On Tuesday the phone wakes him. Driven from warmth and contentment he stomps out to the kitchen and fields the call in his boxer shorts, flexing his bare feet against the tepid linoleum floor. He yawns without apology into the receiver before speaking. The man on the other end asks for the boy’s mother.
She ain’t here. She don’t live here.
I know she doesn’t. But she’s not where she lives so maybe she’s there.
Well. Welcome to disappointment.
The man grunts quietly. He might be laughing. She gonna show up for court? he says.
Did she say she would?
She did. She signed the papers and she gave me her word.
My guess is no then. If she told you she would, you’re burnt. That’s just my personal experience though.
An endless sigh comes through the line, charged with mourning and beleaguered, as if the casual duplicity of one errant woman has blasted the caller’s faith in all creation, all his hope for its future.
That seems to be the size of it, he says. You see her tell her the hearing got continued but they won’t do it twice. She’s got to show up Monday at eight. Courtroom three A. Her lawyer’ll meet her there. And tell her call Rick Shafer at Destiny Bailbonds.
Yep.
You got it?
Yep.
Did you write it down?
No.
That woeful sigh again. All right, the caller says. Appreciate it.
* * *
Wednesday morning there are bounty hunters in the yard. The dry crunch of boots treading the gravel at the side of the house opens his eyes. The scrabbling sound of someone unathletic scaling the backyard fence follows, then the thud of a large man jumping clumsily to the earth. This last is not a sound at all but a single noiseless reverberation, the faintest tactile sensation in the boy’s central nervous system. Lying in bed beneath a tangled nest of his grandmother’s antiquated wool comforters he watches the broad shadow flick across his blinds. The doorbell rings.
A bearded thug is stationed at the back door when the boy opens it. He wears a dark beanie pulled down on his eyes and carries a shotgun at portarms. He favors a police sketch of a rampaging and not particularly intelligent armed robber. He takes a step toward the boy.
Where’s she at?
The boy simply shuts the door on him and locks it. He is back in bed when the doorbell rings again. Then comes knocking. He attempts to wait it out but now the man with the shotgun is pounding at the back door as well.
This time he attends to the nuisance out front. He steps onto the porch bed-mussed, creases in his cheek from the pillow and his hair a crazed asymmetric swirl studded with lint. His breath smokes. He is scrawny as a refugee child in his shorts but a head taller than the man waiting on him.
She’s not here, the boy says. She don’t live here and no you can’t come inside.
Better get some clothes on.
I’m good.
The man’s eyes scan the windows to either side of the porch. There is a pistol on his hip and he rests the heel of his hand on the butt, fingers splayed.
She know there’s a warrant out for her?
There usually is, the boy says.
The two watch one another–the old gray-faced bounty hunter with a plug of chew in his lip and the bird-chested boy trying not to shiver. A severity in the bounty hunter’s bearing marking him as a veteran of violence and human iniquity in its infinite forms. The boy an obvious veteran of the same.
The bounty hunter withdraws gradually. His bootheels sound dull reports on the warped wooden steps as he backs down them. Another glance at the windows. A nun-like septuagenarian woman has parted the curtains and is staring at him with an expression indistinguishable from the boy’s. He raises a hand to her. She doesn’t move.
You got it, the bounty hunter says. You see her you let her know somebody’ll be back for her car.
Her car ain’t here either.
The bounty hunter nods toward the corner of the house, where the nose of a late model Ford pickup is visible.
That’s mine, the boy says. But simultaneous with the words comes understanding. The bounty hunter walks down the driveway to an old and unrestored muscle car parked in the street and the man with the shotgun comes unsummoned from out back and trots after him, hunched slightly and gripping the shotgun mid-barrel in one hand, like a trained chimp.
The boy stands motionless until the car is out of sight and then sprints inside to his bedroom. He pulls out the bottom dresser drawer and paws aside a ball of unfolded shirts and he looks down at the slim envelope containing what rare legal documents the life of a teenage boy will generate–birth certificate, social security card, truancy notices. Without touching it he knows it has been rifled through and that the title is gone. His grandmother is in the doorway.
Did they say what they wanted?
They’re looking for Brandy.
Mm. Is she in trouble?
She’s fine. I told them if they find her they can go ahead and keep her.
Well that was a cruelty. They might get stuck with her.
The boy turns, laughing, but she’s already moving down the hall in her slow slipper-hushed nun’s shuffle. She calls out that she’s going to start breakfast.
* * *
In the bondsman’s office there is an air of bitter fatigue, exasperation with a routine gone stale. The same tired women bailing out the same shiftless men for the same predictable and unprofitable transgressions again and again. The women exude not desperation or misery but a hard-edged resignation. Two of them sit with their purses on their laps on a worn sofa beside the door. They appear to be mother and daughter. Another leans at the counter. Someone has given her a dixie cup of black coffee and she sips from it as she fills out forms. The pen she holds is lanyarded to the countertop by a length of dogtag chain. The boy stands next to her. She smiles at him with pity, as though she’d hoped not to see him here but had known it could not be avoided. It is his intent to smile back and cheer her up. His bleak effort seems to depress her further and she returns to her forms.
The bondsman is at a desk, typing. Hulking over a relic Smith-Corona. The boy catches his eye.
Brandy Maranville, the boy says.
The bondsman nods and waves him over. He walks around the counter and the three women look after him with passive outrage. The way lifelong orphanage wards might watch some new arrival already headed for the gate with an adoptive family. The boy takes a seat. His eyes fall on the booking sheets splayed out around the bondsman’s desk and he twists his neck to inspect the black and white arrest photos in their upper corners. A few he knows. Friends of his cousins, a sometime boyfriend of his mother. A relatively young woman who once babysat him while his mother passed contrived payroll checks and who now bears the collapsed toothless face of a mummy. The thin brittle hair of a crone. Brandy Maranville’s booking sheet is absent. It would be conspicuous among the rest–she is lovely even in mugshots. The bondsman lays aside his reading glasses.
You get a hold of her?
No, the boy says. I’ve been lucky. I want to talk to you about my truck.
He bondsman cocks his head. It is massive and unusually wide and jug-eared. He resembles a perplexed koala.
She used the title to bond out, the boy says. Okay. Title’s in your name?
My grandpa’s. He left it to me.
The bondsman is nodding, remembering.
He endorsed it though. Yeah. It was her dad’s. Steve was out at your grandma’s place looking for her yesterday? You live there?
It’s mine. That title’s stolen property.
But somebody bailed her with it.
That’s right.
So how’d she steal it if she was in jail?
The boy stares hard. It is almost enough to unsettle a man whose vocation is outlaws and their depravities.
I’ll tell you, the boy says. She’s in county. She’s dopesick, she’s hurting. She calls whatever lame ass dude she’s got wrapped up in her bullshit. She cries and she says she loves him and she misses him and the guy eats it up. Next thing he knows he’s breaking into an old lady’s house and digging around in my underwear drawer. All in the name of love. You can see it, man. It’s not like this is a brand new scenario. It’s what they do.
Before the boy is finished the bondsman rolls his chair back and stands. There is a gunsafe against the rear wall and he walks over to it. The door is unlocked. He swings it open and leans inside.
Someone’s mom has come into the office and she is at the counter negotiating bail terms with the second bondsman. The boy half listens, studying the booking sheets. The woman explains the overt injustice of her son’s charges and does not rule out the possibility of a frame up. She sketches plans to sue the city, the county, the arresting officer. Her bravado fades and she asks whether marketing opioids to a federal agent is generally considered a significant offense.
The bondsman returns. The boy looks up. His face is structured upon the haughty cheekbones and delicate jaw of his mother and now the bondsman can picture her exactly.
You know Corey Danner?
No, the boy says. Am I supposed to?
Any reason he’d have the title to that truck?
Absolutely there is. I already told you. The motherfucker stole it.
The bondsman sits down and sighs. He shuts his eyes and rocks his ponderous head side to side, cracking his neck.
You’re for real upset about it? the boy says.
With his eyes closed and his head lolled on his shoulder the bondsman says, it bothers me. People looking right at you and lying and then they shake your hand. You get sick of it.
Why don’t you just find another job?
Right.
There’s nothing stopping you, the boy says.
The bondsman looks at him. Rain has darkened the upper half of the boy’s sweatshirt. His hair is damp and hangs in his face.
How’d you get here? the bondsman says.
Took the bus.
The bondsman turns to the big storefront windows. Rain dances off the cars at the curb. The windows are astream with it.
Good three blocks to the bus stop, huh?
The boy doesn’t answer.
I appreciate you not driving the truck anyway.
It’s got nothing to do with you.
No?
No. I told my grandpa I’d never drive it until I got my license.
The bondsman nods slowly. He has not looked away from the windows. He stares outside for a long time.
Here’s what we can do. Get her to turn herself in by Monday, I’ll give you the title.
The title’s mine.
Not when it’s sitting in my safe it ain’t.
Under examination the boy’s stare is but a boy’s stare. It wants actual malice, that immediate sense of homicidal ill will a seasoned badman’s eyes will impart. The bondsman sees a child scrunching up his face, trying too hard. He grins at him in consolation. That’s the best you’re gonna get, he says. It’s not too late for her to sidestep a bail jumping beef either. She stays running, they’ll crack her for five years.
Can I bring her here?
You make it sound like you’re gonna drag her in by the hair.
If it comes down to it, the boy says. He shrugs.
Hot damn, kid. All right. Try not to get so sentimental.
Yeah, sorry. My love for the woman overwhelms me.
The steel bell suspended above the office door clinks. They both turn. As if there is a whisper of likelihood Brandy Maranville will walk into this place of her own volition.
Bring her here, the bondsman says. Find her and call me. Whatever. Put her in front of me by Monday morning and you get the title.
Get my own title. That’s real charitable.
Matter of fact it is. But take it however you want to. That’s the deal. Welcome to disappointment, right?
The woman who’d been filling out forms leaves when the boy does. He holds the door for her and they walk to the bus stop together, heads bowed before the rain and talking with their eyes on the sidewalk, like a pair of internees bucking the silent system. He had my car when he got arrested, she says. Got it impounded.
She relates this smiling, as though her husband has played a charming prank on her. Sarah is her name. The boy wishes her luck as she boards a bus headed eastbound from the city center. She waves the words away, a woman who considers luck fanciful or unnecessary. Or perhaps because she knows better, has acquired empirical understanding that she will never see luck’s grace. The hydraulic door creaks shut behind her. The bus hisses and jerks away.
* * *
A rabble parade, unflagging, tweakers by the drove, afoot and coasting on mountain bikes. Pale uncertain figures strapped into backpacks like the ghosts of paratroopers. A weak sallow light, bleeding from plastic fixtures hanging off the sides of the battered apartment buildings, sheens their faces and so renders them more cadaverous. Garbed in what they’ve borrowed or scrounged or stolen, gaunt malnourished frames from which the clothes melt and drag underfoot. Morbid buffoons. Wretched jesters in whom there can exist no joy.
It is nearing one in the morning and the malefactors drifting in and out of the complex grow weirder as night progresses. They grow bolder. They seem to have twinned themselves such are there numbers–four or five slink and lurch past the bounty hunter’s truck each minute, contorting themselves spastically while they go, arms wild, heads swiveling. Parked in the shadow of a carport and concealed by window tinting he surveys this oblivious mendicant herd, hunting absconders and known associates. Then the boy is among them. The bounty hunter sits up and flicks on the windshield wipers and watches him approach the unit most notorious for traffic. The apartment door is propped open to the night. The light blaring out evokes from the darkness a door-size rectangle of rain and bleaches the rain white. Each drop containing at its center like the spark of life a tiny reflection of the light. The boy steps into the glare and through the doorway and he disappears. The bounty hunter shuts off the wipers. He settles back and picks up the soda bottle nestled between his thighs, spits a black stream into it. His gaze fixed on the open door.
It’s ten minutes before the boy emerges. Outside the apartment he pauses in the passageway of light and tilts his face up at the sky. Illuminated sublimely out of the world’s gloom, adolescent saint at his instant of beatitude. Swathed in furiously swirling flecks of glimmering white light as at the instant of ascension. Oh she’s not there? the bounty hunter says, spitting into his bottle. Go try G 201. Maybe Pinball’s got a line on her.
And the boy goes.
* * *
A girl he knows answers his knock. Myriad weeping sores mar her pretty face where she’s picked at herself. The total result of her gouging looks something like flesh-eating bacteria or an exotic rash. When they were last in school together she would sashay into homeroom with her hair up in a snug artful twist and her makeup hours in the application and every boy would watch her languidly situate herself at her desk. Now her eyebrows are gone, shaved or plucked to the hard ridge of her brow bone and drawn cartoonishly in place, glossy black pinstripes with incredulous high-arching backs. Her lips are chapped and cracking. He does his best to look her in the eyes.
Jeremy, she says. Oh my god. Out of nowhere, huh?
When you least expect it.
You’re looking for your mom?
I am. Against my better judgment.
Everybody and their uncle is.
She rolls her eyes and he realizes her lashes are missing as well. For some reason this seems the worst of the atrocities she’s inflicted on herself. His stomach clenches.
The apartment is miniscule and he quickly satisfies himself that Brandy Maranville has not ducked into a closet or slithered under a bed. The girl pursues him room to room. Are you for real right now? You want to search my house? I just said she’s not here.
Had to check, the boy says. Well stop.
They stand facing each other in the brief hallway. Obscured by the dimness of the hall they could be an ordinary teenage boy and girl, no caustic cynicism in his face, hers innocent of disfigurement. Entering a moment of confused fledgling tenderness. Two teenagers unsupervised and the typical diversions occur to neither.
Okay, the boy says. I’m done. Sorry.
I wouldn’t lie to you. It’s not like you’d turn her in.
A short stack of scratch tickets is on the living room table. She brings a beer to him and sits beside him on the couch and points to them. Her fingernails are chewed to the raw pinkish-white flesh beneath but the remaining fragments of nails are lovingly painted.
You want a couple? the girl says. I didn’t even scratch any yet.
The boy declines. The shade of her nail polish is fuchsia, he thinks. He is baffled by this information, that he should possess it.
Where’s your mom, the casino?
You know it, the girl says.
She’s getting high then.
I mean. Yeah. It’s no fun sober.
Brandy’s not with her?
Without hair the girl’s eyes are fleshy and wrinkled and alien, like those of a baby bird. She looks at him sidelong and gnaws at the inside of her mouth.
Keep acting like that and you’re gonna piss me off.
An hour dwindles away while he drinks three beers and watches the girl scrape tickets with serial killer intensity, luckless, wielding a loose house key. She hunches low over the table, getting the tickets within inches of her face. The force of her strokes curls the stubs into little paper grins.
She shakes him awake.
My mom’s back, she says. Her hand lingers on his knee, warm. Her mother flanks him on the sofa. She has her lips pursed around a hollow pentube, smoking drugs off a folded sheet of tinfoil. She flicks a cigarette lighter and waves the flame along the underside of the foil. Cross-eyed in her concentration on the task. The drugs can be heard faintly crackling. A string of saliva clings quivering to the tube when she takes it from her mouth. She lets an acrid cloud of chemicals plume from her nostrils and the room fills with a smell like fermented cat urine.
Sorry baby, I haven’t seen Brandy in forever, she says. She looks at the smoking tinfoil and she looks at him. She smiles, chagrined. Drunk guy sat on my purse at the casino, she says. You believe it? Broke my pipe into a thousand pieces.
* * *
He picks his way through the curious mechanical debris hoarded in the front yard, lawnmower motors and a doorless refrigerator and mismatched axles rusted beyond recovery. An inexplicably neat pile of six-foot sections of pvc pipe occupies the driveway. There is a whole tree stump lying on the porch and blocking the front door, its tangle of pale roots like arms flailing skyward in distress. He stretches across it to try the doorbell and he tests the knob and then spends several minutes knocking.
With an eye for protruding nails, he steps off the porch and goes out to the center of the yard and looks up at the house, a high-peaked Victorian turned hovel. He sniffs the air. Something burning.
At the rear of the house he finds a naked man tending a fire in a washing machine. The flames reach above the charred lip of the laundry drum.
You’re way too late, the man says. I burned it all.
We were hoping you would.
The man turns to him. Sweat runs from his hairline and down his face. A fire poker hangs limply from his hand, smoking.
Eddie sent you?
Yep. He said to tell you happy birthday.
The man wags his head despondently.
Jesus. I knew it was gonna be serious this time.
Well you already burned everything. So that’s handled. I’ll take Brandy Maranville to see him and we’ll smooth the rest out.
Nice play, the man says. He leans the fire poker against the washing machine and tugs roughly at his penis a few times. It is severely shriveled from the cold, barely visible within its steelwool hood of pubic hair and turning purple.
She’s still here, right? the boy says.
The fire pops and sparks race up. That’s the last of them, the man says. He folds his arms. Smug.
Sounded like it, the boy says. Grab Brandy for me before Eddie freaks out. We don’t want him coming around here.
Taking up his poker the man turns a full circle, eyeing the ground. Like a dog bedding down. She’s gone, he says.
You’re sure?
Positive, bro. I ran them all off. Straight feds, like you guys told me. There’s nobody left except that chatterbox bitch in the wall. And you know she aint going anywhere.
I better check.
Can’t let you do that, the man says. He raps the fire poker against the washing machine. His face darkens at the resulting eruption of sparks and he stares at the fire poker as if suspecting some defect. Don’t get crazy, he says to it. He addresses the boy.
The house is sealed. Feds’ orders.
The boy weighs his options. There is no real chance his mother is holing up here–her tastes run to discreet motels when she’s on the lam, moving daily. The man tugs at his penis.
Five more, the boy says.
Unhesitating the man seizes his sad retreating dick between thumb and forefinger and counts aloud five pulls.
That should do it, the boy says.
The man agrees. Tell Eddie I took care of the microphones, he says. It’s all cool. Good. You got to them right in time. But what about all the ones they planted in your ass?
Dread clamps down on the man. His fears confirmed. His jaw flexes. The boy stays deadpan. There follow a few seconds of panicked indecision and then the man rushes for the house, the fire poker dragging in the dirt behind him and one flat hand wedged into the cleft of his buttocks.
* * *
By Friday, he has exhausted his mother’s haunts, harassed every friend and acquaintance and dealer. He stalks dope houses and casinos. He interrogates complete strangers. He issues spurious threats and makes extravagant promises he has no means of fulfilling. No one has seen her. Her most recent phone number goes directly to an automated message from the carrier. Her most recent social media post is ten months old. Brandy Maranville has vanished.
Leaving his cousin’s trailer early Saturday he hears his name. The bounty hunter is parked in someone’s driveway two doors down. His truck is a Datsun thirty years old and spray painted with primer. The boy walks over and the bounty hunter reaches across the cab and pushes open the passenger door.
How come I keep seeing you?
The boy stands there in the rain, his hood up.
Get on in here, the bounty hunter says. I’ll give you a ride.
I don’t need one.
Is that right? You look like you do. Looks like you’re a couple drops away from drowning. Come on, man. Don’t make me beg.
The boy climbs in and shuts the door. She ain’t here, he says.
I know she ain’t. Did that door stick?
It takes all the boy’s strength, gripping the handle in both hands and heaving. The latch snaps into place.
Let’s just sit here a while and see who turns up, the bounty hunter says.
It’s a waste of time. She doesn’t even hang out here.
Son, I got eighteen people on my list. Half of them hang out here. She can show up or not.
And if she does I’m supposed to sit quiet and watch you tackle her.
The truck’s springs creak as the bounty hunter shifts his weight, going up on a hip. Here, he says. He straightens his leg and digs into his pocket and retrieves a coin. Slaps it down on the dash as if to call a bet. We’ll flip for it, he says. You win and she goes home with you, lives to jump bail another day. But sooner or later she will get cracked. That’s a fact. And the longer she stays running the more pissed they’ll be when they get her in court.
If I win and she comes with me I’m dragging her ass to Destiny Bailbonds.
She’ll go for that?
No. Not even a little bit. She’s going though. That wasn’t her truck to give away.
The bounty hunter is nodding. You went and worked something out with Rick, he says. For my own title. Ain’t that a bitch.
The headline is that he made a deal with you at all. That dude’s way too soft for his line of work.
I suggested a career change.
Yeah, I bet you did. You’re the helpful sort. So what? You’re trying to find her for him?
That’s about right.
So we’re competitors.
The boy shrugs, watching the rain.
Ha. Well ain’t you a coldblooded little villain. It’s whoever tackles her first then?
The boy looks at him and puts a hand out. They shake. The bounty hunter holds on. Steve Day, he says.
Jeremy Maranville.
The boy eases down into his seat. They watch day shift crooks roam the trailer court. The rain and the extensive spider webbing cracks in the windshield obscure their view and the cab is frigid with a steady draft but the bounty hunter leaves the engine cold and the windshield wipers at rest. He has a dense sheaf of booking sheets on his lap and he shuffles through it, referring to the photos when people wander by. He spits into a plastic bottle. The truck smells of equal parts wintergreen and mildew.
Where’s your dad at? the bounty hunter says.
I don’t know. I’d like to believe he’s off somewhere fucking himself.
When the bounty hunter laughs the sound is inhumanly guttural, one that an inanimate object should issue. Rocks boiling in a pan.
Don’t dwell on it, kid. Trust me.
There’s nothing to dwell on.
The bounty hunter glances over. A raised brown scar circumscribes one eyesocket.
Hating them doesn’t help. Fighting the world, drinking. Stomping on schmucks in bars doesn’t help, getting yourself shipped off around the world patriotically killing folks.
That don’t do it. Definitely don’t marry chicks a week after you meet them. They tend to turn out exactly like her. Kind of compounds the problem.
Those are the only options?
There’s all the options you can shake a stick at. And they’re all bad. Hate to tell you. You make it worse or you let go. That’s it. That’s the whole deal. Hurting the world don’t change nothing with him. You still feel the same. And you can’t ever turn her into who you want her to be. No matter what you do.
Huh. Who do I want her to be?
You know.
The boy’s eyes flick away. The passenger door pops open, startling them both. As the boy wars with it, a squat man in a canvas jacket and bandanna saunters out from the trailer across the road and props open the hood of the car in his yard. Lacking tools of any sort he pretends to fiddle with the engine. Peeping at them around the hood.
I see you seeing me, motherfucker, the bounty hunter says. With your silly ass pirate hat.
He turns the ignition over twice before the truck’s motor catches.
What happened to your Challenger?
This here’s what I drive when I want to blend with the commoners, the bounty hunter says. He licks his thumb and rubs at a spot on the steering column, clearing away an imaginary smudge. He spits in his bottle and tucks it between his legs. He asks the boy where he’s headed.
* * *
At a motel on the highway he misses her by minutes. The bed she slept in is mussed and the pillow retains a wrinkled imprint of her head. Strands of her hair in the sink. She’s dyed it strawberry blonde.
Rumors now. Breathless gossip that she’s informed on a local chapter of the gypsy jokers. That she’s already been killed. The boy shrugs this off. He comes upon traces of her in a dope house basement, clothes her size and style. Her perfume is on them. Sunday night he sees her in a friend’s apartment. Hours to his deadline and he’s taken to forcing his way into a residence whenever the door is opened. He barges in past his mother’s friend and lifts a cautionary hand to the man getting off the couch, who sits back down. The woman seems altogether unmoved by the intrusion. She trails him like a personal assistant while he searches, making no protest. Then his mother walks out of a bedroom. All these days of singleminded pursuit yet he is unprepared for the sight of her. Before he can speak a word of confrontation he is laughing at her dyed hair. She freezes.
You stole my title, he says. Choking, trying to work up his anger.
Brandy Maranville spins and slams the bedroom door behind herself. He hears the lock click. Now he’s angry again. The door consists of two cottonthin sheets of synthetic wood sandwiching a honeycomb cardboard center. His foot sinks clean through. He loses balance and falls and his sneaker comes off and drops into the locked room, his long flat foot ripping out a chunk of the door as he frees it. He reaches into the ragged hole he’s created and feels for the inner knob. Infuriated and fumbling. He unlocks the door. An open window, a glimpse of his mother leaping out. He finds his shoe and wrenches it on, hopping to the window. He climbs out after her.
Outside the rain has quit. His mother sprints barefoot across the wet parking lot. He chases her a few strides but she’s too far ahead. He gives up in frustration.
You stole my truck, you dirty bitch!
At this she pulls up and turns and flips him off. His foot brushes a beer bottle and he picks it up, chucks it at her. She stands calmly watching its flight. The bottle hits the pavement much shy of her and bounces without breaking. It skitters past her. She runs. He is stooped and scouring the parking lot litter for another projectile and he catches himself. Here it is, he thinks. It always comes back to calling names and throwing stuff. He is disgusted not because of the childishness but because it is precisely what Brandy Maranville would do. He watches her disappear around the corner of an apartment building.
Behind him his mother’s friend is screaming out the window. She tumbles over the windowsill, a stack of loosejointed bones spilling to the ground.
I’ll pay for your door, the boy says.
But the woman cannot hear above her own squalling. The boy approaches her. She is not the woman she was mere months ago. Addiction has taxed her, augmented her age by decades. She looks like a cadaver animated by some supercharged car battery. A corpse paradoxically overamped.
Marie, I’m gonna get you a new door. I swear to god. Now please eat something and go to bed. Okay? You look scary. You hear what I’m telling you? Take care of yourself.
Please.
The woman screams on. He puts up his hood as if to filter out the noise. Then he turns from her and begins the walk home.
* * *
Monday morning he is with Steve Day in the old Datsun pickup. They wait on a child rapist who has gone underground midtrial. The bounty is five grand.
Who the fuck pays money to keep these dudes on the loose? the boy says.
You won’t believe me. And it would ruin people for you.
He is quiet so long the boy thinks he’s done talking. And then he says Man, I seen guys’ old ladies bail them out when he’s locked up for diddling her kids. Sick stuff. Chick bailing a guy out with a busted lip and a black eye, guy barely caught his breath from beating her up. Bailing out their pimps.
I thought you weren’t gonna tell me. You were supposed leave my innocence intact.
Yeah. Well. Such is life. You got to learn eventually.
What happened to letting things go? Align your chakras and center your chi and pass the peace pipe.
Do that. But you can’t play make believe. Center your chi about the fact that there are evil sociopathic fucks walking around wrecking whatever they can and there’s decent people who can’t help gravitating to them. Get zen in advance that you can’t reason with them and you will have to deal with them. You’ll be less of a miserable asshole yourself.
So why doesn’t that work for you?
A ruddy blonde man resembling a summer camp counselor or mormon missionary emerges from a house at the end of the block. He heads toward them.
Don’t look at him, the bounty hunter says. Don’t spook him. Let him walk right up on us.
They sit still. The bounty hunter bows his head and plays with the radio dials. As the bailjumper comes abreast of the truck the boy slides out and punches him in the face. There is no weight behind the punch but the man is not built to take one. He goes limp while the boy slams him bellydown on the sidewalk and pins him there. The bounty hunter is running around the truck.
Are you kidding me?
Give me your cuffs, the boy says.
The rapist is sputtering, telling them to just take his wallet. His mouth is bleeding. The bounty hunter glances at the neighborhood window by window.
Somebody’s gonna call the cops.
So what? Where’s those handcuffs?
The bounty hunter is standing over them. His laughter is like bones snapping. He shakes his head.
My goodness gracious. We got a natural on our hands.
He kneels and fits his shin to the base of the rapist’s skull and applies pressure when he squirms. The squirming settles. He twists the man’s arms together and cuffs him one-handed. He looks at the boy.
How long until you turn eighteen?
Couple months.
Beneath them the rapist corkscrews.
This guy’s not even eighteen?
The bounty hunter applies pressure. Sorry, didn’t mean to get you turned on, he says. To the boy he says It takes a specific personality type for this job. Not a lot of people can do it. You turn eighteen, I’ll put you to work.
Yeah, maybe, the boy says. Unless Broadway comes calling first.
* * *
He goes to see the bondsman. The same caste of deflated women tenant the office. The bondsman is eating lunch at his desk. He offers french fries to the boy, absently, out of polite habit. His expression falls when the boy snatches a fistful and jams them into his mouth.
The title’s stolen property, the boy says, chewing.
We’re back to this, huh? Since you had so much success with it last time?
It wasn’t hers.
The bondsman throws a napkin at him. Wipe your mouth, he says. He rocks in his swivel chair. Unironed pink oxford, reading glasses, scholarly jowls. A contemplative and slightly self-important crease in his brow. He could be a liberal arts professor deciding whether some nonspecific answer the boy has given will suffice for a passing grade.
It was her dad’s car, he says. The title’s in his name and he endorsed it. Even if he bequeathed it to you in a will you’re a minor and she’s your parent. Legally she would have executive power. I’m sorry, man. Really. I gave you all the leeway I could.
He tilts back and gestures widely with both arms at the boilerplate office and its impoverished clientele, gazing around with mock fatuousness. His impression of a sultan admiring the decadent seat of his empire.
Despite the luxury you see me steeped in, I’m treading water here. I’d feel good about letting you keep the truck but I’d feel less good about me and my family sleeping at a shelter.
I’ll work it off. I’ll clean your office. I’ll paint your house. Whatever.
Sorry.
The bondsman pauses and seems for an instant to reconsider and then he stands, his gut disrupting the papers on his desk. He extends a hand. The boy surprises them both by taking it and thanking him for his trouble.
* * *
He holds vigil at the kitchen window, staring out at the final tangible remembrance he has left of the man who raised him. A fall twilight. Heavy violet haze settles over the rooftops of the houses across the street, tamping down the garish neon remnants of the fallen sun. He envisions the truck’s demolition. Smash the windows and slash the tires. Pop the hood and take a hammer to the engine. Let them haul away the ruins. The hunt for his mother has accustomed him to odd hours and he remains at his post long toward dawn. The tow truck never arrives. In the morning there is an envelope for him on the kitchen table. It is unsealed and unaddressed. Inside is the title, together with a note scratched on a torn square of booking sheet.
Here’s your signing bonus. Steve Day
* * *
I know you’re not sleeping, she says. You’re breathing different.
Her weight is on the corner of the bed nearest to him.
You used to sleep so hard when you were a baby. I’d shake your little foot five minutes to get you up.
Why wake me up? I was sleeping on your dope?
She laughs soundlessly. He can feel her body rocking.
Faker, she says.
The boy opens his eyes. A month is gone since her barefoot flight out of that apartment window. Her face has fleshed out. Healthy weight. Her teeth flash in the darkness, somehow bright and intact after the innumerable prison brawls with predatory butch cons and a lifetime of militant substance abuse and an open penchant for physical men. Seeing her the boy discovers a perfect void in the place where he once loved her. He wishes there was pain in the discovery but can only summon a lukewarm regret. Go away, he says.
You’re upset. I earned it. You can choose not to engage in the conversation. That’s up to you.
Treatment.
What?
You went to treatment. We were speculating about what rock you hid under.
I’ve been at Savior Ranch. It’s this farm you live on while you’re doing the program and everybody helps out and has chores they do. It’s really cool. It’s like a little community.
I don’t give a single actual fuck. I just think it’s funny you always come back from treatment trying to imitate the counselors. I can choose not to engage. And your face gets fat.
Thanks for that. What a sweet child.
Yeah, no charge. Get out of here. Go turn yourself in. Tell them where you’ve been, maybe they won’t hit you with the bail jumping.
You won’t listen to me at all? You won’t even let me talk?
Won’t let you repeat the low-rent psychology they gassed you up with? No, I won’t be doing that. I centered my chi over you. I’m done.
Her teeth flash. You’re a buddhist all the sudden?
Yep. I transcended you. I’m zen. I wish you the best of luck but I’m through worrying about you and I’m through getting mad at you. You don’t get to cause chaos here. I’ve got my chakras aligned.
Chakras is hindu.
I’m that too.
Morning presses at the blinds, conferring upon the room a muffled light. He sees that her age is beginning to show. Her mouth parenthesized. Her skin beginning to slacken. He wonders what will become of her when she can’t coast by on her looks anymore.
She gets up.
I’m gonna shower, she says. Think about it, okay? There’s lots I want to tell you.
The boy waits for her to go. He steps into the dim hallway and stands outside the bathroom door with his cellphone blazing against his cheek. The water turns on. The ringing goes through to voicemail twice before Steve Day answers.
You better be trapped under rubble. What, were you sleeping?
Hilarious. Hang on.
The bounty hunter clears his lungs, hacking and spitting like a wolverine. The boy takes the phone from his ear. On the other side of the bathroom door his mother is humming something familiar. He listens. A song ingrained in his deepest infant memory. An imageless recollection, one that can only be felt. The melody reaches out to him. It triggers a feeling he resists, of implicit peace and safety inviolable. He wills the feeling dead, attempts to shove it back down. And instead a traitorous and maddening part of him awakens to it. This melody from his memory before memory reaches down into him–and at last, he wants to be reached.
All right, the bounty hunter says. What’s happening?
Nevermind. I shouldn’t have called. It’s nothing.
Well I’m up now. What is it?
Nothing. I thought I saw somebody.
Saw who?
Nobody, man. I messed up. Go back to bed.
I can’t once I’m up. You just beat me for two hours of sleep for no reason. I’m gonna be wore out the whole day.
You’ll come to terms with it.
Motherfucker.
Yeah I know, the boy says. Go have a cup of sleepytime tea. Give me a call after you’re nice and rested and I’ll tell you all about it.
The boy goes to his room and lies atop the covers. His mother is singing now, faintly.
He can just hear her. He closes his eyes. When he wakes she’s gone.