Authors: Wyborn Senna
Halfway through the second bin, there was still nothing in the wastebasket he’d brought in from the bathroom, nothing Ramona would dream of throwing away among the dozens of worthless objects Logan had shown her, and she had made a serious dent in the pack of cigarettes he’d brought her. Now she wanted the bottle of gin she kept in the hall closet under a pile of towels, hidden from Jarrod so she could drink it all herself.
Logan went and got a glass and opened the freezer, removing expired frozen foods to find the sole ice tray so he could put some cubes in her drink.
Smoking and drinking on MawMaw’s bed, propped against the pillows and feigning fatigue, Ramona continued to shake her head every time her son pulled something else out and held it up. “No, I need to keep that. I might need it someday.”
Logan looked at the broken blender, incredulous, and returned it to the box.
And so it went, until half the bottle of gin was gone. He dug around in the box for the next item, and when he held it up, he saw that his mother had passed out, her drink spilled on MawMaw’s chenille spread, her cigarette still smoldering in the ashtray. Her mouth was open, and her head was back, making her look like she was in the middle of a silent scream. Logan kicked the box, took the wastebasket back to the bathroom, and went out back, navigating the cluttered yard until he found a clear spot measuring roughly five-feet-square. In the failing light, he watched as the stars blinked on like tiny lights. He’d brought some blankets and a pillow outside with him and set about forging a makeshift fort, using surrounding containers as walls. He had no wish to be anywhere near his mother after all he had tried to do, without any appreciation on her part.
He put his head down and dozed. He dreamt he was in a smoky pit, and his classmates were throwing hot coals at him. It was hard to breathe, and he coughed. Logan awoke with a start and shook off the nightmare. He peered out of his fort and was stunned. His home—his cluttered, awful home—was on fire, and his mother was inside.
Ryan refused to go with his father to show properties unless Nana could come along. So, after an argument, they packed the dog into the back of Gene’s highly-polished, blood red E-Class Cabriolet convertible, fastened a seat belt, and looped leashes around her torso to keep her in the car, and then headed northwest on North Rexford Drive toward Santa Monica Boulevard.
As they hit the coastline, offshore winds kicked up so Gene and Ryan couldn’t converse, but Nana punctuated the road trip with happy barks, her ears flying straight back, her tongue lolling to one side. The ocean rippled, rose, and pounded the shoreline under a Tiffany blue sky, and the beaches were filled with sunbathers.
They were meeting Michael Knight-Lewis, who planned to move to Branson for his own one-man show. Since he grew up in Malibu, he wanted to establish a second home on the West Coast so he could come back out and visit friends from time to time. He had sold his place in Ojai the previous week, so he was anxious to secure a beachfront getaway, pack his bags, head to Missouri, and be back in a few months to visit after professional decorators furnished his new pad to his specifications.
As Gene pulled up to the Malibu Main Colony, Michael ducked out from beneath one of the winged-doors of his silver McLaren, slammed it shut, and waved. Ryan had seen cars around Beverly Hills that looked like they were straight from
Back to the Future
, but he thought they looked like a pain to get in and out of.
Gene parked behind Michael’s car, and Gene and Ryan got out. As Michael approached them, Ryan reached around to untie Nana. His dad’s one rule was to keep Nana away from him while he was dressed in one of his better suits—a charcoal gray cashmere off-the-rack Brioni with a purple silk tie and matching pocket square. Neither Ryan nor Michael had any desire to dress in anything better than jeans and never-iron Dockers for the meet-up, but that didn’t bother Gene. Gene dressed to the nines because when he wore a great suit, he felt like he could conquer the world.
Michael gave Nana a scratch on the head. “Big dog.”
“A hundred and fifty pounds,” Ryan told him.
Gene made the introductions. If Michael found it odd that his agent brought his son and dog along to show him properties, he made no mention of it. The two men talked as Ryan and Nana trailed behind.
Malibu Main was a gated community, and Gene was eager to show Michael a beachfront home with five bedrooms and three-point-five baths worth eight million. The home had an open floorplan that gave the place the expansiveness of an airport hangar. While Gene waxed poetic about the exquisiteness of the French limestone fireplace, Ryan went out onto the patio overlooking the beach. He leaned over one of the solid panes of glass to look at the poles that supported the balcony. Water swirled as waves swept in, and Ryan felt like he was on the bow of a ship.
“You can fish right off the deck,” Gene boasted as the men and Nana joined him.
Michael was glum. “I like the place, I really do, but—”
Gene moved over to the stairs that led down from the balcony to the beach and unlatched the gate. “Look, direct access.”
Nana saw the exit and couldn’t resist. She ran across the tiled patio and flew down the staircase.
“Nana, no!” Ryan shouted.
Michael was all smiles. “I know about Newfies. They love the water.”
“Go and get her, Ryan,” Gene commanded.
The men moved to the edge of the balcony to watch Ryan cajole Nana back to shore. Out about thirty yards in no time, Nana barked as she paddled against the waves.
Michael grew serious. “I like the house, I really do, but two of the bedrooms don’t face the ocean.”
“But two of them do,” Gene countered.
Michael shook his head. “Let’s keep looking.”
Logan stood outside in his dirty gray long johns and watched his home, engulfed in flames, save for the corner room where Ramona listened to records on her portable record player. He ran over and tried to peer inside by jumping up and down. After a minute, he gave up. His eyes darted around the yard. A storage box with a firm lid, marked “pillows” in Ramona’s spidery scrawl, was three yards away. He dragged it over to the window, climbed on top, and looked. The window was open, the screen intact. He pushed on the screen, and it sprang forward into the room now filled with smoke.
He climbed through the open window and landed on the floor with a hard thud. Flames licked at the open doorway. Eyes wild, he searched the room ‘til he located his mother’s albums, stacked on a chair near the record player table. The cover of
Elvis’ Christmas Album
reflected the light from the flames in the doorway. He grabbed it just as the flames crept closer and began to consume the rug beneath his feet. Scampering to the window, he clambered up, fell through, hit the box of pillows, and rolled onto the grass. Then he ran as fast as he could, out through the side gate, out to the front of his house, out to the street. Lamps and lights were popping on across the street, first in one house, then in a second and a third. Someone would call 911.
Then he saw his dad, three blocks away, in his vintage black Chevelle SS 396, driving like a bat out of hell, barely braking at stop signs. Surely his dad knew the house was on fire and was coming home to save them.
Just as Jarrod entered the block, a mustard-colored sedan careened around the corner and rammed Jarrod’s car into the curb. A second car, this one a grimy white, nearly mowed Logan down as it rushed past from the opposite end of the block and rammed the Chevelle’s front bumper. Jarrod jumped out as men from both cars sprang from theirs, leaving the doors wide open. One gunshot. Two gunshots. Three. Jarrod fell to the ground behind his open car door. Logan screamed, and the men from the white car turned and noticed him.
“Get the kid,” the shorter of the two men shouted, and Logan ran as hard as he could, back to the house, back through the gate into the backyard, and back to the chain-link fence separating his yard from Fred’s. He found the gully and shoved the Elvis album beneath the fence before he crawled under it. Then he grabbed the album and hid behind the tree. He heard noise in the yard as the men stumbled over Ramona’s bins and boxes. He cringed, held his breath, and waited. In the distance, he heard sirens.
It took Ryan a full hour after school to make it to the North Camden florist shop, select a cylindrical vase filled with yellow tulips and goldenrod, return back home, and head next door to Bea’s house, prepared to tell her how sorry he was and why he’d ignored her these past years. Of course, she probably knew the reason. After he saw her and Kincaid together in the hallway, he never spoke to her again. He had let the time slip by, and here he was, sixteen, ready to man up and apologize.
The doorbell sounded like the first six notes to “Anchors Aweigh”, and as Ryan stood on the flagstone porch, he wondered how many times he’d rung it since preschool. Maybe thousands. If she forgave him, he planned to ring the bell daily until they graduated from high school, went off to college, got married, and had kids of their own.
Bea’s mom opened the door, and if she was surprised to see him, she covered it well. She was dressed in slacks and a white sweater that looked like it had been sprinkled with multi-colored confetti. Ryan looked directly at her, but it was difficult to tell if she was meeting his gaze because of her wandering eye, which always made her look like she was glancing upward, struggling to remember something important.
“Hi, Mrs. Edwin. Is Bea home?”
“I’m afraid she’s resting right now, dear, but come in.”
The Edwins had a bench in their entryway which served as a last-chance spot to sit before heading out, a place to wait for someone, something to dump things on if you were just coming home, and somewhere to sit and chat if someone stopped by. Ryan sat on the edge of the corduroy cushion and cradled the flower arrangement in his arms.
“Where are my manners? Here, let me take those.”
Mrs. Edwin put the vase on the narrow hall table used for keys, mail, spare coins and, at Christmastime, a Hummel nativity scene. She returned to the bench, rubbing her slacks down with her palms as she walked. “Those are beautiful. She’ll love them.”
“Excuse me for asking, but my mother didn’t know too much. All we know is that Bea has been sick. I guess Mr. Edwin told my dad, who told my mom, who told me.”
Mrs. Edwin was hesitant. She didn’t know how much she should say and how much Bea should tell him herself, but he had been like a son for years, and seeing him again warmed her heart. “It’s good to see you.”
Ryan brightened. “I’ve missed you.”
“I understand why you haven’t been around, but that Kincaid boy meant nothing to Bea. They went on three dates, and after the last one, she came home crying. Apparently, he took her to a party but ended up hanging out with some other girl while they were there. You would never treat her that way.”
Feeling respectful, Ryan nodded.
“And you’re getting more handsome by the day. How is that even possible? You look just like a young Elvis Presley. You’ve got those dreamy blue eyes and those… Well, here I am embarrassing myself and probably you, as well.” She laughed at herself, and he liked her for it.
“How’s the dance studio?”
“Same old, same old. I only go in once a week lately, since Bea fell ill.”
“What exactly—?”
“Do you know anything about rheumatoid arthritis?”
“That’s an old-person thing where your bones hurt, right?”
“Well, it can strike young people, too, even when you’re in high school.”
Ryan picked at the buttons on the cuffs of his striped Oxford shirt and listened.
“It’s a disease that causes the body’s immune system to attack its joints. She takes folic acid, hydrocodone, Oxycontin, Naproxin, prednisone, and muscle relaxers to manage the pain, but I have difficulty controlling how may pills she takes. She’s been allocated a dozen Lortab, a dozen muscle relaxers, and two Oxycontin per day, but I think there have been days that she’s had far more than prescribed because I’ve found her passed out in her room more than once.” Mrs. Edwin started stroking her arm in a self-soothing gesture before she moved on to her hair. She combed it with her fingers as she continued. “Remember how energetic she used to be? She’s not that girl anymore.”
Ryan felt like he’d been punched in the gut and said nothing.
Mrs. Edwin stopped stroking her hair and looked like she was about to cry.
“Now all she says is that she wants to die.”
Brown eyes wide, chestnut hair hanging in sweaty strands, Logan watched and waited. The men seemed enraged by the state of the yard.
The first druggie punted a lightweight container a good twelve feet. “What the hell is this, an obstacle course?”
The second meth-addled man kicked a stack of boxes that tipped over and spilled.
“Bunch of shit,” he muttered. The sirens grew louder. “We gotta go.”
“No, we gotta get the kid! He saw us!”
The second man shook his head. “He doesn’t know what he saw.”
They argued as they left the backyard, punching and kicking boxes as they went. Logan counted to ten before he crawled back into his own yard and then went out into the middle of the street, yards from the tangle of trucks there to fight the blaze. The killers backed away from the smashed Chevelle and peeled away without a backward glance.
One of the firemen turned and saw Logan, standing alone in the middle of the road. In a daze, the boy clutched the deluxe limited edition Elvis album from 1957 as another fire engine roared down the street and navigated around Jarrod’s beloved and now battered ride, siren blaring.
The fireman came and scooped Logan up into his arms. The boy’s dirty gray long johns were damp; he had wet himself.
“You gotta get out of the street. Is that your house?”
Logan nodded.
As neighbors began to gather on front lawns, the firemen finished extinguishing the blaze. Logan glared at them.
What took you so long?