Dream Wheels (12 page)

“Because it’s regular,” Lionel said.

“That and we all need a place we can come back to.”

“He needs it to fill that gap you’re talking about,” Birch said.

“For now,” Johanna said. “It’ll do some for now. The rest he’ll have to fill on his own when he’s ready.”

“Or when we help him get ready,” Victoria said, and they all stared at her and the words hung there between them again. The ebb and flow of the hospital passed about them and they
sat together on a short line of chairs and watched it happen. Eventually they came back into themselves and looked at each other, each wondering what the next move should be or who should tend to it.

“I’ll see to it,” Victoria said.

Johanna rose with her and the two women walked away toward the nursing station. Birch and Lionel watched them go, then turned and looked at each other. Birch grinned at his father and patted the chest pocket of his jacket.

“Guess we might as well smoke,” he said.

“Guess,” Lionel said, and they rose and walked together toward the smoking area.

Bail denied. Claire couldn’t believe her ears. Two words that shocked her so terribly that when she stood in protest her legs wobbled beneath her and she had to lean on the bench seat in front of her for support. Golec turned and looked at her, a profound sorrow on his face. He shrugged, held his hands out at arm’s length with fingers splayed, and Claire felt a hot wave of resentment wash over her. The judge had sat passively through the proceedings, staring at the papers in front of him so distractedly that Claire doubted whether he’d even heard what had been presented to him. Golec hadn’t pressed, hadn’t said anything above a quiet, polite timbre in order to snare his attention. Now, judgment passed, the judge stared at his desk in the same disaffected way.

The bailiffs came and stood on either side of Aiden. The boy looked at her and she saw how small he was, how much a little boy he was, and despite the pinched-lip gaze he levelled at her, she could see a small tremor in him. Aiden just looked at her, then turned when the bailiffs touched his elbows and walked out of the courtroom between them. Claire closed her
eyes, dropped her head and leaned hard on the seat back, hands shaking and hot tears flowing down her face. She gasped for breath and sat down hard. She cried openly. Soon, she felt a soft hand on her shoulder, a hand that pulled her close and held her, and when she opened her eyes Marcel Golec was looking at her. She pulled away.

“Come with me,” he said and led her out of the courtroom.

He didn’t try to speak to her, didn’t try to offer any words of consolation or attempt to cover up for himself, and as Claire followed the broad back of him through the courthouse, she appreciated that. There weren’t any words adequate to cover the feelings running through her, and Golec was astute enough to know that, sensitive enough to leave her with her thoughts. They stood silently in the elevator and the only time he spoke to her was when they arrived at the reception area for the cells. “I’ll bring him,” he said.

Aiden looked small against the steel and concrete. He tried to walk as tall as he could, but Claire could see the shrinking that the circumstances effected in him. His eyes were hardened and blank, but she could sense the fright he walked in.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m all right,” he said stonily, casting a look at Golec. The policeman moved out of earshot.

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Aiden?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? You didn’t do anything,” he said, shifting his feet.

“I feel like I did.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t.”

“Did you?” Claire asked, and he gave her that hard look. She stepped closer to him and he allowed her to put her hands on his shoulders. “Because if you tell me that you didn’t, I’ll fight for you. I’ll stand beside you and do whatever it is that needs to be done to get us past this mess.”

“And if I did it?” he asked.

Claire eased him to her and felt his stiff resistance. She held him. She closed her eyes and felt the warmth of him. “Then I’ll still fight for you. I’ll still stand beside you and we’ll get through this together. No matter what it takes. You just need to tell me either way.”

Claire smelled the cellblock on him. It was in his hair and on his clothing, and she remembered how he’d smelled as an infant, that rich, ancient, almost burnt-dust smell, and as she heaved a deep breath she could still catch a shimmer of it rising upward through the dankness of the cellblock that clung to him. He was all she really had. All she’d ever really had. The only thing in the entire world that was irrevocably her own and she’d love him forever. When he raised his head, put his lips to her ear and whispered, “I did it,” Claire felt her heart breaking. But she held him tight nonetheless.

Max Foley had encountered numerous stubborn, resistant forces in his medical career but none as perplexing as the combined assault of Victoria and Johanna Wolfchild. The women impressed him with their fortitude, and Foley was convinced they would have made excellent trauma unit nurses. They brooked no argument once a decision had been reached and
they were committed as hell to the good of their patient. Joe Willie was going to require a lot of attention in the initial phase of his recovery, and despite Foley’s protests the women assured him they could manage the work.

“We’ve picked that boy up after a lot of falls, Doctor,” Victoria said. “We’ve got a practised hand at it by now.”

“This isn’t some schoolyard scrape,” Foley said.

“No. It’s not,” Johanna said. “But when you’re a mother you learn how to mother the fear that falling down and bleeding brings. Can you do that, Doctor? Are you that kind of specialist?”

Foley tried his best steely-eyed gaze, but the iron in Johanna’s eyes was too stern and he looked away. He removed his glasses and polished them with the corner of his lab coat. “No,” he said. “I’ve never trained in that kind of healing.”

“Shame,” Victoria said quietly. “It’s likely the commonest disease around here.”

“Fear,” Foley said. “You have a cure for that? You’d be millionaires if you could bottle it.”

Victoria laughed softly and reached out to place a hand on Foley’s elbow. “No,” she said, “there’s no cure. It’s one of those chronic conditions and the best you can do is learn how to live with it. Family is the best antidote, as far as I know. Joe Willie’s better taking what we have to give in the long haul.”

“Like I said, it’s a lot to take on.”

“That’s why we’d like you to recommend a home care person,” Johanna said. “Someone who can show him what to do to get himself around, how to get stronger, how to cope with the physical recovery.”

“It’ll cost you.”

“It already has.”

“He won’t be receptive to it.”

“He’s not receptive to much.”

“He’ll resist it. I think you know that.”

The look Johanna gave him made Foley feel ten years old and in it he could feel the staunch force of her motherhood. He knew it was the look Joe Willie had grown up in the light of, and Foley knew in that instant that hers was a medicine he had no hope of duplicating and he allowed himself a small measure of envy for the young cowboy. Foley put a hand to his face and rubbed his jaw contemplatively. Finally they crossed their arms and leaned against the wall and exchanged a private look, and in that moment Foley saw the scope of the territory the Wolfchild family had sprung from. What he knew of doctoring paled in the face of it.

“All right,” he said, “but I’ll want to be kept informed and you’ll have to provide him with a physiotherapist for at least the next six months. I have one I can recommend. She’s a tad flighty sometimes but she knows her stuff. You’ll have to helicopter him home. Can you afford that?”

They looked at him wordlessly. Foley nodded and headed down the hallway to make arrangements.

The way Marcel Golec figured, it was all about concentration. He’d been a detective on the youth squad for a few years now and he’d about seen everything. The thing was, kids these days never learned how to concentrate, how to focus their attention on one thing for more than a couple minutes. Their music came at them in three-minute bursts. The movies they loved never stretched a scene beyond the same three-minute time frame. Hell, getting a kid to sit and read for an hour would take a court order most times, and except for computer time, the chat lines, action games, endless surfing and noodling about they did, they couldn’t commit any time to anything. It
wasn’t their fault. No one took the time to show them the wonder of things anymore. Like music. Golec’s kids went to the symphony with him and the missus every week. Their attention spans were incredible for their age. They could sit and listen to an entire symphony, and it showed in their appreciation of music in general. Sure, they still listened to the crap that was everywhere, but mixed in with the rap and hip-hop CDs were healthy dollops of Brahms, Dvořák and Elgar. They got scope that way, a way to measure, a means to compare, evaluate and choose. It seemed to Golec that most parents neglected their kids’ attention spans far too frequently and the result was a reduced ability to choose. Hence the peer pressure bullshit, and hence kids like this Aiden Hartley sitting in his lock-up.

Golec had talked to him briefly when they brought him over from the courthouse. He hadn’t said much, but what he had said he’d offered distantly but politely. No swagger. No gangbanger attitude. Just a kid who knew how to keep his mouth shut, and move quietly, resolutely. That was the word. This kid had steel in his spine. No need to act out to try to prove anything through display. Instead, he measured everything, calculated, reacted according to available information, and despite himself, Golec admired that. Those qualities were what good men were cut from. On the other hand they were also what created good criminals.

“What kinda tunes you into?” Golec had asked.

The kid looked at him. “Cole Porter,” he said. “He rocks.”

Now he just sat staring at the wall, waiting. It was all about the waiting. Before he moved to youth crime Golec had been in major crimes. He’d seen a lot of hard-asses and he knew that the difference between a solid crook and those who could be broken was how they handled the waiting. Some
paced. Some rattled the bars. Some gathered allies from the others in the bullpen. But the sure ones, the toughest ones, just sat there, waiting, calm, patient as a viper. This kid had the makings of a viper. Sad too, because Golec discerned a brooding intelligence in the kid, some as yet unsponsored push that showed in the level way he looked at you.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Is this the buddy-buddy part?”

“Nah. Wouldn’t trouble you with it. Solid guy like you.”

The kid brightened at the word. “Yeah,” he said. “I could eat. Any Coke?”

“In the can, right?”

“All right.”

“You’ll settle, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll settle.”

“You know that other shit’ll eat your brain,” Golec said.

“Nah. It’s food for thought.”

“Cute,” Golec said. “This an example of your best thinking? This five-star accommodation?”

The kid looked at him levelly again and Golec felt him pull away. “Can’s fine. Maybe a sandwich.”

“Gotcha,” Golec said, giving him a thumbs-up. “Tuna okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“You know, they’ll move you pretty soon. Normally we like to get remanded inmates out to the juvenile lock-up right away. Your mom wants to know what you want her to bring you. You can call her if you like.”

“No,” he said flatly and looked away.

“No what?” Golec asked.

“No I don’t need anything. No I don’t want to call her.”

“She could use it.”

He looked up then and Golec saw the hardness in him. He’d seen it too often. Young men, all jut and edges and angles as their bodies filled out, lean with that elastic kid sort of energy, and it all faded when they stood here, all got transformed into something foreign and different as though they adopted the composure of the steel and the obdurate concrete and the dull flat of the paint around them. It aged them suddenly. It made them horrible caricatures of the men most of them would become. Aiden got up and walked slowly to the far wall and slapped a palm hard against the concrete before he turned and walked back to Golec. It was a practised walk. There was something in it that spoke of effort, and even though it was a good job of mimicry Golec understood that there was something other than the future gangster in the kid, something more than this story told. Aiden walked right up to the bars and looked at him.

“Don’t wanna see her,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I said I don’t want to see her. Not in here. Not anymore. Not until it’s over.”

“That could be two years, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid.”

“Sorry. Son.”

Aiden almost sneered at the word, and Golec sensed a steeped and nurtured anger and the flicker of hope he held was nearly quashed under its weight.

“Don’t call me that either,” Aiden said.

“All right, Aiden,” Golec said, and the two of them stood and looked at each other. “Your mom could use the call. That’s all I meant to say.”

“You make it.”

“And tell her what?”

“Tell her I don’t want to see her. That’s it. That’s all.”

“That’s pretty hard stuff. Mind if I ask why?”

Aiden bent his head down and moved the toe of his shoe around in a small circle, and Golec could see the kid in him then, and when he pursed his lips together and looked up at him again Golec could see the effort the hard line he was drawing cost him. “Easier this way,” he said. “Better. She don’t need to see me there.”

“You don’t need to be ashamed, Aiden. Lots of kids make mistakes. It doesn’t have to be the end of the road if you can learn from it.”

“Don’t call me kid,” he said, and the venom in his voice surprised Golec with its suddenness. “I’m not a kid. You figure I’m man enough to plan a score. You got me in here when you don’t even know. But you figure I could. You figure I’m big enough, old enough for that. So don’t call me a kid and don’t tell me about my mother.” He took a step away and then half turned, looking away down the long corridor of the cellblock. “She don’t need this,” he said.