Free Verse (7 page)

I can't watch the news anymore. I cuddle Stella to my face and try to sleep. Only now that Ben's in my head, I can't shake him back loose again. I'm halfway in between asleep and awake, aware of the pattern of the fabric of Phyllis's sofa pressing into my cheek, but also feeling Ben's hands there, the way he used to pat my face, leaving
streaks of filth from work. Ben was more affectionate than a lot of dads in Caboose, and even more so after Judy left. He made it a habit to squeeze and hug and pat and lift and spin. Since his death, nobody has ever hugged me so tight. Michael mostly kept his arms at his sides, or loosely draped across the back of the sofa, or fixed to the ladder of the fire truck.

I'm not done missing Ben, and now I've started up with missing Michael, too. I'm missing him elbowing me and calling me “Beanpole” and “Lightbulb.” I'm missing him pressing and pressing for me to go off to college, to go someplace else. I'm missing those few hugs I did get from him, how carefully he held me and how safe he made me feel. I squeeze Stella tighter, breathe against her warm fur. I wish Phyllis would pat my knee again. I think about Hubert, the closest relative I've got anymore. I wonder if he's the hugging type and maybe he just doesn't know me well enough yet to hug. Or maybe it's me. Maybe I'm not the kind of person who looks like you can hug her.

•   •   •

Hubert comes in late to retrieve Mikey. The two of them, one sad and one sleepy, make their way out of Phyllis's house. I stretch and head up to my room. Now that I've napped, I feel wide awake, not ready to climb into bed yet. I look around.

It surprises me to realize that the room doesn't look
like I live here. Most of my treasures still live in the suitcase under the bed, ready to run if I get half a chance.

Today, I learned how to cook something. And today, I fell asleep safe, knowing Phyllis was there to watch out for me.

I pull out the suitcase and undo the clasps. The GUI-tar money is stashed away on one side, along with my small wad of escape money. I know it isn't near enough for college, but I've only been saving for a couple of years. It would have been enough to help me with a train ticket or a plane ride. Now it's going to help me replace Phyllis's GUI-tar.

I take the old picture of me and Michael out of the suitcase and hold it close for a minute. It's ruined from the day I tried to run away in the rain. You can't even tell who's in it, but I know. I place it on the top of the dresser, which has stayed empty the whole time I've been here. Beside it, I place a handful of rocks—one glittery rock Judy gave me that she called fool's gold, one piece of hard black coal from Ben's mine, and one smooth river rock that Michael called a worry stone. Beside the rocks, I place a small stack of photos, facedown. I like having them close, but I'm not ready to look at them yet.

Now the only thing left in the suitcase is my notebook. In its pages, I've kept track of ideas for how to escape Caboose. They all involve Michael. I've written down firefighter jobs in other cities that I found online. I've written
down a list of colleges with family housing, so he can take me with him. I've researched scholarships and grants and student loans for him.

I was going to tell him all about it. Soon. As soon as I had it all figured out.

Now that Michael is gone, I don't know what to do with the notebook. I'm too young to get any of the jobs that he could have gotten. I'm too young for college. I can't take out any loans. It's going to be a while now before I manage to find a way to escape Caboose.

But I have to do it. Even more so now that Michael's gone, I can feel how this town might drain me away. I'm tired and sad like all the grown-ups here. I don't want to get stuck like Michael did, like he always feared I would.

I hold the notebook for a long time. It's one thing to decide to stay with Phyllis for a while. It's another to trust her with my notebook. It goes back in the suitcase, and I clasp the lid closed.

Nine and nineteen, we walked uptown
one bright morning, with heavy sun streaming down like a tall glass of something sweet. My legs weren't as long as Michael's and I got tired before he did, but it took me blocks to be willing to admit it. By the time I did, I was so tired that I didn't warn Michael before plopping onto the porch of one of the abandoned buildings by the side of the road. There were handfuls of them all along Route 10 for as long as I could remember. I thought I could remember this building being a feed and hardware store once. I remembered a bin labeled “Penny Candy,” only the sweets cost a dollar. It was tough to tell what the worn-down lettering on the glass used to say.

We sat the longest time without talking. That was how it was with me and Michael. We didn't always have to talk. He was tired, too. He'd worked all day at his firefighter gig and
late into the night over at the Save-Great. He smelled like smoke and spoiled milk. He hadn't talked about the Navy in a long time.

“Listen here,” he said. “I know you think I've been on you too hard about that spelling test.”

I shifted on the porch boards, embarrassed. I didn't like him being disappointed in me. It wasn't that I hadn't studied, exactly. I had. At least, I looked over the words once, on the bus ride to school.

“It was just a Friday test. It hardly counts.”

“Everything counts.” He leveled this stern look at me that made me think of our mother. “Everything you learn now is going to help you get where you want to go in life.”

Anytime a grown-up said something like “where you want to go in life,” I tuned out, but this time, Michael wouldn't let me. He had that look on his face again, the one he only wore when big things went wrong. But all he said was, “You're going to go someplace.”

I felt warm and sleepy, and I didn't really feel like going anywhere. “Where we going?” I asked.

“Just somewhere.” His sigh was short and didn't sound quite like him. “People grow up here and they . . . they get stuck, Sash. They get tired and they get in a rut, and then before they know it, they're thirty and nothing's ever gonna change. There's a whole world out there, and most people here, they don't ever see it.”

I looked up the road at the sun splashing patterns on the pavement. Yellow flowers sprouted out of cracks in the sidewalk. “Ain't this part of the world?”

“
Ain't
ain't a word, squirt. And yeah, this is part. Only it's just
one
part. You've got to promise me you're going to see at least a few of the other parts. The better ones.” His voice went low, almost like he wasn't even talking to me anymore. “I can't stand the thought of you staying in this damn town your whole life.”

I thought of our mother, who ran away, and I linked my arm through Michael's, suddenly scared he might disappear, too. It wasn't till a long time later, thinking back, that I realized that was around the time Michael stopped talking about getting himself out of here. The only escape he talked about anymore was mine.

•   •   •

I sit alone on the bus every day. It's funny how people leave room around you once they know you as “that kid who punched that other kid for no reason.” But once I'm in my seat the morning after the vigil, the girl I punched changes seats to slide in next to me.

This is such a shock that it takes me a moment to process. By the time I have, she's already making herself at home on the far end of the bench seat, slipping out of her backpack straps and balancing the pack on her skinny knees.

“Hi,” she says. Her voice, like her hair and the tip of her nose, defies gravity, lilting upward. I try to think of an appropriate response. One that convinces her how sorry I am to have punched her. One that explains it was an accident. One that buys me a fresh start.

I come up with, “Hi.”

“I wasn't”—except she pronounces it like
wadn't
—“sure you wanted any friends, but I never noticed you having any and I thought”—except she pronounces it like
thowt
—“you might be looking for one.”

“Well, that's . . .” I search for something I can say that will match her manner of speaking and make her feel comfortable. I end up saying, “. . . hmm.”

We sit while the trees hop by. I say
hop
because the bus is bouncing. Road crews never make it this far out the holler.

“We got nine goats and five cats, but I ain't allowed to get a dog,” she tells me.

“You moved here with nine goats and five cats? How'd that work?”

“We didn't move. I just never came to school before.”

This doesn't sound possible. “How'd you manage that?”

“I was homeschooled. But now my dad thinks I need more social skills.”

She seems plenty social to me, but then my standards in that area are low.

“I'm Jaina,” she offers.

Even though I already know this—everybody knows the new kid's name—I pounce on the new topic. “I'm Sasha.”

“I know,” she says. Then she looks embarrassed. I shouldn't be surprised she knows my name. Everybody knows the weird kid, too.

•   •   •

In social studies, we do coal mining as a current event. It's not one of the lessons they made us write down in our planners, and I remind myself that I shouldn't complain to Mr. Powell about it later. I hate when the teachers don't stay on topic. It's easier to talk about classwork than real stuff. But Mr. Powell has told me more than once that my constant critique of my classes has more to do with me needing to feel in control than it does with my education. He says it's because so many things have been out of my control lately.

It's not that I don't see his point. It's just that it's really not what we'd had planned for today, and for once, I had my homework done.

Also, I really don't like to talk about coal mining.

Talking about coal mining in Caboose never ends well. It's been brought up more and more lately because of a few big accidents in our own state as well as in Kentucky, Tennessee, and other places that share our livelihood. When people run for office, they talk about it, and then
everybody at home talks about it. How accident rates really are on the decline, and the news just makes it seem otherwise. How so-and-so's daddy and his daddy and his daddy were coal miners and it was good enough for them. How it's the best living around and how politicians care more about the environment than jobs.

Today's class discussion goes a little bit different. It seems like everybody in class knows somebody who knows somebody who knew the miners who died last week.

“But it was a freak accident,” one kid says. “It's a dangerous job; that's one reason they get paid so much. They know it's dangerous. That's what they sign up for.”

“I think what they sign up for is having a job, period,” a boy in the front row offers. “The other stuff they just have to put up with.”

“Your dad owns a laundry mat!” the first kid points out, distracted, pulling her hair up into a ponytail while she argues. “My dad and uncle are miners, and they love what they do! They're not ‘just putting up with' anything!”

“There's a lot of jobs that's dangerous!” another boy pipes up. “Police, paramedics, firemen . . .” His voice trails off, and I sense the second when half the people in the class glance at me.

I raise my hand.

“Sasha?” Mr. Pope asks. “You can speak up. You don't have to raise your hand during current events.”

I slowly withdraw my hand, keeping my head down.
“May I be excused? I'd like to talk to Mr. Powell, if that's all right.”

•   •   •

But I don't. I sit in his office, drawing treetops on the inside cover of my social studies books. Treetops are easy. They're all leaves and smudgy texture. It's the trunks that give me trouble. I can't ever get the angle right.

Mr. Powell finishes with the student before me, a burly kid with a wallet chain hanging out of his pocket, legs the width of the tree trunks I've been drawing, disappearing sockless into untied kicks. My eyes trail from his retreating figure to Mr. Powell standing in the doorway of his office.

“Ms. Harless,” he says. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Social studies,” I answer.

He sighs shortly. “Come in.”

“No, thanks.”

“Sasha, you came to see me.” He's moving quickly through the stages of Mr. Powell anxiety. He started out with his hands at his sides, but now they've moved to his pockets. He bounces up onto the balls of his feet and back down.

“Yeah, but you were busy. Now the bell's about to ring.”

He walks out to sit next to me in the yellow fabric-covered chairs that line the rose-pink wall. His hands go from pockets to running through his thick hair right on schedule. “Sasha. Is everything all right?”

I glance up from my drawing. “I mean, I don't want to be late for English.”

Right on time, his arms crisscross his chest. I've gotten pretty good at reading Mr. Powell's frustration with me. “Why didn't you want to stay in social studies?”

I glance back down at my book and start erasing the treetops before he can get mad about them. I don't know what to say.

“Were they discussing something that was upsetting to you?”

Bingo!
But I don't tell him that. The more times Mr. Powell is right, the more times I think there might actually be something wrong with me.

“Were they discussing yesterday's candlelight vigil?”

I think of the flowers on the news. The stories that couldn't begin to sum up what the stories left behind had lost. I smack the cover of my book shut, hard.

“We weren't supposed to talk about it!” I blurt out, and then the bell rings.

•   •   •

In English we do haiku. Five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five again in the last. They're supposed to have something to do with nature, like running streams or hazy mountains. They're supposed to capture a single moment in time.

We're supposed to do three. The kids around me moan
and groan. Something about the shortness of haiku feels good to my pencil. I write and write.

I do:

Walking from the store

where the GUI-tar waits for me—

when will it be ours?

I do:

Mom picked up and left.

The rest of us waited, but

she didn't come back.

I do:

Mom sang about birds.

No, that isn't quite true. She

sang about cages.

I do:

Dad walked down and down.

Me and Michael waited, but

he didn't come back.

I do:

Phyllis likes to sing,

but guitars will break when they

hit the windowpane.

I do:

On the bus today,

Jaina sat and talked to me.

Could we become friends?

I do:

Coal mines can collapse.

I watch miners come and go—

except when they die.

I do:

So many people

are down under the ground here.

Some in mines. Some not.

•   •   •

We read our haiku to the class, each student choosing one to share. We hear poems about report cards and poems about cardinals on tree branches and poems about how much the writer doesn't like writing poetry. I can't imagine how I'm going to choose just one. I finally do:

In history class,

we do a lot of talking

about scary things.

•   •   •

Miss Jacks calls me to her desk after class. “Sasha,” she says. “I wanted to talk to you about your poems.” She's holding my paper in her hand.

“I know they're supposed to be about nature,” I blurt, afraid she's going to give me a bad grade. Michael always said I have to get good grades if I want someone else to pay for college.
And believe me, sister, you want somebody else to pay for college.

Miss Jacks wears T-shirts and jeans instead of the khakis and polos most of the other teachers wear. Today's T-shirt is sky blue and says
GRIZZLIES
on it, showing our school mascot. She's got long brown hair that she wears loose on her shoulders so that it tangles around the stems of her glasses; she's always having to take them off and sort them out.

She's looking at me with this long, strange look that I've
never seen on a teacher's face before. Like she's afraid of me or something. “They
are
about nature, Sasha,” she says. “They're about the nature of where you're growing up.”

Or maybe not afraid
of
me so much as
for
me. I don't know what to say, so I look at the clock and then the door.

“You're an excellent student,” she says. “Just like your brother.”

No one's ever called me an excellent student before, but I'm more interested in the second thing she said. “You had Michael?”

“Twice. Honors and yearbook. He was a brilliant student, your brother. A beautiful writer.”

This is news to me. I never read a word Michael wrote. He put out fires. He encouraged me to go to college, but he never went himself. The idea of Michael sitting in Miss Jacks's class, writing haiku, makes something well up in me, and for a minute it's difficult to catch my breath. Even now, after three months have passed, I still have moments where all the air leaves the room for a minute.

“What did . . . did he write?” I have to work to make the words come out.

“Science fiction,” she says with a smile. “A couple of westerns. Your brother liked adventure.” She makes a small sound, halfway between a laugh and a sigh.

I don't know what to say. I look back and forth between Miss Jacks and the door. Her eyes are misty. “Go on,” she says. “Go get the bus.”