Tommy was as good a man as I was not. That’s all I can say. We had a contract. I went back over there the next evening, and we made our peace. Tommy gave me a key to his garage house, to prove he trusted me. I started working over there, just me and the pitchforks and gas cans, until he finished up his layouts, then he’d come home and we’d work together.
Being alone there was much like being back in the McCobb dog room. Complete with surprise appearances of Haillie, popping in to scare the bejesus out of me. Thirteen-year-old version, picture the sparkle-Barbie vibe and hit fast-forward. She showed me the Howliie Fairie drawing she’d kept all this time. I was trying to work, but what can you do. I asked her what the squaller twins were up to, and she said kindergarten. The next night, came back with those brats on each hip like she’s the little mama. I tried to ask the normal questions, how was Ohio, did she have a boyfriend. She said she had four. Toting those kids half as big as herself, giving me this sultry eye like I just might be number five. Shew-ee missy, I thought, you’ll get there soon, no help from me. Eventually Mrs. McCobb would come shoo Haillie back to the house. Then she would stand there in her triple-XL sweatpants and mom hair and talk my ears off. Her husband is a genius, his Wate-o-Way enterprise is about to take off, same old same old. I wasn’t depending any more on this nutbar family for my calorie intake or anything else, so I tuned it all out.
Except for this one crazy thing. She said she was scared Mr. McCobb had got into something over his head. Some deal he had with a man she didn’t know, but he had come over and she did not like his looks. Given my football connections, she wondered if I might know this individual. U-Haul Pyles. Fuck me. I told her to steer clear by all means. But couldn’t stop wondering. Was it real, was she trying to yank my chain. Was U-Haul trying to find me here.
Martha turned up, living in what June called “that crack house in Woodway” like it’s a famous attraction. The place we’d picked up Swap-Out that time. June wanted me to go over there and collect her. I said Maggot was friends with those fine folk, so he was her man. Failing that, she should call the law. June said no dice. She’d gotten the tip from Juicy Wills, the sheriff’s deputy that she’d dated in high school. Juicy had been coming over for debriefings ever since Emmy ran off, as full of himself as ever. June only tolerated him on the chance of a decent lead. Now that she had one, she was not blowing it by going over there with a damn peacock in a squad car. Her one goal was to find Emmy, and for that she had to get Martha to trust her enough to talk. Maggot had agreed to help, but only if I did too.
June was persuasive. She knew Martha wouldn’t be glad to see her, even after all she’d done to help her. That was the reason, really. So it was decided Maggot and I should go over. If we could somehow fetch Martha back to June’s, she’d take it from there.
We drove to Woodway in broad daylight, with Maggot too stoned even to remark on my crap transmission. Pulled up to the house and sat in the car, admiring the porch that was its own twisted universe. Old rotten mattress, drawerless dressers, propane canisters, sawhorse, refrigerator on its side with four connected plastic chairs on top. Crutches. Fake palm tree. Little Tikes Cozy Coupe. Huge stack of firewood split by some man in his prime that surely was not around anymore to burn it. This was the dregs of three or more disappeared generations. It took me a minute to see the wisp of cigarette smoke, and Martha at the bottom of it, sitting on a Shop-Vac. We asked if she wanted to come ride around with us. Where to, she didn’t even ask.
You never saw a more wrecked person. Hair, teeth, everything on her unwashed or coming apart. Old striped jeans with a busted zipper. Skeleton arms bare, in that cold. Maggot got in back so she could ride shotgun, and I got the full smell of her, like kyarn. Rotten meat. I made myself ask if she needed to eat, and she said yeah, but then dipped out before we got to a drive-through. I got her a burger, but Maggot ate it, saying there would be more food at June’s. Then he went to sleep too. We drove through the creepy stretch where the kudzu vines are hanging off the trees and reaching over the guardrails like they’re wanting to get at you.
About a mile out from June’s, Martha woke up, saw where we were, and tried to throw herself out of the car. Forgetting she was belted in. I pulled over and let her go, because there was no escaping out there, just the banks of the Powell River where Mr. Peg used to take us fishing. A beautiful place, hemlock trees standing around like bored giants. She stumbled down the bank. I only then noticed she had one bare foot. Probably she’d shot up, dipped out, and forgot. I’d seen Dori do it many times. Having Dori and Martha both inside my skull at the same time scared the hell out of me. I left Maggot asleep in the car and went after her. I squatted on the riverbank, watching her shiver. All hunched, her face pressed to her knees, both hands in her stringy hair.
“I can’t have her seeing me,” Martha finally said. “She hates my guts.”
“June? She doesn’t either.”
“She’s the one made you come after me, ain’t she?”
I said all June wanted was to take care of her. Martha shook so hard, I was afraid something in her might break. She said she wasn’t taking any more of June’s money because it made her more of a bad person and she couldn’t go any lower. She’d tried to kill herself already a couple of times. “June thinks I’m the one that corrupted Emmy.”
I told her nobody thought that. What struck me though was how Emmy had said this too, I’m a terrible person. Fast Forward was out there so cocksure he could do no wrong, with these women run over in the road behind him. I made myself touch Martha’s back, rubbing my hand in a circle on her thin summer shirt, feeling the hard knobs of her spine. Dori’s were like that now.
I told her June was not one to give up on people, ever. And if Martha had any way of getting in touch with Emmy, she needed to tell her that June still loved the heck out of her and wanted her home. Martha sat wiping her nose with the back of her hand, taking this in. I was trying to give her some usefulness, to keep herself going. But it wore me out. By the time I got her and Maggot dropped off at June’s, it was dark and I was one more casualty of the day.
The whole drive home I thought of Dori, where she was headed. God help me if I’d just seen it. Dori was never going to get clean, she had no reason. I couldn’t picture living without her, but neither could I go on being this lonely forever, waiting for Dori to wake up wanting to share my burdens. The only words we had left between us now were the foreplay to fighting.
She was asleep on the couch, on her back, with one hand on the floor like a storybook girl trailing fingers in the water from her boat. Jip on her stomach, beady-eyed watchman. He growled as I shook her gently. “Baby, I’m going to get you something. Did you eat today at all?”
She rolled over on her side without opening her eyes.
“I need you to wake up. Sit up, okay? We have to talk.”
Where to go, if I left, I had no idea. No place seemed possible. Maybe it would only be for a little while. I pushed Jip off her belly and helped her sit up. She blinked, focusing her eyes.
“What do you feel like eating?”
She put her hand on her stomach, shook her head. I said she had to eat. Her eyes opened wider, like my being there was dawning on her a step at a time. Then she looked at me like I was going to hurt her, and I felt like a terrible person. “Baby, baby,” I said, stroking her hair. It had grown out every which way, finally her true color of blond. I said I loved her and would never, ever want to hurt her. And she said, The thing is, Demon. I’m pregnant.
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