Criminals (10 page)

“Wanta know something?” She revved the truck a couple of times before she shut it off. “I like to clean. I like to
move
. You think I want to sit around all day typing up what somebody else oughta do with their life? Guess what, I have a business. I have two more people ready to clean when you have the things built. I have two more guys coming on—Garth has—for Grounds.”

“OK, sorry, sorry.” Mark backed away from the window.

“Maybe just put it in my contract and I'll talk to everybody and all like that.”

“Is this about money?” Mark said, putting his hands up. “Want to go have a beer?”

“I'm waiting for Garth.”

“He's down at the machine shed. So tell me, how are things?”

“Good.”

“So I guess we've been a little worried about Garth.”

“Who has?”

“Dane and I. Because it seems like he's having some trouble.”

“You think so? Shit, I wish I would have noticed.”

“You don't have to talk like that, Shannon.”

“Gosh, did I say a bad word? Do you want me to fire him?”

Mark's face went red. “It's the war.”

“Right, you were over there too? That's how you know? Why don't you fire
me?
Don't you know we're not supposed to yell at the boss?”

“Go ahead and yell.”

“You go ahead. Go ahead and fire me. I don't care. I don't care what happens.”

“Nothing's going to happen.”

“Yeah, I guess that's the whole point of this place.”

The Newells' niece Chelsea was in high school. She had short, teased hair with longer strands pulled free and waving around her head. “Who's the hot guy?” she asked Shannon the day she got there with her backpack and pillow. “His name's Garth,” Shannon said. In an hour the girl was outside in shorts, pulling a board out of the scrap lumber. Her legs had dark bruises up and down them. She set up her aunt's easel near the bed of sand Garth was leveling for flagstones and she put the board up on the easel like a canvas. Shannon waited to see how long it would take Garth to leave. But once the girl was talking, twisting a brush handle in the belt loops of her shorts, he leaned on the rake and appeared to listen. Above the low shorts she had a roll of belly.

Mary Newell came into the kitchen and looked out with her at the two of them in the yard. “Oh dear,” she said. “I'll explain to her. We forgot to say you're married. You and Garrett.”

“Garth,” Shannon said. “I am, anyway. I don't know about him.”

DuÅ¡ka would have had an answer, several answers, but Mary Newell did not. She gave Shannon a look of frightened pity, wiped her dry hands on a dishtowel, and said, “Chelsea is our brother's daughter. We have her come every summer before school starts. I don't know. . . .”

“Can she really paint?”

“Oh, yes. Yes indeed, she's very good. She's still in high school but her teachers think if she can just . . . somehow . . .”

“Grow up,” Shannon said.

“Yes, if she can emerge from the . . . troubles, if she can just . . . She's an artist.”

Did that help you? A girl with bruises, Goth lipstick, troubles—troubles meant pregnant, Shannon was willing to bet: could being an artist help her? Did it help these two old women? Maybe not so old, if this was their brother's kid.

The girl had begun to put paint on her board, talking all the while to Garth, who did not seem to know she must be painting him. Could he be listening, as he looked off at the woods? Shannon wanted him to answer. She found herself wanting, in fact, to see him drop the rake and close his hand on the girl's heavy upper arm with its large
blue tattoo of a bird. Maybe just to shut her up. Shannon could almost feel the skin herself. She almost willed him to take off his work glove and touch the bird. The girl had stopped painting and had the brush in her black Goth lips while she wiped her fingers on her shorts. Then she was showing him a bruise on her thigh. He bent to look at it.

Shannon was not going to open the door and go out. She was thinking it through and if she said anything it would be later, at home. She'd say, “Hot stuff, huh?” If he didn't answer, or even if he did, or if he turned his back on her she'd get up in front of him and maybe slap him, not to hurt him but just—and although he had never hit anybody he would hit her back, though not with the strength that must be in him still, or how could he work the way he did? She would yell and that would bring the neighbor out into the hall and Shannon would say a mouse ran out of the chair.

“There is your husband in the rain,” said DuÅ¡ka. “He is in a hurry.”

“Training for a marathon,” Shannon said.

He went by fast, bent over, hands stuffed in the pockets of his overalls. Not the way anybody who
ran
would run. Shannon didn't know where he was going but she knew there was an army regulation that said you could not put your hands in your pockets.

“Don't have him deal with a lot of disorganized stuff,” the chief warrant officer told her. His sergeant was the one she had gotten along with but his WO Mr. Coombs was back and had e-mailed that anybody could call him.

“Disorganized stuff. It's a building site,” she said.

“Well, keep an eye. Is anybody bothering him?”

“Bothering him? No. Sir.”

“You had a question?”

“About what happened. Like you say, I don't want to bother him . . . sir.”

“It's a forward base. If they didn't get hurt they saw hurt.”

“I know that.” She said it in a friendly way so he would not put her with the antimilitary wives.

“In his case, that would be bones and fat where there was a kid, his buddy, a minute ago. Let's see. What else.” They both knew a WO or anybody else with rank was not supposed to offer information in those terms, let alone over the phone. She could tell something was wrong with Coombs so she went ahead.

“OK if I ask you another question?”

“Fire away.”

“It would be about you and your wife, sir.” There was a silence except for his ice cubes clinking. “Please don't hang up on me.”

“I don't have a wife.”

“He said you were married.”

“I was.”

“I mean, I've been to the VA. I saw the guys. Maybe they don't have a leg. They're holding on to their wife, though.”

“Everybody's different.” She could hear him breathing. She remembered him, his way of grinning when she saw him in the PX. That was a couple of years back. She thought he was going to say he was different himself, but he didn't, he said he had to go, and then it sounded like he dropped his phone on the floor.

What if she yanked the duffel out of the closet and chopped into it with the hedge shears? Would he slap her back to normal, or get her in a chokehold like somebody from another unit had put on his wife?

She dragged the duffel out and sent it sliding on its cleats into the living room. Zena scrambled up growling.

“OK what's in there?”

“What?”

“That picture? Is that what you have in there?”

“What, now?”

“That day she painted you. Showed you her thighs.”

“Jesus. A car hit her on her bike. She could be dead.”

“She's not, though, is she. What's in there?” By this time Zena was pressed against her leg, growling.

“Stuff. My stuff. Elbow pads, gauze, knife. My canteen.”

“Knife? Elbow pads?” Her voice was loud.

“To crawl with.”

“Why do you need that? Why do you need that?”

“Stop it!” he yelled. Her own elbow came up before she saw he meant the dog. The dog was steadily growling, facing away from them in a kind of shame.

“Think I'm gonna hit you?” Garth said.

“No, I—”

But again, he was talking to the dog. “Gonna growl at me? Gonna bite me?” He squatted, took the dog by the head. “Think you might bite me?”

“She doesn't like that. It's OK, Zena.”

“Wanta bite me?” The dog whimpered.

“Don't do that,” she said. “I can't believe you're teasing a dog.”

“Jesus, can't anybody just leave me the fuck alone?”

“Anybody? You mean me? I'm anybody?” For a moment she thought he was going to pick the dog up by the head, but instead he let go and stood up.

“Good dog,” he whispered, as if it were a secret from Shannon like everything else.

“Because something's the matter, that's why. You need to get up here and see him—”

“Up where he's at?”

“—because he's out on the backhoe in the rain.”

“He don't drive a backhoe.”

“Well he's on one. I can't catch him. I can't stop him.”

“Look, I'm due for my shift.”

“Right. I'll just let him know that. You haven't seen him for two months.”

“Take me twenty, thirty minutes and I got a job to do.”

“Fine, Stanley. It's on you. What he does. You sent him to the goddamn war.”

“What's he doing on a backhoe? Track or tire?”

“He's driving it, goddamn it, Stanley. Track.”

“That's a trackhoe. Excavator. You got excavators out there. Any idea what one of them costs?”

The backhoe was running along the middle slope. It leaned at a steep angle and moved faster than you would expect.

“I couldn't find him, it was Zena that found him,” she told DuÅ¡ka for the second or third time. “I ran, but it was so wet and I couldn't catch up.”

Duška took her wet hand and put a tiny glass in it. They could just see the dog, chasing and barking. It was the first time Shannon had known her to bark. They could hear better than they could see through the pane, as the backhoe leaned in a wide circle and headed, increasing its tilt, uphill to the woods.

“Hear that? That's trees. He's running into them. And DuÅ¡ka, Ivan's out there.” They could see him on the hill behind the backhoe. “I have to go back out.”

“No, no, no. This is cold and you take it quickly. It's—” DuÅ¡ka pronounced one of her words, raising her little glass. Shannon's had a vertical crack leading to a rough edge that could cut you. That's what Garth would say. Many things could cut or drown you or reduce you to bone and fat.

The dog was running circles around Ivan, herding him. A rig like that could plow you under. That had happened to someone. A girl somewhere who thought she could stop men.

DuÅ¡ka leaned close to the window. “With our son,” she said, “he always knew how to do.”

“You have a son,” Shannon said.

“We had,” DuÅ¡ka said.

“Wait! Wait!” It was Chelsea, slapping the screen door. She ran into the kitchen pulling two phones from inside her wet shirt. “Don't call 911! I took their phones, see? I had to! If they call 911, if anybody does, he'll get shot. A vet, doing this stuff? They'll shoot him!”

“Thank you, child,” DuÅ¡ka said.

“Keep these.” Chelsea dumped the phones on the counter. “My aunts. Helping.” She turned to Shannon. “I know he won't run over
the dog.” How did she know that? Did she know that you could turn a rig like that over, that you might want to, might long to, roll it into a pit? “Don't worry,” the girl was telling her. “I'm going back in the house. They're afraid. Don't worry.” She ducked into the rain.

Ivan stepped up to the backhoe and the noise stopped. A calm descended like an awning, with the drum of rain resuming on it. They could just see the dog, sitting now, while Ivan was slowly turning in the downpour and pointing, moving his arms in arcs as if to number the things that made Garth's effort—or any effort, from the way Ivan dropped his arms—in vain. Sky, mud, dog, machine; trees dark now and tightly ranged. After a time Ivan reached up into the cab with both arms. Was he going to pull Garth off the seat? But they were shaking hands, all four hands it seemed. Garth got down on his own. Then for a while the two of them walked around the backhoe inspecting it, the dog circling with them, and then they stayed out of sight behind it, at the tree line where some damage must have been done, and finally they emerged and set off down the hill.

After a while Ivan stomped on the porch mat and entered with his exhausted look, shedding rain. When he saw DuÅ¡ka he clapped himself on the chest in a way that struck Shannon as an old-man act, as if he might begin to sing, but instead he spoke to her in their language. Their son died, Shannon thought, holding the cold little glass. How terrible everything is. I want a baby. She would have sat down, but she was the youngest. “Where did he go?” she said.

“He is taking the dog to the truck,” Ivan said. “The dog is wet. He will wait for you.”

Maybe he would drive off the bridge into the water. No, he was in the passenger seat, and he had the dog in the cab with him. Her panting was the only sound until a high voice came out of Shannon. “Did you see her do that?”

“What?”

“Run after you? Keep right on after you up there? With no way to know, because how can she possibly, possibly know what you're going to do next? She came after you! She came, not your dad! Don't you
like this dog? Don't you like her at all? Don't you like anything any more? Can't you at least like a dog?”

“Like?” he said, sitting back with his cap down.

The dog, still panting, looked from one to the other. Shannon couldn't get her own breath. “OK, so you don't even like a dog.” She didn't reach over to stroke the dog because she saw that he had hold of her by the collar, both of them sliding on the wet vinyl.

“She got a spider off the dash,” he said when they reached the freeway. “Ate it.”

“Ugh. They're still in here.”

“In Helmand . . .” He pulled off his wet cap, shook out his wrists, and took a fresh grip on the collar. The rain was loud on the hood and she got in the slow lane to hear him. “I drank a spider. Drank it down.”