You Believers (34 page)

The cop snickered then. Mike looked at him. The cop grinned. “They sure don’t make mommas like they used to.”

“She ain’t my momma.”

“Nope. You got the wrath of God coming down on you.”

She turned and gave a glare to the cop, who wiped the grin right off his face. “I ain’t nothing like the wrath of God, young man.” She looked back at Mike. “And there you were creeping all around the house trying to make things seem all nice and normal while that hoodlum’s sleeping on my couch. I heard you come in my room, try to sleep in that chair in the corner. You hardly slept a wink, Michael Ray Carter. You were scared of that boy, and don’t you deny it.”

Mike looked at his hands. At least he wasn’t cuffed. He wasn’t convicted, just a suspect for now. And all because his granny had to volunteer her own information. He was pissed about that, part of his brain thinking,
Why the hell couldn’t she mind her own business
? and part of him mad at himself for bringing Jesse to his granny’s house, for using his granny like bait for the girl in the blue truck. But it was Jesse who’d picked her, Jesse who had convinced her to drive.
Not me
, he thought. He felt his granny glaring at him. He didn’t know which was worse, her glaring at him like that or not looking at him at all. He remembered they were talking about Jesse; they were talking about that night Mike had sneaked her walker from her room and let Jesse sleep on her couch. Mike said, “You just got to try to please Jesse when he’s in one of those moods. He was angry, and you gotta go along with whatever he wants when he’s angry like that.”

“I knew he was angry,” she said. “Any fool could have heard that. You boys was up to something that day.” She poked at the back of his hand. “Don’t you lie to me. You might try to lie to the law, but don’t you dare try to lie to your granny. What was that boy so angry about?”

Mike sighed. “He told me he wanted to boost some car or truck
to go rob a pawnshop.” He saw the cop taking notes. He didn’t know why the cop bothered since most likely the conversation was being taped. He’d seen how they did that on TV. He looked around at the walls. Didn’t see any glass, but he’d bet there were cameras and microphones somewhere. “Not a robbery,” he said. “A burglary. He wanted to break into a pawnshop and needed a car that he could count on. He told me that much. I guess the truck he got to make the hit ran out of gas.”

The cop looked up from his notebook. “And you knew full well that associating with a man planning a crime is in violation of your probation.”

“We didn’t do it,” Mike said. “You know how sometimes guys just talk.”

The cop glared. “If it was just talk, why was your friend so angry? That wasn’t just talk. You were in on it, weren’t you?”

“Jesse wanted it, not me.” It would be all right as long as they didn’t get him to say anything about the blue-truck girl. “I let him use my car, made him drop me off at the Taco Shack, told him I couldn’t risk going to jail ‘cause I got to take care of my granny.” He looked up at her, but she only gave him a hard glance and looked away. “Jesse went on and said he was just gonna have a look at the pawnshop. But when he got there, the owner was there. Jesse didn’t want to risk getting close.” He looked at his granny. “So nothing happened. He didn’t even try to break into any store.”

She reached across the table, poked at his hand the way she used to poke him in the chest as if poking could make the truth come out. “You’re telling me that boy who was yelling, stomping around my house, eating all my cookies, drinking my last Coke, getting you so nervous you couldn’t even sit for ten minutes with me, and you hiding my walker so I couldn’t get out there to see what was going on without risking falling, breaking my hip . . .” She paused to catch her
breath. He wished he could go home with her. If they kept him overnight, took her home, he hoped they’d make sure she was all right and that there was food in the house.

Mike reached, squeezed her hand. “Granny. When Jesse gets angry, he can get mean. I didn’t want you to see him mean. I was trying to keep him peaceful. You don’t know how he can be. I was trying to make sure he wouldn’t do something to hurt you.”

She shook his fingers loose, gripped the table, and stood. “I am a child of God, and I fear no one.”

Mike looked up, surprised at the strength in her voice. He saw her leathery skin sagging; he saw the trembling in her arms, the thin bones, the wisps of gray hairs slipping loose. He knew she wouldn’t be around much longer. The things he was putting her through made it all the harder for her to find the strength to keep on. “I know, Granny.” He couldn’t stop the tears from slipping down his face. “I’m sorry, Granny. But I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s Jesse. And I did like you told me. I called in. I didn’t see anything. I just called ‘cause he talked about how he’d like to hurt that rich girl.”

She sat back down, wouldn’t look at him. “You risked everything I’ve worked for. If they lock you up, what is going to happen to me?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry, Granny. I’ll make it up to you.”

She pushed back from the table. “You tell this man here everything he needs to know. You tell him every bad thing that Jesse ever talked about; you tell even what that boy thought about, you hear me?” He’d always thought she’d be the one who would save him from his trouble, who’d pull him out of whatever mess he fell into. But while he had been in one room telling the cop everything he could about how Jesse had wanted to hurt that rich girl in his neighborhood, while he was thinking about how he could use that thousand bucks to
get his car fixed and maybe take his granny for a nice shrimp dinner, she was in another room telling another story, telling whatever she could about Jesse Hollowfield, how she’d known Jesse was up to no good because he was always relying on her boy, who had nothing but a granny and a beat-up car. She was the one who’d asked, just the way she was always asking Mike,
Why does some boy come from all that money need to be leaning on you
? Mike would never answer that question. He’d say he figured Jesse liked him, that was all.

There was a knock on the door. The cop stood, leaned out. Mike strained to hear the words but couldn’t make them out. His hearing had been off since the time he’d gotten jumped in juvy, gotten smacked in the ears so hard his eardrums busted. Next time it wouldn’t be juvy. If they sent him up, he’d be young meat for anybody who wanted a piece of his ass. That was why he’d stayed close to Jesse. Jesse had never wanted that. Jesse wanted other things Mike could do for him, like cut his hair, get him extra servings in the food line, things like making him an egg sandwich in his granny’s house. Mike hoped one day he’d get some of whatever it was that ran in Jesse’s blood. But now he was figuring that what Jesse had, he was born with. Mike could never be what Jesse was. He was thinking maybe Jesse was the devil. He was wondering if Jesse was sitting right now in some other interrogation room saying some kind of shit about him.

The cop shut the door. “Looks like you’re staying, Carter.” He went to the other side of the table, gently pulled out Mike’s granny’s chair. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we got to keep your boy.”

“What?” Mike said. He tried to stand, but the cop pulled him back to his chair. His granny was crying. “It’s all right, Granny. I’ll be home soon. These men, they just doing what they got to do.”

She reached for him. The cop said, “That’ll be enough, ma’am.” Mike saw another cop come into the room, help his granny to her walker. “This officer will get you home, Mrs. Carter.”

“I need to go take care of my granny.” Mike stood “You can’t leave her alone.”

The cop yanked him back to his chair again. His granny turned. Mike hoped she’d come pat his back the way she always did, tell him it would be all right.

She stood there. He waited for her touch. But she just poked his arm, hard, the way Jesse might do, but not enough to hurt, just enough to let him know she was done. “You should have thought about that before you got in this mess, Michael Ray.” She turned to her walker and lumbered away. He saw her bent back, the hem of her skirt swaying at the back of her calves, her swollen ankles and feet pushing those shoes around. “I’m sorry, Granny,” he called. “I promise I’ll make this all up to you.”

He waited to hear her voice. She always said,
I love you, baby
, when he was going somewhere, as if those words could remind him to be the boy she wanted him to be. He thought surely she’d say something, something like a momma would say, before she left the room. But he just heard the clumping, rolling sound of her walker. He couldn’t hear her steps, but he clung to the sight of her walking away. The door closed. Mike was wondering if she’d said something like good-bye, something he just couldn’t hear for the blood pounding in his head. The cop yanked him up, pushed him toward the door. Mike kept his head down the way cops liked a man to do when they were shuffling him to another room. A whipped dog was what they wanted.
Roll over and play dead
, he thought. He’d never be what Jesse wanted him to be.

As he walked down the hallway, the cop pulling at his arm to make the cuffs cut a little deeper, he thought,
Yeah, I’m a fool all right. Ratting out Jesse. He’s gonna kill me first chance he gets
. He’d have to play Jesse’s way. He’d have to show Jesse what he could be if he had to. No one had mentioned the girl in the blue truck. But if they did, if
he had to, he’d tell them everything to keep Jesse buried under some jail. He’d tell them how he’d never touched that girl. But he’d never tell anybody how she had stood there beside him. She’d touched him as if he were the last thing in the world she could hold on to. And he had been. She’d never gotten the chance to hold the joint Jesse had offered her out in that field. Mike shook his arm as if he could shake her off. But there would be no getting free from the reach of her hand.

Some Kind of Power

Roy warned me about going to the hearing, but he knows me enough to know that a warning to me is more like an invitation than a threat. He told me seeing Jesse Hollowfield in the flesh was nothing like seeing him on tape. Roy said seeing him in person was like watching some kind of shape-shifter. He said one minute the guy was handsome, had a face like the young Elvis, had that mouth the girls loved, and then in a second his face could change, get hard and turn to too much mouth and teeth, like a wolf ready to tear apart whatever got in its way. “When you see that change,” he said, “and you’re right next to it, you just quiver.” I’d seen Jesse’s face on tape, and yeah, he gave me a sick feeling, but I figured I could take him live just fine.

Livy was beside me, leaning close. I had tried to reason with her, told her there was nothing to be gained, that seeing his face would only set her to imagining awful things, and she didn’t need that. I didn’t tell her what I’d seen on that tape of Jesse in the interrogation room. But I did tell her that Mike Carter’s granny had said something about Jesse being at her house the day Katy disappeared. And something about a truck out of gas. In most cases that wouldn’t mean much, but Katy’s truck had a gas gauge that always read empty. Livy
was trying to believe maybe he wasn’t involved, but for Roy and me, Jesse being involved was something we knew.

So there was Livy, leaning on the edge of her seat, watching the room like something huge would happen any minute. She’d never been in a courtroom as far as I could tell. I’d told her nothing really big was going to happen. But she had said, “I need to be there, Shelby. When I see his face, I’ll know.”

I knew the judge was the kind who liked to give the ones he sentenced a chance to say one last thing to the courtroom before they were led away to lockup. He liked the drama, or maybe he was just curious to hear what a convicted man had to say. And I’ll admit, I was curious. Along with everybody else sitting in that room.

Livy seemed relieved, as if just being near lawyers, cops, and the judge would bring her a little closer to setting things right in her world. I knew she’d never make it back to any kind of world where she thought she belonged.

It wasn’t really my business to see Jesse on tape. But Roy had convinced the DA that it could be helpful for me to study the man. When Roy led me into that viewing room to watch, he paused a second, some pain moving across his eyes. He said, “You don’t know what you’re in for.” And that was what I felt like saying to Livy that day:
You don’t know what you’re in for
. But nobody ever knows what might be around the corner of any day. “Bring it on,” I said, the way I always say it when I know I need to face something and I just want it over.

Roy always sees through my tough talk. He just shook his head, sat beside me, and turned on the TV. The screen showed Jesse sitting there, looking at his hands shackled to the table. He looked up, scanned the room, looking for the camera. Then he caught sight of it, a tiny thing, the lens probably no bigger than a pea, but he knew what he was looking at. He made some effort to straighten in his
seat, grinned. Then he said, “You tell Mike, you get the word to Mike, I hope he enjoys that reward.” When he leaned back in his chair, I could hear the creaking of metal, the clank of cuffs on the table, “You tell him . . .” Then he laughed with the low, dirty sound men can make.

When the detectives came into the room, he sat up as tall as the shackles would allow and said, “You tell that bitch Mike he’d better fucking enjoy the money. It’s gonna be the last he spends.”

I remembered the detective grinning. He was a friend of Roy, had Roy’s cool way of playing an interview. He said, “Mike?”

Jesse looked up, fearless. “You tell him I know where his fucking granny lives.” His lawyer grabbed his arm, said, “Stop.” The lawyer must have known Jesse, had to be a family friend. It wouldn’t be any man who’d lay a hand on Jesse, try to hush him like that.

“I’m curious,” the detective said. “What do you know about a truck being out of gas?”

Jesse shrugged, looked at the backs of his hands. There were scars there. I could see them. The detective asked if he knew anything about a blue truck with Tennessee plates, left abandoned, out of gas.