The Twelve-Fingered Boy (6 page)

At ten or so, Moms passed out. I took the last cigarette from her fingers and stubbed it in an overflowing ashtray. Me and little dude hung then, watching Cartoon Network and talking about what the next school year would bring. Girls. Movies. Superheroes.

“Hey, Vig.” He stared at the television, where a wolf and a pig smacked each other with hammers and put lit sticks of dynamite into each other's pants.

“Vig, buddy. Bedtime.”

“Momma?”

“Sleeping. Come on. Let's get you in jammies.”

Vig stared at the television as if I didn't even exist. I stood in front of him, and he tilted his body sideways so he could still see the flickering, blue-white pictures.

When I turned off the TV he cried, mad as the dickens, and turned his face to the wall and stuck his fingers in his mouth. I try to keep his nasty paws out of the maw, but when he's upset … well, there's no arguing with the little dude when he's tired.

He gave a soft little chuffing snore. I picked him up, carried him past snoring Moms, back to the bathroom, and put him on the pot so he wouldn't wet the bed. I don't think he even woke up on the pisser. He opened his eyes, smacked his lips just a bit, and let the yellow flow. It sounded loud in the stillness of the trailer.

Once he was down, I stepped outside and walked down to Coco's trailer. The light was on in her room, and her mom and dad had the television blaring at the trailer's other end. For folks who lived in Holly Pines Trailer Park, the Greens were well-off. Two newish cars and a doublewide without rats or cockroaches or holes in the linoleum where you could see the ground. Maybe that was just our trailer. I scratched on Coco's window.

I saw her shadow move behind the curtains, and she came over and raised the window.

“Shreve, what're you doing out this late?”

I shrugged. “Just got the kids to bed.”

She gave a pained smile. “She bad tonight?”

“No worse than usual. Can I climb in?”

She paused and then shook her head. “I want you to, but … my dad would be furious if he caught you in here.”

“It's been so long since we've hung out.”

Her resolve cracked a little then. I kissed her and she kissed me back, over the windowsill, her soft lips meeting mine without reservation. But I felt other things in the kiss: nervousness, desire, fear, love. Maybe love. I don't know. It's amazing to me how you can know someone since you were a kid and love them with all your heart, and still not know if they love you back. Or even what they're thinking.

When we broke off, she said, “I'm sorry, Shreve. You can't come in. But Dad's going out of town next week on a contract job. Maybe then.”

“Okay. I understand.”

She ignored that, the self-pity. “How's Vigor?” She always called him by his full name. She's helped me put him to bed a hundred times if she's done it once.

“Mad when I turned off the TV. But he settled down quick.”

“I miss him. Give him a kiss for me.”

I smiled. “Okay. Where is it?”

“Where's what?”

“The kiss.”

She laughed softly. Then she leaned forward again, giving me a good one across the chops. I smelled her hair. She always smelled like fruit and perfume, but not sticky or too sweet. Powdery and light and clean.

As we kissed my mind flew away, out of my head and into the stars. Sometimes I imagined us married, with Vig as our son. I imagined us living happily in a big city, far away, where I worked in an office and she taught school and at night we ate dinner in a big kitchen, all three of us, laughing.

Off across the park, a gunshot sounded, someone cursed, and dogs began to bark. And for that instant I was furious—at my mother for being a drunk, at the world for the suck of gravity, at Coco's father for keeping her from me. She pulled back, and all those emotions screwed themselves tight in a knot in my stomach and I did my best to smile at her again.

“Coco, I—”

“Sssh.” She touched a finger to my lips. “I know. It's a monster of a world. It'll get better soon, Shreve. I know it will.”

She kissed me again, let the curtain fall, and closed the window.

I walked back to my trailer and sat on the steps. The stars shone hard and bright overhead, indifferent to me.

Our trailer stood at the edge of the big piney woods— miles of needle-matted ground until you reached the old Rock Island Line tracks and then, a mile beyond that, the interstate. But behind me the glow of strip malls and pizza joints and gas stations and bowling alleys lit the sky and gave the edges of my vision a white halogen tint as I looked into the dark needles and trunks. I had a lighter in my pocket, for sparking Moms's smokes, and I took it out and flicked it, sending small tracers shooting away from my hands.

They say there are bear out there. I've seen raccoon, squirrel, and rabbits, possum (smeared across the highway), and deer. The numb-nuts in the trailer park are loaded for them all, with spotlights on trucks, gun racks in cabs, a rifle quick to hand in each trailer. At night you can always hear the crackle of gunfire, like popcorn, common and steady.

Sometimes I imaged burning it all down. All of it—the malls, the trailer park, the piney wood, everything. The fire would rise up to the heavens, and the smoke would choke out everything I know, blanket the world in white.

But there's the little dude to consider. Vig. Ferrous Vigor Cannon. Why'd she have to name him that?

A big truck rumbled through the trailer park, and I knew who it was without seeing—fat Billy Cather, all double chins and chubby tires and jacked-up suspension and deer lights. The truck sounded like a freight train—or a tornado; take your pick in a trailer park—and lit up the night like a traveling circus. Cather pulled in two trailers down, and once he cut the engine I could hear the sounds of the radio—blaring electric guitars, heavy bass, and drums.

Cather stayed in there a long while, drinking beer, listening to the music.

There was a time when he was friendly with Moms and came by regularly. They'd drink and smoke, get loud and listen to her tape deck. He'd bring meat and grill out on the cement-block patio, and he'd tousle my hair and call me kiddo and hide his belches behind his hands. But one night they argued, I don't know about what, and then he stopped coming around. Which was fine with me.

When Cather finally got out of his truck, he swayed and staggered to his trailer door.

Late at night, in the park, when the drone of cars has fallen away, you can hear when someone coughs or goes to the bathroom, the trailer walls are so thin. I listened as Cather opened his fridge, farted like he was auditioning for first trumpet in a big band, popped a beer, stumbled back toward his bedroom, and turned on the TV.

I listened to the sounds of the park, the slamming of screen doors, televisions being switched off, the barking dogs quieting, settling down for the night. The cicadas whirred, their night chirrups rising and falling like strange waves washing a foreign shore. I watched the indifferent stars and followed a cloud bank moving glacially across the sky before I stood and walked slowly over to Cather's trailer and truck. His TV was loud, but as I approached the sound of his snores cut through the commercials hocking laundry detergent with scrubbing agents and whitening power.

I slowly opened the truck door and nearly ran when it pinged twice. Inside, beer cans littered the floorboard. I took all the change from the console, a flashlight, and some of the single dollar bills curled into a wad in the drink holder. There was a matte-black pistol, but I left that sitting there with the country music CDs. I was backing out of the cab when I saw the keys in the ignition.

I leaned back, out of the truck, to listen for Cather's snores. There weren't any. But the TV still blared, and I doubted anyone could hear me. The fatty probably shifted in his sleep and closed his mouth.

I stood there in the dark for a few long moments, thinking about the keys and the truck and my mom and Vig back in our trailer and how I'd never be able to leave until Vig was eighteen or Moms was dead, drowned in alcohol. And those keys said things to me that went beyond speech or even thought. Like maybe they were a jailer's keys, and all I had to do was turn them and change my life. Like there was nothing for it but to run.

I slipped behind the wheel and adjusted the seat, all without thinking. I cranked the ignition and the truck roared, vibrating and monstrous and raw. I threw it into gear, backed it out, yanking the wheel right so the truck's ass slewed left. And then I jammed it into drive and stomped the accelerator as far down as my foot would reach. The truck jumped and bucked like a bronco, the tail shifting and floating sideways, throwing the mud and gravel of the little trailer park road. Then finally the wheels caught and I was shooting forward, my heart doing its best to hammer its way out of my chest. And then the windshield went opaque with cracks, a million little facets, and I heard the cracks of what sounded like a rifle. Small pops, far away under the roar of the truck. And then the cab filled with a red fog, and I realized I was free, falling into the black, slipping into darkness, like a bird shot on the half-lit cusp where day meets night.

I looked down and saw the blood pumping from my arm, drenching my shirt and pants, making a crimson mess all over the cab. All I thought was that Cather would kill me if he caught me.

The truck slewed to the right. Now that I had trouble controlling it with my right hand, the steering wheel had a life of its own.

Then there were more pops, one after another. The front windshield collapsed, and the rear one as well, and I found myself in a shower of glass and furious wind. I thought I should crouch down to avoid being shot, but by then my body was as out of control as the truck. The rig slammed into a car, caromed off it, and sideswiped a trailer. And then I was spinning, upside down, on the ceiling of the cab, then on the floor, then slamming into the dashboard. I felt parts of me go crunchy inside, and I thought I might black out. But I never did; I never faded to black. I held on until the truck came to a stop, upside down, the engine still running.

I remember fat Cather's face filling the window, as angry as a devil's until he saw me. Then his face kinda crumpled like an empty beer can.

I'm sure I was quite a sight.

“Dammit. Dammit.”

Mrs. Johnson appeared behind him, and her daughter. The girl had a cell phone to her ear and was speaking quickly to someone.

“It's the Cannon kid. The oldest.” Mrs. Johnson covered her mouth and glared at Cather.

“He's been shot.”

Cather sounded hurt. “I didn't mean to! He stole my truck! How was I supposed to know?”

“You just started shooting?”

Sirens sounded in the distance. Cather made a halfhearted effort to open the door and get me out.

“I'm sorry,” I said. But the words didn't sound right, and Mrs. Johnson shushed me.

“Call again, Louise. He can't talk, and there's blood everywhere.”

On the inside, on Saturdays Booth unlocks the remote controls for the televisions, each set hanging dead and dull behind chicken wire all week, and passes the remotes out to the boys with the least demerits—which, believe it or not, never includes me.

I tested it once and went on hiatus from the candy sales, did all my homework and towed the line, walked the straight and narrow, and didn't get one demerit all week. But when the time came to pass out the remotes, Booth looked at me, snorted, and said, “Shreve, I can't give this to you. If I did, you'll have bilked these kids out of their money before noon.”

Idiot. I bilk them during the week. Saturday is my day off.

This Saturday I roll out of bed for headcount feeling good and looking forward to spending a little money at the commissary—which, on Saturdays, sells hamburgers and hot dogs and ice cream, Nutty Buddys, orange Push-Ups, and Rocket Pops. I plan on having one of each. I guess I'll buy Jack some too, since I'm flush and the little dude looks like he could use it.