Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 (38 page)

"Want to go?" he said. "Want to see where I get this stuff?"

I shook my head. "I'm staying in tonight. Chores."

Not chores. Never chores. I don't do the dishes. I don't take out the trash. Mom does that. Sometimes I make dinner, but it's just heating up the frozen stuff in the freezer, so it's not really cooking. What did I do around there? When I was very young, I helped with the goats in the morning until I got so sick of it and let them all loose in the winter and from then on Big Dolores told me just to go inside because I was going to spook the animals. Then, sometimes I'd help load up her car with the milk she was taking out to deliver. I met the vet at the gate when it came time for birthing, and I led the people who came for baby goats around back, to see the animals bounding around the fenced-off places. I cleaned bathrooms when I made a mess in them. I cleaned my room when I was told I had to clean my room. I didn't really do much.

Chores, I had said, because he had thrown up a little when I showed him my arm. He knew what I was telling him.

When the snow came, that year, I was almost fifteen and it came all at once, like a flood. One day it was nice and the leaves had fallen and we were walking around the schoolyard with windbreakers. The next day, it was three feet and slushy and the wind howling so hard it never let up.

Petey came up to drop off the weed. He asked me if I'd mind if he used the restroom. I didn't know why he was asking me anything. He got up and went back into the hallway. Big Dolores came in and asked if Petey was here and needed cash. I pointed at the hallway. "He had to pee," I said.

She sank into a chair and put her head down. "I'm feeling old today, girl. Feel so goddamn old. What the hell happened to me? Winter comes and kicks me in the ass as soon as I'm thinking maybe this summer means I ain't so bad off. You know what, Jujube, can you go get my purse. It's in the bedroom. Gotta pay that boy or his momma will yell at me something fierce."

I went back in the hall, and back to her bedroom. He was in there. I saw him reaching into Dolores' purse. He saw me seeing him. I shook my head. He pulled out cash, far more than he was owed, and held it out to me. I reached out and took it from him. I slipped it into my pocket. He did the same with his. He put the purse back, his hands shaking and his face pale. I gestured for him to go to a window and climb out. Instead, he leaned over and got close to me like he was going to kiss me or something. I could smell him. He didn't smell any better than Dolores, honestly. I curled my lip and pulled away. If he hadn't have been stealing, I'd have kissed him. I turned my head in disgust.

Rebuked, he dove out the window. I hid the money under a loose floorboard in my room, and I think it might still be there. I've never gone back for it, honestly. What sins we've done, and how foolishly? It was only a couple hundred, and it's no use to anyone, now, under a floorboard in an empty house.

Big Dolores had started cooking kidney beans and eggs for dinner. She said she was going to need a long sit down tonight, because of the weather, and I should eat up. I told her that Petey had to go, on account of delivering all the way from Drummondville, and he could get paid next time. He had to make another delivery. Dolores shrugged.

I ate. I ate and I ate and I ate. Then, we sat down and bought a movie to watch on the box. It was a treat for me. It was the only time I was allowed to watch the TV.

I didn't watch the movie. I watched her leaning back, absently stroking a pillow like it was some kind of cat, closing her eyes and resting. I saw the grey bones of her face sagging. I saw the way the tension in her hard muscles had pushed so hard against herself she had collapsed inward into a heap.

"Petey stole money from your purse," I said.

"How much?" she said, without opening her eyes or acting surprised.

"All of it," I said.

"I'm going to call the police on him, if that's true."

"It's true. I saw him do it."

"Well, when we finish up, I'll call it in."

I sat there, watching her breathe heavy.

"Want me to call his mom?"

"Nope," she said. "Boy ain't your age, girl. He's old enough to stand for his sins."

"Maybe if we just called his mom, she'd talk to him. Maybe if we called him and told him we knew..."

"Girl, you know your momma wishes she had called the cops a lot sooner with your dad. Don't let these boys fool you. They do something like that, they know better, and you don't negotiate it with them, or they'll just think they can walk all over you next time and get off clean."

"Where will you get your fix if he don't bring it?" That got her eyes open. She looked at me. "Give me some credit for competence, Jujube. I can still drive. I can still drive myself. I'm not that useless, yet. Thank god for that."

When we got done, I unplugged us both. Dolores got up and took a long, slow breath. She walked back slowly to check her purse, and found more than just money missing. He had taken her old wedding ring, too, from the jewelry box. She called the cops. She told them that her granddaughter had seen the boy that did it, saw him red-handed when he did it, and that they probably knew the boy pretty good already. They did. Petey had been in juvenile before. Petey had been in trouble with police before. Petey was known to be on a path with walls at the end of it where all his pathways stopped.

Dolores answered the door when the cops came. They said Petey confessed to everything. They said they didn't need our statements, exactly, but we might as well give them. They were able to recover the ring, but the cash was gone already. I looked over at Big Dolores, standing at the door. I went back to my room. I slammed the door. Big Dolores apologized to the officer and walked back to the door. She called out through the door. "What is it, Jujube?"

"You didn't have to call the cops! Shit, Dolores, you could have just called his mom!"

She asked the cops, who had followed her down the hall, if that was enough of a statement from the witness, and they said it was, so they left us.

Big Dolores rode out to get her own weed, then. She drove out to the place in Drummondville though it was almost two hours both ways.

She was probably pushing up against eighty years old, by then, and she drove regular, but she drove in the mid-morning once to get the milk to the two co-op stations that bought in. She didn't drive over three hours to a place where she could score some speakeasy weed and Ritalin for my mom.

Third time out, she got pulled over in the snow. It was so cold, the cop that had her was wrapped up head to toe in the heaviest stuff he had, and unwrapped the scarf around his face before he got out of the car. She was being pulled over because she was driving erratically.

"The road's just slick,"she said.

"You coming from Drummondville?"

"What's it to you where I'm coming from as long as I'm sober enough to drive?"

"I'm just asking because we're shutting down an illegal dispensary up there."

"What the hell do you care about an old woman driving in a snowstorm? I've got to go check the generator and heater in the barn. I've got cats to get in from the cold, goats to feed. What the hell do you care about me for? Write a ticket and let's go. I've got a goat farm, goddamit. I've got work."

"Got a tip on you," he said. "Got a tip you're carrying from a dispensary. Mind if I look around your vehicle? See if there's any illegal marijuana?"

"Goddammit, I mind. I'm old. I've got Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and I mind. I'm supposed to be using the stuff."

"Not if it's from an illegal dispensary. I've got a warrant," he said. He pulled it from his coat like a magic scroll. "We saw a vehicle matching yours at the dispensary this morning."

She was pulled out in the snow. She was handcuffed and left leaning against a tree. Another cop car showed up. Then another. They all had their lights flashing. She was sitting out in the freezing cold, nearly eighty and left sitting in the snowstorm with her hands bound. She was crying, her hands shaking. They found it right away, but they kept searching the car for anything. They piled everything she had— every bit of trash and detritus and maps and papers and a half-eaten bag of food and clothes and emergency kits—all in a heap next to the car while they were searching it. She watched everything get dumped into the snow. They wouldn't let her in from the cold until everything was poured out. The car was checked for explosives. She watched the men sticking the chemical strips against the cracks and crevices after explosives. What the hell would she be doing driving an explosive truck? A tow truck came. They said all her stuff was evidence and they were going to collect it.

Then, when she was shaking so bad from the cold she couldn't talk, and she was so pale and so cold, they got around to pushing her into the back of the police car.

They didn't even treat her like a person. They just pushed her around like a tired, old goat that had to be dragged by its horns. I think that's the worst, for her. She wasn't even treated like she was a person to them.

It was Petey that did it, I knew as soon as I heard. I was out with my mom, buying groceries at the time, on the way back from school, and I saw him in his truck driving down the street when he ought to have been locked up from the stealing and so many priors hanging over him. As soon as I heard from my mom, I knew that about my friend in a flash, like the way you know someone is going to be the love of your life, or someone is going to trip in a moment, or the way you just know someone is talking shit behind your back. It was Petey. That's who it was. That's exactly what happened.

I had that to simmer on a while. I had that to think about. I never told Mom that I saw him.

Momma and me were doing our best with the goats. It was a pain, and I hated Petey even more for this. I refused to blame the goats when it was Petey's fault. I did the milking, the mucking, and kept them locked in the barn when I was at school and Momma was sleeping. The cats, we didn't feed. We wanted them to wander off into the cold. We didn't care if they froze or the coyotes got them as long as Dolores didn't see it. We wanted rid of the goddamn cats.

That was the worst winter of my life. I still have nightmares about it, up at dawn to deal with the bleating, stupid animals before school, and my mom sleepy at the wheel trying to get the milk to the co-op when she should have been getting ready for work, driving with drowsy eyes. That smell everywhere I turned, all over my clothes and hair, and it's so cold out, and I had to shovel the snow away from the barn door, and shovel the paths clear to mud. We went into the county prison to visit Dolores, who had to do a few months on her first charge. She sat there, shaking, knowing that her mind was going a little bit more every day and it would never come back, and that was a worse punishment than if they had killed her.

Big Dolores, she didn't have me inside. She didn't have my blood. I don't think the judge understood what it meant to separate her from me. She had Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and an obscure blood type, and she needed my blood to give hers a boost. We had to wait for her bail hearing just to see her the first week. She refused a lawyer. She said she was an old goat farmer and she couldn't afford a lawyer, and she couldn't afford dispensary drugs, and she didn't care what the judge did to her.

"So you're admitting your guilt," said the judge. "You're confessing in open court?"

"Your honor, I'm old enough to do what I ought to do. I do what I need to do, and I don't..." she took a breath, a deep breath. "I don't think it matters much if one old woman is doing what she can to get by. My head hurts, your honor. It hurts so much, and I can't eat. I have a shunt. My granddaughter helps me."

"Well, I'm sorry, but you confessed. You're pleading guilty, you refuse counsel, and I have to convict you."

She spent the minimum time in jail, but it was enough. At night, she didn't want my blood. She didn't want to sit with me on the couch and plug in to me, and watch TV. Momma asked her about it, and she said "Fuck that" and she drank whiskey in the snow, sitting next to a fire she had made out of scrap wood and old fence posts. She watched her goats. She held them to stay warm. They bleated for her. She hummed and sang to them. The snow kept coming that winter.

She was shaking bad when she got home, and it only got worse.

Petey drove by and knocked on the door. I was home to see him. I stood on one side of the screen, all that cold air coming in, but I wouldn't let him in the house.

"Hey," he said.

"Ain't you supposed to be in the city by now, working a sweatshop on Rockaway?"

"It'll be a while until I can save up. I wanted to come by and say I was sorry for what happened."

"Well, I don't care about that," I said.

I could tell he was drunk. It hit me that he was drunk, and he was wobbling a little and his eyes were lit up like coal fire. "Do you want to get some ice cream?"

"No," I said. "It's too cold. Besides, I only like boys my own age. Dolores is here. You want to apologize to her, you can."

"I heard Dolores got locked up," he said.

"She did. She's out. An old lady with no priors, she got the minimum they could give her."

"Yeah." He rubbed his naked neck. "I was lucky I wasn't around when they caught that one in Drummondville. I'd have been put away for years with my record."

"Ain't nobody lucky around here. You should wear a scarf," I said.

"Maybe," he said."I got enough whiskey to keep myself warm."

"Ain't you got a scarf or something?"

"Yeah, at home."

"You should wear it. Well, Dolores is here. You want to see if she wants to hire you again, you talk to her about it. I don't think you should come back, though."

"I didn't think she would after she called the cops on me."

"You stole her wedding ring."

"You stole from her, too."

"That's not true," I said. "Don't say that."

"You did, though," he said. "You're an accomplice, and nobody caught you. I didn't rat you out, Jujube. I took the weight for you. Well, I'm going. Unless you want me to stay. Ain't it cold out here, though? I mean, goddamn it's so cold. I wish you'd invite me in. Or come out with me. One of the two."