Have Mercy (Have a Life #1) (13 page)

I tried to pretend that everything was normal—not that my grandmother was down at the police station trying to get Jane off the hook,
again
—and opened my social studies book.  It was my last exam and passing it was my only hope of not being a complete washout in school.  It occurred to me that if I flunked, they’d make me repeat a grade and that would weaken my case for dropping out and being an “autodidact,” as I learned that word was for what I wanted to be.  I couldn’t even learn when people were cramming knowledge into my head, so how could I do it on my own?

              Mr. Dow had hinted broadly—okay, he wrote it on the board—the question that was our final exam:  Using Your Textbook And Discussions We Have Had In Class On Child Labor And The Draft As Well As The Social Contract, Please Discuss The Pros And Cons Of Teenage Conscription Into The Military.  I had copied the question into my notebook, of course, and I had a couple of ideas as soon as I wrote it down, but it made no sense to me now.  I didn’t think it was even in English.  I closed my eyes and was surprised by the silence in our house.  I think it was the first time our house was perfectly still and without the noise of Jane hacking her head off from cigarettes, or my jacked up music in the Trap or the commotion of The Griffin’s traveling circus, or neighbors yelling at us to turn down the stereo on which we blasted The Griffin because he wasn’t here, or the Tudesco’s dogs barking their heads off, or Mr. Hennings burping and farting on his porch—which I could actually hear in my bedroom and I wondered if he was aware of that—or me and Jane arguing, or Jane and Granny O’Reilly screaming at each other.  Without all that distracting noise, a picture started to come into focus, a picture of me.  True, I was pretty ordinary looking which didn’t auger well for a career in music, although plain was okay for a normal life.  But I didn’t want a normal life.  I had a talent, I knew it, I could see it, I could feel it burning inside me, and the talent was like the little flame of a Bic lighter that wanted to keep burning till it set the world on fire, but the sound of my songs kept getting drowned out by the noises that surrounded me, that defined me, noises that would never stop as long as I stayed here.

              I waited all day for Granny O’Reilly to return, thinking of the new charges that were being heaped on Jane: breaking the terms of her bail,
stalking.
I could imagine the drama that was being performed at the police station with Jane and Granny O’Reilly and Jane’s lawyer and Rob and Rob’s mother and Rob’s pregnant girlfriend and the judge—a real judge, not a fake television judge, who had to figure out what to do with a problem called Jane O’Reilly—all the yelling and shouting that I decided were no longer part of my personal soundtrack. 

                When it was ten o’clock at night, I wrote an email to Mr. Dow apologizing for not taking his final exam and disappointing him etcetera, but I said that I would make it up to him.  Here’s the truth: I didn’t really care that I disappointed him anymore, although I didn’t put that in the email.  There was no reason to be mean.  I wrote a note to Granny O’Reilly and put it on the kitchen table under her ashtray, saying it was a real pleasure to
finally
meet her and I wished her lots of luck with her career, but I didn’t think Akron was where I wanted to be and that I was going to go live with my dad.  As miserable as Granny O’Reilly was, I could understand why she didn’t want to stick around while Jane tried to unload her bag of woes onto her.  She had enough to lug around, what with that Laura woman staring her down and being married to Ron, who I didn’t know, but if he was a politician I could certainly
guess
how she had to think about the consequences of every step she took.

              At midnight, I got dressed and stuffed my backpack with my shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste, my learner’s permit and my laptop and went down to the Trap.  I wanted to take all my amps and speakers, but that was impossible of course.  I could only carry one thing on my back besides my backpack and that was naturally the guitar The Griffin gave me.  I packed the Fender in its case and strapped it on my back, took a last look at the Trap and kind of said good-bye to my life as I knew it, then got on my bicycle and rode away.   

The Kirby VW van was parked in the back of Kulick’s Funeral Home.  I rang the bell and kept ringing it until it finally swung open and Mrs. Kirby was there saying, “Okay, okay, what’s the problem? It’s so late! Oh, it’s you, Mercy,” and she let me in.  She went through the procedure of unlocking the first door and locking it behind her, then doing the same to the second set of doors, until we were in the room with a cadaver, this time an old man, with a paper blanket pulled up to his chin on the gurney. 

              “Where’s Captain Kirby?” I asked her.

              Mrs. Kirby jerked her thumb to a door which I opened and found out was a broom closet with Captain Kirby asleep in her sleeping bag on the floor.  I nudged her with my foot.

              “Come on,” I said.  It was odd to see Captain Kirby asleep, not on the attack.  “Get up.  I’m leaving.”

              She frowned until she saw it was me.   “What are you doing here?”

              “I’m leaving.  I’m going to Houston.”

              “That’s not a great idea.”

              “Do you have a better one?”  I knew now that Captain Kirby didn’t have internet access and went to the public library to get on.  She would have had no idea about the latest news on Jane.  “I just have to leave.”

              “What about your last week of school?” she asked.  “You got to put in the time.”

              “I don’t care about it.  I mean, I do care, but I care about leaving more.”

              “What if they make you repeat?”

              “What’s the difference if I’m dropping out?”

              “You’re a moron.  I told you that before, if you drop out.”

              I sat down next to her.  “Stuff happened.  I can’t tell you about it now.  But I have to leave.”  I told her about the notes I left for Mr. Dow and Granny O’Reilly.  “I hope Granny O’Reilly doesn’t file a missing persons report.”

              “If you left a note, you’re a runaway, not a missing person,” she said, finally rousing herself. 

              “She doesn’t want me to live with her in Akron.  I heard her tell Ron that on the phone.”

              “They won’t get the cops after you or anything because you left those notes, there’s no foul play.  If Granny files a report,  they’ll send some cops around to your house to see if you’re there. 
Eventually
. They’re overloaded with runaway and missing person stuff.”

              “Well, what am I supposed to do in the meantime?  Where can I go?”

              “You can stay here with my mom until I’m finished my exams then you can go with me to Sunny Vale.”

              “Sunny Vale?”             

              “My culinary camp.  Remember?” 

              “Oh, right.”

              I looked out to where Mrs. Kirby was applying lipstick to the dead old man.  From the angle on the floor of the broom closet I could see into the next room where two more bodies on gurneys were waiting for Mrs. Kirby’s magic touch to bring them back to seeming life.

              “Don’t you have to be in school for the rest of the week after exams so the whole year  counts?”

              Captain Kirby shrugged.  “I’ll make it up next year.”

              I was messing up Captain Kirby’s life because my own was so screwed up.  “Why don’t I just go ahead now and meet you at Sunny Vale at the end of the week,” I said.  “I wouldn’t mind learning how to cook.”

              She considered it.  “That would work.  How much money do you have?”

              None.  Talk about poor planning.  I was as dumb as Jane.

              Captain Kirby reached into her sleeping bag and pulled out a nylon pouch.  She opened it and eight hundred dollar bills spilled out.

              “Wow!  Where did you get all that money?!”

              She put her finger to her lips and looked around the door to see if her mom could hear.   “That bike I sold.”

              “You
stole
that bike.”

              “Yeah, well, I didn’t get full price for it, if it makes you feel any better. ” She gave me three of the bills.  “That’ll get you there.  I got give some to my mom to buy groceries and stuff when I’m not here.”

              “I’ll pay it back.  I swear.”

              “I know you will.”

              “Really.’

              “Who cares?” she said.

              We discussed what route I should take.  We thought a bus would be too risky, they might have flyers or something for missing persons in the bus station and anyway, I’d still have to walk almost five miles from the bus stop to the farm.  We decided I should ride my bike.

              “But you’ll have to wait until later.   If you leave now, someone will see you.”

              “Won’t they see you leaving for school?”

              “Yeah, but they always see me.  They think I bring my mother breakfast on my way to school.”

              She stuffed her money pouch into her backpack and got up to leave. She’d been sleeping in her clothes. With her shoes on, too.

              “Tell Tim where I am, okay?  I didn’t get a chance to talk to him.”

              “My mom will let you out,” she said.  “But wait until this afternoon, okay”

              “Okay.” 

              ‘You know,” Captain Kirby said, “You can’t go back.  Once you step out, everything changes.”

              “You think I don’t know that?”

              “You can know it here,” she pointed to her head, “but you don’t know it in your gut.”

              “May I please deal with this tomorrow?”

              “I just want you to be aware, that’s all.  Sometimes I wish I had someone pointing things out to me.  Keep it in mind, that’s all.”

              I knew I couldn’t go back once I left, but what exactly was I supposed to go back to anyway?  I felt like a baby bird who was pushed out of the nest whose mama had destroyed the nest just for emphasis. 

              I stood the Fender up in the corner and lay down on the sleeping bag which was still warm. “Can I borrow this?”  I felt so suddenly tired and before Captain Kirby could answer me I was asleep.

I dreamt I was on The Griffin’s bus, and I was like his manager or something.  I don’t know what happened to his regular manager, but it was only a dream so I guess he got a better offer or something.  Anyway, The Griffin was asking me, his new manager, if I thought he should ditch Aerosmith and go out on his own and I felt really proud that he was asking me for advice.  “I’ve been opening for them for ten years,” he said.  “I think it’s time to stretch my wings.”  And he stood up and stretched his fake eagle wings and each wing was like twenty-five feet at
least
and they kept opening up until they lifted him into the air.  “Hey, I didn’t know these things worked!” he shouted.  “I thought they were just a gimmick. Hey, hey,
hey!
”  He had gone through the sun roof in the bus—I know he wouldn’t fit, but it was only a dream—and was hovering above.  His lion paws were dangling through the opening, and I grabbed at them trying to go up with him, but he flicked me off.  “It’s too much weight, babe, back off,” he said, then,   “Look!  I’m way up here!  This is so cool!” And I shouted through the sun roof in the bus, “Am I supposed to be happy for you?  What about me?  What about
me
?”  And he took off into the clear blue sky saying, “You know you’re my favorite girl.  You
know
it!”  And I shouted after him, “But what does that mean?  ‘I’m your favorite girl.’  What does that
mean
exactly if I can’t be with you?”  And I felt really hot and sweaty and I was trying to get out of the bus but the door was jammed and then I woke up.

              I climbed out of Captain Kirby’s sleeping bag.  My neck was sore from the bottle of Clorox I grabbed from the shelf and stuck under my head in my sleep to use as a pillow, and I was massaging it to get the kinks out, when I froze at the sound of voices outside the closet.  I peeked out.  Mr. Kulick and his daughter, Krista, were dressing one of the cadavers.   

                  Krista Kulick went to my school.  She was in my class and I saw her all the time, although I never said anything to her except “Ewww, what are all those black things” when both of our lab partners didn’t show up in biology class and we had to dissect an extremely fertile female frog together.  She was pretty enough and smart enough and she had a date to the prom (the prom!) with a regular boy who was going off to college in Iowa or somewhere even flatter and maybe she would follow him there in two years—who knew? who cared?—and I just figured she was one of those boring people who would reminisce about our frog experience as a highlight of her pathetic life at class reunions, which I would definitely not attend because I would be famous and reunions—except maybe rock band reunions—are not cool.

                    Krista had snapped on a pair of latex gloves and pulled some underwear up on the old guy Mrs. Kirby was working on when I came in.  She was yammering away to her father and didn’t even look at the old guy’s junk, which I thought was kind of interesting, because I was craning my neck like crazy to see it although I probably would’ve puked if I did.

              “See,” Krista said, “Why does she put this flesh colored polish on men?  It doesn’t look natural.  I told her a million times to use clear.”

              Mr. Kulick mumbled something and Krista said, “Well, this isn’t Hollywood.”

              Krista moved quickly, removing shirt and pants from the rolling rack, checking the tag on the suit of clothes to the tag on the man’s wrist, then ripping both of them off and finished dressing him.  Mr. Kulick pulled a pair of what looked like cardboard shoes from a giant box and wiggled them onto his feet.  Krista wheeled a casket next to the gurney and together they picked up the ends of the sheet he was on, Mr. Kulick said, “One, two, three,” and they heaved him into the casket, yanking the sheet out from under him when he landed.  Krista pulled a Bible from a bag that was hanging on the rack, arranged the dead man’s hands around it as if he had just closed the book after reading a particularly inspirational passage—and she said, “See, this is why she has to go, Dad.  That polish looks awful and she’s too stubborn, or something, to change.  I think there’s something seriously wrong with her,” and then all of a sudden the lights dimmed and they were wheeling the casket out of the room through a pair of swinging doors.

              I balled up Captain Kirby’s sleeping bag and shoved it into the corner then I nudged the door of the broom closet open.  The smell of sulfur almost knocked me out.  There were two more cadavers in waiting and the place looked definitely creepy with just the safety lights on.  I told myself the two bodies were just sleeping, like in a hospital or something because if I heard a sound at that point, I would have fainted.

              I pulled out my phone and saw it was four o’clock in the afternoon.   If I left now, I might be able to make it to Sunny Vale by eight o’clock on my bike.  I remembered what Captain Kirby said about a missing persons report and I wondered if Granny O’Reilly had filed one.

              I washed my face and took a drink of water cupping my hands in the sink Mrs. Kirby used, trying not to think of what they washed in there, then I pulled on my backpack, strapped on my Fender and tried the door.  It was locked.  Of course.

              I wanted to call Captain Kirby then remembered she didn’t have a phone and called Tim and even though I was holding the phone first up to the ceiling and then by the barred window, I couldn’t get any reception. 

              I hurried past the cadavers through the swinging doors where I saw Krista and Mr. Kulick move the casket.  Beyond the doors was a tiny room with an elevator.

              “Great!” I cried, then slapped my hand over my mouth and looked around as if someone could actually hear me.  I pushed the elevator button and I listened for what seemed like forever while it made old elevator noises until the door finally opened.  I stepped inside.  It was huge of course because it had to hold caskets.  There was only one button, only one floor it went to.  I pressed it.