Free Verse (13 page)

A voice comes out of the dark.

“Why we doing this, Sasha?”

There is faraway laughter and the shouts of drunk people as the town slowly comes down from its Hardwood Festival high. The grass under my head is dry. No dew means it's going to rain soon. I hope not tonight. A better guardian would find shelter for Mikey, but I can't get up off this grass. I can hear dogs barking and, in the distance, the Jake brakes of some truck heading away down Route 10. Those sounds are familiar, but there are fewer birds and bugs singing here in the darkness than there are back home. I guess that makes sense, if there are fewer trees.

It's hard to find the right words in the right order, but I can hear from Mikey's breathing that he's still awake and waiting. Somewhere in me, the poetry flickers to life again and gets my words unstuck.

I say:

“Outside of Caboose,

people laugh more than they cry,

and we deserve that.”

There's a long quiet, so long I think Mikey's gone to sleep there in the dark beside me. But then the tired little voice finds me again. “That's bull,” he says. “I laugh plenty back home.”

“Whenever we laugh

back home, we know there's a chance

bad news is coming.”

It doesn't sound like a poem, but I like picturing the line breaks in my head.

“Sasha?” The pause is longer this time, and his voice is smaller. I abandon the poetry now that it's gotten me started.

“Yeah, Mikey?”

“Is my dad dead?”

I'm glad it's dark so my cousin can't see the tears that start to roll out of the corners of my eyes, down the sides of my head, and into my hair. I wipe my nose on my sleeve instead of sniffling out loud. I don't want Mikey to hear me.

“Is he?” Mikey asks again.

“The longer we're gone,” I say, “the longer we don't have to know. And the longer it'll be before anybody else goes away.”

There's quiet while he mulls. I know he's mulling and not sleeping because he makes little thoughtful noises and hauls in shaky little breaths.

“Okay,” he says finally. Lying wide-awake in the grass in a strange town, watching black clouds turn silver in front of the moon, he agrees to my plan. “Okay. We can run away.”

“I'm glad you think so, since we already did.”

I wake already knowing things have changed.

Mikey is tugging on me. Pulling on my sleeves. His voice slides in from somewhere else. I think I might be underwater.

“Wake up, Sasha! C'mon, wake up!”

I do, at last. I sit, and the world is
still
spinning. It's full, bright daylight, and Mikey and I are no longer alone.

“Young lady,” says the police officer in his uniform, which, up close, is not as crisp as I would have thought a policeman's uniform would be. His face is marked with stubble, as though policing the festival has worn him out. “Are you all right?”

“Oh.” I get to my feet, but it takes me a minute to remember we're in Alley Rush. The festival is getting under
way again. The sidewalks are full of clumps of kids walking together, teenagers in school shirts, laughing.

“Young lady?”

“Oh.” I focus on the officer. “Oh. I'm fine. Yes, sir, thank you. I'm fine.”

But he's not satisfied. He waits.

“We stayed out late last night at the festival. I guess I fell asleep.” I sound more normal than normal. I sound more normal than Lisa.

He keeps looking. I start to hustle Mikey away. The officer puts out a hand to stop us.

“Young lady, I need you to stay with me for a moment.” He's reaching for something. A gun, maybe. Worse. A radio.

The radio makes something inside me shake. As it crackles, I remember the final call for Michael at his funeral. I remember how the air went quiet when he didn't answer. He's buried now in Caboose, and he'll be there forever; he'll never get out.

If this police officer takes me and Mikey back, we might never get out, either. This is it—our now or never.

I tug on Mikey and he follows me, too slowly. I shove him ahead of me, hard.
This
Michael Harless will get away. I'll make sure of it.

We make it three steps before a hand closes on my shoulder. “Young lady!” Then, worse, “Sasha Harless!”

Panic bangs into my chest. I twist free of the officer's grip. I keep pushing on Mikey. “Go! I'll catch up!”

Mikey turns to look at me. His eyes are wide and almost all pupil. I think for a second it's fear, but then he grins—this quick, wild grin that I've never seen on him before—and starts to run again. Now that he's running on his own, I'm having trouble keeping up. Mikey is tiny and built out of muscle, and he's quick as a hummingbird.

I grasp a handful of my cousin's filthy T-shirt, uncertainty wedging itself into my heart. He's going too fast, getting too far ahead of me. I want him to escape, but not alone. I think of Shirley, weeks ago, asking if I could handle him, and I struggle to hold on, but I can't get a good grip. I feel the warmth of his skin through the thin cloth, the sharp jut of his shoulder blade, before my fingertips lose contact.

Mikey does not turn around as he disappears into the woods. One minute, he's in sight, and the next, he isn't anymore. Like everyone else I've ever loved.

I've never been in a police station before. I expected ringing phones and jangling jail keys and officers coming in with criminals. Instead it's just me and the officer who caught me. We're sitting on opposite ends of a bench. He has a black eye and a sprained pinkie. He has scratches the shape of my fingernails up and down his arms. He looks heavenward, and then at the clock, and then at me.

“Young lady,” he says, then seems to remember that he knows my name. “Miss Harless.”

“Where's my cousin?” I ask.

“Well now, Sasha, you're the one that told him to run. So you know as much as I do about where he's gone.”

I feel sick. I may have done the wrong thing.

“I didn't
want
him to be by himself, but . . .”

He picks his teeth. “Well, Sasha, nobody wants anything but the best for William.” He says
best
slower than
the rest of the sentence. He pinches the bridge of his nose, winces. He forgot his black eye. I forget, too, but I know I must have done it. “William's a young boy. He has problems. We all understand that. We just want to find him so we can take care of him.”

“His name's Mikey, and he doesn't have any
problems
. He didn't mean anything bad. Running away was my idea,” I say.

Officer Cruise shifts his weight and the bench creaks. His brass nametag catches the light. “Sasha,” he says. “How 'bout you help us find the boy.”

I shift lower in my seat. The wooden bench is warm. I wonder if it is certified Alley Rush hardwood like they were selling at the festival. “I don't know how to find Mikey. He's all alone. He's not very good at running away. I don't know where he is.” The truth of it sinks into my stomach. “I don't know where he is.”

Grace comes, and looks me up and down to make certain I'm in one piece.

“You do know how to give a body a heart attack,” she says. Then she turns to Officer Cruise, and they talk to each other like I'm not here. Once in a while, one of them says something to me in the sort of voice you'd use to get close to a stray cat. I don't hear their words.

I ask for the bathroom. But there aren't any windows. I'm stuck. I sit in the corner of the bathroom. I rock. I worry about Mikey. I think I might be crying.

•   •   •

I ask about Phyllis. Grace says no. She says someone else has agreed to take me.

“Your cousin's on the way,” she says.

“Mikey?”

“Not that cousin.” Her voice is kind, but I tune her out. I stand and pace.

“Sasha?”

In the doorway is Hubert Harless. I think for a minute I'm seeing a ghost. But Hubert is wearing his blue flannel shirt and threadbare jeans. If he had died in the mines, his ghost would be stuck forever in his mining uniform. I figure that means he's alive, which is so earthshaking that I need to sit down, except Hubert has crossed the room to me in two steps and put his arms around me. I don't know if he's touching me in anger or relief until he kisses the top of my head.

“Sasha,” he says. “God Almighty.”

“You're—” I can't say
alive
. I'm afraid he might contradict me.

“You scared me, little lady,” he says. I can't bear the kindness in his voice. He has to know.

“I lost Mikey,” I rush to confess.

He shushes me. He smells like coal. His hands are so gentle for a man his size.

“Hubert, I lost Mikey.”

“We both did, honey,” he says.

Night comes. Not the good kind. The kind that might not ever get light again. My gaze flies back and forth. First, I look at Hubert, alive. Stuck underground till late in the evening the day of the accident, but alive. Not even hurt. And then I turn my gaze to the window, in case Mikey is out there. Hubert drives past the festival sign. The vendors have stopped selling. Nobody is dancing in the street. Outside of town, along the edges of the woods, you can see the people searching. You can see the deputy badges and the bobbing flashlights. It looks like a miniature hardwood festival, there among the trees.

Hubert says he's taking me home. I throw open the truck door. The ground slices past.

Hubert swerves onto the shoulder of the road. He swears at me. He leans across me to slam the truck door. He says these damn kids will be the death of him yet.

“You're worried about Mikey,” I say.

His voice is still shaking. “You're damn right I am.”

“It's my fault he's lost.” I feel the truth of this to my bones.

“Jesus H. Christ, Sasha, that's no reason to jump out of the doggone truck.”

“I'm not leaving Alley Rush until I find him.” Till I make up for this stupid thing I've done, dragging Mikey away from Caboose before we knew Hubert was all right.

Hubert swears and swears. When he stops talking, he keeps breathing hard. He hunches over the wheel. This is the closest to crying I've ever seen a coal miner. I tilt my head and study him, but he never looks back at me.

We sit by the road for a full five minutes. Then Hubert turns the truck around.

•   •   •

We watch motel cable. First is a lawyer show and then a teacher show and then a game show. Then Mikey is on a few channels.

Hubert presses “mute” and dials the phone. He swears, clangs the receiver back onto the base. Picks up the phone again and remembers to dial 9 first. He waits a minute. Then he hands the phone to me.

“Hello?” comes a familiar voice. Emotion clogs my throat. There are so many things I have to tell her: I've lost Mikey and I don't get to come home to her and I spent her guitar money. I swallow a couple of times before I speak.

“Oh. Hey, Phyllis, it's me.” My words come out normal, but her response isn't.

“Good Lord above,” she says, and starts crying.

I wait till she gets a little quieter, and I tell her, “I lost Mikey.” I think I ought to still be crying, too, but I've gone dry.

“That little boy's going to turn up,” she says. “I promise you, Sasha.” Phyllis doesn't seem the type to promise lightly, so this makes me feel a little better.

I have more bad news, though. I tell her, “They won't let you have me again. They found out I have a cousin.”

She laughs. “Honey, that's a good thing. Hubert's your family, and I've never seen that man so scared as when you and Mikey turned up missing.”

“But I never bought you a GUI-tar, and now they won't let you have me again.”

One breath in and another out. Not so steady now.

“I was going to buy you a GUI-tar. I was.” In case she doesn't believe me. “I was saving in my suitcase. I picked out the GUI-tar at the pawnshop. It was the pretty one. Three down on the left.” In case she wants to buy it herself, except I know Mr. Cardman doesn't pay her that much.

“The suitcase,” she says. Her voice sounds damp. “Oh, Sasha. I thought you were saving to make your escape.”

I don't know what to say to that, because I
did
make my escape with the money. I don't say anything at all. I feel like I did something wrong by letting her think that. I want to
apologize, but I don't know how. And then I feel like I did something wrong by saving up for something other than escape. Like if Michael were here, he would disapprove of my priorities. I've got so many different kinds of guilt in my heart tonight. I fold up on the motel bed, sitting on my knees with my forehead pressed into the pillows.

Phyllis keeps talking to me, managing to sound almost normal. She tells me everything is going to be all right. She tells me over and over. I can't find my voice again, so I cling to hers. My breathing starts to hitch. When we are one
all right
short of me bursting into tears, I get up and hand the phone to Hubert. I lie down on the bed.

“It's me,” Hubert says into the phone. “Yeah. Yeah, I think she's okay.”

I roll onto my side. I close my eyes. Hubert talks to Phyllis until after I'm asleep.

•   •   •

I'm quick to wake, but it takes a long time to remember where I am. And then, all at once, that I don't know where Mikey might be. He's only nine. He won't admit he's still afraid of the dark.

The motel room smells like old cigarette smoke and something clean that I can't quite name. It's empty except for me. I find Hubert smoking and pacing on the balcony. The morning is already warm and humid. There are no cars coming or going. I see us reflected at odd angles in the windows that stretch away down the row. Hubert's
reflection is broad and solid. I steal a glance at him and find he doesn't look as broad or as solid when you can see his face. His curly beard and mustache hide most of his expression, but the worry lines around his brown eyes are tough to hide.

The motel curtains are closed. I think of the empty beds behind them. I think of sleeping in grass, in a field, in the rain. I think of Mikey sleeping somewhere, somewhere.

“Morning,” Hubert says.

He stops pacing and leans on his elbows on the balcony railing. I lean on my elbows on the balcony railing, too. We look out at the quiet parking lot. We shake our heads. We exhale slowly.

•   •   •

We look for Mikey high and low. We look for him in the woods. We look for him in the city. The police are looking. The people of Alley Rush are looking. But I know that if anyone finds him, it will be us.

I wish I had Michael's worry stone with me. I pick up a piece of gravel and roll it between my fingers as we search. I wish I had given Mikey the suitcase. I would feel better if he had some money. Some crackers. The last of the peanut butter. I wish I had a poem for this.

I try:

Mikey went away.

Me and Hubert waited, but—

I stop. I try:

Mikey.

Small, sweet.

sad beyond sad,

lost in the coalfields.

I stop. The last time I did poetry, I convinced Mikey that running away was a good idea. Now he's missing. There is no form for this. There are no words for this.

•   •   •

The pictures in my head are these:

Mikey asleep in a field in the rain.

Mikey asleep in the woods under a tree.

Mikey dead.

Mikey crying because he's hungry.

Mikey crying because he's scared.

Mikey dead.

Mikey how he looks back home. Moping on his porch. Running from the shed.

Mikey how he looks back home. Stirring up muffins. Greasing the tin. Tilting his head like he'll never understand me.

Hubert talks while he drives. I listen to his voice, and my breath, and rain on the roof of the truck. I can hear the truck seat creaking while I rock.

We drive from one end of Alley Rush to the other. We
take note of roads that look inviting. We drive up one road and down the next. We forget to eat. We study the roadside. We check under bridges, in culverts, in old, leaning red school bus houses. We sneak into yards and check under front porches. We see a lot of empty things.

“You done this before?” I ask Hubert. It doesn't really come out sounding like a question.

“Mikey's momma could have done better than me,” Hubert says by way of answer. His fingers wrap and unwrap on the steering wheel for a minute. “I was already pushing thirty when we got married. She was younger. Nineteen. Pretty as a picture.”

“What if the picture's ugly?”

“Huh?”

“That saying. I don't get it. Can't somebody be pretty as an ugly picture?”

Hubert snorts, shakes his head. “Nah. Aster was pretty as a very pretty picture. I still don't know why she married me, unless it was the job. She had a thing for coal miners.”

“Why?”

He snorts again. “You got something against coal miners?”

I charge ahead before I can hurt his feelings. “I just mean 'cause you're gone all day and you come home really tired. Wouldn't she rather have a thing for, I don't know, news anchors? They get to dress nice, and they don't usually die at their jobs.”

Hubert steers past a downed tree limb. “Coal miners don't usually die at their jobs,” he says.

“Sometimes they do.”

“Sometimes people die no matter what they do for a living.” He glances at me. “Honey, I know you lost people. Hell, we all lost people. But folks still got to turn the lights on and that means we need coal and that means we need miners. And folks still need to put out fires, and that means we got to have guys like your brother. Ain't anything in this world that's totally safe. A person might as well do the thing he loves.”

“Do you love what you do?”

He pumps the brake, steers across the yellow line to avoid the crumbling edges of the highway. Slows to avoid oncoming cars. “I do,” he says. Then, quieter, “Or what passes for love in a guy like me.”

It seems an odd thing to say, especially for a man with three children and at least two wives that I know of. “But you loved Aster, right?”

“Yes, ma'am. I did love Aster.” There is sadness but no doubt in his voice.

“And you love Mikey. You love Sara and Marla.”

“Of course I do.”

“And you love Shirley.”

“Sure. I love Shirley.” His foot finds the gas, and the truck speeds up a little. We drive awhile in silence before I
hear Hubert repeat, in a low voice, like it's meant for only himself to hear, “Or what passes for love in a guy like me.”

•   •   •

The closer day gets to night, the more scared I feel. I know Mikey can get through one night by himself; one night by himself might be all right. But this will be two nights by himself. This will be two cold, long, dark nights with Mikey alone in the woods trying to figure out what to do next. I know he doesn't know. I know he is worse than I am, even, at surviving in the wild.

Night falls like glass. The storm breaks. Lightning and thunder. Downpour like a faucet turned on.

We're in the motel parking lot, but I won't get out of the truck. I'll stay right here, where I can look for Mikey.

Hubert pushes out a frustrated breath. He sits beside me for a while. Then he gets out of the truck. A rush of cooler air sweeps in. I smell damp pavement. I grip the seam of the upholstery. I curl my toes onto the seat.

•   •   •

Hubert brings a motel blanket to the truck. He tucks me in. He sits beside my head where it rests on the seat. He turns the key in the ignition so we can have radio. There are country songs, weather, reports about the search for a missing boy. Hubert turns the key the other way. The windows won't roll up all the way, and rain drips in through the cracks. I curl my feet up tighter to keep them dry. Hubert leans his head against the window.

“You asked if I done this before,” Hubert says after a while. His voice is soft against the rain. “You know about Mikey's mama, right?”

I think of the papers we found. “She got sick,” I say. I don't like to say the words that were on the paper, words like
toxicology screen
and
treatment for addiction
.

“She got real sick,” Hubert confirms. “And she ran off with Mikey.”

I sit up and twist around to look at him. “She took Mikey with her?”

Hubert doesn't look at me. His gaze is fixed on something past the windshield, something far away, out in the night. “Three days,” he said. “I knew she was struggling, but . . . it's your wife, you know? You want to think she's okay. Then she took off with my boy. He was only five. Three days they was missing.” He shakes his head slowly, closing his eyes. I study his weathered, wrinkled skin and his heavy mustache and beard. I wonder if he keeps all that facial hair to hide behind at times like this. But I can see behind it anyway, all the lines that must have got there in those three days, and all the lines that are deepening tonight.

“Where'd they go?” I ask when he gets quiet too long. I wish Mikey'd felt like he could tell me some of this.

He shakes his head. “Mikey never would say. I got him back when she checked herself into the hospital.”

Now I twist to look at him again. “She checked herself in?”

“She was real sick, Sasha. I think she knew . . . well, I think she wanted to get clean. For Mikey.”

“Well, how come Mikey didn't know, then? I mean . . . I mean, he got really upset when we found the hospital papers.”

Hubert shakes his head. “He was a little thing, Sasha. He knew he went on an adventure with his mother. He always just thought I went and got him back. He didn't understand what was happening. He didn't know how sick she was.”

“It was . . . it was drugs, right?”

“Yes, it was.”

“I don't understand why people do that.”

Hubert runs a hand down his face. “Because they got to do something. Life just piles up and piles up until they can't hack it. They got to make it stop somehow.” His words make me think of Chris McKenzie, whose death sent me running out to the Dumpster that day at school. I think of sparks floating up above the parking lot at the Save-Great, of the way he played with fire so he didn't have to stop and deal with things. I didn't know Chris. Can't remember his face very well. In my head, he looks a little like Michael. I might have been the last person to see him alive, lighting things on fire because he had to do
something
.

“What could pile up so bad that Aster would leave you like that?”