Before Familiar Woods Page 2

  MILK RAYMOND

  When Milk Raymond woke on the pullout couch, he sat upright and then folded the blanket and set it on the cardboard box next to his cigarettes and the bottle of aspirin and the crinkled wrappers that contained two tablets of Zoloft and three tablets of Paxil. He put on his blue jeans and white undershirt. He lifted the metal frame and pushed the bed into the couch and then stuffed the cigarettes and aspirin and Zoloft and Paxil into his pockets. He looked around the empty living room at the muted light that played along the nicotine-streaked walls, and then he made his way down the hallway to where his boy was sleeping in the bedroom.

  “It’s time to get up,” Milk said.

  Daniel shifted under the bedsheets and then turned over and faced the window, where a little bit of sun was coming in through the blinds.

  “Come on. Breakfast is ready.”

  Milk went to the kitchen and removed two plastic bowls from the cabinet. He turned on the burner and mixed some water from the tap in a metal pot with a couple of oatmeal packets the previous tenant had left in one of the cupboards. “Breakfast,” he said again. He lowered the burner and turned from the kitchen and started down the hallway but stopped when he saw Daniel in the bedroom pulling on his sweat shirt.

  The two sat down at the table and ate from their bowls. Milk watched his boy. Eight years old and skinny as a rail post. Brown wavy hair that came down over his ears and fell against his unmarked skin. He wore oversized goggles with thick yellow plastic around the eye cups and a black rubber strap that said JUNIOR RACER.

  “How’d you sleep?”

  Daniel shrugged. He lifted a spoonful of oatmeal to his mouth and looked around the kitchen while he chewed. “How long are we going to be here?”

  “I don’t know. A couple months at least.” Milk continued to watch his boy. He tried to tick off the things he knew about him. But the things he thought he knew from the first five years of the boy’s life, he wasn’t sure he knew. He wasn’t sure they were still true after three years of being overseas and hardly seeing him at all.

  Daniel lifted another spoonful to his mouth. He chewed the oatmeal slowly and looked down at his bowl. “It doesn’t taste good,” he said.

  Milk took a bite. The oatmeal didn’t taste like anything. He lowered his head to the bowl and smelled the oatmeal. “Don’t eat it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s no good.”

  “Is it old?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old? One hundred years?”

  “Not one hundred years.”

  “How old, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Daniel put the spoon down.

  Milk studied his boy for another moment. “Put your shoes and coat on. I know where we can find something better.”

  The boy got up from the table and headed toward the bedroom. Milk rinsed out the plastic bowls and set them upside down on the counter to dry. He threw out the remaining oatmeal packets and then went to the closet and put on his boots and his coat and his Boston Red Sox cap, and when the two were ready they left the house.

  “Where are we going?” the boy asked.

  “Put your belt on.”

  The boy pulled the seat belt over his chest and snapped it into the buckle. Milk started the engine and turned up the heat.

  “Am I coming back?”

  “What?”

  “Am I coming back with you?”

  “Why wouldn’t you be coming back with me?”

  The boy shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Open that vent,” Milk said. “Go on. Flip it open.”

  The boy flipped open the vent. Milk pushed the clutch to the floor and shifted into first. He looked back at the blue one-story duplex and then pulled out onto the road.

  Stub Hollow ran north and south. It was covered in braided channels and potholes, but Milk was five days removed from a three-year stint in Iraq and he was used to bad roads, most of them strapped with explosives. He put the truck in second gear and turned on the radio. A rap song blared from the speakers, and he quickly changed the station.

  After following the narrow road for a couple of miles, he reached the center of North Falls. The town looked the same. A little worse for the wear, maybe. Some more cracks in the sidewalks. But the town that had seemed like it was on life support when he was growing up was somehow still not dead. He passed the general store with the large oak tree outside and the orange CLOSED sign hanging from the front door and thought back to how it had been the spot the popular girls used to work during the school year before the lifeguarding jobs opened up on the pond. He wondered who worked there now—or if there was some other place the popular girls worked.

  He continued past the town hall and the library and the fish-and-tackle until the homes were spaced farther apart and the woods became more prominent and were sometimes broken up by small patches of farmland and old farmhouses set back from the road. He followed the road past the gas station, where a truck hauling two-by-fours sat parked next to one of the pumps, and then he turned west at the blinking light and pulled onto Route 7 and continued south for several miles until he saw the big red Donut Shop sign. He pulled into the lot and parked in front of the shop next to an empty newspaper holder. He sat there with the engine rattling and stared at the shop.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Wait here.”

  Milk killed the engine and got out of the truck. He went to the window of the shop and put his hands against the glass and peered inside at the long silver counter and the shelves behind the counter lined with metal trays. He stepped back from the glass. A piece of paper taped to the window on the other side of the door said NOTICE OF CLOSURE: CLOSURE OF PREMISES ASSOCIATED WITH NUISANCE OR DISORDER. He looked around at the empty lot and the wind-torn trees that surrounded it and the chain-link fence and the yellow dumpster where somebody had spray-painted JESUS LIVES. JUST NOT HERE.

  Milk returned to the truck. He lifted his hat and ran his hand over his shaved head. He felt a headache coming on. The dull pulsing behind his eyes like someone trying to dig into hard ground with a coal shovel. Daniel still wore his goggles, and after a moment he pulled them from his face and spit into one of the eye cups and rubbed the plastic with his fingers.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “What?”

  Milk nodded toward the goggles.

  “That’s how I keep ’em clean.”

  “Well, all right,” Milk said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. When he had the cigarette lit, he rolled down the window and started the engine.

  “Are we going home?”

  “We’re going somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere.”

  Milk headed farther out of town. He kept his eyes open for somewhere he could get the boy something to make up for the stale oatmeal and to start making up for everything else the boy had been through during the last three years, but there were only homes same as the homes in North Falls, and so he found a dirt turnaround and drove back toward town, passing again the clapboard homes and the Donut Shop. He slowed as he approached the gas station, and then he pulled into the lot and parked in front of the window next to where the truck hauling two-by-fours had been. “Wait here,” he said.

  A young girl with short black hair and green eyeshadow and multiple piercings lining her right earlobe stood behind the register. She wore a black sweat shirt with long sleeves that had holes for her thumbs.

  “Do you have doughnuts?” Milk asked.

  “They’re long gone,” the girl said. “You have to get in before eight if you want any.”

  Milk looked around the store.

  “We’ve got Chillers. Those are popular too—even in the winter.”

  “What’s that?”

  The girl pointed toward a machine in the corner of the store.

  “Soda?” Milk asked.

  The
girl shook her head. “You ever have a Slurpee?”

  Milk nodded.

  “It’s just like that. It’s like our version of a Slurpee.”

  “How much are they?”

  “A dollar thirty-nine for the large one. Ninety-nine cents for the small one.”

  Milk reached into his pocket and pulled out a small billfold. “I’ll take the large one.” He handed the girl five dollars.

  The girl took the money and put it in the register and gave Milk his change.

  Milk stood there a moment.

  “It’s self-serve,” the girl said.

  Milk looked over at the machine.

  “Here. I’ll show you.”

  The girl came around the counter. She wore tall winter boots and tight black pants and Milk almost stumbled over his feet watching her walk. She reached the machine and grabbed a large blue cup from a stack of cups. “This here is the large one. There’s raspberry and there’s blueberry. You can have one of them or you can have both. I like to mix them.”

  “I’ll do that, then,” Milk said.

  The girl pushed the cup against a metal prong under a spout. Milk saw that she had a small tattoo on her neck under her left ear. It looked like a crow or a black star, but he couldn’t tell for certain and he didn’t want to stare. The girl moved the cup in a small circle, and when it was half full with liquid, she pushed it against the prong under the second spout and moved the cup again in a small circle until it was full. Then she removed a plastic top from the cupboard and stuck it on the cup and poked a thick red straw through the opening. She handed Milk the cup. “Now you know how to do it.”

  Milk nodded.

  The door opened and an old man in a flat cap and leather tab suspenders pulled tight over his flannel shirt walked into the store and went to the counter and pulled out his wallet.

  “Thanks for the help,” Milk said.

  “You’ll be back,” the girl said, smiling. “They’re addictive.”

  Milk nodded and left the store. He got in the truck and handed Daniel the cup.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s like a Slurpee. Have you ever had a Slurpee?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Don’t drink it too fast. You’ll get a headache if you do.”

  The boy studied the drink.

  “Go on,” Milk said. “It ain’t gonna kill you.”

  The boy hesitated and then took a sip. He pulled his lips from the straw and studied the drink. “It’s good,” he said.

  “I know it. That’s why I got it for you.”

  RUTH FENN

  Ruth watched from the uncurtained window at the front of the house as Polly Bishop came up the drive in her grandmother’s station wagon with the fake-wood paneling and the plush stuffed animals lined up in the back. After a moment Polly got out of the car, followed by two little boys with shaved heads and oversized winter jackets who took to running after each other and laughing. Ruth grabbed her coat from the nail and pulled open the door and came down the creaking porch steps. “It looks like you’re feeding those two coffee and sugar cubes for breakfast.”

  “I wish that was true. They’re like this all on their own. All the time, too.”

  The boys ran circles around Polly and Ruth. One of the boys pulled the jacket off the other boy and the boy broke free.

  “Where’s Lila?” Ruth asked.

  “She’s in the car seat sleeping.”

  The boys continued to chase each other.

  “Quit it,” Polly said. “Quit messing around and say hello to Ms. Fenn.”

  The boys stopped long enough to say hello between gasps for air and then took off chasing each other around the station wagon.

  “Elam ain’t here?” Polly asked.

  “No—he ain’t here.”

  “I was gonna have him take a look at the car. I got something rattling in the back.”

  “Could be the exhaust is loose.”

  “I already checked that.”

  “What about the trunk?”

  “What about it?”

  “Maybe you got yourself a dead body in there.”

  Polly laughed. “I wouldn’t put that past Grandma Evelyn. I ought to ask her about it.”

  “Maybe. It might depend on whether there’s still room left in that trunk.” Ruth looked back at the boys just in time to see Billy twist his foot in a rut and land hard on his face.

  “Dammit, Billy,” Polly said. “What did I tell you?”

  Billy got to his knees. Blood covered his lower lip.

  “Shit,” Bobby said.

  Polly turned to Bobby. “Watch your language.”

  “Take it easy,” Ruth said. “Everybody’s all right.” She walked over to Billy and bent down in the gravel. “Can you open your mouth?”

  Billy opened his mouth.

  Ruth grabbed hold of Billy’s chin. “Does this hurt?”

  Billy shook his head.

  Ruth reached into her pocket and pulled out her handkerchief and wiped away the blood. “Nothing’s broke, then. You just split your lip is all. You ain’t afraid of a little blood, are you?”

  Billy shook his head again.

  “I didn’t think so. I thought you were tougher than most eleven-year-old boys.”

  “He ain’t,” Bobby said. “He cries all the time.”

  “Well, he ain’t crying now,” Ruth said. “Maybe he’s all done with that.” She pushed on her knees and stood. Her back stiffened again and she laid her palm where it hurt. Billy turned and spit awkwardly onto the gravel. “You know,” Ruth said. “I seen two gardeners in the woodpile this morning. One of them was about three feet long and I didn’t even see all of it.”

  “Where was it?” Bobby asked.

  “In the woodpile. Like I told you. Right up near the top.”

  Both boys turned to the woodpile in front of the shed.

  “Go on,” Ruth said. “Let me and your mother talk a minute.”

  When the boys had gone, Polly pulled a pack of cigarettes from her back pocket. “Randy left,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  “Becky Wagner is what happened. Probably happened last time, too.”

  “You’re better off, then.”

  “I don’t feel better off.”

  “You are.”

  “I’m gonna miss his paycheck.”

  “You got your own paycheck.”

  “It’s hardly enough to justify the paper it’s printed on.”

  “So find a new job.”

  “Where?”

  “What about Hinman’s? They used to pay overtime on Sundays, from what I remember.”

  “What am I going to do with Lila and the boys?”

  “We can work something out.”

  Polly put the cigarette between her lips and lit it and took a drag. “You watch them enough already. Besides, the manager at Hinman’s gives me the creeps. He’s only got that one eye.”

  “He only needs one eye to sign your checks.”

  “I guess. But I still don’t see why he doesn’t cover the other one up. Besides, he don’t like me. He’s always looking at me funny—out of the one eye he’s got.”

  “All the guys look at you funny. That’s just how guys look at girls like you.”

  Polly smiled a little and took another drag. “It’s going to be hell,” she said. “We were hardly making it before.”

  “Hardly making it is still making it.”

  “Right up until it ain’t.”

  “You’ve got some time before that. You’re younger than you think.”

  Polly crossed her arms and looked over at the boys. Ruth studied the oval-shaped scar on her cheek, hardly visible beneath the thick foundation. She thought back to the first time the caseworker drove Polly out to the house in the middle of the winter when the boys were still little and shy. The stitches were visible then and the caseworker telephoned Ruth beforehand to explain that Polly had been stabbed through the cheek with a pair of scissors and
that the boys had seen it all. Ruth knew the man who had done it—knew his surname, at least. It didn’t come as a surprise and Ruth figured Polly knew he was a snake when she picked him up. But she had two kids by then and no self-worth and she wasn’t the first woman to fall under the weight of those circumstances.

  “Why don’t you talk to your caseworker,” Ruth said. “It might be she knows of some new programs out there. Something to get your costs down for a while.”

  “I’m not doing that family unification bullshit. They make you live with roommates. They tell you you’re getting support because you’re living with people just like you. My whole thing is I got to get away from people like me.”

  “She might know of something else. Maybe something outside of town.”

  “I can’t pull the boys out of school again.”

  Ruth turned toward the boys, who were taking turns holding up the blue tarp and pulling out split logs. She thought about how simple it seemed to her now. To move a child from one school to another. How simple a problem for a mother to have.

  “I saw a place advertised in the paper this morning,” Polly said. “It’s almost half the rent we pay now. It’s only got the one bedroom, but we done that before.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Down on Cottage Street. Behind that old brick building.”

  “The sock factory?”

  “I guess. I never knew what it was.”

  “No. I guess you wouldn’t. It’s been boarded up for some time now. At least it ain’t far.”

  “No. It ain’t far. I hate to move again, though. I hate the thought of it. Those boys haven’t seen two seasons in the same house since they were born.”

  “That’s not your fault.”

  “That’s not how they’ll see it. They’ll blame me ’cause I’m the only one here to blame.”

  “They’ll come to understand.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They will.” A flock of geese moved loudly overhead. Ruth waited for them to pass. “You’re doing all right,” she said.