon. She tucks her Calypso Berry Breezer in her cleavage to free up both hands and comes hauling everything up the stairs.

“I take it all home with me at night because the shop gets broken into at least once a month,” she says breathlessly. She plucks the cooler from her boobs. “Nobody comes to me for hair anymore. They all go to this skank Gina for extensions. I don’t do them because everyone wants them out as soon as they’re in, and you end up working twice and getting paid once. But Gina wears sweatpants with her own name written on the ass, so she’s not about to do the math.”

She pushes me inside to Jackie’s kitchen table, sweeps Jewell’s dog-eared novels and knitting needles to the side, and the next thing I know I’m sitting on a stool with a garbage bag pinned around my neck. While she’s snipping away, Jackie hoists himself up on the counter and starts asking me every question he can think of.

“You got a house?”

“Sort of.”

“Kids?”

“No, but I see you’re about to have one.”

Kim cuts in and says, “Jackie’s fathered just about the whole elementary school.”

He grins. “I got to work seventy hours a week to pay for all their fancy sneakers.”

“You must love being a daddy.”

“I love making love. But not every woman tells you she’s setting a trap. Most of them kids I didn’t know I was making till their mothers’ bellies swelled up and they showed up on my
doorstep with their palms out.” He clams up as Jewell comes in and slides coasters under our drinks.

“Jackie,” I say when she goes back outside. “Do you have shit for brains? It’s called a condom.”

“Oh my God!” He falls off the counter, laughing. “I swear to Christ, that’s the last thing you said to me before you left home a million years ago.”

“It’s probably true,” I tell Kim. “And he was only eleven.”

I look around at his walls. He’s got a Jack Daniel’s calendar with Jewell’s prenatal appointments scrawled on it and a pay phone mounted next to the fridge, which he tells me is the kids’ college fund. Someone actually drops a quarter in it and makes a call while we’re sitting there. I don’t know how he rigged that up, but it’s proof enough he’s Daddy’s son.