The From-Aways (22 page)

“Play anything,” I say. “I’ll sing. Just play and I’ll make it up as I go along.”

L
ATER
, I
AM
full of whiskey and my voice is hoarse from singing, loudly and badly. Quinn sets up the couch for me to sleep on. I wash my face and take my jeans and bra off and get under the blanket. Quinn pops out of the bathroom. She has toothpaste on her red T-shirt.

“You need anything?” she says.

“No,” I say. But there is something. I’m not sure whether I really want to hear it, but I have to. I say, “Quinn, what was it Rosie and Henry said to each other? That got everyone so mad, just before you came running out of the woods?”

“Nothing,” Quinn says, rubbing her eyes, deflecting. “People were just all riled up.”

I am good and drunk and I don’t like being protected from information. I have had quite enough of this from Henry already. I stand up on the couch. I am wobbly on the cushions and the frame groans beneath me. I say, “Don’t you dare lie to me, Quinn Winters!”

“For Christ sake, get down, Leah,” Quinn says. I sit down and fold all my limbs up appropriately. Quinn leans back against the stove and crosses her arms. “She said his mother would be ashamed if she could see what he was doing.”

“And what was it he said back?”

Quinn sighs. “He said trash like her wouldn’t know the first thing about his mother.”

There is too much, too awful, to know about a person.

“Rosie might have been right, you know,” I say. “About June. Henry’s mother.”

“Yeah,” Quinn says. “But you just don’t say a thing like that to a person.” She springs up off the stove and palms my head. “Good night, Leah.”

After she closes the door I pull up the covers and try to sleep but my brain is going around and around. I think about the deer fencing that has already begun circling the Dorians’ estate. I think that my own yard will be next. And then the house. And around the bed, and around my body and my heart until everything is deer-fenced and I will be safe and unable to move at all.

I take out my notebook and I write down everything I saw or heard, remembered or pieced together today. I write clearly, not in shorthand. I leave the notebook on the floor for Quinn to find, because at least I know I took down enough material for a good article in those pages.

The light under Quinn and Rosie’s door goes out and it is quiet. I get dressed.

I trip down Quinn’s stairs and then I am walking away from the Stationhouse, away from the tracks. I walk past the cemetery, which is not quite as spooky at night as you might think. A million peeping insects and frogs are all talking at once. And then there is that chortle and wail. That stupid loon call you cannot escape around here. I hear first the four-note chortle, like an insane nervous laugh, and then the long blow of birdsadness that follows. That’s the sound that gets me. Like someone calling hello in the night.
Hello. Hello. Hello.
Like mourning so terrible it sounds maudlin.

I give a chortle. I let out a wail. I honk again and again until I am short on breath. Leah Loon.

26

Quinn

I
n the morning Leah’s gone and she’s forgotten her notebook. She’s got problems, I know that, but I’m annoyed she couldn’t wait a damn minute so we could go to work together. I’d wanted to ask about her and Henry. I’d have done it politely:
Hey, how did it all go down the tubes and could you please provide me with a list of warning signs?
I grab Leah’s notebook and go.

At the
Star,
Charley is all kinds of worked up. I can tell because she’s chain-smoking in the main office, which she knows I hate.

“It smells like a fucking Winston-Salem in here, Charley, what’s going on?”

“Nice of you to show up, Winters. It’s almost ten and we have shit to do today.” It’s going to be a bad day; you can tell with a boss like Charley. One thing out of her mouth in the morning and that’s all the weather report you need.

“Leah’s not here?” I say.

“No, she’s not, and when I called my brother he informed me she was staying the night at your place.” Charley looks at her cigarette to see how much is left. It disappoints her. “We’ve got to get this story in,
now
.”

“She was gone when I woke up,” I say. Where could she have gone if not back to Henry’s? “Charley, are we really going to run this? I don’t think you’re going to like this story very much.”

“I know the gist already. I went to the bar last night,” Charley says. “But give me your notes.”

I think about it, then I hand over Leah’s notebook. Charley sits down on my desk, her ass in a pile of papers. Her hair is all bed-rumpled and it looks good on her. Good old rumpled Charley, sexy as a fishwife.

Charley smashes her cigarette out in a
SLOOP
RACE
1999! mug. Then she rubs her hands all over her face. “These are good, Winters. They’re good notes.”

“Thanks,” I say. I consider taking the credit. “But they’re Leah’s. I sort of froze up out there.” I can’t take credit for Leah’s work when she’s not even here to elbow me for it. Leah! Gone where?

“They’re good, they’re good,” Charley repeats. “I was afraid they’d be good.”

“What do you want me to do with them, Charley?” I say, hoping she gets what I’m saying—that I’m offering her an out. Would Woodward ever do this? Offer to suppress information to protect a party? No, I don’t think he would. But I’m the reason we’re in position to cover this story in the first place, and Henry is Charley’s brother, and this can’t be easy.

She shakes her head. “No, write it up, Winters. Take your good notes and write up the story.” She’s shaking the notebook in her hand like a developing photo. She looks for another cigarette, spots her pack across the room, and slumps.

And I love Charley for this. Unwavering, is fucking Charley. “If we run this,” I say, “they’re gonna show up to your brother’s house with pitchforks and torches.”

Charley doesn’t say anything. Just keeps shaking Leah’s notes. “They’re good notes,” she says again. “Did Hank really say that? Henry? Did he really say what she says he did?”

“Yeah,” I say. “He did.”

She puts her finger on a spot in the journal. “I assume your story will elide the part where Leah tried to join the line?”

“That is correct,” I say.

W
E
’
RE ALL SITTING
around at Carter’s house, on the lawn. The men are in wooden Adirondacks and a few busted armchairs hauled from under the deck. I sit cross-legged on the ground. Carter does the same, across the circle. Spring is toying with us. It’s almost sixty-five degrees.

“So you all know we got fined,” Carter starts.

People groan. “Fucking bullshit,” someone says.

“We have the right to demonstrate,” Billy Deep says.

Carter says, “They say we were trespassing on private property. And we were.” He glances around the circle. “All of you have got to realize that there are going to be real consequences to our actions here. If there weren’t, it would mean we weren’t doing the right sort of things.”

Rosie’s ready to bust a seam she’s so excited. Real is just how she wants it.

Carter pulls a folded paper from his pocket. “This is our list of fines,” he says, and reads from the list: “ ‘Carter Marks, two hundred dollars. Jethro Newkirk, two hundred dollars . . .’ ”

“Good luck to them getting that out of me,” Jethro says. Jethro received a large check from the Dorians to cover the damage to his truck, but refused to cash it. He made a big show of it at the Uncle the other night, standing on his stool and burning the check with a lighter while a bunch of other guys clapped and yelled.

“ ‘Sara Riley, two hundred dollars. Billy and Joseph Deep, two hundred dollars each.’ ”

“Billy’s a minor,” Joseph says. “Do they really have the right to fine him?”

“It won’t go on any record,” Carter says, “but you get fined as his guardian.” Billy looks green in the face.

The list goes on and on. White, Keneally, Foehr, Robinson, Slane, Kraut, Gandossy, Birch, Palmer, Davis, Dickinson, Warner, Burritt, Sabia, Corti, Kenefick, Klufas, Sokolowski. The whole lot of those guys who were at the tracks. As their names are read off the guys from the docks sit farther forward, leaning over their hands.

“ ‘Cliff Frame, two hundred dollars. Rosalind Salem, two hundred dollars.’ ”

Everyone but me owes the stinking town. You can feel the air going out of people. Even Rosie is looking weary.

“And Leah Lynch,” Carter says. He looks around but of course Leah’s not there. Everyone is looking at their feet, kicking at the baby grass shoots. Carter slowly puts the list back in his pocket. “Here’s the thing,” he says. “You are not paying these fines.”

Everyone looks up.

“Wait a second, Carter,” Joseph says. “I’m sorry but I can’t just not pay it. If I get on bad standing with the town, I’ll have no chance of renewing my permits next year.”

Carter waves his hand. “The fines will get paid,” he says. “But we’re not going to pay them. We’ll raise the money.”

“How in the hell are we gonna raise that much money?” Jethro says.

Carter rubs his neck. He looks embarrassed. “Well,” he says, “I was thinking we’d have a show. A benefit concert.”

“Yes!” Rosie says.

All the guys are grinning now and nodding.

“Who’s playing?” asks Billy, slow as always. And everyone starts laughing.

“That guy right there,” Joseph says, pointing at Carter. “I’d bet you Mr. Marks knows a thing or two about how to put on a show.”

Billy turns red and everyone claps him on the back and then they all start clapping Carter on the back. Carter looks sheepish and pleased.

Jethro shakes his head. “A concert’s not going to fix anything,” he says. “We have to do something else. So our fines get paid. That’s not going to stop them from bulldozing the park. It’s not going to stop the town from letting a dozen more houses like that go up till there isn’t a scrap of waterfront left that isn’t some asshole’s backyard.”

The guys all look at Carter. He lays a hand on Jethro’s shoulder and says, “One step at a time, huh, Jethro?”

Everyone goes back to talking, speculating about the concert. To be honest, I’ve always wanted to see Carter play a show, ever since I was little. Even when I was hating him, I searched for footage of his gigs. I bought every live recording. I lay on the floor of my bedroom with the door locked, listening to live albums with my eyes closed, pretending I was there, imagining all the details and clapping along when the audience did.
What are you up to in there?
Marta would ask through the door.
Nothing,
I would say.
Definitely nothing.

Marta says they met in a restaurant. She was there with some girls she knew from art school, pottery class. Carter came over and asked her out and she said she thought he was good-looking but seemed down on his luck. Raggedy, and definitely not a student.
He looked like trouble,
she said. But she said yes because Marta went after trouble always.

He came to pick her up at the dorms that Friday, showed up in denim. She and her roommates watched him from their window as he strode across the parking lot. He was carrying a melon-sized rock in his hand. Marta went down to meet him. He was standing there in the doorway, hefting the rock between his hands.
So where are we going?
she said. He said,
The parking lot
.
I got this for you
.

Marta said it was one heavy rock.
It’s a geode,
he said.
It’s got crystals inside.
Marta carried the rock in both hands and followed him. He got a hammer from the trunk of a car she was not impressed by.
Put it down right there,
he said
. Now take this and hit it right where there’s that white spot.
Marta looked at the hammer he was holding.
What color are the crystals inside?
she said. And Carter said he didn’t know, there was no way of knowing until you opened it. They could be silvery or brown or blue or purple. She pointed to his hammer.
You swing it,
she said
. And I sure hope those crystals aren’t mud brown.

Marta stood there with her arms crossed as Carter crouched down. He took a big round-armed swing at the rock. He swung the hammer three times before it cracked open in two uneven halves on the asphalt. Inside, the walls of the geode were a deep amethyst purple.
Well, that is nice,
Marta said. She brushed some of the stone dust from his hair and let him take her out to a bar in a part of town she would never have gone to with anyone else.

When he brought her home later they paused in the parking lot, thinking about kissing. They heard giggling.
Geode man!
her roommates called from the window, swooning and giggling.
Come back and bring
me
a rock, geode man!

That was the story. Sometimes I wonder, if that geode had been mud brown inside whether I would have made it into this world at all.

27