Stony River Read online

  Buddy’s face flushed. “Later, Rich.”

  “I’ll take a rain check,” Tereza said, although she liked the idea of Buddy hoisting Jimmy off his feet with one hand and flattening his pointy nose with the other.

  Buddy stood abruptly. “Time to cruise town. Coming along, m’lady?”

  “He’s got a cool car, Teeze.”

  “What are you, his pimp?” she said. Richie looked hurt. Tough gazzobbies. “Can’t,” she said to Buddy. Ma would be having a cow by now, assuming Jimmy had told her what happened. She shook one arm out of the jacket but Buddy held up his hand.

  “Keep it until you get home.” He pulled the pencil from behind Richie’s ear and wrote his phone number on a napkin. “Call me. I’ll come pick it up.”

  Richie and Vlad stood to leave.

  “See you on the flip side,” Vlad said. He tried to be cool but slobbered when he spoke and lived with his Russian immigrant mother. Some people said they were spies.

  The three guys filed out. Tereza stayed on her stool, chewing over Buddy’s offer. Why’d she keep taking Jimmy’s shit? And why didn’t Ma make him stop?

  “Hey, Buddy!” she called out. “You got a flashlight in that car?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  With Buddy’s phone number and flashlight in her pocketbook, she ordered an orange soda and, for a buck, a sack of the little square burgers you could down in three bites. She liked having her own money, spending it how she wanted.

  Allen would be in bed already. If she were home, she’d be skulking into the room they shared and undressing in the dark. Instead she headed for the woods where she and Linda had played that lame shipwrecked game in the summer. It was just plain dumb that Linda wanted to live there forever. And it was just plain dumb for Tereza to wait to be rescued from Jimmy.

  Buddy’s flashlight beamed the way four blocks to the hollowed-out log and the crowbar, then to Crazy Haggerty’s house. It loomed like a ghost ship in the night sea. Sounds stood out in the quiet dark—a truck downshifting on the highway, a dog’s whiny yelps. Each left a shivery silence when it died. Buddy’s jacket swished and crunched as she walked, keeping half of her warm at least. Her toes were numb in the ballerinas Linda claimed would ruin her arches.

  Tereza hadn’t been back to Haggerty’s since she’d climbed the drainpipe in June. (In gym, she could shinny up a rope like nobody’s business. In gym, nobody called her dumb.) Every window and door was boarded up now, including the one she’d propped open with a rock. She crowbarred the nails from the plywood covering the back door—whoever put it up had done a half-assed job—then stood aside and shoved the board over the steps. It fell with a loud thud. Shit. She slunk around the side and waited. When it felt safe she crept back, forced the lock and counted to ten before pushing open the door.

  Not more than a foot away stood Crazy Haggerty.

  Tereza screamed and nearly pissed her pants before realizing she was looking at a coat and a hat on a hook at the bottom of some steps. Recovering, she climbed the steps and called out, “Yoo hoo, is anybody?”—the only funny line in that hokey show Ma loved. Her shaky voice tumbled out huge in the high-ceilinged room.

  She waved the flashlight around, lighting up cupboards, a bucket in the sink, a pan on the wood stove. The air reeked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon had sloshed through. The flashlight landed on a light switch. A dud. She ventured deeper into the room, whipping around each time a floorboard squeaked. Stumbled over an empty dog dish, making it rattle.

  In a room off the kitchen sat six chairs and a fancy table even bigger than Linda’s. Beyond that, a circular staircase split the house. She shot a beam up to the landing. The darkness closed around the beam like a fist. Tomorrow, in better light, she’d climb the stairs. The flashlight guided her to a room as big as her family’s whole apartment. A picture window, shuttered from outside, reflected the flashlight. The lumpy dark furniture could’ve been Dracula’s. The air was cold and the radiators silent. At home they’d be banging out heat, Ma moaning because only the super could control them.

  She tried another light switch. Crap. It wasn’t too late to go home. Ma and Jimmy would be drinking beer and sitting on the floor watching TV because they didn’t have a couch. Jimmy might have had enough beer to forget he was mad at her. She was pretty sure he was bluffing about knowing what she was doing at Tony’s.

  She’d been sneaking into men’s cars a couple times a week after school for over a month. The idea had come to her after she found out Linda’s old man dropped off their turd-brown Nash at Tony’s Garage in the morning when it needed work and walked to his job. Linda’s ma didn’t drive. Once the car was fixed, it would sit behind the garage with the others, where the mechanics couldn’t see, until Linda’s old man returned. Tereza cut school one day to check it out for herself. Most men leaving cars wore suits and hats and carried briefcases. They looked well off. And safe.

  Tereza chose newer cars with full ashtrays. She’d have the Wonder Bread bag of tobacco in her pocketbook as she hid in the back, turning herself into a ball on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Sometimes she had to wait a leg-cramping hour or more, but wondering who might turn up gave her a charge—like buying Cracker Jacks not knowing the prize you’d get.

  After a man drove a short distance away, she’d edge onto the back seat and make little waking-up sounds, scaring the bejesus out of him. He’d pull over and she’d apologize, handing him a story about not getting any shuteye because she didn’t want to disturb her dying mama lying in the only bed in the teeny room they rented. She’d tell him she was selling tobacco to pay for the doctor. She’d practiced her naive, pitiful come-on look in the bathroom mirror for days before the first time. Some men went apeshit and ordered her out. A few forked over a couple bucks and a lecture. But there were others. She’d taken in forty-three bucks so far, none from tobacco. But if Jimmy knew now because Tony had found out, she was screwed.

  Heavy dark drapes covered the two living-room windows. Tereza yanked on one set until rod and all crashed in a dusty, coughing cloud. She blanketed herself in the drapes and sat on a couch, hugging the flashlight as a weapon to her chest, her sharp ears listening to the house stretch and yawn, burp and fart. She dragged three chairs from the dining room and stacked them against the back door. Anyone trying to get in would make a racket and warn her.

  Back on the couch, she closed her eyes and saw the dead-giveaway plywood she’d left on the ground. To the kitchen again, to unblock the back door. No sign of other earthlings. She stepped outside, dragged the board into the kitchen, dropped it on the floor and blocked the door again. Maybe now she could sleep.

  She shrugged off her shoes, made a pillow of Buddy’s spicysmelling jacket and stretched out sideways on the scratchy couch. She drew her legs to her chest and rubbed her toes back to life. Remembering a mouse in Ma’s slipper two houses ago, she tucked her shoes next to her pocketbook under her blanket of drapes.

  It must have been swell when there was only her and her mother, Reenie. Just Tez, as Ma called her, and Reenie. She wasn’t quite four when Jimmy came along; she didn’t remember having Ma to herself but it must have been heaven. Ma looked younger than thirty-three and, with makeup, Tez looked older than thirteen. But they had the same curly black hair and brown eyes. If not for Jimmy, they could almost have lived as sisters. She closed her eyes and sank into that warm thought.

  “TER-EEEEEZ-A!”

  She woke to a room as cold and gloomy as the night before, shot up and listened, but the voice didn’t call again. She must’ve dreamt it. Splinters of light peered from the edges of the plywood covering the window. She wouldn’t have known it was already nine if not for the glow-in-the-dark watch Ma had gotten her with Green Stamps so she’d be on time once in a while.

  Allen would be having Sugar Pops and grape juice in the Howdy Doody glass that used to be hers; Ma, a boiled egg and rye toast; Jimmy, three basted eggs, six bacon strips and four pancakes. Tereza did the breakfast d
ishes on Saturdays and, later, took Allen to the movies so Ma and Jimmy could screw. They didn’t say they were going to, but when Tereza and Allen returned, that telltale fishy odor would be in the air and Ma’s voice would be throatier.

  On Saturdays Jimmy was nicer to Tereza, probably afraid she’d crap out on babysitting. She hated the full-of-himself way he doled out the money: only enough for two tickets and a puny box of Dots to share, like nothing was theirs unless he gave it to them and what Ma made was his, too. Ma acted like Saturday’s Jimmy was the real one. Embarrassed to own up to marrying a jerk, probably, because what would that make her?

  “Give him credit once in a while,” Ma would say, “and you’ll see how sweet he can be.”

  She might as well have told Tereza to balance on one finger. Jimmy hardly ever smacked Ma and Allen. He never hit their jaws so hard they practically amputated their tongues with their teeth. That time, he’d been scared shitless the hospital would call the cops. He bought her a Dale Evans lamp and didn’t raise a hand to her for months. That was when she was eleven and keener on Dale Evans.

  She played the flashlight around the room: cobwebs, purple old-lady flowers on the wallpaper, a pink and beige rug clumped with dog hair, a fireplace she’d use if she wasn’t afraid the smoke would give her away, half a dozen candles on holders as tall as her ringing the room, a wind-up phonograph and stack of records on a small dark table, bookshelves so high even Haggerty would’ve had to stand on tiptoe to reach the top shelf.

  She couldn’t have gotten through that many books if she gave her life to it. The kids at school rolled their eyes when she read aloud. Nobody believed that the words bounced around like Mexican jumping beans and gave her a headache; her eyes tested perfect. Teachers said she didn’t apply herself; that she only wanted to clown around and distract the class. She couldn’t help it if she was funny as hell. She could belch the alphabet from A to K. Do a great Elmer Fudd, Desi Arnaz, Imogene Coca.

  She had to pee. “If I was a john, I’d be upstairs,” she said out loud, but she wasn’t ready to chance it. She’d heard skittering above her head during the night. Probably mice, but it could’ve been rats or foot-long radioactive tarantulas. She peed into a pan that had been left on the stove—the inside was furry. Nauseating, Linda would’ve said. She emptied it down the sink and turned on the tap to rinse the pan. Nothing came out. What a crock. She’d suss out the backyard pump later, under cover of night. The thought of no water until then made her mouth go dry.

  How long did it take to die of thirst?

  Searching for something to drink, she happened upon the gassy lagoon smell: a bag of oozing potatoes. “Them! Them!” she screamed, like the stunned kid in the movie smelling the giant mutant ants. If Richie were here, he’d be splitting a gut.

  She found dishes, oatmeal, crackers, powdered milk and—cowabunga!—cans of baked beans, corn, peas, stewed tomatoes, green beans and Spam. Jimmy hated Spam because that was all the navy fed them during the war. She rooted around for a can opener and spoon. Sat at the high mucky-muck end of the dining-room table, spooning baked beans from the can and washing them down with stewed tomatoes. Miranda and Haggerty must’ve eaten by candlelight. Two brass holders with white candles stood on the table, one candle melted down more than the other.

  A candlelight meal with Tereza’s father had snookered Ma. She’d met him in a tavern on a sleety January night two days before his army unit was to go overseas, exactly where he wasn’t allowed to say. He asked her out for supper the next night and she said yes. Not much else to the story, Ma would say whenever Tereza pestered. She didn’t know if he made it back alive. Tereza was frosted Ma hadn’t asked for a picture.

  “He gave me you. Who needs a picture?” But two years ago she brought home a poster of John Derek in Rogues of Sherwood Forest and said, “Your father looked like this except darker.”

  Although Tereza couldn’t find a speck of John Derek in her face, she saw all his movies after that. Her favorite was The Adventures of Hajji Baba. He played a lowly barber who rescued a beautiful princess as mouthy as Tereza. “Complaints flow from your lips like water from a spring,” the barber told the princess, or something like that.

  She wasn’t finished eating before the beans and last night’s burgers began churning up her guts, making them hot. She fled up the hallway stairs, not caring who or what might be hiding there. After a false turn, she found the crapper in time but had to wipe herself with her skivvies. She tossed them into the claw-foot tub and pulled her shorts over her bare ass. Forgetting about the water, she tried to flush. Swore. Haggerty’s house was bad news.

  In the small scratched mirror over the waste-of-time sink, she looked clown-faced from yesterday’s makeup. Her coarse black hair pointed every which way and she’d sprouted half a dozen new zits. She fingered the lump of bone where her jaw had healed and imagined the shellacking she’d get if she went home now. Ma standing with her back against the wall, her hand on her throat whimpering “Oh, Jimmy” and Allen hiding under the bed. Tereza could take the blows. Worse would be looking up at that King Tut expression on his face after he decked her. Ma said Tereza was too stubborn for her own good, but sometimes stubborn was all you had.

  To the left of the john was a room with nothing in it except a mattress on the floor with dark stains reaching out like bloody fingers. It gave her the shivers. Across from that room was another with a four-poster bed still made up. Against one wall stood an antique desk with a bookcase and four big drawers. The desk and bookcase were locked. She could’ve busted into them easy but Linda would’ve said that whoever boarded up the place left everything inside because Miranda was coming back and deserved better than busted stuff.

  Hanging in a tall, dark, sour-smelling wardrobe were a bathrobe, workpants and shirt, so worn out she could see Haggerty’s shape in them. On shelves: underwear, snot rags and socks. Wearing a dead geezer’s clothes gave her the creeps, but warmth was warmth. The green plaid shirt came below her knees and the maroon robe fell to the floor, its sleeves flopping over her hands like Dopey’s. Something in the pocket bumped her leg: a silver flask etched with a harp. She unscrewed it. Sniffed. Took a swig. It burned her throat in a good way and tasted like smoke.

  Lighter and bolder, she heigh-hoed down the hall and came to a room with a rumpled bed and a tall, narrow dresser. Off the room was an alcove with a crib and a pail of stiff, moldy diapers. Beside Miranda’s bed—it had to be hers—was a pot of turds. Linda would’ve shrieked in disgust. Tereza took another nip from the flask; the heat the house had sucked from her was returning.

  A door off the alcove led to narrow stairs. Up she climbed, one hand beaming the flashlight, the other on the wall, feeling the way. A long, unfinished room with a half-moon window waited at the top of the stairs. The window wasn’t boarded. Bands of light from it stained the wooden floor. Tereza knelt by the window, lifted her face to the stingy warmth of the autumn sun then looked down. From this perch Miranda could have eyeballed her and Linda on their way to smoke punks.

  She looked for chains. Why Miranda hadn’t escaped bamboozled her. Maybe Haggerty had worshiped the devil. It would be swell if she and Miranda could live here together someday, close to Ma but safe from Jimmy. They’d tear down the plywood and shutters, push the drapes aside and let sun, like melted butter, pour into every room.

  2:00 PM. Had Allen gotten to the movies? Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy was supposed to be on. He loved Abbott and Costello. After Tereza brought Allen back from the movies she’d usually hook up with Richie, Vlad, Vinnie and whoever else was at the White Castle, maybe play ball with them in the empty lot beside Vinnie’s house. It was October now and ball was over. She tipped the flask back.

  3:40 PM. Downstairs again, carrying a blanket from Miranda’s room for later. In a closet under the staircase, hard to see in the dim light, she found a gun nearly as tall as her, with a long, skinny nose and a polished wood butt padded in red rubber. She managed to heft its weight and rest the
rubber pad against her shoulder. Pretending Jimmy was at the front door, she aimed and said, “Bang, bang, you’re dead.”

  6:10 PM. Dark enough to risk stepping outside. She unblocked the back door, took the bucket from the sink and dashed to the Ma and Pa Kettle pump in the sharp cold air. The handle squeaked when she lifted it. She pumped hard and fast until water gushed and splashed her feet. She lugged the full bucket inside, dipped a cup into it, took a drink and waited to croak or at least double over in agony. When she didn’t, she filled every glass and cup in the house for later. She washed herself with the rest, toted the dirty water up to the bathroom and flushed away the reeking evidence of herself. Then back down the stairs to hurl the oozing potatoes toward the river and refill the bucket.

  The booze had worn a hungry hole in her stomach. She opened the green beans and peas and set the cans on the coffee table in Dracula’s room. Lit the candles on the tall holders with wooden matches from a tin box on the mantel. Spectacular! A movie set, with candles as spotlights. In the dim mirror of the picture window she watched herself eat, then cross the room in that dumbass outfit to check out the records beside the old phonograph. She cranked up the machine and put a record on the turntable. It wobbled slightly as a man sang “Yes, we have no bananas” like he was in a tunnel. She mugged it up for the spotlights, turning her hand into a megaphone and wah-wahing to the tune through her nose. She pretended Miranda was watching, laughing and saying, “You fracture me, Tez.”

  Tereza sang and drank from the flask until the room did a dance, her insides swayed and her ears felt full of water. She sat down heavily on the couch and stared at the drunken flickers of candlelight until her head fell onto Buddy’s jacket. She pulled Miranda’s blanket over her and drew her legs up to her chest like the babies in jars at the State Fair last year. Embryos that didn’t make it, Ma had said when Tereza got agitated, not poor little bastards nobody wanted.