The Other Shoe (33 page)

“Come on, you can do better than that. You've heard many chapters from my tale of woe, so, come on, you better try a little harder than that. It's your turn. It's the middle of the morning-night, whatever. Tell me something. Anyfuckingthing.”

“There's digestion. That's what I think about quite a bit. I usually got stool like concrete, so that'll occupy your mind. What do you want to hear about it?”

“Fuck you and your fucking bowels. You've been alive, tell me something. You ever been to war? Ever steal anything interesting? Ever loved your neighbor as you loved yourself?”

“I never had many neighbors. Probably why I don't have many stories. Never knew I'd be called on to entertain.”

“You're a hard-ass, aren't you?”

“No,” said Henry Brusett, “and I never even thought I was.”

“Yeah? Well, that's all I am. Little bit limited. I've got what they're calling a small skill set. You know what the cancer rate is among recidivists? The average life span? You'd prefer to die with your boots on, or, in our case, your shower slippers. Aaah. Who's ever worth shaking down in here? I mean, ever. These penniless fools. If we could ever just get a couple hundred or so together, I bet your cousin Tubby could come up with all kinds of goodies, couldn't he? I'd like to get my head up in the ventilator shaft with a spliff. Anything. Except meth—I just cannot tolerate that odor. What do you like?”

“I'm good the way I am.”

“Yeah, you would be. You get yours delivered, don't you? Percocet? That may be my all-time favorite. Got over my fear of needles just so I could jam Percocet in my arm. Ever try that in a vein?”

“No.”

“It's delicious. You should get your hands on a works.”

“I don't get high on it,” said Henry Brusett. “It gets me just about normal.”

“Much as you're taking? Oh, that's a shame. That'd put me in a low, slow orbit around the moon.”

“You think you'd like that?”

“I'd like,” said Leonard, “a spike through my eye, if it meant a moment's diversion. It's the tedium, baby. That's the enemy.”

“Well,” said Henry, “I've noticed Fess and Tubby, they don't watch me swallow. You want to make a deal?”

“Deal?” said Leonard into a suddenly overburdened friendship. “I don't make deals in here, prisoner. I take what I want, and
that's
the deal. I don't want to get started on any other precedent. You better give me some fuckin' pills if you've got 'em to give.”

“It'd be everything I can do,” said Henry Brusett, “not to swallow those once they're in my mouth. So, no, if you get the pills, I get something.”

“Or I could just take 'em from you. I do hate this dealing. It's unnatural to me.”

“Or I could just swallow, like I usually do. Like I'm supposed to do. So, what then? You gonna work me over? Wouldn't get you any drugs. You want these, you're gonna need my cooperation. I'll give you all but the one, the anti-anxiety. That wouldn't do you any good.”

“Oh, I've got anxiety,” said Leonard. “I'm the poster child. So what do you want? Out of this
deal
?”

“Want you to lay off that kid.”

“Why? Got a little crush, have we? Why didn't you just say so. Not that I'd share. Is that all?”

“Him and the other one. And everybody. Leave 'em alone.”

“What are you, a prude?”

“Little bit, yeah. You might call it that.”

“Got any idea how wasted your sympathies are? But, all right. I'll go for it. Give me all my lovelies, and that's your guarantee. I get a load on like that, and I'm pretty Zen. My appetites would tend to zero out, which is the whole idea of downers, isn't it? But I've seen how you jones without these, man, so here's another part of the deal—no dying,
okay? Don't you curl up and die now, because, personally, I don't care to be haunted in here. That would be the last straw.”

S
HE WAITED THEN
in dismay, but no one came, and before long Karen Brusett was longing to be harangued, or made to feel guilty, or for any human exchange, but no one ever came. She canned applesauce and corn, more provision than she could easily store. She finished the embroidery for Henry, a plump bird among plump fruits, a pattern built of intricate stitching. Though faithful to her daily correspondence, she came to regard it as self-indulgence; Henry must not read her letters because he never gave in to her many pleas to let her come and see him. Her letters, she imagined, were only a journal and served only to reveal how she became, without at least a little company for direction or for distraction, mortally bored and boring. She was not nearly so self-sufficient as she had thought herself at Henry's arrest, and she feared a winter in this purer solitude might freeze her solid.

Karen had been hoarding more firewood than she could ever reasonably hope to sell or burn, and drinking beer at all hours, and one morning out on Rugged Cross Road, with her load lopsided on the truck and with High Life on her breath, she was startled if not surprised to see an urgent light display in her rearview mirror. The officer behind her made his siren yip, and she looked for a wide spot in the road. She'd been courting trouble, she knew—no insurance, no current wood permit, no decent jack or jumper cables; her deficiencies
were legion. She owned a driver's license that she didn't even bother to carry, and she was a disaster, and she had gone out of her way to bring it to someone's attention. Now that attention had arrived in the form of a deputy making his way to her side with his hand on the grip of his pistol, and she found she didn't necessarily want it.

“Ma'am.”

“Hi,” she said without exhaling.

“Remember me?”

“You're . . . ?” Was he flirting with her? “From . . . ?”

“Deputy Sisson,” he said. “I was there that night you . . . ”

“Oh,” again with an inhalation. The deputy had been different at night, more boyish among the other officers. She remembered him as pale in someone's headlights. “That's right. Sure, now I do. How are you?”

“How am I? Fine, I guess. You know why I stopped you?”

“No,” she said somewhat truthfully—there were so many possible reasons.

“The way you've got your dog up there, that's against the law. What keeps it from flying off every time you stop or make a turn? All it's got is a lumpy little spot to stand on, and that's . . . You didn't know that was a bad way to go?”

“I did, but she won't ride in the cab. She just barks and barks if you put her in the cab. It's, it's horrible. But I do not like to break the law.”

“That isn't the real reason I stopped you,” said the deputy. Karen Brusett felt her troubles multiplying. What else? Would she have to walk a line on the highway for him? Say the alphabet without singing? She could not be very drunk, she thought, and still be this embarrassed. She could hardly afford to pay any amount of fine. But maybe this officer would take her to jail. This might be her best chance of seeing Henry.

“I've got a subpoena for you,” he said. “Sign right here.”

“What's this?”

“Just what it says. You're to appear as a witness for the state.”

“State of Montana and Henry Brusett? Well, this would be—Henry's trial? Wouldn't it? I thought they weren't gonna have that, not for a long time yet. They must've got satisfied he's not crazy, which I could've told 'em for free. But, already? This is so soon.”

“Says October 15,” the deputy noted. “Ten in the
AM
. S
O
be there, or be square. Or be arrested, actually. Sorry, didn't mean to be unprofessional. They've got us on these thirteen-hour shifts. You get goofy after a while.”

“But—against my own husband I'm supposed to testify? Against my own husband?”

“I guess so. You might want to go home, ma'am, and brush your teeth before you do too much more driving around. And get the dog off the top of that woodpile, too, would you?”

Karen Brusett did not drive home. She drove in that direction until the deputy was out of sight, and then she turned around in the road and made straight for the county seat, where she might expect to encounter even more police. Nosy police. Hard by Karen's side Clementine barked without pause, tireless and intentional, and much closer than she knew to being abandoned at the roadside. In town, the mushroom burger deluxe had become the special at the drive-in, and two demolition derby cars were on display in an abandoned lot. Greg's bakery had gone out of business.

Karen feared to leave Clementine in or on, or tied to the truck, so she led her by her collar, a clumsy undertaking—up the stairs, and through the hall, and she opened the lawyer's door and leaned in. Eleven in the morning, and no receptionist in the outer office, and that girl, who was supposed to be Ms. Meany's something-or-other, her assistant, was completely useless, and Karen thought that she'd make a far better helper if she could ever worm her way into the regular
workforce. What could possibly be wrong with a steady paycheck and doing the kind of work that is done in tidy clothes? Why not? Sometimes she thought she must be getting old already because she had come to want lighter, prettier shoes. People had regular jobs. It was nothing impossible. “Hello?”

“Come in,” the lawyer appeared between the dividers. “Sorry, it's been, oh, Karen. Hi. Well, come on in.”

“I've got my dog.”

“Oh, good. The more the merrier. Come on in.”

“No, she'd get wild in there. She barks like that when she's cooped up. Could we go outside for a minute?”

“Outside?” The lawyer had an apparatus in her ears. She took it out.

“So we can talk. So she'll let us have some quiet.”

Ms. Meany locked her door behind her, and as a troop they went back through the halls, down the clanging stair, and across the street to the grim park where Clementine put her nose to the ground, breathed up its history, and peed on its vertical parts. They sat in the swings, on brittle rubber straps, and like girls on any playground they rocked in them, under the soothing creak of the chains.

“I got a thing that says I have to testify. This is about the worst I've felt since this all started. I thought I was scared before. Geez, what next?”

“I told you it was possible. Anything else? Have you had anyone coming around? The sheriff's people? Meyers? Anybody wanting to talk again?”

“No. But I do have this thing. Already. I mean, isn't there any way around it?”

They swung to and fro, synchronized. The lawyer was very lucky to be smart, because without her intelligence, she'd have been a mash-mouthed, painful sight. Her complexion did not improve for being
seen in the great outdoors. “Karen,” she said at last, “I can't give you any advice. I really can't. You're a witness, and it's a very big no-no for me to try and influence your testimony in any way. I told you that you have certain rights. Just like everyone else has been telling you. But I told you nothing more than that. You understand?”

“Sure, I do. I guess. But what should I say?”

“I can't tell you. That's exactly—well, that would be the very last thing I should tell you. No one can. Or should. That will be up to you now. Entirely up to you. You'll say what you think you should say.”

“Oh? Well, thanks so much for that. At first everybody kept tellin' me, ‘Don't say anything.' Or I thought that was what they were tellin' me. Did they mean that? Did you?”

“That is one of your rights,” said the lawyer, “under certain circumstances.”

“Why doesn't anybody ever say anything straight out? It is—or it isn't. You are—or you aren't. Why not like that?”

“I don't mean to be unclear. But it is complicated.” Ms. Meany's tone suggested that she regretted these complications more than anyone. She seemed a good sport, and too much put upon, and Karen Brusett was touched that a professional person would get her good shoes dirty and indulge the whims of a disturbed dog just to talk this way. Karen was ashamed to keep fishing for better news when the woman had been clear from the beginning that she wasn't prepared to offer much. The news might never be more than mediocre.

“Weren't we supposed to have kind of a long wait? Before they had that trial? I was gettin' ready for a long wait, and, you know, I thought we'd just wait 'er out and hope for the best. That works sometimes, doesn't it? Wait till they're not so mad about everything.” She had hated the waiting very much, but the alternative, now that it was upon them, was worse. “I mean, this is just right around the corner. This is next week.”

“I don't know if Henry can stand to be in there much longer. He's not doing too well. Seemed to me he was going downhill a little every time I saw him. I don't know what's going on. They absolutely swear to me he's getting all his meds and eating, but he doesn't seem to be doing too well at all.”