CALL FOR THE DEAD
1
On Monday, two days after Elizabeth Wharton’s death, Hodges is once more seated in DeMasio’s Italian Ristorante. The last time he was here, it was for lunch with his old partner. This time it’s dinner. His companions are Jerome Robinson and Janelle Patterson.
Janey compliments him on his suit, which already fits better even though he’s only lost a few pounds (and the Glock he’s wearing on his hip hardly shows at all). It’s the new hat Jerome likes, a brown fedora Janey bought Hodges on impulse that very day, and presented to him with some ceremony. Because he’s a private detective now, she said, and every private dick should have a fedora he can pull down to one eyebrow.
Jerome tries it on and gives it that exact tilt. “What do you think? Do I look like Bogie?”
“I hate to disappoint you,” Hodges says, “but Bogie was Caucasian.”
“So Caucasian he practically shimmered,” Janey adds.
“Forgot that.” Jerome tosses the hat back to Hodges, who places it under his chair, reminding himself not to forget it when he leaves. Or step on it.
He’s pleased when his two dinner guests take to each other at once. Jerome—an old head on top of a young body, Hodges often thinks—does the right thing as soon as the ice-breaking foolishness of the hat is finished, taking one of Janey’s hands in both of his and telling her he’s sorry for her loss.
“Both of them,” he says. “I know you lost your sister, too. If I lost mine, I’d be the saddest guy on earth. Barb’s a pain, but I love her to death.”
She thanks him with a smile. Because Jerome’s still too young for a legal glass of wine, they all order iced tea. Janey asks him about his college plans, and when Jerome mentions the possibility of Harvard, she rolls her eyes and says, “A Hah-vad man. Oh my Gawd.”
“Massa Hodges goan have to find hisself a new lawnboy!” Jerome exclaims, and Janey laughs so hard she has to spit a bite of shrimp into her napkin. It makes her blush, but Hodges is glad to hear that laugh. Her carefully applied makeup can’t completely hide the pallor of her cheeks, or the dark circles under her eyes.
When he asks her how Aunt Charlotte, Uncle Henry, and Holly the Mumbler are enjoying the big house in Sugar Heights, Janey grabs the sides of her head as if afflicted with a monster headache.
“Aunt Charlotte called six times today. I’m not exaggerating. Six. The first time was to tell me that Holly woke up in the middle of the night, didn’t know where she was, and had a panic attack. Auntie C said she was on the verge of calling an ambulance when Uncle Henry finally got her settled down by talking to her about NASCAR. She’s crazy about stock car racing. Never misses it on TV, I understand. Jeff Gordon is her idol.” Janey shrugs. “Go figure.”
“How old is this Holly?” Jerome asks.
“About my age, but she suffers from a certain amount of . . . emotional retardation, I guess you’d say.”
Jerome considers this silently, then says: “She probably needs to reconsider Kyle Busch.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
Janey says Aunt Charlotte has also called to marvel over the monthly electrical bill, which must be huge; to confide that the neighbors seem very standoffish; to announce there is an awfully large number of pictures and all that modern art is not to her taste; to point out (although it sounds like another announcement) that if Olivia thought all those lamps were carnival glass, she had almost certainly been taken to the cleaners. The last call, received just before Janey left for the restaurant, had been the most aggravating. Uncle Henry wanted Janey to know, her aunt said, that he had looked into the matter and it still wasn’t too late to change her mind about the cremation. She said the idea made her brother very upset—he called it “a Viking funeral”—and Holly wouldn’t even discuss it, because it gave her the horrors.
“Their Thursday departure is confirmed,” Janey says, “and I’m already counting the minutes.” She squeezes Hodges’s hand, and says, “There’s one bit of good news, though. Auntie C says that Holly was very taken with you.”
Hodges smiles. “Must be my resemblance to Jeff Gordon.”
Janey and Jerome order dessert. Hodges, feeling virtuous, does not. Then, over coffee, he gets down to business. He has brought two folders with him, and hands one to each of his dinner companions.
“All my notes. I’ve organized them as well as I can. I want you to have them in case anything happens to me.”
Janey looks alarmed. “What else has he said to you on that site?”
“Nothing at all,” Hodges says. The lie comes out smoothly and convincingly. “It’s just a precaution.”
“You sure of that?” Jerome asks.
“Absolutely. There’s nothing definitive in the notes, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t made progress. I see a path of investigation that might—I repeat might—take us to this guy. In the meantime, it’s important that you both remain very aware of what’s going on around you at all times.”
“BOLO our asses off,” Janey says.
“Right.” He turns to Jerome. “And what, specifically, are you going to be on the lookout for?”
The reply is quick and sure. “Repeat vehicles, especially those driven by males on the younger side, say between the ages of twenty-five and forty. Although I think forty’s pretty old. Which makes you practically ancient, Bill.”
“Nobody loves a smartass,” Hodges says. “Experience will teach you that in time, young man.”
Elaine, the hostess, drifts over to ask how everything was. They tell her everything was fine, and Hodges asks for more coffee all around.
“Right away,” she says. “You’re looking much better than the last time you were here, Mr. Hodges. If you don’t mind me saying so.”
Hodges doesn’t mind. He feels better than the last time he was here. Lighter than the loss of seven or eight pounds can account for.
When Elaine’s gone and the waiter has poured more coffee, Janey leans over the table with her eyes fixed on his. “What path? Tell us.”
He finds himself thinking of Donald Davis, who has confessed to killing not only his wife but five other women at rest stops along the highways of the Midwest. Soon the handsome Mr. Davis will be in State, where he will no doubt spend the rest of his life.
Hodges has seen it all before.
He’s not so na?ve as to believe that every homicide is solved, but more often than not, murder does out. Something (a certain wifely body in a certain abandoned gravel pit, for instance) comes to light. It’s as if there’s a fumble-fingered but powerful universal force at work, always trying to put wrong things right. The detectives assigned to a murder case read reports, interview witnesses, work the phones, study forensic evidence . . . and wait for that force to do its job. When it does (if it does), a path appears. It often leads straight to the doer, the sort of person Mr. Mercedes refers to in his letters as a perk.
Hodges asks his dinner companions, “What if Olivia Trelawney actually did hear ghosts?”
2
In the parking lot, standing next to the used but serviceable Jeep Wrangler his parents gave him as a seventeenth birthday present, Jerome tells Janey how good it was to meet her, and kisses her cheek. She looks surprised but pleased.
Jerome turns to Hodges. “You all set, Bill? Need anything tomorrow?”
“Just for you to look into that stuff we talked about so you’ll be ready when we check out Olivia’s computer.”
“I’m all over it.”
“Good. And don’t forget to give my best to your dad and mom.”
Jerome grins. “Tell you what, I’ll pass your best on to Dad. As for Mom . . .” Tyrone Feelgood Delight makes a brief cameo appearance. “I be steppin round dat lady fo’ de nex’ week or so.”
Hodges raises his eyebrows. “Are you in dutch with your mother? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Nah, she’s just grouchy. And I can relate.” Jerome snickers.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, man. There’s a concert at the MAC Thursday night. This dopey boy band called ’Round Here. Barb and her friend Hilda and a couple of their other friends are insane to see them, although they’re as vanilla pudding as can be.”
“How old’s your sister?” Janey asks.
“Nine. Going on ten.”
“Vanilla pudding’s what girls that age like. Take it from a former eleven-year-old who was crazy about the Bay City Rollers.” Jerome looks puzzled, and she laughs. “If you knew who they were, I’d lose all respect for you.”
“Anyway, none of them have ever been to a live show, right? I mean, other than Barney or Sesame Street on Ice or something. So they pestered and pestered—they even pestered me—and finally the moms got together and decided that since it was an early show, the girls could go even if it was a school night, as long as one of them did the chaperone thing. They literally drew straws, and my mom lost.”
He shakes his head. His face is solemn but his eyes are sparkling. “My mom at the MAC with three or four thousand screaming girls between the ages of eight and fourteen. Do I have to explain any more about why I’m keeping out of her way?”
“I bet she has a great time,” Janey says. “She probably screamed for Marvin Gaye or Al Green not so long ago.”
Jerome hops into his Wrangler, gives them a final wave, and pulls out onto Lowbriar. That leaves Hodges and Janey standing beside Hodges’s car, in an almost-summer night. A quarter moon has risen above the underpass that separates the more affluent part of the city from Lowtown.
“He’s a good guy,” Janey says. “You’re lucky to have him.”
“Yeah,” Hodges says. “I am.”
She takes the fedora off his head and puts it on her own, giving it a small but provocative tilt. “What’s next, Detective? Your place?”
“Do you mean what I hope you mean?”
“I don’t want to sleep alone.” She stands on tiptoe to return his hat. “If I must surrender my body to make sure that doesn’t happen, I suppose I must.”
Hodges pushes the button that unlocks his car and says, “Never let it be said I failed to take advantage of a lady in distress.”
“You are no gentleman, sir,” she says, then adds, “Thank God. Let’s go.”
3
It’s better this time because they know each other a little. Anxiety has been replaced by eagerness. When the lovemaking is done, she slips into one of his shirts (it’s so big her breasts disappear completely and the tails hang down to the backs of her knees) and explores his small house. He trails her a bit anxiously.
She renders her verdict after they’ve returned to the bedroom. “Not bad for a bachelor pad. No dirty dishes in the sink, no hair in the bathtub, no porn videos on top of the TV. I even spied a green vegetable or two in the crisper, which earns you bonus points.”
She’s filched two cans of beer from the fridge and touches hers to his.
“I never expected to be here with another woman,” Hodges says. “Except maybe for my daughter. We talk on the phone and email, but Allie hasn’t actually visited in a couple of years.”
“Did she take your ex’s side in the divorce?”
“I suppose she did.” Hodges has never thought about it in exactly those terms. “If so, she was probably right to.”
“You might be too hard on yourself.”
Hodges sips his beer. It tastes pretty good. As he sips again, a thought occurs to him.
“Does Aunt Charlotte have this number, Janey?”
“No way. That’s not the reason I wanted to come here instead of going back to the condo, but I’d be a liar if I said it never crossed my mind.” She looks at him gravely. “Will you come to the memorial service on Wednesday? Say you will. Please. I need a friend.”
“Of course. I’ll be at the viewing on Tuesday as well.”
She looks surprised, but happily so. “That seems above and beyond.”
Not to Hodges, it doesn’t. He’s in full investigative mode now, and attending the funeral of someone involved in a murder case—even peripherally—is standard police procedure. He doesn’t really believe Mr. Mercedes will turn up at either the viewing or the service on Wednesday, but it’s not out of the question. Hodges hasn’t seen today’s paper, but some alert reporter might well have linked Mrs. Wharton and Olivia Trelawney, the daughter who committed suicide after her car was used as a murder weapon. Such a connection is hardly news, but you could say the same about Lindsay Lohan’s adventures with drugs and alcohol. Hodges thinks there might at least have been a sidebar.
“I want to be there,” he says. “What’s the deal with the ashes?”
“The mortician called them the cremains,” she says, and wrinkles her nose the way she does when she mocks his yeah. “Is that gross or what? It sounds like something you’d pour in your coffee. On the upside, I’m pretty sure I won’t have to fight Aunt Charlotte or Uncle Henry for them.”
“No, you won’t have to do that. Is there going to be a reception?”
Janey sighs. “Auntie C insists. So the service at ten, followed by a luncheon at the house in Sugar Heights. While we’re eating catered sandwiches and telling our favorite Elizabeth Wharton stories, the funeral home people will take care of the cremation. I’ll decide what to do with the ashes after the three of them leave on Thursday. They’ll never even have to look at the urn.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Thanks, but I dread the luncheon. Not Mrs. Greene and the rest of Mom’s few old friends, but them. If Aunt Charlotte freaks, Holly’s apt to have a meltdown. You’ll come to lunch, too, won’t you?”
“If you let me reach inside that shirt you’re wearing, I’ll do anything you want.”
“In that case, let me help you with the buttons.”
4
Not many miles from where Kermit William Hodges and Janelle Patterson are lying together in the house on Harper Road, Brady Hartsfield is sitting in his control room. Tonight he’s at his worktable instead of his bank of computers. And doing nothing.
Nearby, lying amid the litter of small tools, bits of wire, and computer components, is the Monday paper, still rolled up inside its thin plastic condom. He brought it in when he got back from Discount Electronix, but only from force of habit. He has no interest in the news. He has other things to think about. How he’s going to get the cop. How he’s going to get into the ’Round Here concert at the MAC wearing his carefully constructed suicide vest. If he really intends to do it, that is. Right now it all seems like an awful lot of work. A long row to hoe. A high mountain to climb. A . . . a . . .
But he can’t think of any other similes. Or are those metaphors?
Maybe, he thinks drearily, I just ought to kill myself now and be done with it. Get rid of these awful thoughts. These snapshots from hell.
Snapshots like the one of his mother, for instance, convulsing on the sofa after eating the poisoned meat meant for the Robinson family’s dog. Mom with her eyes bugging out and her pajama shirt covered with puke—how would that picture look in the old family album?
He needs to think, but there’s a hurricane going on in his head, a big bad Category Five Katrina, and everything is flying.
His old Boy Scout sleeping bag is spread out on the basement floor, on top of an air mattress he scrounged from the garage. The air mattress has a slow leak. Brady supposes he ought to replace it if he means to continue sleeping down here for whatever short stretch of life remains to him. And where else can he sleep? He can’t bring himself to use his bed on the second floor, not with his mother lying dead in her own bed just down the hall, maybe already rotting her way into the sheets. He’s turned on her air conditioner and cranked it up to HI COOL, but he’s under no illusions about how well that will work. Or for how long. Nor is sleeping on the living room couch an option. He cleaned it as well as he could, and turned the cushions, but it still smells of her vomit.
No, it has to be down here, in his special place. His control room. Of course the basement has its own unpleasant history; it’s where his little brother died. Only died is a bit of a euphemism, and it’s a bit late for those.
Brady thinks about how he used Frankie’s name when he posted to Olivia Trelawney under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella. It was as if Frankie was alive again for a little while. Only when the Trelawney bitch died, Frankie died with her.
Died again.
“I never liked you anyway,” he says, looking toward the foot of the stairs. It is a strangely childish voice, high and treble, but Brady doesn’t notice. “And I had to.” He pauses. “We had to.”
He thinks of his mother, and how beautiful she was in those days.
Those old days.
5
Deborah Ann Hartsfield was one of those rare ex-cheerleaders who, even after bearing children, managed to hang on to the body that had danced and pranced its way along the sidelines under the Friday-night lights: tall, full-figured, honey-haired. During the early years of her marriage, she took no more than a glass of wine with dinner. Why drink to excess when life was good sober? She had her husband, she had her house on the North Side of the city—not exactly a palace, but what starter-home was?—and she had her two boys.
At the time his mother became a widow, Brady was eight and Frankie was three. Frankie was a plain child, and a bit on the slow side. Brady, on the other hand, had good looks and quick wits. Also, what a charmer! She doted on him, and Brady felt the same about her. They spent long Saturday afternoons cuddled together on the couch under a blanket, watching old movies and drinking hot chocolate while Norm puttered in the garage and Frankie crawled around on the carpet, playing with blocks or a little fire truck that he liked so well he had given it a name: Sammy.
Norm Hartsfield was a lineman for Central States Power. He made a good salary pole-climbing, but had his sights trained on bigger things. Perhaps it was those things he was eyeing instead of watching what he was doing that day beside Route 51, or maybe he just lost his balance a little and reached the wrong way in an effort to steady himself. No matter what the reason, the result was lethal. His partner was just reporting that they’d found the outage and repair was almost complete when he heard a crackling sound. That was twenty thousand volts of coal-fired CSP electricity pouring into Norm Hartsfield’s body. The partner looked up just in time to see Norm tumble out of the cherry-picker basket and plunge forty feet to the ground with his left hand melted and the sleeve of his uniform shirt on fire.
Addicted to credit cards, like most middle Americans as the end of the century approached, the Hartsfields had savings of less than two thousand dollars. That was pretty thin, but there was a good insurance policy, and CSP kicked in an additional seventy thousand, trading it for Deborah Ann’s signature on a paper absolving the company of all blame in the matter of Norman Hartsfield’s death. To Deborah Ann, that seemed like a huge bucketful of cash. She paid off the mortgage on the house and bought a new car. Never did it occur to her that some buckets fill but once.
She had been working as a hairdresser when she met Norm, and went back to that trade after his death. Six months or so into her widowhood, she began seeing a man she had met one day at the bank—only a junior executive, she told Brady, but he had what she called prospects. She brought him home. He ruffled Brady’s hair and called him champ. He ruffled Frankie’s hair and called him little champ. Brady didn’t like him (he had big teeth, like a vampire in a scary movie), but he didn’t show his dislike. He had already learned to wear a happy face and keep his feelings to himself.
One night, before taking Deborah Ann out to dinner, the boyfriend told Brady, Your mother’s a charmer and so are you. Brady smiled and said thank you and hoped the boyfriend would get in a car accident and die. As long as his mother wasn’t with him, that was. The boyfriend with the scary teeth had no right to take his father’s place.
That was Brady’s job.
Frankie choked on the apple during The Blues Brothers. It was supposed to be a funny movie. Brady didn’t see what was so funny about it, but his mother and Frankie laughed fit to split. His mother was happy and all dressed up because she was going out with her boyfriend. In a little while the sitter would come in. The sitter was a stupid greedyguts who always looked in the refrigerator to see what was good to eat as soon as Deborah Ann left, bending over so her fat ass stuck out.
There were two snack-bowls on the coffee table; one contained popcorn, the other apple slices dusted with cinnamon. In one part of the movie people sang in church and one of the Blues Brothers did flips all the way up the center aisle. Frankie was sitting on the floor and laughed hard when the fat Blues Brother did his flips. When he drew in breath to laugh some more, he sucked a piece of cinnamon-dusted apple slice down his throat. That made him stop laughing. He began to jerk around and claw at his neck instead.
Brady’s mother screamed and grabbed him in her arms. She squeezed him, trying to make the piece of apple come out. It didn’t. Frankie’s face went red. She reached into his mouth and down his throat, trying to get at the piece of apple. She couldn’t. Frankie started to lose the red color.
“Oh-my-dear-Jesus,” Deborah Ann cried, and ran for the phone. As she picked it up she shouted at Brady, “Don’t just sit there like an a*shole! Pound him on the back!”
Brady didn’t like to be shouted at, and his mother had never called him an a*shole before, but he pounded Frankie on the back. He pounded hard. The piece of apple slice did not come out. Now Frankie’s face was turning blue. Brady had an idea. He picked Frankie up by his ankles so Frankie’s head hung down and his hair brushed the rug. The apple slice did not come out.
“Stop being a brat, Frankie,” Brady said.
Frankie continued to breathe—sort of, he was making little breezy whistling noises, anyway—almost until the ambulance got there. Then he stopped. The ambulance men came in. They were wearing black clothes with yellow patches on the jackets. They made Brady go into the kitchen, so Brady didn’t see what they did, but his mother screamed and later he saw drops of blood on the carpet.
No apple slice, though.
Then everyone except Brady went away in the ambulance. He sat on the couch and ate popcorn and watched TV. Not The Blues Brothers; The Blues Brothers was stupid, just a bunch of singing and running around. He found a movie about a crazy guy who kidnapped a bunch of kids who were on their schoolbus. That was pretty exciting.
When the fat sitter showed up, Brady said, “Frankie choked on an apple slice. There’s ice cream in the refrigerator. Vanilla Crunch. Have as much as you want.” Maybe, he thought, if she ate enough ice cream, she’d have a heart attack and he could call 911.
Or just let the stupid bitch lay there. That would probably be better. He could watch her.
Deborah Ann finally came home at eleven o’clock. The fat sitter had made Brady go to bed, but he wasn’t asleep, and when he came downstairs in his pj’s, his mother hugged him to her. The fat babysitter asked how Frankie was. The fat babysitter was full of fake concern. The reason Brady knew it was fake was because he wasn’t concerned, so why would the fat babysitter care?
“He’s going to be fine,” Deborah Ann said, with a big smile. Then, when the fat babysitter was gone, she started crying like crazy. She got her wine out of the refrigerator, but instead of pouring it into a glass, she drank straight from the neck of the bottle.
“He might not be,” she told Brady, wiping wine from her chin. “He’s in a coma. Do you know what that is?”
“Sure. Like in a doctor show.”
“That’s right.” She got down on one knee, so they were face-to-face. Having her so close—smelling the perfume she’d put on for the date that never happened—gave him a feeling in his stomach. It was funny but good. He kept looking at the blue stuff on her eyelids. It was weird but good.
“He stopped breathing for a long time before the EMTs could make some room for the air to go down. The doctor at the hospital said that even if he comes out of his coma, there might be brain damage.”
Brady thought Frankie was already brain-damaged—he was awful stupid, carrying around that fire truck all the time—but said nothing. His mother was wearing a blouse that showed the tops of her titties. That gave him a funny feeling in his stomach, too.
“If I tell you something, do you promise never to tell anyone? Not another living soul?”
Brady promised. He was good at keeping secrets.
“It might be better if he does die. Because if he wakes up and he’s brain-damaged, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
Then she clasped him to her and her hair tickled the side of his face and the smell of her perfume was very strong. She said: “Thank God it wasn’t you, honeyboy. Thank God for that.”
Brady hugged her back, pressing his chest against her titties. He had a boner.
Frankie did wake up, and sure enough, he was brain-damaged. He had never been smart (“Takes after his father,” Deborah Ann said once), but compared to the way he was now, he had been a genius in those pre–apple slice days. He had toilet-trained late, not until he was almost three and a half, and now he was back in diapers. His vocabulary had been reduced to no more than a dozen words. Instead of walking he made his way around the house in a limping shuffle. Sometimes he fell abruptly and profoundly asleep, but that was only in the daytime. At night, he had a tendency to wander, and before he started out on these nocturnal safaris, he usually stripped off his Pampers. Sometimes he got into bed with his mother. More often he got in with Brady, who would awake to find the bed soaked and Frankie staring at him with goofy, creepy love.
Frankie had to keep going to the doctor. His breathing was never right. At its best it was a wet wheeze, at its worst, when he had one of his frequent colds, a rattling bark. He could no longer eat solid food; his meals had to be pureed in the blender and he ate them in a highchair. Drinking from a glass was out of the question, so it was back to sippy cups.
The boyfriend from the bank was long gone, and the fat babysitter didn’t last, either. She said she was sorry, but she just couldn’t cope with Frankie the way he was now. For awhile Deborah Ann got a full-time home care lady to come in, but the home care lady ended up getting more money than Deborah Ann made at the beauty shop, so she let the home care lady go and quit her job. Now they were living off savings. She began to drink more, switching from wine to vodka, which she called a more efficient delivery system. Brady would sit with her on the couch, drinking Pepsi. They would watch Frankie crawl around on the carpet with his fire truck in one hand and his blue sippy cup, also filled with Pepsi, in the other.
“It’s shrinking like the icecaps,” Deborah Ann would say, and Brady no longer had to ask her what it was. “And when it’s gone, we’ll be out on the street.”
She went to see a lawyer (in the same strip mall where Brady would years later flick an annoying goofy-boy in the throat) and paid a hundred dollars for a consultation. She took Brady with her. The lawyer’s name was Greensmith. He wore a cheap suit and kept sneaking glances at Deborah Ann’s titties.
“I can tell you what happened,” he said. “Seen it before. That piece of apple left just enough space around his windpipe to let him keep breathing. It’s too bad you reached down his throat, that’s all.”
“I was trying to get it out!” Deborah Ann said indignantly.
“I know, any good mother would do the same, but you pushed it deeper instead, and blocked his windpipe entirely. If one of the EMTs had done that, you’d have a case. Worth a few hundred thousand at least. Maybe a million-five. Seen it before. But it was you. And you told them what you did. Didn’t you?”
Deborah Ann admitted she had.
“Did they intubate him?”
Deborah Ann said they did.
“Okay, that’s your case. They got an airway into him, but in doing so, they pushed that bad apple in even deeper.” He sat back, spread his fingers on his slightly yellowed white shirt, and peeped at Deborah Ann’s titties again, maybe just to make sure they hadn’t slipped out of her bra and run away. “Hence, brain damage.”
“So you’ll take the case?”
“Happy to, if you can pay for the five years it’ll drag through the courts. Because the hospital and their insurance providers will fight you every step of the way. Seen it before.”
“How much?”
Greensmith named a figure, and Deborah Ann left the office, holding Brady’s hand. They sat in her Honda (then new) and she cried. When that part was over, she told him to play the radio while she ran another errand. Brady knew what the other errand entailed: a bottle of efficient delivery system.
She relived her meeting with Greensmith many times over the years, always ending with the same bitter pronouncement: “I paid a hundred dollars I couldn’t afford to a lawyer in a suit from Men’s Wearhouse, and all I found out was I couldn’t afford to fight the big insurance companies and get what was coming to me.”
The year that followed was five years long. There was a life-sucking monster in the house, and the monster’s name was Frankie. Sometimes when he knocked something over or woke Deborah Ann up from a nap, she spanked him. Once she lost it completely and punched him in the side of the head, sending him to the floor in a twitching, eye-rolling daze. She picked him up and hugged him and cried and said she was sorry, but there was only so much a woman could take.
She went into Hair Today as a sub whenever she could. On these occasions she called Brady in sick at school so he could babysit his little brother. Sometimes Brady would catch Frankie reaching for stuff he wasn’t supposed to have (or stuff that belonged to Brady, like his Atari Arcade handheld), and then he would slap Frankie’s hands until Frankie cried. When the wails started, Brady would remind himself that it wasn’t Frankie’s fault, he had brain damage from that damn, no, that f*cking apple slice, and he would be overcome by a mixture of guilt, rage, and sorrow. He would take Frankie on his lap and rock him and tell him he was sorry, but there was only so much a man could take. And he was a man, Mom said so: the man of the house. He got good at changing Frankie’s diapers, but when there was poo (no, it was shit, not poo but shit), he would sometimes pinch Frankie’s legs and shout at him to lay still, damn you, lay still. Even if Frankie was laying still. Laying there with Sammy the Fire Truck clutched to his chest and looking up at the ceiling with his big stupid brain-damaged eyes.
That year was full of sometimes.
Sometimes he loved Frankie up and kissed him.
Sometimes he’d shake him and say This is your fault, we’re going to have to live in the street and it’s your fault.
Sometimes, putting Frankie to bed after a day at the beauty parlor, Deborah Ann would see bruises on the boy’s arms and legs. Once on his throat, which was scarred from the tracheotomy the EMTs had performed. She never commented on these.
Sometimes Brady loved Frankie. Sometimes he hated him. Usually he felt both things at the same time, and it gave him headaches.
Sometimes (mostly when she was drunk), Deborah Ann would rail at the train-wreck of her life. “I can’t get assistance from the city, the state, or the goddam federal government, and why? Because we still have too much from the insurance and the settlement, that’s why. Does anyone care that everything’s going out and nothing’s coming in? No. When the money’s gone and we’re living in a homeless shelter on Lowbriar Avenue, then I’ll be eligible for assistance, and isn’t that just ducky.”
Sometimes Brady would look at Frankie and think, You’re in the way. You’re in the way, Frankie, you’re in the f*cking goddam shitass waaay.
Sometimes—often—Brady hated the whole f*cking goddam shitass world. If there was a God, like the Sunday guys said on TV, wouldn’t He take Frankie up to heaven, so his mother could go back to work fulltime and they wouldn’t have to be out on the street? Or living on Lowbriar Avenue, where his mother said there was nothing but nigger drug addicts with guns? If there was a God, why had He let Frankie choke on that f*cking apple slice in the first place? And then letting him wake up brain-damaged afterward, that was going from bad to f*cking goddam shitass worse. There was no God. You only had to watch Frankie crawling around the floor with goddam Sammy in one hand, then getting up and limping for awhile before giving that up and crawling again, to know that the idea of God was f*cking ridiculous.
Finally Frankie died. It happened fast. In a way it was like running down those people at City Center. There was no forethought, only the looming reality that something had to be done. You could almost call it an accident. Or fate. Brady didn’t believe in God, but he did believe in fate, and sometimes the man of the house had to be fate’s right hand.
His mother was making pancakes for supper. Frankie was playing with Sammy. The basement door was standing open because Deborah Ann had bought two cartons of cheap off-brand toilet paper at Chapter 11 and they kept it down there. The bathrooms needed re-stocking, so she sent Brady down to get some. His hands had been full when he came back up, so he left the basement door open. He thought Mom would shut it, but when he came down from putting the toilet paper in the two upstairs bathrooms, it was still open. Frankie was on the floor, pushing Sammy across the linoleum and making rrr-rrr sounds. He was wearing red pants that bulged with his triple-thick diapers. He was working ever closer to the open door and the steep stairs beyond, but Deborah Ann still made no move to close the door. Nor did she ask Brady, now setting the table, to do it.
“Rrr-rrr,” said Frankie. “Rrr-rrr.”
He pushed the fire truck. Sammy rolled to the edge of the basement doorway, bumped against the jamb, and there he stopped.
Deborah Ann left the stove. She walked over to the basement door. Brady thought she would bend down and hand Frankie’s fire truck back to him, but she didn’t. She kicked it instead. There was a small clacking sound as it tumbled down the steps, all the way to the bottom.
“Oops,” she said. “Sammy faw down go boom.” Her voice was very flat.
Brady walked over. This was interesting.
“Why’d you do that, Mom?”
Deborah Ann put her hands on her hips, the spatula jutting from one of them. She said, “Because I’m just so sick of listening to him make that sound.”
Frankie opened his mouth and began to blat.
“Quit it, Frankie,” Brady said, but Frankie didn’t. What Frankie did was crawl onto the top step and peer down into the darkness.
In that same flat voice Deborah Ann said, “Turn on the light, Brady. So he can see Sammy.”
Brady turned on the light and peered over his blatting brother.
“Yup,” he said. “There he is. Right down at the bottom. See him, Frankie?”
Frankie crawled a little farther, still blatting. He looked down. Brady looked at his mother. Deborah Ann Hartsfield gave the smallest, most imperceptible nod. Brady didn’t think. He simply kicked Frankie’s triple-diapered butt and down Frankie went in a series of clumsy somersaults that made Brady think of the fat Blues Brother flipping his way along the church aisle. On the first somersault Frankie kept on blatting, but the second time around, his head connected with one of the stair risers and the blatting stopped all at once, as if Frankie were a radio and someone had turned him off. That was horrible, but had its funny side. He went over again, legs flying out limply to either side in a Y shape. Then he slammed headfirst into the basement floor.
“Oh my God, Frankie fell!” Deborah Ann cried. She dropped the spatula and ran down the stairs. Brady followed her.
Frankie’s neck was broken, even Brady could tell that, because it was all croggled in the back, but he was still alive. He was breathing in little snorts. Blood was coming out of his nose. More was coming from the side of his head. His eyes moved back and forth, but nothing else did. Poor Frankie. Brady started to cry. His mother was crying, too.
“What should we do?” Brady asked. “What should we do, Mom?”
“Go upstairs and get me a pillow off the sofa.”
He did as she said. When he came back down, Sammy the Fire Truck was lying on Frankie’s chest. “I tried to get him to hold it, but he can’t,” Deborah Ann said.
“Yeah,” Brady said. “He’s prob’ly paralyzed. Poor Frankie.”
Frankie looked up, first at his mother and then his brother. “Brady,” he said.
“It’ll be okay, Frankie,” Brady said, and held out the pillow.
Deborah Ann took it and put it over Frankie’s face. It didn’t take long. Then she sent Brady upstairs again to put the sofa pillow back and get a wet washcloth. “Turn off the stove while you’re up there,” she said. “The pancakes are burning. I can smell them.”
She washed Frankie’s face to get rid of the blood. Brady thought that was very sweet and motherly. Years later he realized she’d also been making sure there would be no threads or fibers from the pillow on Frankie’s face.
When Frankie was clean (although there was still blood in his hair), Brady and his mother sat on the basement steps, looking at him. Deborah Ann had her arm around Brady’s shoulders. “I better call nine-one-one,” she said.
“Okay.”
“He pushed Sammy too hard and Sammy fell downstairs. Then he tried to go after him and lost his balance. I was making the pancakes and you were putting toilet paper in the bathrooms upstairs. You didn’t see anything. When you got down to the basement, he was already dead.”
“Okay.”
“Say it back to me.”
Brady did. He was an A student in school, and good at remembering things.
“No matter what anybody asks you, never say more than that. Don’t add anything, and don’t change anything.”
“Okay, but can I say you were crying?”
She smiled. She kissed his forehead and cheek. Then she kissed him full on the lips. “Yes, honeyboy, you can say that.”
“Will we be all right now?”
“Yes.” There was no doubt in her voice. “We’ll be fine.”
She was right. There were only a few questions about the accident and no hard ones. They had a funeral. It was pretty nice. Frankie was in a Frankie-size coffin, wearing a suit. He didn’t look brain-damaged, just fast asleep. Before they closed the coffin, Brady kissed his brother’s cheek and tucked Sammy the Fire Truck in beside him. There was just enough room.
That night Brady had the first of his really bad headaches. He started thinking Frankie was under his bed, and that made the headache worse. He went down to his mom’s room and got in with her. He didn’t tell her he was scared of Frankie being under his bed, just that his head ached so bad he thought it was going to explode. She hugged him and kissed him and he wriggled against her tight-tight-tight. It felt good to wriggle. It made the headache less. They fell asleep together and the next day it was just the two of them and life was better. Deborah Ann got her old job back, but there were no more boyfriends. She said Brady was the only boyfriend she wanted now. They never talked about Frankie’s accident, but sometimes Brady dreamed about it. He didn’t know if his mother did or not, but she drank plenty of vodka, so much she eventually lost her job again. That was all right, though, because by then he was old enough to go to work. He didn’t miss going to college, either.
College was for people who didn’t know they were smart.