Sticks and Stones (12 page)

Jack stared at the muddy heap, earth rounded and clumped in chunks because of how far they’d dug, from the rain and the roots that had curled strong and deep. “He made us safe,” he whispered. “He made me solid.”

Sandra swallowed fast, held her breath because it would sob out if she didn’t, and tried to remember how Lem had smelled, of oil and leather and a little like despair, how he’d always made her feel safe, big hand on her head, on her chin, because she should never look down –
don’t you dare be ashamed
– how he could make them straighten their spines with a look and shut up with a word …
feel proud
. She wanted to say that, say everything he had meant to her –
safety
and love and comfort and hope and pride and family
– but she didn’t know how. He was gone. He was
gone
and everything felt razor thin.

“I wish he could’ve been my dad,” she whispered, and then she was crying, huge gasping sobs, and didn’t even know she was on the ground until Danny’s arms were around her, and then Jack’s, and they all sat in a heap, clutching at each other, until her nose was so stuffed she couldn’t talk and her eyes were too red to see.

It’s not
fair
, she wanted to say, and maybe she did, because Danny kept telling her
shhh shhh
, voice torn all to pieces.

“He was,” Jack kept saying, and his voice was no better. “He was. He was your dad. He was yours, too.”

For real, she wanted to say. She wanted it to have been real. But paper had never meant anything to the Sloans, and it hadn’t mattered to Lem that he wasn’t her real guardian because he’d played the part since she’d first met them at thirteen, and, maybe…

“He was,” Jack said again.

And then the tears dried up and they got up off the ground and said goodbye for the very last time.

Daniel crouched low, didn’t touch the mound of dirt, but lowered his head, spoke soft.

Jack nodded, nodded again, and couldn’t speak.

Sandra just prayed, silent and deep, fingers clenched so hard that they turned white and numb.

She promised,
I will protect them
. She hoped he heard.
I will always protect them
.
I
won’t fail again.

Then they turned around and walked back to the barn. Her heart hurt every step of the way.

Chapter Twelve

They stripped
the truck for parts and left the rest to rust inside the thick line of trees when they drove away. It was hard to pack all the truck’s belongings into the car, and those that they couldn’t fit were buried in a pit just inside the trees, the boys shifting old branches and leaves to make the displaced soil less noticeable.

Even after, covered in enough mud to fill another grave, they sat around the barn, silence pressing down. Daniel wanted to wait for night, when the dark could help conceal their car plates for a little while longer, make it a few towns over and steal another, make it a little further, then ditch the car altogether. They couldn’t go home, not that the place they’d been living could be called much of a home. They’d spent more time outside of the rental than in. Sandra’s eyes wouldn’t stop aching, and she spent her time carefully ignoring the area where the tarp had been, cleaning her hands with a long strip of flannel she’d found stuffed under the car’s front seat. Her knees had gotten scraped at some point. There was a bruise on her arm, and she kept pressing at it, watching the skin turn white, then slowly deepen back to angry purple and green.

Jack had his eyes closed, pretend-asleep, like he feared they would try talking to him. Both boys had spare work clothes in the trunk, stained with grease and oil, and Sandra closed her eyes as they changed. They kept themselves turned to the walls, as though they were sparing her some delicate sensibility.

Sandra made do with dusting the dirt from her jeans and peeling off her shirt, wrapping herself up in Daniel’s jacket

When the reddening sky cast bloody light through the cracks in the slates of the barn, Jack peeled back the doors and they climbed into the car.

The radio filled the silence.

In the back seat, exhausted and filthy, Sandra let the turn of the wheels lull her to that moment just before sleep, body heavy and eyes closed. She hoped the whole day would be a long, horrible dream when she opened them. Jack turned his body into the line of the door and stared intently out the window as Daniel drove and drove, mindless of the hours as the gray asphalt was eaten beneath them. When he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore, he pulled over and switched places with Jack. Sandra sat up at the sound of the door, but they pulled back onto the highway, far-away fairy lights of a city glittering on the horizon. Sandra sunk down, head stuck between the door and the padded seat backing. She watched Danny’s face tip down in the front seat, brown hair curling around the one ear she could see. Time was non-linear, and whenever Sandra opened her eyes, everything had changed. Jack was driving. The music was off. Daniel was awake. The music was on, soft and slow. Daniel was asleep. Jack was crying. Daniel was driving again. The music was off and the sky was turning orange, eastern light falling over the world, joining the headlights in cutting through the tar-black shadows.

The highway stretched endlessly.

Sandra considered offering to drive, but her hands shook inside the jacket where they were drawn in, cold against her chest, and she lowered her head back down, forehead now pressed to the cool glass of the window and watching fields turn golden-bright. The horizon lights winked out and the clouds soared orange across the sky.

Lem felt worlds away.

Jack, sleeping in the front seat, came awake with a startling, wounded sound that Danny pretended not to hear, teeth clamped tight and jaw set against the rising sun shining into his eyes. He was falling asleep again, but he didn’t stop until they needed gas, and then he made Jack take all the money that they could out of Lem’s account at the ATM. Jack peeled a hole in the fabric of the car down near the middle of his feet and stuffed the money inside, an extra three hundred stashed inside their wallets and pockets. Coffee and donuts, then they were back on the road, leaving someone’s dust-covered car behind them with the wrong plates.

Jack drove well into the day. Sandra switched spots with Danny and he stretched out along the backseat, still too tall to lay his head flat and having to keep one leg bent, the other hanging over the side. He lay with his hands covering his eyes and Sandra couldn’t tell if he was asleep or just wishing for it. Jack kept the radio on low and Sandra spent some time going through the glove box and trying to separate the good from the trash, but she couldn’t concentrate and ended up with her knees pulled up on the seat, head tilted down.

Jack’s hand stayed heavy on her neck.

~

Sandra sat in the car while Danny walked to the used car lot. Jack disappeared next door to get food at the tiny convenience store labeled
Bob’s Mart
. Danny had pulled on one of Jack’s sweaters, trying to look a little less like himself. It was small on him and made him look younger.

Sandra lost sight of him across the street and nodded off to sleep, managing ten minutes before jerking awake and slamming her head against the side window, heart jackhammering inside her chest.
Bang-bang
. Lem falling. No sleeping then. She curled up against herself, breathed in the smell of Danny and the mud and blood still on her skin and watched Jack amble back toward the car with two heavy plastic bags.

The used car ended up smelling a little odd; not bad. But musty, like it had been shut up for years, maybe since it had been made. The engine was alright and with a little work Danny figured it would be fine.

Jack drove their old car fifteen blocks away to the seedier part of town where they loaded everything up, lost the stolen plates and finally drove away. It hurt, a little, leaving it there, something that Lem had helped build with his hands.

The sky was dark again by the time they stopped, world gray and stretched thin in the evening air. The motel sign flickered as they pulled in, neon bulbs buzzing and popping. Sandra clutched her bag of newly bought clothing, cheap blue jeans, t-shirts, and pajama pants, and hunched down with them in the front seat while Danny went to check-in.

The number four on their door was crooked and the heavy curtains over the window were lime green and ugly as sin. The dented wooden door squeaked open to reveal a lackluster motel room.

Jack flopped down on the nearest bed, but moved when Danny shoved him to the other with a frown and Sandra headed for the bathroom, keeping her eyes slitted to block out most of the too-bright color of the wallpaper and red-orange carpeting until the door was safely closed, worn white tiles under her stockinged feet. The shower was missing grout, but there was plenty of hot water. A gritty swirl disappeared down the drain. The pressure left Sandra’s skin red and angry and she stared into the chipped mirror when she was done, dripping all over the floor and looking for something she wasn’t sure she could find.

She always expected to look different. Outsides to match her insides.

The steam made her a foggy, ghost image, and, heaving a sigh, she patted her hair dry with the sole towel. The new clothes scratched her skin, new-store smell making her hollow stomach twist.

Sandra felt cold, even in the humid air, battered and full of shadows.

Finally, Sandra opened the bathroom door. Jack still lay on his bed, arm thrown over his face, a curl of grit-black soil by his ear, following the sweat trail of his jaw, boots still on and one leg drawn up on the bed. A fine layer of mud was shedding onto the carpet and Sandra wanted to say something, but didn’t.

Daniel sat on the edge of the other bed. His head wasn’t in his hands, but his chin nearly touched his chest, curled fingers hanging loosely over his thighs. His jeans had gotten ripped sometime during the day. A red line slashed across the glimpse of pale skin. Dust covered his knees. He blinked when she stepped into the room.

“You should eat,” he said, voice scratched and blown to impossible bits.

Sandra shook her head, moved toward Jack’s bed and nudged his shoulder softly until he moved out from the middle so she could climb in.

Jack rolled her into the slot nearest the wall and tucked himself around her, long limbs and hot flesh. The dust on his skin and his shirt tickled her nose, but she didn’t move, only pressed her face in between his shoulder and neck and closed her eyes. Danny settled heavily on his bed and Sandra listened until Jack’s breath evened out and slowed.

Danny’s took a much longer time.

He was gone when she woke. Jack grumbled, rolled out of bed and stepped into the shower.

Danny didn’t come back for exactly three hours and twenty-nine minutes. He returned with new IDs and drivers licenses for him and Jack. Jack didn’t say a word about them, waiting for Daniel to explain, but the tension in the air grew and grew and his jaw got tight.

“Dad had some contacts,” Danny said, but his eyes were too bland, face too empty, and even Sandra knew he was lying.

Jack didn’t even bother looking up.

“Good,” was all he said, turning the new license over in his hands. “Hey, look,” his grin grew wide, “we’re family now – Jack Casey. Does that make us kissing cousins?”

Sandra grimaced and didn’t deign that worthy of a reply.

“I’m betting we don’t have much money left,” Jack said, voice more subdued.

Daniel shrugged, stopped close enough to Sandra that she could feel the heat from his body. Reaching out blindly, she grabbed onto his hand, pulled him down onto the bed and relaxed into the long, lean line of his body against hers. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

“No. We will.” Jack’s jaw went tight and eyes glittering something fierce. Daniel looked unsure but, finally, just nodded.

“Are we okay to stick around?” Sandra asked.

“No,” Daniel breathed.

They left. They drove. She watched the boys get angry.

Sandra dreamed things. Of Lem and Jack and Danny. She dreamed of bullets and fires and people she had never met. They came across police in some towns. She knew the Sloans had never trusted the law, but it was worse now. Danny went out of his way to stay out of trouble. Soon, Jack went out of his way not to. He pushed. He made people angry and found the right buttons until Daniel had to step in, or Sandra had to step in, and they had to get Jack far, far away.

Jack’s attitude became the fire under Daniel’s skin. Another argument blowing up out of proportion and Danny would slam out the door, become quieter than usual, spend his nights at the bars they passed, learning how to hustle and cheat the townsfolk out of their honestly-earned money, cheat them out of their women, too.

He came back to the motels covered in smoke and alcohol and the perfume of other girls.

Sandra didn’t know where Jack went when he disappeared. Sometimes there was blood on his shirt when he returned, new bruises on his knuckles and his cheeks where someone had gotten a lucky hit. After a while, it seemed as though they couldn’t hit Jack at all.

Most nights, they brought money back with them. Sandra didn’t know where it came from or how it was earned. She eventually learned not to ask; it was easier to ignore the mysteriously appearing money than face the long silences caused by her questions.

Whatever she did, Sandra couldn’t make the boys stay inside. She learned how motels sounded at twelve o’clock at night when she was the only one in the room, diluted sounds of fake passion crawling through the thin walls. She learned that the silence Jack had given before was nothing like the absolute, sullen silence he brought to a room now. She learned Jack didn’t want to kiss her anymore.

And Danny never looked.

Sometimes she felt invisible, and then Sandra would head into the bathroom and watch herself in the mirror just to make sure she was still there. After a while, the boys would come back, crawl into bed beside her – sometimes Jack and sometimes Danny – making her shoulders hitch as a cold nose shoved into her neck, skin smelling of whiskey and beer and perfume, wondering if the women had been better than her. Probably. Of course they were. The women they found had more experience. Far more than her paltry three times.

She tried not to be jealous. It wasn’t easy.

The towns they drove through were all the same. There were the inevitable differences, of course. Some had more than one traffic light, some consisted only of a Main Street, others had a population of five thousand. There was this restaurant instead of that one, this haunted factory instead of the haunted house at the edge of town, a tiny grocery store instead of the widely known all-night convenience store chain.

Once they settled somewhere, a couple weeks or a few months at a time, Sandra would escape the silent, heavy rooms by walking into civilization.

Right now they were in an abandoned house close to the edge of town, the nearby population big enough that they could slip into daily life and go unnoticed. The electricity didn’t work, but the weather was warm and it wasn’t so bad, even if they had to use the money the boys brought home to buy jugs of water and sponge off in the cracked porcelain tub upstairs on the second floor. The wood sagged in places, soft pieces under their feet, and Sandra treaded carefully. She was sure the old boards would collapse and spill her down to the first floor, then all the way into the basement she never visited where the walls were too dark and shadowed and familiar.

Sometimes, Sandra stared out from the windows in the early hours of the morning, wondering which town’s darlings kept her boys company. She’d wander the rooms and imagine the lives that had come before. She’d listen to the boards of the old house creak, imaging she could hear voices within the moans of the house, the laughter of children, the passion of a man and woman.

Sometimes there were only rats in the walls.

Sandra headed outside where she could at least pretend it was the wind she heard. The grass tickled her toes, the mud making her feet dark as insects hummed, weeds catching her ankles and toes.

The house’s porch had fallen off years ago and Sandra found a place to sit against the siding of the house, back against the rotting wood and knees folded close to her chest. The moon was small, casting slivers of light across the neglected yard.

She watched the car pull into the overgrown driveway.