Running on Empty (20 page)

His father and Jillian got to the emergency room ten minutes after the ambulance did. Ethan looked up as they burst in, seeing them without seeing them. Shock, he would later learn, had a way of doing that, protecting the brain and the body from things they weren’t ready for.

“I’m Jack Palmer,” he heard—but didn’t hear—his father say when he reached the admitting desk. “My daughter was just brought in. She’s been shot?”

The woman at the desk nodded. “She’s in surgery.”

Ethan saw—but didn’t see—Jillian put a hand to her perfect red mouth. Had she actually stopped to apply lipstick, worried about showing up at an emergency room without makeup?

“How soon will we know something?” Jack demanded.

“They’ve only just started. It could be some time, Mr. Palmer. I’ll let you know the moment I hear anything. In the meantime, you and your family should make yourselves comfortable.” She waved toward the waiting area like a realtor selling floor space.

That’s when his father saw him. “Ethan!” He rushed over. “What the hell happened?”

Behind him, Jillian echoed, “Yes, Ethan, what happened?”

Ethan looked up at them, his face slack. He’d stopped sobbing in the ambulance. Not because he didn’t want people to see him cry. He was all cried out. Now all he felt was a kind of numbness.

“Ethan?” His father’s voice again.

He let the numbness hold him for a moment, let it work its
way through him before he attempted to find the words he needed. “She was protecting me,” he heard himself reply.

And he was wrong. He wasn’t all cried out after all.

“We’ve managed to piece together most of what happened, Mr. Palmer,” said the policeman wearing a name tag with
Constable Leonard Richards
printed on it.

Ethan remembered talking to him earlier. He wasn’t sure when. Sometime between when his father had arrived and now. But he wasn’t sure when
now
was. The clock on the wall said 3:47, but that had to be wrong. He hadn’t been here that long. It wasn’t possible. He remembered the clock in the Echo had read 11:23 as he’d gotten out of the car. Or 12:31. Or maybe it was 13:21. Did older cars use twenty-four-hour clocks? He remembered two 1s, anyway. And a 2 and a 3. And Raye lying on the sidewalk.

The paramedics thought he’d been shot, too, because of the blood. It had been all over him. It was still on him now. Whenever
now
was.

“What do you know?” his father asked the constable.

“You say your daughter left the house right after your son?”

Jack nodded. “Yes, yes, we’ve been all through this.”

“Your son wasn’t aware she’d followed him.”

She
couldn’t
have, Ethan thought. Not all that way on foot without him seeing her. To the cemetery? He’d sat there for hours. Then all the way downtown to Anwar’s Convenience? Surely she hadn’t followed him, hadn’t watched over him all that time, shivering in the December darkness.

“Apparently, your son was mixed up with an offender we’ve had our eye on for some time,” Richards said.

“You know who shot my daughter?”

“Yes, sir. Your son said his cellphone was in the guy’s car. We traced it and picked him up a few minutes ago. They’re taking his statement now. No sign of a gun yet, but they’ll do a residue test on him. I’m sure it’ll be positive.”

Jack nodded. He looked across at Ethan as he asked the policeman his next question. “You said my son was involved with this person. This wasn’t a random act then? A mugging gone wrong?”

“No, sir, we don’t believe it was.”

In the seat to Ethan’s left, Jillian put a hand to her mouth. Not perfect now, though. She must have fallen asleep in her chair at some point because her lipstick was smudged. There was red on the back of one hand.

Ethan looked down and saw that both of his own hands were red. Like he’d dipped them in paint. Someone had given him something to wipe them off, but all he’d managed to do was smear it. Even the skin under his fingernails was red.

“You say you’ve had your eye on this person?” his father asked.

“Yes, sir. He preys on teenagers. Grooms them, you could say.”

“How?”

“Introduces them to gambling, makes it look like a sure thing. Then when they’re in over their heads, when they’re really desperate, he offers them a way out. Uses them to do his dirty work.”

Jack glared at the constable. “You
know
all this? Why is he allowed to continue? How does he get away with it?”

“Intimidation. We haven’t found a kid yet who’s willing to testify against him. And then there’s—” Richards stopped, clearly uncomfortable.

“Then there’s what?”

The constable squared his shoulders. “The families, sir. Lately,
he’s been targeting kids whose parents are well connected, people who’d rather have the whole thing go away if their kids got caught. People who can afford lawyers who make that sort of thing happen.” His last words hung in the air for a moment, almost visible in the waiting area.

“I see,” Jack said finally. “Thank you, constable.”

“You’re welcome, sir.” Richards paused. “If you don’t mind me saying, sir …”

“Yes?”

“I see a lot go wrong in my line of work.”

“So do I.”

Richards nodded. “Of course. I’m sure you do. It’s just that with young people there’s often so many other things involved, so much below the surface. There’s seldom just black and white, if you know what I mean.”

Ethan saw that his hands weren’t really red after all. They had been at one time, but they were brown now. The blood had long since dried.
Paint’s got the same colour-changing pigments in it that they use in American money
. So much blood. He wondered if it would ever come off.

“Thank you, constable,” Jack said again. He watched Richards leave, then got up and crossed the space that separated him and his son. Kneeling down, he put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “There’ll be time later to sort all this out,” he said.

Ethan looked at his father’s hand. It was warm, even through the thick jacket he still wore. A nurse had asked him earlier if he’d wanted to take his jacket off, but Ethan had shaken his head, hugged his arms about him. It had soaked up so much blood he was afraid to remove it. They’d probably put it in one of those medical waste bags and throw it away. This was Raye’s blood. He was taking care of it for her. Just like she’d been taking care of him.

He began to sob again.

“You must have more information now,” said Jack standing at the nurse’s desk. His voice had changed. Ethan had never heard him plead before.

The woman at the desk had just returned. She kept her voice low, and Ethan wondered why. It was 4:51 and they were the only people in the waiting area. Earlier, a reporter had arrived, but a man in a security uniform asked him to leave. The reporter had been angry, had complained loudly about his rights, but the security guard hadn’t budged. Shortly after that, paramedics had wheeled in an elderly woman suffering from chest pains and took her straight to a room, leaving Ethan, his father, and Jillian alone again.

Ethan had wondered what that woman’s room might look like. Those thoughts had helped keep him from thinking of the room that Raye was in now, a sterile operating theatre gleaming with stainless steel, the only colour the white of the sheets and the walls. Like their Brilliant Cream living room. He couldn’t stand to think of her there, small and frail on that table in the middle of something like January.

He was kidding himself, of course. There was another colour besides white in that room. Lots of it.

The woman at the desk had earlier reported that the doctors were having trouble stabilizing Raye. She’d lost far too much blood. And the bullet had ricocheted inside her belly, scrambling her guts. That’s not how she’d put it, of course, but the outcome was the same. Hearing that, Ethan had wondered if he’d helped tear Raye’s insides even more when he’d run with her in his arms instead of trying to stop the bleeding on the sidewalk like his Red Cross course had taught him to. That was something else he didn’t want to think about.
Couldn’t
think about.

His father returned to the waiting area now, sat heavily in
his chair. “It’s not good,” he said. “They’ve been working on her this whole time.” He put his hands on his knees, stared at them hard. “They fix one thing and then find there’s something else.”

Ethan saw his father was gripping his knees with his hands, his knuckles white against his slacks like he was holding on. Or trying to. “I guess there’s always something else,” Jack added, and then his voice broke and he was crying.

It was as though someone had thrown cold water on Ethan, every fibre of his body and his brain clamouring for his father to stop. Jillian put one hand on the back of Jack’s neck, the other on his shoulder, rubbing it in small circular motions.

Filthy had gently caressed Shawna’s belly in a similar way. Such a simple act, but it had reminded Ethan of something then. Now he knew what it was. It was perhaps his earliest memory, an afternoon when he was not yet four. He’d been on the swing in the yard of their Herring Cove home, his father pushing him while he’d giggled “Higher! Higher!” His mother had come to the back door, and he’d waved to her as she stood watching them for a moment then called for them to come eat. She’d been away somewhere that afternoon and had returned with fried chicken, Ethan’s favourite, and he’d hurried inside and climbed into his chair at the table. As he watched his father cut up some of the savoury white meat for him, his mother had told them about her day. Ethan wasn’t listening—his mouth was watering and he had eyes only for the chicken—but after passing Ethan the plate, his father got up and stood beside her, placed his big hand on her belly, stroked it in small, slow circles. His own hands already covered in chicken grease, Ethan had turned to them, wondering why they weren’t eating. But he’d seen his father’s hand on his mother’s belly and somehow knew that something special was going to happen. And nearly eight months later, it did.

Seeing that moment in his mind now, Ethan wondered what others he’d forgotten. And then they swam into memory. His
father’s strong hands gripping Ethan’s as he wobbled on skates. His father running beside him as he pedalled without training wheels for the first time. His father showing him how to swing the bat, add double-digit numbers, hold the kite string, swim.

His father was right.
There’s always something else
. Ethan reached across and put his hand on his father’s arm, squeezed it.

Jack Palmer looked up. His voice like gravel, he said the last thing Ethan expected to hear. “Please forgive me.”

“Your grandmother was a drunk, Ethan,” said Jack, his voice still husky although he’d managed to stop crying. “Even before Dad died, I’d find bottles in the washing machine. It was one of those old wringer models with rollers that squeezed the water out of the clothes before you hung them on the line. Dad had found it in a dump and got it working again. You’ve probably never seen one. My life was like those rollers, trying to squeeze out anything that might keep us going for one more day.”

He’d been talking for a while now, sharing with Ethan the woman behind the myth he’d manufactured while both of them tried not to look at the clock on the wall, its second hand sweeping around and around.

“I was the oldest. It wasn’t easy making people think everything was fine. She’d be in bed passed out half the time. When people from social services would come around, I’d tell them how she’d been up all night washing clothes she’d taken in from neighbours. But she never did that.
I
was the one who went around the village asking people if they’d like their laundry done.
Begged
them. The few who gave me theirs never knew that I was the one who washed it, hung it out to dry, folded it. They just knew I picked it up dirty and returned it clean. But the laundry helped make people think my mother was functioning like a regular person.”

He paused, took a long breath before continuing. “I had my hands full making sure the house was clean and my brother and sister were fed. If I wasn’t home when she got the welfare cheque, she’d blow it on liquor, so I skipped school on the days the mailman delivered it. If she was out cold, I’d forge her signature and hike to Windsor and spend it all on groceries.” He shook his head. “It took me a while to learn how to put some aside for the power bill, clothes, everything else.”

There were moments as Ethan listened that he thought his father was making it all up, giving himself something to say and Ethan something to listen to so they’d keep from going over to that nurse’s desk again. But then he’d realize that the thing his father had made up was hanging above the fireplace in their living room.

“Of course, even if she didn’t spend it on booze, the welfare cheque was never enough. I did other jobs. Weeded gardens, chopped firewood, raked leaves, shovelled snow, anything that would bring in a few bucks. I’d hide the cash in a coffee can under the woodpile, dip into it when we needed it.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I dreaded holidays that other kids looked forward to, like Christmas. I’d try my best to save a few dollars so I could put something for Carol and Paul under the tree.” He grunted softly. “Tree! More like a bush. If it grew in a ditch, I figured it was fair game.”

His father stopped talking then, seemed to be picturing in his head bushes masquerading as Christmas trees. Or empty cupboards or a wringer washer with liquor bottles hidden inside. Ethan couldn’t stand the silence, needed to fill up the emergency-room waiting area with words that weren’t about Raye. “What did you do when you didn’t have enough money?” he asked.

His father looked down. “It’s not what
I
did,” he said, his voice thick with disgust. “She’d walk into town and bring some
guy home. Tell Carol and Paul and me to make ourselves scarce, which was easier if the weather was good. Harder when it was storming and you lived in a two-room shack. Those times, I’d get Carol and Paul to pretend we were camping and I’d string up a sheet like a tent. I’d get them under it, tell them ghost stories with lots of noises so they wouldn’t hear what was happening on the other side of the wall.”