When the Saints (15 page)

West parks outside the Lighthouse until the Open light switches on, then goes in hoping to catch the owner. Twenty minutes go by and I fall back to sleep on the sun-warmed seats. The door snaps open and I sit up with a start.

“Laz knows this Troy guy,” West says, sliding back behind the wheel. “Says he wouldn’t be surprised if that’s who’s behind this.”

“Okay. What do we do?”

He squints toward the dock railing where some boats are heading out to open water. Then he turns the key in the ignition. “We’ll have to send the cops up there.”

At the police station, we find out they have only one car out searching for Swimmer. The officer in charge gets winded just from standing up from his chair. The two middle buttons of his uniform shirt pop open. West gives him the address for Troy, but he tells us there’s nothing he can do without a search warrant.

“You got a woman in a bar saying she heard people at that house arguing about where to stash a kid.” West rubs the knees of his jeans. “Don’t you think it’s worth looking into?”

The officer picks some crud out of the corner of his eye with his pinky finger. “Sir, let me explain this to you one more time. Even if I wanted to check it out, I can’t enter private property without a search warrant.”

I cut in. “Shouldn’t you at least issue some kind of press release with Swimmer’s photograph?”

“Truthfully, we’re not considering this a missing person case yet.”

“What? Why the hell not?”

“Because it’s not the first time your sister’s lost track of her son. Last year, we got a call from some woman a kilometre away saying he just turned up on her lawn, playing with her dog.”

“He’s been gone overnight. If he was playing with somebody’s dog, they’d have called by now, for Christ sake.”

He shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. It could be someone who knows his mother and hasn’t got around to bringing him home yet.”

“Are you kidding me?” West looks about ready to put the guy in a headlock. “What if you’re wrong? What if this was your kid?”

“Sir,” the cop begins, but doesn’t continue.

I stand up. “Let’s go.”

West kicks the door on our way out and yells, “Fucking Keystone Cops!” He tells me about an RCMP officer in Solace River, the only one he trusts enough to call when a fight gets out of hand at the tavern. We find a pay phone and the dispatcher puts him through. He talks for a while and, when he hangs up, tells me the Mountie might have a jurisdiction issue but said he’ll see what he can do.

We drive to the playground for a quick look before we head back to the trailer. No one’s home when we pull in. I dig the spare key out of the swan planter and we go inside, try to make small talk, but we’re too drained. Our voices trail off and we just sit in silence. West’s eyes travel around the trailer and I bet he’s wondering where I get off making comments about his place.

Just before dusk, a Toyota Tercel rolls up the driveway. Jackie gets out, goes around and helps Ma out of the passenger seat. Janis climbs out the back and it takes her three tries to slam the door shut. Swimmer’s still missing. I can see it in their eyes.

“Janis, this is West,” I say once she kicks her sneakers off.

She stands there on the carpet, eyeing him from behind her sunglasses. “You’re him.”

“I’m him.”

“You can’t meet Swimmer, because he escaped.”

West nods. “That’s okay. I’ll meet him when he gets back.”

“He’ll be back on Tuesday because that’s when we watch the Muppets show.” She points at Jackie and Ma. “This is Uncle Jackie and this is my grandmother. Just call her Grandma.”

West shakes their hands, but they barely register him.

“We been at the hospital trying to get more information out of Poppy,” Jackie says. “She’s hopped up on something, trying to claw out the windows. They had to restrain her twice because she’s so goddamn skinny, she squirms right out of the straps.”

“Who’s Troy?” I ask.

Jackie flinches. “Who said Troy?”

“Some woman in the Lighthouse said Troy was out to get Poppy. Who is he?”

Jackie sniffs his armpit, says he needs to take a shower and walks away down the hall.

Ma sets her purse on the table. “Poppy said those low-lifes at the drug house wouldn’t let her leave, wanted to know why the cops were looking for her and whose names she’s been giving out. They closed the drapes and wouldn’t let her check
on the kids, started forcing pills down her throat and asking her the same questions over and over. She doesn’t know how much time passed before she heard Janis screaming at her through the cat flap.”

“Oh shit.” I feel the blood drain from my face. “I made Lyle think the cops are after Poppy.”

“This ain’t Lyle,” Ma says. “It’s Troy. This ain’t the first time he used Poppy to get at Jackie. When she was just a dancer, he fed her drugs like candy one weekend, convinced her she could make a thousand a night doing what she shouldn’t. He’s the reason she got addicted in the first place.”

Janis lies down on the kitchen floor and doesn’t say a word while I boil spaghetti noodles and West chops up whatever he can find in the fridge. I have about ten questions for Jackie, but after he jumps out of the shower he heads straight down to the pay phone at Frosty’s to call Jewell. I ask him why he doesn’t just use the phone here and he says he doesn’t want to tie up the line in case the cops call.

“Use your head,” he snaps at me, jabbing his index finger to his temple.

I keep thinking about what Ma said. Troy would have to be one demented motherfucker to snatch a kid. I bet West is thinking the same thing. He’s been slicing the brown spots off the same onion for five minutes.

When Jackie finally comes back, he rigs up a police scanner in the kitchen and stays glued to it all night. The rest of us eat in the living room, staring blankly at the television while we chew.

“Is Swimmer eating supper?” Janis asks.

“Of course he is,” I say. “He’s got it all over his face as usual.”

“And on his arms,” she says.

“And on his shirt.”

She rips off a hunk of bread. “He’s wearing his Smurfs shirt,” she says with her mouth full. “I remembered that to the fuzz.”

A
FTER SUPPER,
W
EST TELLS ME HE’S GOT TO HEAD BACK
to Solace River and check on the tavern. He keeps his back to me as he puts his boots on and I get the feeling he’s had enough. Maybe he’s finally realized why people keep ten paces back from anyone named Saint. Part of me wants to jump in the truck with him and forget I ever found Poppy’s trailer in the first place. I take my coat off the hook.

“You should stay,” he whispers.

I peer around the corner at Ma slumped in a chair, Jackie resting his head on his arms at the kitchen table. West starts to say more, but Janis pops up between us.

“Can you look for my brother at Saw-liss River?” she asks West. “He might go fishing, so you should look for a kid sitting with a stick in the water.” She spreads her arms wide. “His head is this big.”

West tells her he’ll keep his eyes peeled and heads out. Janis follows me to the front window, waving to West as he starts up his engine. At the foot of the driveway he gives a weak honk, and then he’s gone. I still have my coat in my hand.

“There goes a good man,” Janis says.

“How do you know?”

“Trust me.”

The full moon is so low in the sky, it looks like the opening to a tunnel through the trees. Janis stares at it, nose pressed to the glass. “You think there’s wolfs out there eating Swimmer’s brains?”

“No, honey. They don’t eat humans.”

“They do too. I seen it on Uncle Jackie’s TV. They eat us raw. But I don’t think they’d want to eat Swimmer because he smells too bad.” She breathes a circle of condensation. “Some wolfs take real babies and make them into wolf babies. So when Swimmer comes back, he might walk like a dog and eat out of garbage cans.”

W
HEN THE POLICE FINALLY PHONE, THEY TELL US THEY
went up to Troy’s residence and no one was there. The doors were locked and the cars gone. They finally contacted all the Maritime police agencies and alerted the media, and I bet it’s only because West made that phone call to the Solace River detachment.

Ma goes to lie down and doesn’t come back out. I knock on the bedroom door to ask if I can borrow her car and she says fine, if I can get it started. She drives a hatchback with two missing side mirrors. I try the key, pumping the gas until the engine finally turns over. The safety inspection expired four years ago and there’s a hole in the floor so big you can see the gravel in the driveway. An air freshener shaped like a lobster hangs from the rear-view mirror. I sniff it out of curiosity, but the scent’s all worn off.

It’s been a while since I drove stick and it takes a minute to catch it in gear. I jerk all the way down the driveway but have it under control by the time I pass Frosty’s. Thinking about Poppy going to score after she was half clean gets me so worked up I almost take out a purple mailbox.

It starts raining as I pull into the hospital parking lot. I get out and stand in the drops, staring up at Poppy’s lighted window and grinding my teeth. She’s sleeping when I get up there, so I sit down in the hallway with my back against the wall and wait until a nurse goes in to check her meds. When the woman comes back out, she tells me Poppy’s awake. I walk in, keeping my distance. Poppy’s arms and face are scratched up and bruised.

“Someone beat you up before I got the chance?”

She squints at me. “I did. I hit myself in the face until they shot me up with tranquilizers.” She wrenches herself into a sitting position. “Where’s my baby?”

“No one knows.”

Her eyes are red slits. “Please kill me.”

She looks dead already or I’d seriously consider it. Her skin is so pale, she practically disappears against the sheets except for the black and yellow holes in her arms. Twenty-one years old and all washed up. I can’t stand to look at her.

“That’s the second time someone said that to me in this hospital. You both want the easy way out.”

I turn and walk out of the room to the stairwell, jog two stairs at a time up four flights to the top floor, push open the heavy door and march to the end of the hall. The door to 404A is closed, but I kick it open and barge in. Daddy’s rank breath
makes it easy to find him in the darkness. I switch on the lamp, stand over him for a few seconds and listen to his chest whistle. I can only imagine what demented dreams slosh around his head.

It takes me a few minutes to unhook all the tubes. I figure out how to release the foot brake on his bed then guide it out into the hallway. He doesn’t wake up until the elevator doors are sliding open.

“The hell?”

A nurse comes around the corner and yells at us to stop just as the doors are closing. Before we get down to the second floor, Daddy starts struggling and demands I take him back to his room. I tell him to shut his trap just like he said to me a thousand times. The doors open and I wheel his bed quickly down the hall. When I’m almost to Poppy’s room, I break into a run and heave Daddy right through the open door.

“You deserve each other!” I yell.

A loud bang echoes into the hallway as his bed crashes into hers and slams it into the wall. Nurses come running, Poppy’s screaming like she’s being doused in acid, Daddy hollers, “WHAT IN THE FLYING FUCK?” and I turn and walk right out of the hospital.

T
HE CLOCK IN THE FRONT ROOM OF THE TRAILER IS
ticking too loud. It’s like Chinese water torture.

“Ma,” I say. “We have to leave.”

“And go where?”

“Back to Solace River.”

She’s been sitting in her ratty maroon bathrobe staring out the window at nothing all day. Ever since Swimmer’s face appeared on page two of the
Jubilant Herald,
people have started driving by to get a look at the missing boy’s trailer. Some dickheads in a minivan stop at the foot of the driveway and point at us. I point right back.

Ma sighs. “In the old days, when something like this happened, the neighbours would come over with casseroles and cigarettes, offering to pick up prescriptions or do the dishes. It was like that when I was a little girl.”

I try to close the curtains, but her fingers reach out and
tighten around my wrist like an eagle talon. I debate whether to tell her the problem is us, not the town.

“Whatever happened to your friend Bev?” I ask instead.

“When I shacked up with Wendell, I lost all my friends, one by one. They couldn’t sit still around him, kept turning around to make sure their purses were still hanging off the back of their chairs. But not Bev. She used to come by to check on us when your father was in jail. She didn’t want no trouble, though. After those men came out to the house, she brought us to Jubilant, but was scared shitless they were going to show up on her porch next. She always said she had no idea why I hooked up with a man like that, but Tabby, he could dance, and my God, he was so funny. He made me laugh so hard one night I pissed my new jeans.”

“But then the fangs came out.” I summon the nerve to ask her the question I’ve been wondering about for years. “So why did you stay with him?”

Janis looks up. She’s been drawing pictures of Swimmer to put up on phone poles. In every one of them he’s dancing to music notes rising out of a grey rectangle that’s supposed to be the stereo. She waits for Ma to answer.

Ma picks up the cold mug of tea sitting on the window ledge. “I didn’t. I left.”

“No, you lost your home and couldn’t go back.”

“Well, I didn’t let him in
here,
did I?” She sets the mug down with a bang and I can tell she’s determined to have that tally point.

“But why’d you stay with him before all that? Back when he beat you, beat your kids, took off or was in jail half the time?”

Her eyes drift back out the window where a three-legged cat is hobbling along the ditch. I think she isn’t going to answer me, but then she says, “He used to cry sometimes at night. He didn’t mean to hurt you. He just couldn’t change.” She blinks a few times. “In the old house, the bathroom doorknob was wrong. You had to turn the knob left instead of right. Your father could never keep that straight. Even if he’d just been in there, he’d keep turning it to the right, getting all worked up, hollering that it wouldn’t open, and I’d have to come show him again. He had some damage, I think, from his father.”