Caring Is Creepy (21 page)

“Jesus,” he said, once I’d calmed him down. “What was all that? I thought we were under … I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

My Specialist Loy sounded nearly as scared as I did when Marty squeezed my shoulder. This irritated me. I wanted Logan to be strong and sure and capable in an emergency, and it seemed pretty
clear this wasn’t going to be a dependable trait of his, but what confused and confounded me was I also wanted him to be the little boy I kept an eye on and took care of. I never knew which one I’d find when I opened the closet door.

“What was
what
?” I said carefully.

“The shooting. Somebody fired off a gun. Not just once. Five times. I counted.”

What was he talking about? There hadn’t been any thunder. Or any other loud sounds I’d heard. Then I got an idea of how I could use this to my advantage. This is going to sound cruel. I know it better than anybody. But you got to remember, I did what I did to protect him. If I couldn’t count on him to be a soldier, I needed a way to protect the little boy from his own mischief.

“They’re looking for you,” I told him. “Those weren’t guns you heard. The police have been knocking on every door around here. You know the way they do, knocking on doors like they hold a grudge against anything with a knob. Didn’t you hear me talking to them out front?”

“Uh-uh,” he said.

I made him sit down on several sheets of clean newspaper and then I took a washcloth and soaped him up. I’d watched my mom do this at the hospital many times. I started with his face. Careful downward strokes. First the left cheek, then the right. Logan was so agitated by what I’d told him, he didn’t seem to notice what I was doing at first. Somehow he’d managed to get grime in his ears, but I washed it all away. I made sure to be methodical about it. One bowl for scrubbing, one for rinsing. This was how I managed to keep the brittle bits of my brain together on that unhappy day. Without someone else to look after, I feel certain I’d of come to pieces in under an hour. In this way, Logan saved me. He served me more by sitting and allowing me to scrub his dirty hide than he would of done had he leapt from the closet and served Marty
up with a mighty thump on the head. And besides, Marty would of turned and done something even worse to Logan. Maybe even given him the gift of nine grams, as Logan himself was always saying. I noticed, just before he left, that Marty carried some sort of firearm beneath his sports coat in a shoulder holster. And nine grams is the weight of your normal workaday bullet.

“God, you’re dirty,” I told him. “How did you get so filthy dirty?”

“Now I think about it, maybe I did hear somebody talking. You swear that wasn’t a gun?” Sweat and soapy water drew lines through the dirt on his chest.

“Yeah, I’m sure. Last time it was Mr. Cannon’s door set you off, remember?”

“Right,” he agreed, with an extra-sad look. Logan had taken to tapping each of my toes three times in quick succession every time I came into the room. I can’t recall when this practice started. But instead of the usual one time through, he kept at it over and over as I washed him. “How’d they know to come looking for me here? You said it was safe.”

I knew I had him now.

“Remember that man we saw when you bought the wine? Mr. Jenkins?”

I took his left arm and rubbed it down, rinsed the cloth and washed the soapsuds off. Then I did the other arm. He had a faint star-shaped scar on his shoulder. I kissed it.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “That old guy from Cobbtown?” The one who called my sergeant? Damn, I knew that’d come back and bite me on the ass. What’s he done now?”

I washed his chest, scrubbing in circles. He had a dusting of hair there, darker than the hair on his head but lighter than the hair on his boy parts. Dirty lint had collected in his belly button. I lifted his arm and gave his pits double washings. That’s where he smelled the ripest. There and down between his legs.

“He went and told the police he saw us together. I guess snitching to his brother wasn’t enough.”

“What did you say to them? The police, I mean?”

“Turn around,” I said, so I could get at his back. The grime was smudged in the shape of an upside-down bottle. I’d only now begun to really scrub and already the water in both bowls was filthy. “I told them I got a ride from you. I didn’t really know you all that well and that was the last I saw of you. I don’t think they believed me. That’s why they wanted to search the house. I said they’d have to wait for my mom. They know you’re around here somewhere because they found your car.”

“Who was it that found it? The hardware guy again?”

“A policeman. Don’t you remember? I told you all that.”

“Shit, shit, shit,” he rubbed his hands against the tops of his thighs. “What am I going to do? I knew I should of brought my rifle.” Then he mumbled something about bombs. I didn’t like the way his eyes looked. If I hadn’t of known first hand, I’d never of believed this was the same Logan pitching me woo only an hour before. He wasn’t a bit scared of Marty, the one who was worth worrying over, but a couple of handclaps drove him to distraction.

“When I’m back here all by myself,” Logan said, “I have to listen out for every sound. Just in case, you know? It makes my neck hurt, and my back. Today, all those sounds about drove me crazy.”

For some reason, being the source of common sense soothed me, even if I was the one who’d set these fears in motion. My own shoulder ached down deep in the bone, but telling Logan the simple fake-truth like this somehow made even the worst of my hurts feel better too. I can’t explain it.

“I’m fucked.” He took a deep breath and let it out with a long, wheezy squeak. “I am
so
fucked.”

I washed his thighs. This went more quickly. They weren’t as
dirty as the rest. The washing soothed him, but not enough to make him sit still.

“Calm down. You’re safe in here. I told you that a dozen times. They didn’t find you, did they?”

Logan shook his head, still jittery with worry.

“And believe me, mister, they questioned me pretty hard. This is as good a hideout as you’re likely to find.” I held his chin in my soapy hand and forced him to look at me. I made my voice go soft and low. “You’re still here with me, right?”

“Right.”

“And you feel safe here with me, right?”

“Mmmm,” he said.

“And you love me, right?”

“Mmmm,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“I love you. Of course, of course.”

Then I went on to his feet, which were black on the bottoms and took some serious scrubbing. The big toe on his right foot was crooked. I’d forgotten about it until then. Logan told me the story the first night he spent behind the closet. He’d broken it the day his base was overrun in Iraq. The insurgents had caught him napping, literally, and in his rush to put on boots, he’d stumbled against a cot and cracked that little bone in two. If you knew his alphabet of scars, you could read Logan’s body like a book. Slowly, I was learning the ABCs of Logan Loy.

“I don’t see you being taken away from here in handcuffs any time soon, sweetie.”

“I guess.” His breathing slowed a little, hitched, then slowed a bit more.

“You can hide out until things have calmed down, as long as that takes, and then you can ride my bike to Statesboro and catch a bus.” I washed between his legs, taking my time. I did it slowly.

Over and over. I used a lot of soap. His little guy hardened in my fist. Like a turtle’s head with a long, pink neck.

“Yeah,” he said, but not like he believed it. He looked down at my hand and then back up at me. “It might be better for me to go tomorrow morning before they really get serious about looking for me.”

“Nah, that’s crazy. It’s way too late for that. If you tried to bike or walk there now, especially during the day, they’d catch you for sure. Statesboro’s the closest Greyhound station and it’s still a fair hike. They’ll give up looking for you around here after a few more days. Don’t forget, you’ve still got a pile of Green Gable books to get through.”

I lifted his heavy, wrinkled sack of skin. In the bright light, it looked like something deformed. It occurred to me then that a boy’s equipment had its uses, but it really wasn’t much to look at once you got over the thrill of seeing it out in the open.

“I guess,” he said.

I put the washcloth back in the water and looked at him. I smiled.

“What are you smiling about?” he asked.

“You clean up nice,” I said.

T
he first thing Mom said to me Thursday night after work, as she came in through the kitchen door with a brown paper sack in each hand and a carton of Virginia Slims Menthol 100s tucked under her arm, was, “I saw Mr. Jenkins today.”

There, under the bright twitch of the fluorescent lights, I got a good look at Mom’s face and I didn’t much like what I saw. She had about twenty pounds of frown dragging down each corner of her mouth and her eyes had sunk into deep, dark caves beneath her eyebrows. Still, those eyes of hers flashed at me as she set down the bags and told me what Mr. Jenkins said.

And since these were the first words to come out of her mouth—never mind a
Hey
or a
How you doing?
—my first fast thought was I must of brought this on myself by lying to Logan. I’d had this happen to me before. Tell someone a hard lie, and in return, someone else might tell you a hard truth. A string stretched between these things. Mr. Jenkins told her about what you’d expect. “And now,” she said, “they’re looking all over for him. Some people have it in their heads he might even be hiding here.”

“In our house?” I fairly screeched this out. My God, look what my lie has done.

Mom, God bless her, just laughed at this.

“No,” she said, “nobody thinks you’re a tramp, honey. Just a foolish child who maybe made the very bad decision to ride around in a strange man’s car.”

I couldn’t keep the blood from rushing to my face. It went there without my permission. And my cheeks flushed hot and guilty. I had to cut Mom off at the pass before she tripped me up or caught me in a lie. Frantic thoughts bounced around my skull like flies trapped in a bottle. The lies had gotten so thick and tangled, I near about had to write them down to keep track.

“Something bad happened,” I said, after a too-long moment.

My mom’s eyes widened and I could see she thought the very worst. “God, Lynn. Did he do something? Did he touch—?”

“No, no, Mom.” I shooed that idea away with my hand. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Then what?” she said, putting her hands on her hips. When I didn’t speak up right away, she stepped across the kitchen to fetch her quilted cigarette bag from the counter. The motor in the fridge
chug-chugged
and stopped. The room went dead still. The metal clasp on her bag sounded like a Black Cat firecracker when she snapped it shut again. Mom knew something was up, so I decided I’d best walk on tiptoe from here on out. She blew a thin blue jet of smoke at my chest and stared me down with her shiny black eyes. There was nowhere for my own to slip away to. When I glanced off to the safety of the tablecloth, she snatched up my chin and made me look at her. Mom hadn’t done this to me since I was ten years old and she thought I’d messed with one of her boat bottles. “Don’t you look away from me, Lynn Marie. I know something’s happened. You’ve gone red as a beet. What? Please don’t tell me you’re pregnant because I don’t want to hear it. Not now, anyway. Not tomorrow either.” She turned my face to one side. “And what in God’s name happened to your cheek?”

“It’s two things, really.” I took a breath.

“Jesus,” she said, pacing back across the room and throwing her cigarette bag onto the counter. Cigarettes spilled everywhere. She put one hand against her forehead and the other on her hip. Then
she pushed out her lower lip and blew at the bangs hanging over her eyebrows until they fluttered. “Tell me. What is it?”

“Rhonda said for you to call in is one.”

Her eyes flashed at me. “That’s not what—”

“No, I think it’s important. Really important. She seemed pissed.”
Slow down
, I thought. She knows I babble when I’m spinning stories. “She said Dr. Drose wants to talk to you. Right away.”

“Oh.” She dropped her hand from her head and hugged herself. “What’s two?”

Then I took the mashed and sweat-limp business card out of my pocket and held it out to her like a pet that’d died. When I opened my mouth to steer this conversation toward safer shores, suddenly, without me meaning to or even expecting it, the tears came popping out one after another and dribbling from eye to nose and nose to chin. Touching the card again was all it took for the fear to squirt out of that fresh crack behind my left cheek and go juddering down my spine. I thought I was over it, but I guess the bad feelings were only hiding out and waiting to ambush me when I least suspected it.

“What, baby? What happened?” When she came across the kitchen to hug me, I handed her the card. This brought her to a full stop. Her eyes turned to slits as she read.

I told her what Marty’d told me to say about the deadline and the money and all the rest. And then I told her what he’d done. I lifted my shirt and showed her the mess he’d made of me. I was surprised myself at how ugly the marks looked. I could see the reflection of it in the microwave door. My shoulder was seriously puffed up by then and an ugly blue-red color. The prints left by his sausage-link fingers couldn’t have been clearer had he drawn them on with a marker.

“Oh, baby, I’m sorry.” She sucked in a breath and winced. “He did that to you?”

“Yeah,” I said, quietly, “he did.” Then I told her about what he’d done to the house.

She ducked her head under the cabinet and looked across the breakfast bar at the living room.

“God-damn-it,” she said. Each syllable came out of her mouth with a hiss, like water dripped in a hot skillet.

Mom kicked off her shoes and slid back and forth across the linoleum in her stockings. She gnawed at her lower lip. She did it in small, hard shuffles, like she was cleaning grime off the floor with her feet. This odd sort of pacing was usually her standard operating procedure for thinking over a serious financial jam. Half a dozen expressions made the muscles in her face jump and twitch.