Chapter Four

My first inclination was to head for the graveyard, but I knocked that idea down as soon as it appeared. That was something I would have done. I had to think like Mickey. He wasn’t exactly enamored with graveyards. He still had a child-like fear of those places, as evidenced by the way he superstitiously held his breath whenever we drove past them.

My biggest fear was that Cal had stuck around and led him away from the store to mine his brain for more of whatever it was he was looking for. Mickey was easily led; the perfect victim for someone as adept at intimidation as Cal.

I headed to my house, thinking Mickey might be out on the front porch waiting for me to appear and rescue him from himself. I only got about halfway there when I noticed a bundled figure sitting on the curb across the parking lot from The Hive. Even with his back to the road, I knew it was Mickey. The parka hood, fur-trimmed, pulled to a tight ‘o’ and the slow rhythmic rocking forward and back; it had to be him. I threw my left signal on and pulled into the Hive lot.

As I inched the car up to where he was rocking, the ‘o’ of his hood slowly rose… but I could not see the darkness inside. I only knew that he was seeing me.

His hand slowly lifted to a wave as I put the car in park-leaving it running-and jumped out into the cold.

“Hey, Am,” Mickey said. His voice came out with a muffled gush of air that dangled in front of him a moment before dissipating in the cold. He loosened his hood and revealed his face to the headlights’ glare.

He had been crying.

“Hey, Mick. We’re not at work now,” I said, patting his shoulder and taking a seat on the curb beside him. “You don’t have to call me Am. We’re friends now.”

“Well, yeah. But not really. I’m on the clock still, Duncan. I’m sorry I didn’t stay.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m just relieved to see Cal didn’t trap you somewhere and give you what for for not telling him whatever it is he imagines we know.”

“Well he didn’t. I came here on my own. I was just thinking, that’s all.”

I put my hand on his arm and gave it a squeeze. This seemed to slow the pendulum motion his body had locked itself into. I only let go when his rocking had come to a complete stop.

Not sure what to say, I chose to go with nothing. We sat in the glare of the headlights for a few minutes just watching the white tunnels of breath escaping with our exhalations.

“Why don’t we go inside for a drink before we head back to work?” I suggested. Mickey startled back to himself, giving his head a shake to clear the fog. “We will have to get back soon, though… but we can stay a few more minutes anyway. Dean’s taking care of things for now, but you know how he gets.”

“Sure, Dunc,” he said. “Sounds good. I like being inside. It’s like we’re closer to her in there.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean, bud.” But I didn’t. Not really. To me it felt like we were walking in a ghost house whenever we entered The Hive. Roni was everywhere. I wondered if she had touched the glass that held my beer, wiped down the stool I perched myself on, lingered in the hallway I walked to reach the men’s room. The whole Hive experience had become excruciatingly painful for me. For Mickey, it was like coming home. For him, The Hive was the true final resting place for Rhonda Eastwood; somewhere he could go to pay his respects.

I got up and killed the engine on the car and locked it up. As we walked to the front door, I noticed for the first time just how bone-cold it was outside. “You can’t sit on pavement like that when it’s this cold, Mickey. You’re libel to get piles doing that.”

Mickey held the door open for me, ignoring the comment I had hoped would serve to lighten his mood.

The darkness of the Hive reached out and pulled us in. Never did a bar have a more apt name. The Hive was dark and hectic. I always had the sense there was so much going on I wasn’t quite privy to and I was acutely aware of its manic insect hum. I was not comfortable there when Roni was present and I hadn’t warmed up to it at all in her absence. There was also the distinct impression that such good friends of Rhonda’s were not welcome.

I followed Mickey to where I knew he would go. Our table was in the corner behind the pool table. We spent many hours there watching patrons shooting pool while waiting for Roni’s shift to end.

Mickey slipped into the chair against the wall. This was his normal chair too. In the corner he could watch for Roni to make her appearance. I pulled out the chair across the table from him and sat down.

“We’ll have one quick drink,” I said. “Then it’s back to the grindstone.”

“Sure, Duncan.”

I took my coat off and hung it on the pool cue rack beside the table. This was a signal for Mickey, who seemed to be operating on auto-pilot. He chose only to toss his hood back off of his head, though. He was only half-willing to leave the cocoon and join me in the Hive. The coat would stay on.

It was extremely rare that nobody was shooting pool and I had half a mind to just take up a cue and start playing myself. It would have lifted Mickey from his funk, but the fact that Dean was left in charge at the store niggled my thoughts like a canker. I stared into the two pools of light shining on the table’s purple felt surface instead, waiting for Mickey to make sense of whatever it was he was worrying on and spit it out.

Tate himself came over to take our order. Tate was the owner, a pessimistic piece of misery who looked the same as long as I’ve known him. When we were growing up together, he was Ryan. Somewhere in high school Ryan slipped away and he has been stuck with his last name ever since.

“What can I get ya?” he asked, not even attempting to hide his contempt. He carried a germ laden J-Cloth and swiped a single swath through the center of the table with it, dropping down two cardboard coasters along the way.

“Two draughts, Tate,” I said. I snipped a smile short when he turned abruptly and headed back to the bar.

“He’s a fat fuck, Duncan.”

I pulled my head back and raised my eyebrows, taking Mickey’s unexpected comment in. He smiled and unzipped his parka.

“Yeah. No kiddin’. I never did like that guy.”

“Roni used to call him a pencil dicked hellcat,” he said. “Said he was always hitting on her and causing her grief. Said he was so fat he couldn’t find it to pee.”

I laughed and looked back toward the pool table. It was calling out to us… getting louder as Mickey’s mood improved.

“I suppose she’s probably right about that,” I said. Tate was grossly overweight. With his graying hair and climbing widow’s peak he looked easily ten years older than us. He was three days younger than me. It used to piss him off that my birthday was celebrated first in school. “I certainly wouldn’t wanna go looking for anything under that pile of rubble he calls a gut.”

Despite the fact that his eyes were darting around the bar scanning longingly for the ghost of a girl who would never show, all was finally right with the world. Mickey laughed. It seemed he finally shook the cloud that Cal had dropped on him.

“Howsabout a game of pool?” I asked, forgetting myself. It was sink or swim time. Every day the manager in me struggled against my natural inclination towards mediocrity and slackerdom.

“We have to get back to the store after this beer. This place’ll be closing soon anyway.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Maybe you should be the manager. God knows my heart ain’t in it.”

Tate pressed in between our conversation and plopped two mugs of beer on the previously dropped coasters, spilling foam from each with the force of their landings.

“Two draughts. That’ll be six, eighty-five.”

The beer at The Hive was no longer free for Rhonda’s freeloading friends. I reached into my pocket and paid the man, smiling at the ridiculous vision Mickey had just gifted me. I hoped Tate wouldn’t mistake the smile for a kindness.

“Maybe I’ll just shoot a few into the corner pocket while you’re drinking your beer, Duncan,” Mickey said. He slid out of his chair, grabbed a cue and the triangle and began his short journey around the table emptying its pockets of balls. The noise of balls being dropped and rolled and dragged across the surface of the table followed.

I took comfort in the tap of the cue on the white ball and the clack of the break. Sipping my beer, I felt lulled and sated by Mickey’s noisemaking. It was easy for me to slip back into a time when we did this every night. We’d come and have a beer on our lunch-hour, maybe a plate of the Hive’s piss-poor fries on the side, get a few words in with Roni as she’d move through the bar like a queen on a mission.

Roni did do the books for the Hive, but she really did so much more. It was as though she ran the place. Tate wouldn’t know his arse from a cupcake. Roni was the best thing that ever happened to him. I could not figure out what went wrong. It was like all the pieces were sitting right in front of me, but I had no way of knowing how they fit together.

I certainly felt the hatred oozing out of Tate’s pores whenever Mickey and I slipped into the bar, but I couldn’t tell Mickey we weren’t going back. He loved being in the place where Roni had spent most of her time. It gave him peace. Taking that away from him would have destroyed him. Besides, her conscience had already warned me in no uncertain terms that she’d hide me if I ever stopped him from going to the Hive.

Another sip, another clink of ball against ball and the soft thunk of a pocket being filled was all it took for me to slip back completely.

***

There was something disarming in the way Rhonda acted while I was packing a few things at my place. I tried to imagine that it was simply the adrenaline of flight, her excitement in busting away from a town she always hated, but it was more than that. Her sudden impatience with me, and her insistence that Mickey wait in the car out of the way, made it feel like it was her journey. Not ours. She dismissed all my questions about things we would need with a quick, “It doesn’t matter”.

“Okay, Roni,” I said once we were back on the road. “What’s this really about?”

“What do you mean? Adventure. Escape. Getting out of this little town before it sucks us under. Before we disappear. Can’t you feel it happening, Duncan? Can’t you feel the fading?”

I wasn’t buying it. The look of desperation that crept into her face earlier was now holding court over the landscape of her features. The panic in her heart was visibly recognizable in her near panting, and the shimmer of sweat covering her forehead and arms. There was more to this thing than adventure.

“Bullshit,” I said.

“What? Can’t a girl have fun? It’s not just a man’s world, you know. We can break out every now and again too.” Her smile, with the dashboard lights illuminating her manic face, was more frightening than convincing.

“I don’t have anything,” Mickey said from the backseat. “Why don’t I have anything?”

“What, sweetie?” Roni asked, pleased by the intrusion. She turned to face him, offering him another of her shocking new smiles.

“Well, we didn’t go to my place. I didn’t pack any clothes. I’ll need stuff too.”

She swung around to look at me, looking for help getting out of the corner she had put herself in. I averted my eyes to the road, pretending I hadn’t seen her shift.

“I have money, Mickey,” she said. “Enough to buy you a couple of things. We have to get to the train station or we’ll miss the next train. Miss that, and we may not leave.”

“Why not take the car?”

“Yeah, Roni? Why not the car? What’s with taking the train? Whenever we get to wherever it is it’ll take us, how the hell are we gonna get anywhere? We’ll need a car.”

“The train’ll take us further. And we can sleep. It makes sense if you think about it.”

She interrupted Mickey’s next question with a blast from the radio. CCR took us the rest of the way to the station while my attention oscillated between the road and the nervous foot tapping and fidgeting going on in the seat beside me.

We pulled into the station and parked next to the main building. It was all I could do to beat Roni to the trunk.

When the trunk popped open and I reached in to grab my bag, Roni clenched my wrist. I stopped what I was doing and looked at her, knowing the other shoe was about to drop.

“Wait,” she said.

I tried to yank my wrist free, but she held firm forcing me to look at her.

“What’s going on here, Roni?”

“Drunk courage.”

“What-”

“I needed to play you and Mickey into the mix to get me this far. I was scared, Duncan. I needed you to think you were coming with me.”

“We are coming with you.”

“No. No you’re not.” She finally released her grip and reached in to grab her own bulging suitcase.

Mickey had joined us at the back of the car but remained quiet. He often watched the two of us like a hawk to see how tense situations would play out before adding his own two cents. Not being one to take sides, I think he was always quietly hopeful our arguments would never come to the point where he would have to.

“I’m not going to let you leave here without us, Roni.”

“Come on, Duncan. You want to leave here as much as you want a turkey on Tuesday. You were just playing along to hear the sound of your own voice.”

“This isn’t about seeing the world, is it Roni?”

She dropped her suitcase to the ground with a thud. Before I knew what was happening, she had me in a panicked embrace. Her hands then grabbed my head and her mouth found my nose, my cheeks… my mouth.

When she finally found my ears she held me closer and whispered, “Don’t make a scene, Duncan. You’ll only upset Mickey. You have to let me go. I have no choice. You have to.”

My eyes roamed and locked on Mickey. He was watching us like someone on the verge of a breakdown. I didn’t think it was possible for him to be more upset than he already appeared, but I had to listen to her. She had once again manipulated me into a corner; something Rhonda Eastwood was incredibly good at accomplishing.

Her mouth came back to mine and she whispered the same warning again, her hot breath filling my lungs as she spoke the words.

“You guys are scaring me,” Mickey finally said.

She released me and opened her arms to Mickey. As he fell in, I picked up her suitcase and headed for the front doors of the station. I had already relented to her will. She was getting on the train and we were staying behind. She would tell me what was going on in her own sweet time. And like a puppy lost, I would wait for that time to arrive.

***

“Hey, idiot,” Tate said, startling me from my reverie. “I think it’s time you let somebody else use that table. You’re only fooling around. These boys want to have a real game.”

He was flanked by the Martin brothers, Robbie and David. They were regulars at the Hive. Roni called them Trouble and More Trouble. They were a couple of muscle-bound simpletons I never gave the time of day. They smiled at Mickey, arms folded, waiting for him to cower under and walk away from the pool table.

“There aren’t any idiots here, Tate,” I said, rising out of my chair. “No need to speak to him like that.”

“And there’s really no need for the two of you to keep haunting this place now that Roni ain’t in it, either, Duncan. How’s about the two of you call it a night now? I’ve been a good host. I brought your beer. I let the thin genius there scratch up just about as much of my table as I can take. How about you just get your asses on back to the IGA and stock some shelves now.”

I moved toward him, balled fists at my sides. He took a step back at the same time the brothers Martin took a step forward, smirking their ill will in my direction.

“It’s okay, Dunc,” Mickey said, sliding the pool cue across the surface of the table. “I was finished anyway. We’ll go, Tate.”

“That’s very good of you, moron,” Tate replied. “I’ll tell Roni you stopped by.”

Mickey gasped and a dark anger crossed his features. I thought he would pounce on Tate, but he seemed to recompose himself on the spot. He grabbed his coat.

“Come on, Duncan,” he said, ignoring the three of them completely. He put his parka on and started walking towards the door. “We better get back to the IGA like he says.”

The Martins stopped their posturing and began to set the pool table up for a game, not once opening their mouths to speak.

“I don’t like you, Tate,” I said, making sure I was quiet enough so that Mickey couldn’t hear me. “And Roni didn’t like you either. She didn’t like you a lot, Tate. She warned me about you. I wouldn’t even come to this rat trap if it wasn’t for Mickey. He wants to be close to where Roni used to spend her time, but he doesn’t know how much she loathed the time she spent here.”

“Well don’t do me any favors, Duncan,” he replied. “Tell him not to come back and we’ll all be happy.”

“We’ll be back as long as Mickey wants to keep coming. And you are not going to stop us.” I leaned in close enough to smell his stale breath. “I’ll tell Roni you said hi. How’s that?”

He flinched. I saw it just before he regained his composure. He was just as uncomfortable with ghosts as I was. It made me wonder what it was Roni was keeping from me the night she boarded that train. The Hive was involved in that night. I sensed it like you sense someone watching you. You just know where to look… and when you do, there they are… looking like the cat that ate the rat. And as soon as I mentioned Roni’s name, it sure looked like a rat that Tate choked to swallow.

Chapter Three

            I heard a crash three aisles over and went to investigate.

      “Shit!” Mickey cursed and chased the red cans like chickens around a coup. They rolled the length of the aisle in all directions. Mickey spun with them, as though he thought if he stopped them fast enough, he could undo their falling. That instinct to catch something before it falls had kicked in, only too late. And he was unsure where to even start picking them up.

     “Shit again,” he said in a near-whisper, to himself and finally stood still.

     “Mick, what’re you doing?” I stood at the end-cap with my hands on my head, smiling at my goofy friend.

     “Oh hey, Dunc. I was just stocking this and tipped the box of Spaghettios. Help me?”

     I laughed, “I’m just headed to the back. The frozen food truck is here.”

     His posture sagged, “Oh. Okay, Am.”

     Mickey took to calling me “Am” at work, ever since I got the Assistant Manager job at IGA. He used it to distinguish between his friend, Duncan, talking to him, and his shift manager talking to him. It’s how he kept the two of me straight.

     He thought he was clever, and I didn’t discourage him. Rhonda liked that he gave me a nickname. With her, “Oh Mickey, it’s perfect for him,” I was stuck with it.

     Since her death, she had become a new conscience in my head. My own, not so refined or defined, had been pushed aside, and a very distinct Roni set of values had transplanted in its place. I let him call me “Am” because she liked it when she was living. Now that she was gone, her conscience told mine it was the right thing to do, even if I thought it was silly. If I didn’t let him, her conscience would put mine in a guilt choke-hold. My own conscience still hadn’t recovered from the Christmas tree bonfire debacle. She slapped me around good for that one.

     Mickey started to pick up the cans and I walked away, satisfied that he could handle it.

            Stocking shelves at the IGA was a part-time job in high school that turned into a full-time job after graduation so I could sock money away for college. After a couple years of working, I realized I had no interest in more school. Mickey wasn’t going and neither was Rhonda. She started as a cashier with us at IGA. Then she got a better paying job for Tate, keeping the books for his restaurant and bar, The Hive. That Mickey and Rhonda were still in town was reason enough for me to stay, too. We were a package deal.

     Rushville is a small town. There aren’t many jobs, so I stayed on at the IGA and used the money for rent so I could move out from my mom’s basement.

     After three years of stocking shelves, they put me on third shift. The shipments would come in and we could stock the shelves through the night when we wouldn’t be in the way of the customers. Mr. Larson promoted me to assistant manager and it seemed it was going to be my career, rather than the stop-through I had intended it to be.

     I pushed through the metal doors and helped the driver unload the truck. Dean came back from stocking the deli and helped me sort the pallets.

     “Ok, looks good,” I said.

     Dean pulled the pallets into the freezer, leaving the product, still to be stocked, accessible for stocking later and I walked to the floor to check on Mickey.

     A stray Spaghettios can had rolled against the butcher’s case and I leaned down to pick it up. That’s when I heard the voices, and stopped mid-stoop, to listen.

     “I don’t know,” Mickey said. There was a terror in his voice.

     “Now, Mickey, I know that’s not true. Why don’t you just tell me everything you do know?”

     “But…we already told ya everything. I swear.” Mickey stammered and sounded as though he may cry. I pictured his full face gone red, his eyes wet.

     “I don’t mean to scare you. I don’t think you did anything wrong, buddy, but Roni deserves to have the people responsible for her death pay for it.”

     Cal, the bastard.

     I realized I was still hunched over an aisle away and stood, took a deep breath, and approached their aisle.

     “Roni deserves it, Mickey. If Duncan did something to her, we need to put him in jail.”

     “No,” Mickey said, “Duncan didn’t do anything. Roni just…”

     “Hi Cal,” I interrupted.

     Mickey was backed up against the shelves, grasping a box of Instant Spuds to his chest, his knuckles whitened by his grip, face red and pained.

     Cal stood over him. He was taller than Mickey by a few inches. He used his extra height to bare down over Mickey, who was shrinking to the floor.

     I walked to them, and rested my hand on Mickey’s shoulder. I felt him relax in my grip. Cal stepped back and I eased Mickey to me. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Get away from him.”

     “I was just leaving,” he said. “I’ll talk to you again soon, Mickey. I know you have something to tell me.” He rested his hand on his holster, tapped his fingers against the black leather, then turned on his heels and walked away.

     Mickey sniffled, still clutching the box of spuds.

     “What did he say to you?” I rested my hands on his shoulders and made him look me in the eye.

     “Just about Roni and you. He wanted to know about the night…” he had never been able to say the night she died, so rephrased, “that night last year.”

     “And you told him…?”

     “I told him nothin’, Dunc. I swear.” He looked panicked all over again. He stared hard into my eyes, pleading with me to be convinced he’d done nothing wrong. “At least I don’t think I did. Shit, I can’t remember. He scared the hell out of me.” He smacked his forehead, punishing himself.

     “Okay, buddy, okay. Calm down. I’m not blaming you. He shook you up pretty good, why don’t you go on break.”

     He relaxed. “It was just like that night, Duncan. Just like that night when he was yelling at us at her house. Remember? It freaked me out.”

     “I know.” I squeezed his shoulders then dropped my hands. “Go on break.” Then I started stocking the shelves.

     That night last year. It wriggled in my brain all over again. I pushed it away as I pulled the boxes of E-Z Potatoes to the front of the shelf. Damn Cal. He didn’t like us when Roni was alive; he hated us now.

     Grief takes many forms. Mickey clung to me in his grief. Feeling like he could keep Rhonda near if he kept me near.

     I spent hours staring at pictures, drinking too much, reeling from her absence, talking to the conscience she’d transplanted in my head. I took care of Mickey for her and he had grown to depend on me being both Roni and Duncan. I let memories of her consume me.

     Even in defending Mickey tonight, with Cal’s threats hovering over him, he looked at me like he had looked at her so many times. She was his big defender. She was the one who had taken care of him. I was a sad surrogate in her place.

     Cal turned his grief to hate and had spent the last year making certain we knew it was all aimed at us because we were the last people to see her alive.

***

     Rhonda sat up and the wing of tangled hair more resembled a nest. She untangled and straightened it the best she could and pulled her feet from my lap. Mickey readjusted in his seat to make room for her to sit.

     If you’re serious, then let’s go,” she said. “Right now.”

     Mickey smiled but the uncertainty did not leave his face.

     I said, “Okay, then.” We drove to her house.

     Mickey asked, “Where to?”

     Roni only laughed. The joy she felt presented itself as a glow that overwhelmed her face.

     I took the laugh to mean she didn’t even know where, but she was excited to be going… wherever it might have been.

     We pulled into her yard and filed out of the car. She dug keys from her pocket and slipped one into the lock, telling us to stay quiet with one slender finger to her lips. The glow had turned devious as her excitement grew.

     Once inside, she said, “I’ll be right back. Stay here.”

     We heard her banging around, then footsteps overhead. She was in the attic. More banging – drawers slamming. Mickey and I did not speak. My stomach had curdled though, and the sour taste of fear crept up. I felt like a coward; I was afraid of the unknown adventure she wanted for us.

     She bounded down the hall with a suitcase, tilting to one side as she carried it. The weight of it nearly toppled her and she bounced off the wall of the narrow hallway.

     She put it down by my feet.

     “We’ll get your stuff on the way out of town. I just have one more thing to get,” she said, and escaped to the kitchen, returning in seconds with a sealed plastic container. She held it up to us, “Rainy Day Fund.”

     Mickey picked up her suitcase while she turned off the light. I walked out the front door and held it open for them.

     Cal pulled up just as we had put her suitcase in the trunk. “What are you doing?”

     “We’re leaving,” She answered. The cool tone in her voice angered him.

     “With these idiots? Are you kidding me? You’re not going anywhere, Rhonda.”

     She approached him like a cat circling the legs of her owner. “Calvin.” She circled him. He stood still as she moved behind him and back to the front to face him. “Cal,” she said again. She was confident in her ability to shut him down.

     He didn’t move. ”This town is killing me slowly. There is nothing for me here. I have to get out. My friends are taking me.”

     He was not capable of saying anything to her in anger just then. A spell, I thought. The deep magic Roni had over everyone kept anger away.

     Instead, he looked to us. “You assholes. What have you done to my sister? Put some stupid idea in her head that she has to leave. What are you going to do to her when you get away from here? You don’t even have a plan. I swear to God, you are not taking my sister anywhere! Do you hear me?”

     He rushed up on Mickey and shoved him. “Hey Retard, do you hear me?”

     Mickey tumbled to the ground.

     I ran to his side. Cal kicked me in the ribs as I bent to Mickey.

     “And you, Manning. Total loser. Criminal for a dad, drunk for a mom. No good. If you think you are going to go anywhere with an Eastwood, you’re in for a rude awakening.” He kicked again, knocking the air from my lungs. I gasped, and Rhonda pounced.

     “Goddammit! Get away from them. Step away from my friends and go. It was my idea. I have to get out of here, now!” She swung at him with her purse. “These are the best friends I’ve ever had. They are my family now.”

     Cal cowered under her rage with his arms raised to protect his face.

     “Go, you ape!”

     Mickey and I dove into the car, leaving the door open for Rhonda. She swung again, smacking Cal on the side of his face with her purse before she jumped in the car and we drove off.

     Her urgency frightened me. This was not the wish-hanger of earlier that night. This was someone desperate. I hadn’t seen it before and I wondered what she was running from. She wasn’t just running to a freedom; she was also running from an enslavement. I worried, but took comfort that it would all be over soon. We would be gone.

     Rhonda said, “Your place. Then we’re driving to Springfield to the train station.”

     She turned to look in the rearview mirror, afraid her brother was in pursuit. When she saw that she was free of him, she rested her head on Mickey’s shoulder and made a soft apology for her brother.

     Mickey stared out the window and seemed to address the night sky, “I’m not a retard.”

     “I know, baby. I know. I’m so sorry,” Roni said.

     I wanted to answer, as well; I wanted to reassure him, too, but I could never make him feel as good as Rhonda could. She was Mickey’s defender. On that night, she was even mine. It meant more coming from her, I thought.

     In that dark moment as we drove away from her house, we shared a silence that made us more together than ever before. Not a silence of loneliness, fear, or even of discomfort. Our mutual silence bound us to the same moment and we each relished the first inklings of a new freedom. A freedom, first for Rhonda, and then for us.

***

     We all handle grief differently. I not only grieved the loss of Rhonda, I grieved the loss of the dream she thrust upon us; the dream we reluctantly held – the dream that took root like so many pines – the dream that had died with her.

     Thirty-five minutes had passed and the boxes were now empty. Mickey hadn’t returned.

     First, angry with him for taking such a long break, I stomped to the break room. But once I saw he was not there, I went to the back room.

     “Dean, have you seen Mickey?”

     “Nope.”

     I ran to the wide-open receiving dock door. “Mickey!” I yelled into the alley.

     No answer. My fear for him, and the sense that I had failed Rhonda by not being there for him, swarmed around me. I could only imagine that Cal had gotten a hold of him.

     I left the store in the care of Dean and went out into the cold February night in search of my friend, my surrogate responsibility. I went looking for Rhonda’s Mickey.

Chapter Two

Waking up to our first Christmas without Rhonda was even harder than I had imagined it would be. With the bitter taste of our confrontation with Cal still burning a hole in my throat, I was in no mood to greet the morning without her.

As I sat up in bed, I remembered-and instantly regretted-the damage I had done to the rest of that bottle of whiskey after we left Roni’s graveside with our heads down and our tails between our legs.

We loved Roni like crazy. Bringing her a Christmas tree every year was just the tip of our Rhonda Eastwood obsession iceberg. Rhonda had come to define Mickey and me; form the people we had become. It was hard to be around such a free spirit as hers without having just a bit of that magic rub off on you, whether you wanted it to or not.

I should have gone with my gut when Roni voiced her desire to flee this shit-town, though. My gut told me I belonged in the small, in the forgotten, in the never going anywhere. But as I drove on, with Roni’s feet in my lap and her dreams in the air around us, something overtook my reason. Her desire to be anywhere, everywhere… it suddenly spoke to me. It bit me like a bear you can’t bite back but have to chase anyway, just to prove your courage.

If I would have kept my mouth shut, she’d maybe still be hanging wishes on those God-damned wires. There’s nothing wrong with wishin’ your life away and going nowhere with it. It’s when you cross that line and try to put those wishes into real… for losers like me, that’s when the trouble starts.

What hurts the most is that Roni had every faith in Mickey and me. She really believed we would take her to the everywhere she imagined. That was where Roni was most fallible, her Achilles heel. She was unable to see the losers before her whenever she looked at us.

But we didn’t kill Rhonda Eastwood. That was one piece of business Cal would eventually have to chew on and swallow hard.

We may have allowed her to dream, and maybe even dreamed right alongside her too, but Mickey and me… we didn’t have a thing to do with Roni’s dying. Like two idiot moths at a porch light, we were just wrapped up in something bigger than us and too stupid and blinded to realize it. Only problem with that analogy is the porch light went out first and the two stupid moths are left behind wondering why it’s so God-damned dark.

It took all my energy getting out of bed. I tried as best as I could, with just my two hands, to hold my head in place as I walked to the bedroom window and looked out at the blustery day forming beyond it.

I sank a little further when I saw the dead tree hanging askew from the side of the car, looking every bit the victim of a violent altercation with a wood chipper.

I didn’t have to wonder how far we dragged the carcass the night before. A trail of branches, needles and debris ran down the middle of the street and lead up the driveway to the car. The falling snow was quickly erasing all traces of foul play, though. Anyone on the lookout for a stolen pine tree would soon be out of luck.

I continued my futile attempts to keep the pounding headache at bay while I hauled myself into the clothes I had shucked off and left in a pile at the foot of my bed only a couple of hours before.

Each footfall I took reverberated the throbbing pain in my head, but I thought I’d better remove the tree from the side of the car before anybody noticed it. It hadn’t occurred to me that other, more civilized, people were too busy celebrating the season with loved ones to notice a mangled tree hanging from the side of their crazed neighbor’s car.

Mickey sat at the bottom landing of the stairs, bent back and staring upwards in his usual one-eye-open drunken sleep posture.

“Hey,” I said. I shook his shoulder on my way past.

“Handsaw?” he asked.

“You’re dreaming, fruit-loop.”

He startled upright and his hand went to his mouth to wipe away a trail of drool.

“What time is it?”

“Time to get up and bury that God awful tree. Or what’s left of it. What the hell did we do after we left the graveyard last night?”

Mickey stood up and hugged close to the wall for support. “Oh. I don’t feel so good, Dunc.” He put his hand over his mouth. His eyes rolled in his head, unable to anchor. “I think I have to use your wash-”

“Don’t you even think of getting sick in my hallway, Mickey. I’ll swat you with your own hand. Get your ass to the toilet now before it’s too late.”

I was in no state to hear the retching that was sure to follow, so I made a beeline for the garage door. With my coat flung over my shoulder, I embarked on my search for the garden shears. It was time to free our prisoner.

Leaving the shears and rope in the snow beside the car, I dragged what was left of the tree into the backyard. I began to pluck it apart branch by branch, the whole time struggling with the heady scent of pine and the way it tried to lure me back to the past.

Mickey’s reappearance, even in his hung-over state, was the ballast I needed to keep me in the present.

“What are ya breaking it up for, Duncan?” he whined. “We don’t have a tree ourselves.”

“Well, you can’t have this one neither. We tore it all to ape-shit last night, Mickey. Weren’t you there?”

He grabbed a bough from the ground and used it to swat at the falling snow. “I don’t see why we couldn’t keep it, anyway. It wasn’t that bad. What are you gonna do with all the pieces?”

“I thought we could have a bonfire. Maybe it’s time we started a new Christmas tradition, Mickey. What do you think?”

“I think it’s snowing like a bitch, Duncan. And I think maybe Cal Eastwood’s making you a bit crazy. I wanted a tree. And you went and ripped it to pieces. That was Rhonda’s tree.”

Mickey placed the bough on the pyre I had been building and turned and walked back to the house.

As much as I might have agreed with him, I tried my best to ignore his simple logic. I finished shredding the tree apart and returned to the garage for the gas can I kept with the lawnmower.

Soon the flames and smoke were rising against the storm and I knew I had to head back to the house. Whenever Mickey gets his feelings hurt you have to ease him back into happy. Somewhere along the road I had become both his tormentor and his touchstone. I knew he’d be inside waiting for me to cheer him up. And I knew I had to do it. With Roni gone, I was all the poor bastard had left.

But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was back in that car, in that time. Back dreaming about the way those wires swooped up and down between the telephone poles in that dreamy way they dance in motion. Back looking at that stretch of body as she lay across our laps.

***

Instead of returning my thoughts to the road like I should have, I shot Mickey a wink and a smile. Instead of letting Rhonda sleep the sweet sleep of wire wishers and daydreamers, screw-up Duncan gave her a great big poke in the belly.

As Robert Plant melted into Freddy Mercury, Rhonda awoke with a blast of that rich and heady laughter that was such an elixir for the both of us.

“Duncan, you ass-hole,” she said. “You scared me half to death.” But her renewed laughter belied her true feelings.

“I was just thinking, Roni. What if we did happen to see the world? What would be so wrong with taking a little peek?”

“Duncan Manning, you crazy bastard. You don’t have it in you,” she replied. Her eyes narrowed though. She was trying to read my expression and determine whether or not I was pulling her chain. Or perhaps she was attempting to gauge whether she needed to wait a little longer, or give the rod that final yank that set the hook.

Roni may have gone overboard on the free-spirit thing, but seeing her shine like that-seeing her light up Mickey the way she did-I just wanted to be hauled in with them.

“What makes you think I don’t want to see the world too?” I asked, poking her again as we drove on.

Her laughter carried us through the rest of the song.

“Are you guys sure?” Mickey asked, hanging his head out the window for a quick gulp of passing air. Coming back in, he looked past Roni and made sure he had my attention. “The world’s a hell of a big place, Duncan.”

“Not if you take it one step at a time, Mick.”

“It’ll be okay, Mickey baby,” Roni cooed. “We’ll take care of you. You trust us, don’t-cha?”

***

He did trust us, too. Mickey always did. He’d follow Roni and me off the face of the Earth if we ever found the right turn to get us there. Problem is we never knew what to do with that power. Roni was too busy dreaming of another place and I was too stupid to do anything even half-ways good with it.

I stumbled enough with Roni’s help. With her gone, I felt completely lost. It didn’t help that Mickey was still looking my way for answers. I guess he just never realized how many of the previous ones had actually come from Rhonda.

Standing in a blizzard on Christmas morning, watching a bonfire sink in upon itself, I knew I was failing him yet again. A good word was all he needed. I could have saved our first Rhonda-less Christmas for him, but I couldn’t drag myself away from the smell of pine and the lost wishes that scent encompassed.

Chapter One

Mickey scrambled around my garage, lifting one tool after another and setting each one aside as he ruled it out in his search for the perfect cutting implement. I fell onto the couch in the corner and raised the bottle of wine to my mouth. The strawberry soda of wines had a tinny aftertaste from the screw-off cap. I’d grown to regard it as flavor you can only get from a $2 bottle.

A look of EUREKA streaked across my friend’s face then faded with my disapproval. “It’s two in the morning. We’re not using a chainsaw.”

I closed my eyes against the onset of dizziness and waited.

“We have to cut it down by hand?” He pushed some boxes aside and raised an orange handle. “Ax?” He swiped his shirt sleeve across his brow.

My non-reply answered his question.

The same scene, in different variations had taken place for the last six years. Each year Mickey searched for the perfect tool, only to arrive half an hour later at the same conclusion; we just needed a handsaw. I had always let him look though. In previous years it humored me that he hadn’t yet seen the handsaw and pieced together that it was what we used the previous year, and the year before that. But this year wasn’t nearly as funny.

“Handsaw,” I said with my patience at an end.

“Handsaw?” he asked.

I sat up, against the pull of the tattered green cushion. Though it was Mickey who donated the couch to the garage, it was my cushion, as it was the one I had written “Duncan” across the top of with Magic Marker. I raised my leg for leverage. Mickey skittered around the garage while I swigged from the bottle again. Once finished off, I tossed it into the metal garbage can in the corner. The hollow boom echoed through the can.

“Jesus, man. Are you trying to wake up everyone?”

This from the guy who wanted to use a chainsaw.

I grabbed a rope from the cluttered shelf, Mickey found the saw and we headed out to find the perfect Christmas tree.

We drove, looking into each yard we passed. Mickey scanned each one carefully with interest and hope.

“Nope,” he said as we came up on each home that didn’t have a pine tree in the yard. “Nope. Nope. Nope.” He did eventually stop giving the play-by-play on every yard, and unlike any other year, rode on in silence.

“It’s freezing in here,” he said at last.

“The heater isn’t working right.”

Mickey pulled his coat around him, paying particular attention to closing his collar high around his neck. I did the same.

He leaned his head to the window, no longer watching for pine trees, and stared upward.

“Looking at the telephone wires again?”

“Yea, man, how’d you know?”

“You do it every time you think of her.”

***

Rhonda used to hang her head out the window, lay back against the sill, sprawled across the seat with her legs across my lap and her back against Mickey, reclining across the front seat. She looked perfect like that. I followed the line of her from ankles, to hips, to her neck, curved and vulnerable. She peaked at the ivory white chin pointing skyward. I would rest my hand on her denim shin as I drove.

The last time she did it Mickey slid his hand across her belly; he was awed by seeing her that way – her midsection bared with the stretch of her body -and right in front of him for the touching.

She giggled. “Stop distracting me. I’m busy. I have to concentrate.”

“You’re looking at telephone poles,” I said. A question hung in my voice before it got doused in dashboard lights and extinguished by Robert Plant’s voice over the radio.

But she heard the unuttered question anyway. “I’m hanging wishes and memories on every one of them,” she said. “I’m decorating them like we always decorate the trees you bring.” She tugged her shirt back into place then wrapped her arms around her middle.

“I think I want go away for a while,” she said, after a long silence.

Mickey looked to me, and I to him and we both said, “Where?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere. I want to see the world.”

While Mickey found this all very fascinating and she was in her Own Private Eden, I could not help but think she’d overdone the whole free-spirit trip she was on. But she meant well, and somehow Rhonda had affixed herself, and all of her craziness, to Mickey and me.

“Duncan, my love?”

“Yes, Roni,” I answered, mimicking the soft dream-soaked tone in her voice.

She didn’t answer, so I looked at her. Her long dark hair cascaded out the window of the moving car – a raven’s wing in the breeze – and Mickey put a finger to his lips to quiet me. She’d gone to sleep.

***

“There!” Mickey shouted, jarring me back to the present.

I mashed my boot against the brake. We slid on the icy road before the tires ground to a stop.

The pine sat close to the road at the far end of the deep lawn. I watched the house for lights and movement. When it appeared no one was awake, we headed toward our victim. A six foot tall pine would become this year’s tree.

We approached the tree. I carried the saw and rope then dropped them to the ground.

I dug my hands deep into the base of the tree and pushed the snow away. The branches were weighed down from the first big snowfall of the season and there, on my hands and knees, I was subjected to the icy prickles of frozen pine needles. With every moved branch, I wiggled against the slingshot sprays of fine snowflakes as they infiltrated my jacket collar.

Mickey grabbed the rope and began tying the branches upward, “Shit! Is this how we did it last year? I don’t remember it sucking nearly this bad.”

“Yes,” I said, grunting as I leaned in deeper, trying to find the trunk of the tree under the lazy branches. “It sucked this bad.”

It didn’t though. This year was much worse.

I dug at the base, asked Mickey to hand me the saw and went to work.

Once I’d freed the tree from its roots, Mickey finished tying it off and we escaped the yard unnoticed; the snake-trail of the dragged tree erased our footprints through the yard. We were on our way to do our annual stolen tree delivery.

Lots of times we considered getting one that was already cut, but tree lot owners expect thieves and we didn’t want to pay. That wasn’t the point anyway; the point was tradition. We swore that even if we got out of this shit-town and made lots of money, we would come back every year, swipe a pine and deliver it. Each year we talked about not doing it anymore – the risk, trees don’t cost that much – but we did it anyway.

I opened the gate and drove through, winding down the path, with headlights off. “Is it that lane or this one?” I asked Mickey.

He scratched his head and presented me with a quizzical look and a yawn.

Two wrong turns and a right turn later, we pulled up to the spot.

“I should have visited sooner.”

“Me too,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Mickey opened the back door of the car, climbed up on the door frame and released the tree from its restraints. I pulled my pocket knife and cut the ropes that bound the branches. The tree sprang back into shape.

“Now what do we do with it?” I asked.

“Shit, Dunc, I don’t know.” He pointed to the headstone. “Put it over there I guess.”

Mickey dove into the backseat and grabbed the bottle I’d left. “Whiskey,” he said, smiling like he’d won the lottery. His smile faded though, and I knew why.

“Roni’s favorite.” I said. I thought it was appropriate.

He unscrewed the lid, took a deep breath and drank. He then thrust it at me – his mouth still full, as though he had summoned the courage to pour it in, but hadn’t quite managed to summon enough to swallow it.

“For Roni” I said and slugged it back. “Ok, let’s do this.” I shook off the bite of the drink, replaced the lid and tossed it into the car.

I looked up at the bright white moon, then down at the twinkling snow, stars beneath my feet; I was calmed by the serene quiet of the world. I thought Roni would be, too, in her Earth Child Eden way. A wave of nausea (whiskey and wine?) swept over me. I steadied myself and picked up the tree in a bare spot opening between branches. It scraped against my cheek and my free hand went to the scratch protectively.

Headlights approached and I stopped before I could lean the sad little stolen tree against the stone that read Rhonda Joan Eastwood Daughter Sister Friend.

I squinted the light away, now in the high beams, then dropped my head back and closed my eyes when the cherries came on.

The fear of tickets disappeared though, and a new one set in when I saw who got out of the car.

“Duncan Manning?” he said, shining his flashlight in my eyes.

“Yes.”

“You’re not supposed to be up here after dark.”

He stepped closer, tilting his light down as he got mere inches from my face.

“Hi Cal.” Mickey said.

His badge glowed with the moonlight. He looked me square with his shoulders hunched forward, much like I’d imagine a porcupine would when his quills went up. I dropped the tree to the ground. It exhaled a soft rush of sound as it landed in a drift.

“You aren’t supposed to be here either.” He spoke to Mickey, never moving his eyes away from me.

“We just wanted to visit Roni.” Mickey said.

“Had to carry on a tradition.” I said, trying to clarify what Mickey was saying and hoping he wouldn’t ask where we’d gotten the tree.

“Let me make myself clear,” he said, waving his flashlight toward my face. I held my breath. “You are not to visit this gravesite. I haven’t quite figured out what you had to do with her death, but something. I am going to find out what it was. Now you step away from my baby sister’s grave, get in your piece of shit car and go.”

Mickey backed up toward the car, reaching in slow motion for the handle.

“I didn’t do anything.” I felt the tear-salt burn my eyes. “I loved her.” I looked to Mickey who had lowered his head with my words. A burst of white breath rose with his heavy exhale. “We both did.”

Welcome to Yours, Mine… Ours

With this blog, Trish and Kevin hope to create a cohesive novel written in two voices. Trish will write the first chapter and Kevin the second… and so on. They would like to have the entire novel written by the fall, but life may intervene.

Chapter 1 is now available for reading. You can click Chapter 1in the Categories list in the left-hand menu to read it. (Or, simply click on the links below to open chapter in new window.)

Enjoy!

Chapter Log

Chapter 1 – Posted by Trish on May 21, 2008