Free Verse (18 page)

—OCTOBER 19

Dear Michael,

You don't know the other Michael Harless,

but he's ten.

He has light brown hair

and light green eyes

and I've only ever seen his face clean once.

He has a different first name,

but he's a Michael Harless

and he does things like he doggone means them.

I wonder if you could keep an eye out for him.

If you could just check and make sure he's all right.

I know you wanted me to get out of Caboose,

and I thought that's what I wanted, too,

but for right now, I need Mikey to come home with me

and let us finish growing up before we choose.

I don't want to let you down.

But Mikey's ten

and his name is Michael Harless

and I don't want him to die.

Can you find him for me?

Dear Mikey,

I've spent a lot of time wishing that we never opened the box.

That we never walked in the sun, ate strawberries from the fields,

slept in a meadow under the stars, bought hot dogs from a street vendor,

and ran from the police.

But all those things happened.

And there are other things that happened.

Your mother loved you enough to take you with her when she left.

Your father loved you enough to come and find you.

Your cousin loved you enough to take you away so you didn't get hurt.

I've been mad at you for not coming home when all those people love you,

but I guess what we love is that you do things your own way.

And sometimes I want just one person

to love that about me.

I'm not mad anymore.

If you come back,

I will make you a dozen gnarled finger-bone muffins with extra chocolate

and we'll lie on the front porch in the sun

and you won't have to tell me where you've been

if you don't want to.

And if you don't come back,

I'll think about you all the time,

and when I travel someday,

I'll keep an eye out for you.

But I finally get it.

You've got to decide for yourself

Where you want to be.

—NOVEMBER
1

SPEAK

Once,

there was the crackle of a radio

and a voice calling for Michael Harless,

who was never going to answer.

His silence sank into my heart slowly,

but it did sink.

Tonight,

There is the ringing of a phone,

And the voice of Mikey Harless

Begs to come home.

The line, once silent, comes alive.

Two voices get found.

“Do you think he's mad at me?”

Hubert about drives the truck off the road when I speak, halfway up to Beckley in the middle of the night. It's not the first time tonight that I've done it—I told him Mikey was on the phone—but I guess after five months of quiet, he's not used to the sound of my voice.

“Sasha, Mikey gets mad for no reason sometimes. I don't want you to worry that you've done something wrong.”

“Well, did he sound mad to you? He sounded mad to me. And I
did
do something wrong.”

“Nobody's mad at you,” Hubert promises. Which doesn't mean the same thing as telling me I didn't do anything wrong.

I can't sit still. I tug at the seat belt, tuck my feet up under me, let them down again. The drive to Beckley's
gotten familiar, but this midnight trip feels more like when me and Mikey ran away than a normal drive.

Hubert's got directions written down on the top page of Shirley's apple-shaped notepad. He looks at them so often, I'm afraid he's not looking at the road enough, but before long, he's got us steered out the other side of town and down a road that winds next to a creek.

“Is he living out here?” I ask. I haven't seen any houses in a while.

“I don't know,” he says. “He just put her on the phone, and she gave me directions.”

“You talked to Mikey's mom?”

“Enough to get directions.”

“Well, how'd . . . how'd she sound?” It feels strange to be talking, but I can't keep all the questions in. My heart hammers in my chest, and I curl and uncurl my fingers. What if something happens and Mikey's not where Aster said he'd be?

Hubert wipes a hand quickly down his face, and I feel the truck speed up. I think Hubert must feel the same way I do, like we need to get there as fast as we can.

“She sounded like Aster,” he answered, in a voice that implies that's not a good thing.

•   •   •

I'm expecting Mikey—filthy face, tough-guy attitude—but what we see when we pull up to the long stone building is a blanket-wrapped bundle in a stranger's arms. At least
to me she's a stranger. I know who she is, though; would know even if we hadn't talked about her. Aster looks just like Mikey. Same light brown hair, same narrowed eyes.

We've met at what Mikey called “home,” a run-down old train station, red cinder block next to rusted lengths of unused track. The broken windows look like something I might have done on a bad day, which frightens me. I don't want to think I have anything in common with this woman who got addicted, who lives in a train station, and who kept a lost boy.

Aster looks almost sweet as she presses the bundle of blankets into Hubert's arms. She's wearing shorts even though it's the first of November, and her eyes look old. She never seems to look directly at anybody, not even Hubert, who she used to love so much she married him. I'm not sure she even knows I'm here. I watch her eyes move from Mikey's hair to the quilt to the hood of the truck and back again. I watch Hubert, how he can't take his eyes off her.

“Aster,” he says. “It's cold outside. Why don't you come home with us?”

I imagine what that might look like, introducing Aster to Shirley. But Aster shakes her head, pressing on the lump of blankets that is her son. “No, I'm good, I'm good here. I'll stay here. You take the boy, Hubert. You take our boy, you take him now.” She keeps saying these words over and over, pressing on Hubert's arms, pressing us toward
the truck, pressing the door closed behind us. Through the window, she keeps saying it. “You take good care of our boy, Hubert Harless. You take care of him.” She has a necklace of a heart, and the cheap metal's left a green stripe around her neck. Her hands shake as she reaches into the blankets, stroking Mikey's hair.

Mikey doesn't wake up or look back as the truck reverses onto vine-covered pavement that's too old to be sturdy enough anymore for cars. We rumble over rocks and chunks of old gravel as we pull away. Me and Hubert have Mikey propped between us, heavy head bouncing from my shoulder to his. In the side view I can see his mother's hair as she leans into the wind. I know it's impossible, but I think I can see her dry, cold cheeks. She's holding her last blanket closed with her hands. I think about what it must have meant to her to give up two of her blankets to Mikey, leaving him wrapped as she handed him to us. I think of what it must have taken, of how much of a mother she must still be, to hand him to us. I shiver in the full-blast heat from the vent.

Mikey sleeps all the way to the hospital. He stretches at one point, and his legs fall across me, toes curling against the door handle. His skin is filthy and warm. A couple of times he moves, and I know he's trying not to wake up, trying not to face us or anything else just yet. I know he'll be quiet for a while. I might have to talk for both of us.

In the light of a passing car, I see tears on Hubert's face.
They're rolling silently down into his beard. I think about the woman in the abandoned train station, in shorts and a sweater, clutching her quilt. I think about how he used to love her. I think about the look she had on her face when we drove away. She looked like Michael when we got the news about Ben. Like Phyllis when I broke her GUI-tar. Helpless. Like we'd pulled the cord on the last light in her life.

Hubert wakes Mikey at the hospital. It takes him a minute to blink awake, but once he does, he flings himself at Hubert, winding skinny arms around his neck.

“Hey. Hey there, buddy. Okay.” Hubert keeps him wrapped in the blankets and carries him inside. I think about the first time I ran away from Phyllis and how they gave me an IV and took care of my feet. I don't know what might be wrong with Mikey, and I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to talk to him. I decide not to talk unless he talks first.

I'm asleep in the waiting room when Hubert comes to find me a while later. “We can go,” he says softly. He's got Mikey in his arms, now wrapped in a clean blanket and sound asleep again.

At home, Hubert carries Mikey past Shirley's car, which is parked at the edge of the driveway with the motor running. He takes Mikey into the house and tucks him into his bed. He comes back out to deal with Shirley, who is following two steps behind him.

“He's okay?” she asks.

“He's okay. Lost some weight. A little dehydrated. But he's okay.”

“Oh, I'm so glad, Hugh. I'm so glad he's home,” she says. The sound of her voice is so odd that I look up to study her face. Her eyes are shining with tears, and she reaches up to touch Hubert's cheek. “I knew you'd bring him home.”

“Shirley, why's your car running?”

She turns away, walks into the girls' room, and comes back a minute later with a sleeping Sara in her arms. “We're going to be at my mother's if you need us.”

“Shirl?”

“I couldn't leave a man who had lost his son,” Shirley says. “You've got your boy back. Now I can go.”

The words take a minute to sink in, and then I feel the breath punch out of me.
Poor Hubert!
I think.

“But . . . my girls . . .” He reaches a hand toward Sara, tucks a loose curl behind her ear.

Shirley watches him do it. “You'll see them. I'm not going to keep you from them.” Her breath hitches and she passes him, carrying Sara out the front door to the waiting car. When she returns a moment later, Hubert has already picked up Marla and is cradling her under his chin. Shirley takes the sleeping girl from him, kisses her hair, and heads for the door. I reach out to touch a bit of Marla's hair as Shirley carries her by. Hubert and I follow them to the
porch, and she comes back to face him, standing on the bottom porch step like she wants to climb back up, but thinks better of it.

“Please don't do this,” he says. His voice sounds so rough that I'm afraid he might be crying. “Shirl, I love you. Please don't go.”

“Aww, Hubert . . .” She lays her fingertips against his forehead. “I know that right
here
, you think you love me.” Then she moves her palm to cover his heart. “But I haven't been right
here
in too long, and, honey, that's where I'd need to be if it was ever going to work.” It's the sweetest and the calmest I've ever heard her voice sound, even though her face is tearstained. She kisses Hubert once on his scraggly cheek and walks back to the car, climbs behind the wheel. She backs up quickly enough that the tailpipe scrapes the embankment on the other side of the road. She pulls out, first onto gravel, then onto pavement. Leaves rustle back and forth in front of the taillights, making them flicker. It's hard to tell when the exact last moment is that we can still see them.

•   •   •

Hubert sits for a long while, reading to Mikey even though he's asleep. Then staring at him and staring at him. I watch from the couch, peeking through the crack in the bedroom door. When Hubert falls asleep there on the floor, Mikey crawls out of bed and comes into the living room, trailing a quilt. He crawls onto the couch beside me. He
curls up with his head on my shoulder. He sleeps after a while. He still hasn't spoken.

I stay awake.

Which is good, because it takes three hours to get the house clean. Dust is swept out into the dark yard. Long-neglected corners are mopped as dawn is breaking, left to dry in the sun with the windows open. The cold autumn morning plays with the curtains and sprinkles leaves onto the rug.

There are things I can't fix and things I can. I can get the stains off the molding. I kneel with a dish sponge, inching around the length of the kitchen, then the living room, then Mikey's room, then Hubert's. I leave the bathroom till last, because the black mold has begun to grow up the shower and I don't want to ruin the sponge until I'm finished with it. The sun hitches higher. I scrub and scrub.

When ten o'clock rolls around and Mikey and Hubert are both still asleep, I turn on the TV to Saturday infomercials, the way Shirley would have done by now. I raise the volume, but nobody stirs. So I put my shoulder into the black mold and I toss the old sponge and I scrub-scrub-scrub with Shirley's left-behind toothbrush. After a while, the bathroom tiles sparkle. They are paler blue than I thought. I take the rugs out onto the porch and shake them. Phyllis is out there with her new girl. They're both bundled up, tossing a stick for Chip to fetch.

“Phyllis.”

Her head whips around sharply. “Lord above!” she exclaims. “Have I missed that voice!” She crosses to me and wraps me tightly in a hug. The girl drifts along behind her, looking lost.

I wrap my arms around Phyllis, and I don't let go when I say, “He's home.”

She moves quickly to hold me at arm's length. “Mikey?” When I nod, her eyes fill up.”He's okay. He's still sleeping, but he's okay.”

“Well.” She wrings her hands, smooths my hair and then her new borrowed kid's “Well. Miss Phoebe, I think this calls for a very special dessert. Will you help me in the kitchen?”

The little girl nods shyly.

“Miss Sasha, would you care to join us?”

“I'm going to stay here,” I tell her. I can't help but be a little jealous, with Phoebe getting Phyllis's attention, but it's more than that. “I want to be here when he wakes up.”

•   •   •

Mikey wakes before Hubert, at a little past one in the afternoon. I've tried to make breakfast, and mangled it. The biscuits are hard as stones. The gravy is too thin. I was probably supposed to grease a pan or something. I toss breakfast in the trash and sit next to Mikey while he finishes waking.

“Hey,” he says.

Mikey was only quiet for a single night, and I'm relieved
to hear his voice. I think of how Hubert and Phyllis must feel, hearing my voice after months of quiet. Mikey sounds older than he used to, and he's gotten taller. His hair, once spiky, has grown out past his ears and lies in soft, light brown tangles. He's thinner and his eyes are set deeper in his lean face.

“Hey,” I answer.

I don't know why, maybe because I haven't heard his voice in so many months, maybe because I've barely heard my own voice in as many months, but all of a sudden I'm swallowed up by tears that need to fall, and sobs that need to whoop out before they crack my chest from the inside. I bolt off the couch and into the kitchen. I throw the skillet onto the stove again, determined to get these biscuits right.

•   •   •

Mikey and me and Hubert sit on Phyllis's porch with the plate of muffins she and Phoebe have made for us. Chip and Stella are in the yard, picking over the ruined biscuits and gravy.

“I'll teach you,” Phyllis tells me every time my breath hitches from crying. I nod, even though I'm not crying about the stupid biscuits.

Mikey has eaten three muffins. The rest of us take one apiece, except for Hubert, who doesn't take any. We wait to see how many Mikey will want. He starts on a fourth. Though he's had a long bath today, he's still hiding under
a layer of grime. He stops halfway through the fourth muffin and starts looking green around the edges.

“Slow down, Mikey,” Phyllis says.

He does, and now that his mouth isn't full, we're all waiting. He must know it, but he doesn't start talking for the longest time, and I can relate.

•   •   •

Mikey is not very good at telling us the story. When I ask him how he survived alone, he says, “I thought about what you would do, Sash. And then I did that.”

“Oh, holy crap. It's a miracle you survived.”

It takes him three days to get the whole story out. The police come, and talk to Mikey, and piece a few things together, but some things we still don't know. Like how he survived the first week down in Alley Rush, before he caught a ride to Beckley and escaped outside the police station. We know he lived in someone's outbuilding, but we can't imagine what he ate or what he drank or how he stayed calm. I think about what I would have done, like Mikey said, and
I
don't know.