9:55:00 a.m.
“She’s here!” Jenny called.
I heard the door open and my friend, Tonya Brown, made her usual entrance.
“Mmm, mmm. That’s what I needed this morning. How does someone so tiny give such good hugging? Your auntie awake yet?”
“She’s awake. Did you bring polish?”
“I did.”
Their feet clomped above me, then echoed on the wooden steps down into the basement.
“Hey,” I called from the treadmill.
Tonya marched over and clicked off the CNN. “Non-business hours, honey. It’s music time.” She popped a best of En Vogue CD into the player and winked at Jenny.
The first time Tonya Brown made the trip out to my little ranch was the day after my sister’s funeral. She’d brought her gym bag and my entire free weight set, scavenged from my north side apartment. The suspension on her drag-ass POS car would never be the same.
God, was I glad to see her.
Every Saturday morning since, she’d come to work out and hang out with Jenny and me. Jenny liked her, too. A lot.
Tonya was an ER nurse at County Hospital when I first met her. I’d been hired to develop a story on inner-city emergency-room medicine. It wasn’t that far from my usual material. The executive who did the hiring had used me several times that year. Maybe he liked my eye for stills, or maybe someone tipped him off that I needed down time after Afghanistan. That was the summer I drove Peg into a sidewalk mailbox near the intersection of Sheridan Road and Jonquil, two days before the Fourth of July. Kids were playing with fireworks; I thought somebody was shooting at me.
Anyway, Tonya and I hit it off. Whenever I was home for a few days, T and I got together at my apartment on Saturdays. We lifted weights in the morning, drank margaritas until dinner and spent the rest of the night in a quiet restaurant complaining about work or men, or work and men.
When my life changed, Tonya found a way to keep the healthy part of our tradition going. We still worked out on Saturday mornings, Jenny fiddling with something nearby. Lately, the two of them had bonded over hair and nails. Tonya is the only weight lifter I know who maintains her relaxed grip on the bar by virtue of three-inch fingernails. Today, they were painted electric green.
Jenny was impressed. “Tonya, could you bring the green nail polish for me next week? It’s awesome.”
“Sure, baby.” The bar clanged as she finished a set. “This girl’s got sophisticated taste, Maddy. Not everybody appreciates my green.”
Or her chartreuse unitard. Or the matching beads clackety-clacking as her extensions swung above her shoulders. Of course, only an idiot would fail to appreciate the entire package.
“Huh,” seemed a safe enough answer. I timed it to an exhale on my leg press.
Tonya twisted one elbow high beside her ear for a triceps stretch, while fishing around in her giant bag with the other arm. She grabbed a handful of something prescription level and chased it with water. “Don’t eyeball me, Maddy O’Hara. I’m clean and legal here.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.” I shifted the pin on the weight stack for my last set of reps, cleverly looking the other way. “How’s the back?”
“Oh, just shitty. Sorry, baby, don’t listen to that nasty talk.” She must have told Jenny not to listen fifty times a day. “I may have to take another promotion if it keeps acting up.”
“Why are you lifting if your back is bothering you?”
“Please,” she cut me off in her Top Administrator voice. “I’m a trained professional. Bicep curls are good for me.”
“What’s with the meds?”
“Pain slows healing.” She winked at Jenny, who was trying not to be noticed watching us. “I take a couple of these and feel no pain at all.”
When T left the ER to become Director of Nursing, part of the reason was the added challenge. Most of the reason was the disc she’d blown rolling a road worker off a bed onto a gurney. Another reason T and I were friends-she understood pushing harder than made sense.
Sweat popped everywhere as I cranked out my last two presses. I can do this. I can do this.
“I think I’ll need two coats of purple,” Jenny announced. “I like them really dark. Next time though, I want to try orange and green.”
“I think that’d be very…autumn. Now I’m going to do one more set of curls, baby, so I can still beat your auntie arm wrestling, and then we’ll see about braiding your hair. Sound good?”
Jenny gave Tonya a pressed-tight smile, the one that always seemed to me as if she was hoarding her happiness.
I swung my legs around the bench and sat up. Exhaustion hit me hard.
All Tonya had to say was, “Would you go run and get me some more water, baby?” and we had a moment to speak privately.
“Thanks for coming out today and hanging with the kid,” I offered.
“Daylight hours are no problem. It’s those midnight runs that kill me.”
“Uhn,” was the best answer I could manage.
“Any more bad nights?”
“Not since the last time I called.”
Things had calmed down since the school routine had gone into effect. Midsummer, I’d had a bad spell. I started slipping out at night when the kid was sleeping. At first, I’d walk to the mailbox and come right back. Then I went all the way to the corner and back. One night I walked all the way to the highway and back. That night, I got back just before dawn. Jenny was still sleeping peacefully.
But I knew we had a problem.
The next time I had the urge to walk away, I called Tonya after Jenny fell asleep. She came, no questions asked. I always returned before Jenny woke.
“Work’s helping?” Tonya asked.
“Yeah. Sort of.”
“Talk to me, Mad-dee.” Tonya teased my name out.
I had hung a clock on the wall across from my treadmill, so I didn’t have to feel the clock in my head while I worked out. It’s always there,:60,:30,:10, bumper, commercial, joiner. Out. How much time did we have to talk privately? Minutes, if I was lucky. I usually worked myself up to these kinds of conversations, over hours and an entire pitcher of margaritas. Another lifestyle change: pruning my emotional life into the time limit that fit around Jenny.
Tonya leaned back against the wall and patted her face with a towel, as if we had all the time in the world.
“This story I’m working on. It’s got something. At first, I was afraid it was pretty run-of-the-mill creepy sex stuff, you know. But there’s something else there.” I tried to shake it off. Make it seem less significant.
She gave me her careful eyebrow look, the one that indicates concern mixed with you-crazy-white-girl.
I don’t know why I tried to explain; I’m sure she’s right. “I spent the last few years in the field doing nothing but war and disaster. Half the time, I’d end up talking to the head guys because nobody worried about talking to a girl.”
We shared a long suffering eye-roll.
“And even though I sucked at first, figuring out how to ask questions and get answers, wearing masks to hide my disgust, hiding my fear-I wanted to do it. I believed.”
She nodded and picked up the barbell I’d just finished using, adding ten pounds to either end. She needed all the strength she could muster. Cynicism and hope were the left and right ventricles of a nurse’s heart and soul.
“Sometimes, I was so afraid.” Muscle memory caused a familiar burning roil below my diaphragm. “But I didn’t want to stop. The stories mattered. They mattered to me.”
Tonya gave me the blank look. “You are going to have to spell this one out. You’re losing me.”
“I’m just saying there’s something in the stuff I get attached to that kind of worries me. You know-with Jenny around now.” I popped my last three curls, breathing fast. My skin tingled, warm from the effort. “Damn. I’ll shut up now.”
“No. Say it.”
“In my head, I hear my J-school profs yelling, ‘You interview experts, you aren’t the expert. You report the news, you aren’t the news.’ So I try not to get involved, but there’s something underneath the stories I want to do that scares me.”
“Sounds normal to me. You want to know what’s under the rock. Remember how you obsessed about Dr. N?” Dr. Norman was part of my emergency-room story. He’d been in and out of recovery programs. He was good at two things that should have been mutually exclusive, high pressure healing and drinking. My theory was he used them both the same way-full body forgetting. “And it made a great story.”
“If I was in a hurry, I could do something with the lead I’ve already got on this story. Splice in some network research on deviant sex and I’m done. No brainer.”
“So why don’t you?” The words puffed out as Tonya curled.
I shrugged.
The weight clanged back into a resting position. Tonya took one deep breath, studying my face the whole time. “Then be about your business. Investigate. Report. Figure it out, baby. Figure it out. For yourself and the rest of us.”
Upstairs, the doorbell rang.
We both looked up, listening to Jenny’s feet run across the floor upstairs. Her voice filtered down to us. “I’ll get it.”
“How’s she doing?” Tonya asked softly.
“Okay, I guess.” I dropped my bar and everything sagged. Resistance was the better part of what kept me upright lately. “She ditched a class yesterday. Teacher asked me if she’s getting any ‘help.’”
“Like a shrink?”
“I guess.”
“Shit.” Tonya sighed. Therapists would not have been widely utilized in Tonya’s childhood neighborhood. Too hard to do therapy on somebody who doesn’t eat regularly. “You know any shrinks?” she asked.
“No.”
“You want me to ask around? Get you the name of someone good?” People who work in a hospital know better than anyone that they call the guy who finished last in his class at medical school “doctor,” the same as all the rest.
I sucked a long swallow of water. “I think she just needs some time. Her mother died. She ought to feel shitty. I do.”
“Yeah.” Tonya plopped her butt on the bench press and looked at me. “How bad is it?”
I stalled to get the bite at the back of my throat under control. “I got a six-minute story due in four days, jack-all in the can and my back-up is Opie the Boy Wonder. Jenny still wakes up screaming once a week. This house I’m living in is triggering flashbacks to my misspent youth and my prescription for Xanax has expired. I’m great. Just great.”
“I can help you out with the Xanax.”
“You’re a pal.” The only towel I could find this morning was embroidered with daisies. It made my sweat feel especially dirty.
Tonya smiled. “There’s always boarding school.”
That got a grunt.
One of those nights I’d run for it, I returned with a half-baked plan to sell my sister’s house and pack Jenny off to boarding school. My frugal sister had managed to build some decent equity. In the current market, I figured I could get the kid all the way through high school on that money. Summers, I’d let her stay with me, or she could go to friends. She’d make lots of friends at school, right?
Tonya had listened to the whole plan, one eyebrow cocked, television on in the background rattling on some typical morning news about a kid who’d gone missing and parents who were frantic. She’d clucked her tongue and dragged me up the hall to look in at Jenny dreaming. The room was warm with sleep, and smelled of what I knew to be Jenny and thought might be my sister, or even mother.
“No boarding school, yet. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Tonya answered. “Only one of us allowed to have a breakdown at a time.”
“I’m not having a breakdown.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fucked-up. Insecure. Neurotic. Emotional. Yeah, you’re F-I-N-E, all right.”
There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and who should appear? Ainsley’s happy head popped around the corner. “Hi there.”
Jenny hadn’t followed him. I could still hear her feet shuffling around upstairs.
“Hi yourself. Who’s this?” Tonya drawled. Her posture altered and her chameleon-colored unitard suddenly took on that queenly nonchalance that only black women can pull off in lycra. Ainsley was suitably impressed.
“Meet my Boy Wonder,” I grumbled. “Ainsley Prescott. Tonya Brown.”
He reached out to shake her hand. Ainsley’s version of weekend casual wear consisted of a gray T-shirt-tucked in-and ironed blue jeans. The shirt hung loosely across his shoulders, his collar bone and shoulder blades cutting into the drape of the cloth at the back. Ah, young boy bones.
“And what a wonder he is. Very pretty. He gay?”
“Not sure,” I said to rile him. “Never came up.”
“Not,” Ainsley replied dryly. “I give demos, if you’d like to resolve any doubts.” He pressed a palm over his heart and smoothed it down his chest, stopping when his fingertips tucked in his waistband.
Tonya cackled, “Ooh, I like him.”
Uncle Rich would not be amused.
“Back upstairs, College.” I inserted my sweaty self between them, herding him toward the steps. “You’re early.”
“No beer. No videos. I woke early.”
As I hit the top of the stairs, Jenny came stumping out of the kitchen with a can of pop in her hand and cotton stuffed between her toes to protect her polish.
“Give me five minutes to change,” I told Ainsley. “Then we can run and meet Melton.”
“Are you going somewhere?” Jenny’s voice stretched to a squeak. Lately, even walking out to the road to get the mail out of the box, I’d heard that same question, in the same tone of voice.
Come on, kid. Keep it together. I answered slow and steady. “I’ve got to go pick up some stuff from the local newspaper. Tonya’s going to stay here with you.”
“How long will you be gone?” Tonya stepped behind Jenny, using her whole body to soothe. No hands, just a solid presence at the girl’s back.
Why couldn’t I do that, give her comfort automatically? How do you learn that?
“Not real long.” I saw the raised eyebrows of skepticism. T had offered to stay all day, if I needed it. Until that minute, I hadn’t realized how much I did.
“Okay,” Jenny mumbled. She wrapped her arms around her ribs and her shoulders rolled forward into two sharp points. Her chest seemed to cave in at the center.
“You and Tonya’ll have a good time,” I insisted.
Jenny stared back at me, blank-faced and big-eyed.
Everybody nodded. Nobody cared. I didn’t even try to hug her goodbye.
11:48:21 a.m.
It was a twenty-minute drive to the Clarion Newspaper Worldwide Headquarters. The red brick shoebox that held offices and press machinery was in a very industrial neighborhood surrounded by car dealerships, auto repair shops and a no-tell motel with a flashing sign promoting: All Parking in Rear.
Interesting zoning code.
Ainsley seemed relieved the newspaper had its parking right out front. Before we got out of the truck, I decided to say something.
“For the record, College, I like to keep my personal life out of the office. I’d appreciate it if you’d forget whatever you know about my home life.”
“You got it,” he chirped, very sincerely.
Gratitude makes me sheepish, but my thanks were equally sincere.
As I planned, we arrived a few minutes early. Through the glass double doors, I could see the receptionist packing up. She came over to lock the front and looked suspiciously in our direction.
“Don’t.” I cautioned Ainsley against knocking. People started filtering out the back doors and heading for the cars parked nearby. I made a show of looking around as if we were there to pick someone up. “I think Melton wants to keep this meeting private. She’ll be gone in a minute.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“All the papers I’ve ever known roll up the welcome mat at noon on the dot on Saturdays. I’m guessing that’s why Melton told us to be sure to come after twelve.”
“What papers have you worked at?” Ainsley asked, dangling his preposition like a good midwesterner.
“I started taking pictures for the Cook County Register back in high school, then did news photography all the way through college.” He looked impressed; I shrugged. “Paid for my books.”
“They say print is really different from TV news.”
“Some of it’s the same: the low pay, crappy hours, psycho egos everywhere. The motives are different, though.”
The lights went out in the lobby. I tried not to look impatient.
“Motives?”
“People go into newspaper work for the stories, usually. They get a thrill out of knowing stuff nobody else knows. Knowing stuff first.” I glanced at my watch again. “TV people want to know stuff first, too. But it’s mostly because they want you to notice them; they like the glam. They’re attracted to the glow of the set, like a bug to a flame.”
Ainsley leaned against the glass and tested his come-hither smile. “Is that why you went into television? The ‘glam’?”
“I said ‘mostly.’” I could see his questions percolating. I answered an easy one. “There are a lot more people watching television these days, than reading newspapers. I prefer to swim in the big pond.”
“So you like the competition.”
“Partly.” I snuck a glance at his face and added, “Also, greater opportunity for impact.”
His brow furrowed. I figured I’d lost him, until he said, “Impact won’t be much of an option at WWST, will it?”
Damn. He was with me after all. I shrugged. “Could be worse.”
Melton appeared, looking furtive but smiling. He snapped open the door and bustled us through the waiting area.
“This way.” The buzz coming off him was palpable. He must have found something interesting.
The Clarion’s interior was remarkably similar to WWST. Brown on brown. The fourth estate is not renowned for the decor and gardens. Beyond the reception area, we passed through the semi-public classified area and on into the anti-public newsroom. We wound our way through a maze of desks, randomly personalized with widgety clutter, family photos and the all-pervasive paper mosaic of shorthand notes, post-its and newsprint. Some of the computer monitors looked older than Ainsley. The space was democratically at-large but mostly deserted. Here and there somebody sat typing or talking on the phone.
Melton paid no attention and made a bee-line for the back hall. He’d cultivated a slouching sort of amble that almost made him seem as if he wasn’t hurrying. “Plate room’s right through here. Jeff’s at lunch so we can talk without,” his voice dropped to conspiracy levels, “you know-interruptions.”
The plate room is sort of a demilitarized zone between The Press and the press-the people who think up the words and the people who actually ink them onto paper. Nobody hangs out there. Melton was taking no chances we’d be interrupted.
We crowded behind an old relic A-frame into a far corner, where the light tables had been left on, burning through the page proofs with that particular shade of pale gray and fluorescent glow I recognized. I could smell the developer from the nearby darkroom. I crossed my arms over my chest and smiled, feeling right at home.
This was going to be good.
Melton handed me an eight-by-eleven envelope, wiggling like a puppy. “I got him. Employment info, adoption history…”
“Spill it.”
“…and, did I mention, his arrest record?” Excellent instincts; Melton knew his lead.
“Curzon busted the guy?” I asked with more than a reasonable amount of glee.
“Not the sheriff. His cousin.”
“Ha! And now I got him,” I laughed and put up a palm. “Can I get a witness?”
Ainsley slapped my hand.
“Let it be a lesson to you, College. Give us the short version, Mel.”
“It’s an unusual situation because the Amish don’t register births like we do. What I found was Tom Jost’s real father left the area with his son when the kid was young. He went west-California, New Mexico-somewhere like that. The next thing we know, Mr. Jost is petitioning to remove the kid-he’s ten years old by now-from an Arizona foster home, bring him back to Illinois. Kid’s dad is listed as deceased.”
“Fast forward to the good stuff, please.”
“Right, right.” Melton waved a hand, shuffling through papers. “The next bit of paper I found on him is his application for the fire service. He’d just graduated from a fire school in Elmhurst. That was three years ago. Nothing else interesting happens ’til last August, about a month before his death. When fireman Tom gets pulled over with a minor in the car. Cop writes it up-”
“Curzon’s cousin?”
“Right-as contributing to a minor’s curfew violation. I think there was some kind of scuffle, couldn’t confirm that, but Officer Curzon ended up putting them both in the backseat and giving them a ride to the station. Jost’s car was towed and-get this, the tow driver ‘happened to notice’ the trunk was full of porno magazines.”
“‘Happened to notice’?” Ainsley repeated.
“Them tow-truck drivers got X-ray eyes,” I mocked. “Go on.”
“Apparently, Curzon-the-cousin wrote that part up as well, and sent it to Jost’s lieutenant at the fire station.”
“How’d you find that out?”
Melton crooked a bashful shrug. “Buddy of mine at the fire station.”
“Not very discreet,” Ainsley tsk’d.
“‘Telephone, telegraph or tell a fireman,’” Melton said. “Those men sleep together two nights a week. There are no secrets.”
“But why tell you?”
“I get the feeling none of them really liked Jost, for some reason. Bad blood.” Melton shrugged. He seemed convinced the guy had been telling the truth.
“Any idea who the minor was?” I asked.
“No. But the record mentioned Amish clothing.”
Ainsley flashed me a look.
“Female?”
“Yeah,” Melton said.
“Rachel.” Ainsley said aloud what we were both thinking.
I was grinning like an idiot. I love these moments. “Got anything else for us, Mel?”
“Nothing really. The girl was shipped home. The guy was given some kind of write up. His employment record is sealed. I couldn’t get anything on how it impacted him at the fire station.”
“Your friend didn’t have anything to add about what happened with his shift buddies?” That seemed odd to me considering the gossip fest we’d had so far.
“Nope.” Melton shook his head. “He said it all blew over.”
“Except the guy killed himself a couple weeks later.”
“Yeah. Except that.”
1:03:11 p.m.
Fire station number six was out in the middle of nowhere. Couple of guys were giving a big red engine a bath on the driveway. Behind the station a three-story brick building with smoke smears around the windows sat alone in a parking lot. A training tower, maybe?
Several old junkers were lined up on the tarmac below the tower. We watched someone pull another barely drivable vehicle around and park it. The driver got out and walked toward us, your typical hulking, midwest beef-eater.
I opened my door and waved.
Ainsley followed me out of the van but didn’t make a move to pull a camera. “These guys aren’t gonna tell us anything.”
“Why do you think it’s not worth trying?” I pulled off my sunglasses before delivering the bad news. “Listen, College, if I gave up every time I thought I wouldn’t get an interview, I’d be selling Mary Kay cosmetics right now. You want to sell cosmetics, leave the camera in the van.”
Ainsley shook his head, his lips tight.
Stories always feel like something at the start-a texture, a shape, even a temperature. Once I recognize it, the whole thing falls together quickly. Occasionally, I get a story I don’t understand right away. I have to back up and feel my way around the edges. Crack it open. Stick my hands in deep, take hold and turn it around a few times. Those messy, ambiguous stories are the ones that don’t come easy. They’re also the ones that keep me coming back for more.
Two days ago, I thought this was going to be a straight salacious sex-death; the kind of story that reveals in intimate detail exactly how strange your neighbor is. With Melton’s research, on top of Amish oddities, and sheriff tantrums, I knew things were about to get messy in a very good way.
“Relax, College. This is the fun part. We’re living the dream. Right now.” I smiled at the guy with the soapy sponge.
He smiled back, until I flashed my credential and said my name. “I’ll get the captain. Hang on.” He disappeared into the station without another word.
“What do you want?” the beefy one asked. Up close, he was ruddy-skinned. Bright-eyed. Good looking. And young.
Lately, I’ve noticed there seem to be a lot of near-children doing grown-up jobs like fighting fires.
I tried casual. “We’d like to talk to someone about Tom Jost. He worked here, right?”
“Yeah.” He pulled off a pair of work gloves and tucked them in his back pocket. The patch on his shirt was embroidered with the slogan Prevent & Protect.
“Did you know him?”
The guy folded his arms over his chest, looked at Ainsley, looked back at me. “Yeah. I knew Tom.”
“You all work together pretty closely, know each other pretty well, don’t you? Did he have any family? Girlfriend, maybe?”
“Tommy was a loner,” he mumbled. He stared at me, willing me to shut up and go away.
“I’ve heard it’s like having another family when you work for fire service.”
His eyes narrowed, suspiciously. Yeah.
“Maybe the guys on his shift were like his family?” I asked.
The eye contact I got for that question crossed over from annoyed to odd. Maybe the guy had issues with family.
“Maybe,” was all he had to say.
“Was it like losing a brother when he died?” Ainsley asked.
The guy spun around to stare at Ainsley now, as if some kind of insult had been implied. He looked down at his hands, out to the street, everywhere but at us.
“What’s going on here?” A big fella with a respectable gut came out from around the fire trucks in the garage.
“Hey, Captain. We’ve got a TV reporter here, asking questions about Tom.”
“Thanks, Pat. I’ll handle it from here,” the captain replied.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell with men and their patented empty-expressions, but the captain seemed genuinely concerned. He gave the younger man a bracing upper arm squeeze and sent him inside.
“Just a few routine questions. We’re looking for background mainly.”
“Sure. Sure.”
Ainsley got the camera rolling. The captain re-tucked his shirt. You don’t usually get the top job unless you can talk the talk. The incident with Jost was a “tragedy.” They were all “saddened.” Employment records were “of course, private.”
“We have a letter written by a police officer documenting some trouble that Mr. Jost got into with a minor.” I threw that fact out there, fishing. “Do you think the situation contributed to his state of mind before the suicide?”
“Son of a… how the…? Never mind.” The man winced and rubbed one hand across his bald head. “No way. No more questions.”
I had so little to go on, I nodded to Ainsley. He took the camera off his shoulder.
“Off the record?” I smiled. “I don’t want to bring it up, if it doesn’t matter.”
The smile always helps. “That letter should never have been written. Cop was out of line.” The captain pointed his finger at me. “I had to talk to Tom about it. Had to. We weren’t going to fire him or anything. We couldn’t have, legally.”
“How did Jost react?”
“Deer in the headlights. He seemed stunned. Oh, he was pissed, I could tell. But Tommy wasn’t the kind to just blow off steam. He held it in, you know? I told him the whole situation would pass if he’d put it behind him. Forget about it.” He waved the whole thing away with both hands. “The kid needed to get out more. I offered to take him out myself to a real bar. Meet some women. Set him on the right track, so to speak. That’s how much I respected him. As a firefighter, of course. The kid had stones.”
“Did he catch flack from the other firefighters about the letter, or the incident?”
“Probably.” Captain shrugged. “The boys give each other grief for farting on the toilet.”
“And Tom was just one of the boys before the trouble. Got along with everyone?”
“I wouldn’t say that-exactly.” Captain puckered up with consideration. “Tommy was different. He had his ways, you know.”
“Because of the Amish background?”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t watch TV. Except the Weather Channel. Always had to take a moment, you know, when he sat down to eat. Praying and shit. Me, I got no problem with that. Doesn’t bother me. Some of the other guys, it took ’em a while getting used to that kinda thing. Vegas helped him fit in.” The captain tipped his head in the direction he’d dismissed the younger man.
“The other man we were talking with, he was a friend of Tom’s?”
“More than a friend. They partnered on the ambulance.”
Maybe that explained the odd expression when I’d mentioned family. Tom’s partner was definitely someone we would want to speak with again.
“Pat’s last name is Vegas?”
“No.” The chief shook his head. “Vegas is his nickname. Everybody in the station’s got one.”
“He’s a Las Vegas fan?”
“Doubt he’s ever been there. Pat’s a dealer.” The captain snorted a little chuckle. “Always got something going on, you know?”
Ainsley went ahead and put the camera back on his shoulder. “This isn’t privileged info, is it, Captain? Could I get one more shot? I’m not sure about the last one.”
The captain gave him the Big Man’s affirmative. “Tommy and Pat rode the ambulance together. Both of them are…were paramedics-EMS.” He sighed and stepped back. “That all you need to know?”
I smiled some more. “Were they friends?”
“Yeah, sure. Pat had been here a while already when Tommy got hired. Kind of took him under his wing. Tommy was small for a firefighter, you know. Some of the boys had trouble with that at the start. But he was a good man. Fearless. He’d do things nobody else would, you know?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Fearlessness is the first requirement of unbalanced competition. “Tom ever go into a fire?”
“Oh, yeah. Did it not one month ago. House fire. Got a sticker in the window, says there’s a kid in there. I’m about to call for volunteers, Tommy’s already suited up. The guy had stones, I’m telling you. He came to us better trained than most of those babies out of fire school, ’cause he’d worked VFD for the Amish. He knew fire. Unafraid.”
“How does it work out there, if there’s a fire on Amish land?”
“If? Shit, they get them all the time. They’ve got barns full of sawdust and kerosene lamps. They live in wood buildings and use candles. And wood-fucking-stoves! I’m surprised there aren’t more fires out there.”
“Do you get a lot of calls out there?”
He pursed his lips and shook a no. “Most of them are too isolated. By the time we hear about it, not much we can do. If it’s bad and it’s not too far out-and somebody calls us-we’ll send a pumper. That’s what they usually need. Sometimes, a guy in full gear will go in after someone. The Amish VFD don’t use air tanks.”
“Why?”
“Mask won’t fit over the beards.”
“How’s somebody do that?” Ainsley piped up. “How do you actually walk into a fire, even with a tank?”
“Most of the good ones, they think about it ahead a time. Get it set in their head, who they’re going in for-their wife, their kids, their mother.” The captain leaned back against the shiny fire truck, just another old salt waxing poetical. “Tommy had that and something else. He was the kind of guy who liked a test.”
I cocked my head and wrinkled my brow, keeping my voice off the recording. My face said it all, explain that.
“He was always setting tests for himself. Asking how many runs did that guy do? Pushing himself. The other guys on his shift, they saw right away he was a man who’d do the job. That meant a lot to him. Tommy cared what the guys thought. That letter from the cop-” Captain frowned, his jowls shaking with discouragement, “-knowing what people were thinking about him, after that letter, it messed him up. Maybe just about the worst thing could’ve happened to him, you know?”
“What did people think about Tommy,” Ainsley asked before I could, “after the letter?”
The captain had warmed up. He seemed almost relieved to tell his side of the story. Sometimes that happens. Usually, it’s where you find a guilty conscience.
“Hell, they thought he was a pervert! All this time, Tommy was never anything but a paramedic and a firefighter-a damn good one-but he seemed to have no life, no…urges-you know? He was a robot, a shiny robot. That’s how he got his name,” one side of his mouth crooked in a half-forgotten smile of genuine fondness, “guys called him Tinman.”
“Tinman?” I repeated, hoping to draw out more detail.
“From The Wizard of Oz?” Ainsley prompted. “The Tinman had no heart.”
“Thank you. I get it now,” I ground out before turning to the captain to ask, “So your Tinman got busted for copping a feel on Dorothy?”
“Can you believe?” The captain opened his hands, all shocked innocence. “We were pretty surprised. He caught some grief about that, too.”
“Any idea who the girl was?”
“He never talked about her.”
Ainsley tried again. “Um, Captain? What sort of ‘grief’ did the guys give Jost, exactly?”
The captain waved it off. “No more than the usual. Few jokes. Put stuff in his locker, you know? Just grief.”
Just grief.
“How did Pat handle it?” Ainsley asked.
“What?” The question startled him. He was suddenly self-conscious, trying to remember how much he’d said.
“How did Pat handle Tom’s trouble?” I said. “You mentioned they rode the ambulance together.”
“Oh, they were fine mostly. Yeah. No problems. They had words now and then, maybe, like anybody working together. Nothing unusual. I’m sure it was a coincidence they argued the before-” The words came to a sudden halt. He turned his shoulder to the camera as if he’d forgotten something behind him. “Listen, I’ve got to get back to work now.”
“You think Pat might be willing to talk to us?”
“No. Can’t help you there. Against department regulations.” The captain was back in charge. He held up a hand, like a crossing guard warning of a stop. “That’s all now.”
“Anyone else you know I should talk to? Any other friends of Tom’s?”
“No. Nobody-except that school teacher. He used to go see her, have Sunday dinner or something. That’s it.” He stepped back, both hands up now as if he’d push us away if we tried to follow him. He backed up, two steps, turned and hustled off into the cavern of the firehouse.
“Thanks,” I called.
“That was weird,” Ainsley summed up, as the camera came down.
“That, my boy, was not weirdness. That was guilt.”
2:40:31 p.m.
“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Ainsley said again.
“I heard you the first time.”
Traffic was a mess. We crawled past town hall for the second time. It was smack in the center of the main drag. From the front, it looked like the live location shots used half a century ago for Mayberry, R.F.D. Wide stone steps led to a columned portico. Doors tall enough to accommodate NBA superstars. Surrounding the building was a park that extended a full city block behind the place. As we circled the area looking for a place to park, I could see banners and booths advertising for the animal shelter, the art league, Republicans and various other gun nuts.
“What is all this?”
“City’s celebrating the 150th anniversary of incorporation,” Ainsley said. “They’ve been planning it for two years. It’s a pretty big deal.”
“I’ll bet.” I felt a sudden whoosh of relief, as I realized how close I’d come to being ordered to do a story on sesquicentennial weekend for network television. All due respect to Charles Kuralt.
“There’s produce and animals in that big tent, like a mini state-fair market. City hall’s open for tours. Carnival rides in the Catholic church parking lot. I heard there’ll be Amish here for the market. I figured that would be the place for us to get those filler shots.”
Not bad; the boy had come through with a plan for getting the Amish on camera. However, his parking karma was the pits. Even the spots reserved for Town Hall Business Only were taken by huge Lexus-style sedans straddling two spaces. Damn lawyers.
“Maybe we should stick to the sesquicentennial party,” Ainsley repeated. “Leave Sheriff Curzon alone for a while?”
Here in the boondocks, the county seat was also the sheriff’s palace. So it just so happened that Curzon had an office in the old downtown town hall courthouse; although the jail itself was in the modern extension grafted onto the back of the building.
“We’re here anyway. We need to ask about the letter.” I tried to keep the edge out of my voice. I like my work. I like asking people hard questions. “Don’t worry. Curzon’s going to get a big kick out of seeing us again. I promise to make every effort not to piss him off. All I want is five minutes of clean interview with the letter-writing cousin,” I dreamed aloud. “Park right there.”
“It’s marked Deliveries Only.”
“I know.” I gave the boy a friendly shot to the arm. “Good reason to go see the sheriff. We’ll ask for a press pass.”
Ainsley looked a little bug-eyed, but he didn’t argue.
I think he was getting used to me.
Inside the town hall, the air was old-stone cooled. We followed a clump of modern signs glued to the marble, directing us to the sheriff’s office. The place was bustling with activity. Folding tables were set up with handouts, balloons, people educating the citizens about programs for recycling hazardous waste, invader bugs eating local trees and how to fingerprint your kids for their protection.
The hallway swarmed with people, dressed casually and talking loudly, many using the building as a cut through to the park area out back. A pair of kids darted around us with balloons in tow.
“Ainsley!” a woman in a suit called from across the hall.
College hissed something under his breath, then answered her with a big, welcoming smile. “Hi, Mom.”
That turned my head.
“Maddy O’Hara meet Phyllis Prescott, my mother,” Ainsley coughed, “the mayor-elect.”
“How do you do?” I said. What else is there to say to a mayor-elect?
“I’m so glad you came to our little celebration today, Ms. O’Hara. You are planning on taking a tour of the mayor’s office, I hope?” Phyllis Prescott struck me as the kind of woman who maintains a narrow standard deviation of appearance. Her hair was a widely available chemical gold, styled and sprayed solid. Nice open smile, decent handshake. She wore slacks with a suede jacket that sported appliqué leaves, pumpkins and Indian corn.
“Ainsley was saying perhaps you could arrange a special tour for us?” I smiled at our college boy. He was not an idiot; he encouraged her with a nod.
“Did he?” She looked pleased. “Well certainly. I’d enjoy that. I’m busy for at least another hour. But hopefully we can meet-”
There was a shout and a sudden interruption of feet pounding toward us, echoing against the stone up into the high-ceiling hallway. My heart jumped. Low threshold for startle response.
A big teenage boy in Amish clothes shoved past us, bumping Mrs. Prescott against a table in his hurry. “Pardon, ma’am,” he called.
“Hey!” Ainsley called, steadying his mother with one hand.
I caught a bright line of blood down the boy’s face, from his nose to his chin. He didn’t stop. He sprinted toward the bright light of the main doors, lunging around the crowd toward the exit, like a critter on the wrong end of the hunt. His fan club appeared down the other end of the hall. There were five of them.
The Amish boy had already cleared a path through the crowd, so the boys chasing him were able to move quickly up the hall.
It flashed through me so fast, I couldn’t say how I went from angry to action. I put my best boot forward and turned the boys running toward us into a split of bowling pins: three in front toppled, two in the back still wobbling.
Ainsley had stepped forward to shield his mother. I stepped back, swung my camera off my shoulder and started shooting photos.
“What the hell!”
“Quit taking my picture, bitch!”
“That’s enough!” Mrs. Prescott snapped. “You watch your mouth, mister, or you’ll be in more trouble than you can handle.”
As the two boys in front scrambled to their feet, a swarm of uniformed cops hustled up the hall. I hadn’t seen them coming, being too busy looking through the lens. All the men were very concerned about Mrs. Prescott and very un-concerned about the tumbled teenagers. One of the cops put a heavy hand at my back and directed me up the hall toward a door labeled Sheriff’s Department.
We all trooped past the front desk, to an open desk zone, full of busy people and the constant under-hum of electronic services: a scanner, two-way radio buzzer going off, telephones. The usual. Felt like a newsroom to me-except the men were more butch.
The Amish boy had been nabbed as well. He was sitting in a wooden armchair, with a paper towel full of ice melting against his nose. He looked like a kid waiting to see the principal.
“I’d better go with Maddy,” Ainsley told his mother after the paperwork had been organized. She waved him on, deep into a tête-à-tête with one of the officers. Sounded like the boys would be picking up tot-park litter until they graduated college if she had her way. Power used for good is so appealing.
Curzon appeared in the doorway next to where the Amish kid sat waiting. He stepped back and thumbed the kid into his office. Before he shut the door, he shot a glance my way.
Guess who was next for the principal’s office?
“You still plan on asking Curzon for a press pass?” Ainsley sounded sorry for me.
“Sure. No harm in asking,” I answered. “So your uncle runs the local television station and your mom is the mayor-elect. Any other family members you want to tell me about?”
“Um…no?” Ainsley waved at one of the cops who’d raised a hand in greeting.
Shit, my boy was better connected than a Daley democrat.
I crossed my arms and propped my butt against the desk behind me. “What does being mayor-elect get you in this town anyway?”
“A parking place. Free rides on fire trucks.” He smoothed his sunny hair back off his brow with a casual brush that mimicked a cartoon whew. “Oh, and a cable television show.”
“Maybe I should ask your mom for the press pass.” I would have laughed out loud if there weren’t men everywhere. “Cable, huh?”
“Everybody’s got to start somewhere.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, elbows locked.
“What’s it called?” I asked.
Cable shows are the pulp fiction of television. I concede a secret fascination for them.
“One Heartbeat Away.” Ainsley’s grin stretched another inch. He cocked a shoulder in half-a-shrug. “I was into Tom Clancy at the time.”
The sheriff’s office door opened and the Amish boy shuffled out, Curzon behind him. The boy was hunched over, elbows pressed to his sides, the brim of his hat clutched between his hands as if that black anachronism were the lifeline to his identity.
Curzon pointed toward the way out. A man in uniform with a freshly shaved skull guided the boy away. Curzon’s back was to me. That world-weary slump wasn’t his usual stance. One hand came up to rub his forehead, in that classic masculine indication of simultaneous feeling and thinking. Always looks to me as though it gives them a headache. Suddenly, he snapped around to look at me. I expected hostility, but his expression was mostly wary, as if he wondered what do you see?
I didn’t look away which was the only answer I knew.
The things we see change us. I know this in my bones as much as in my head. I wouldn’t do what I do, if I didn’t believe it. That old saying, “the eyes are the window to the soul,” means more than just a view from the outside; it’s a way to enter someone’s soul, as well.
The thing is, Sheriff Curzon and I probably had a lot in common. We both made a living walking through shadows looking at stuff nobody wants to see. Neither of our souls were all that shiny anymore.
Of course, when I felt threatened and shot at things in the dark, nobody died.
The sheriff signaled get in here with a snap of his head. I waved back.
“I’ll go with you,” Ainsley said.
“Oh, most definitely,” I replied, grabbing a handful of his jacket above the elbow to keep him close.
Curzon held the office door open and I slipped past. Ainsley was stopped at the threshold.
“Rick,” Curzon called. “Show Prescott’s kid the break room.”
Rick was the skinhead cop who’d escorted the Amish boy. He had a chest circumference that would have matched Ainsley’s and mine combined. I could feel his voice, like bass notes through a subwoofer, when he reverberated, “Do they let you drink coffee yet, kid?”
Ainsley answered with a long-suffering sigh as Rick led him away. He shot me a look over his shoulder that was part woe, part vengeance.
“Trade with you,” I called out. I freely admit it’s easier to play hard-ass on home territory. I was not looking forward to a private meet in the sheriff’s inner sanctum.
The wood blinds clacked against the office door glass as it shut behind him.
“Talk,” Curzon rumbled.
“Nice place you got here.”
His office had an old-world gangbuster air. Dark, paneled walls, designed to muffle everything from shady deals to gunshots and a mahogany desk larger than some of the parking spaces downtown. On top of the desk sat a stack of files, a pad of paper and a phone. Everything was laid out in parallel precision to the desk’s edges. Including the shiny, brass plaque that faced a pair of parochial wooden chairs. It read Sheriff J. Curzon.
The man himself took a seat behind the desk. “What’re you doing here, Ms. O’Hara?”
“I came in for a press parking pass. There was a little altercation in the hall, and…” The intro sounded lame, even to my ears. I cut to the chase. “I heard your cousin is connected to Tom Jost’s suicide.”
He folded both arms across his chest. “Says who?”
Tough talk is a variation of playground rhetoric; to do it right you have to get in touch with your inner child.
“Says me.”
“They had an interaction almost a month before his suicide,” Curzon stated.
“Which led to an ‘interaction’ with his boss over at station six. And further ‘interactions’ with his co-workers. You heard about any of that?”
He smiled at me curiously. He wasn’t a bad-looking man under the right circumstances. But I didn’t like the glow behind those green eyes. Didn’t like the timing, either. According to playground rules, he shouldn’t be smiling.
“Where are you going with this, Ms. O’Hara?”
“Wherever it leads, Sheriff.”
“Uh huh.” He opened a file on his desk and in an extremely polite tone of voice asked, “How is your niece-Jennifer-getting along these days? She doing all right?”
My hands clamped down around the wooden arm rests. “I beg your pardon?”
Curzon looked frighteningly sincere. “I’m sure it must be hard for both of you.”
“How do you know anything about ‘both’ of us?”
“According to the file, we never found the man who ran your sister down.”
Double-shit. “No. You didn’t.”
He spread his arms wide along the edge of his desk and pushed himself back, assuming the immoveable object position. His weapon bulged in a highly visible lump beneath the shadow of his armpit.
The black handle caught me up short. I don’t know why. I’ve been around guns.
They have a lot in common, guns and cameras. Most people have enough sense to be scared at first. Very few realize how bad it can get until the damage is done.
“Why do you ask?” I snapped.
“It seems relevant.”
In a very calm voice I asked, “Do you think there is a conflict of interest? That I might be pursuing this story as a way of getting back at your fine-” useless, Mayberry, “-department?”
“I think you have legitimate frustrations.”
“I have legitimate questions, Sheriff Curzon. Such as, is it department policy to rat out somebody to their employer for minor violations of the civil code?”
“No.”
“Then why’d your cousin send Tom Jost’s boss a note, tattling that he’d been caught-what?-with dirty pictures and a high-school sweetie past curfew?”
“A letter was sent. It shouldn’t have happened. Nicky thought he was doing the right thing.”
“Do you think he was doing the right thing?”
Curzon made a face. “What does that matter? Nicky took his reprimand and moved on. It’s over and done.”
“Then why are you still trying to protect him?”
“I’m not protecting anybody here. I’m telling you, Nicky’s a good kid.” Curzon’s voice was getting loud. “And a good cop.”
“What about Tom Jost? What kind of kid was he?”
“I can’t help the fact that Tom Jost didn’t have people watching out for him.” The volume dropped abruptly. He leaned forward, crumpling paperwork in his effort to close the space between us. “Nicky is a member of the team, like everybody else. I treat him the same as anyone. I don’t turn my back on somebody for making a reasonable mistake.”
Translation: whatever anyone else thought, Curzon didn’t believe his cousin had done wrong. And he’d kick the ass of anyone who said different.
“Is that what happened to Jost? He made a mistake and people turned their backs on him?”
“Jost’s life sucked,” Curzon summarized curtly, then started rubbing his forehead the way I’d seen earlier. “I can’t do anything about that. Nicky crossed a line and took his lumps for it. As his superior I see no justice in ruining his career over this.”
“I’m not trying to ruin your cousin’s career.” I was starting to feel indignant. “I’m not looking for a scapegoat, Sheriff.”
He stood up and the sheer size of him looming over me was enough to shut my mouth for the moment. He walked slowly around the desk, propped one hip on the corner and stared down into my face. “What exactly are you looking for then?”
I stood up, my chair raking the floor with a screech. “I want to understand what the hell happened. Something happened here. Something more than cheap thrills.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, what it’s like to always be different, no matter what you do. Such as, risking everything and then-giving up.” I was riffing, with no firm sense my story would end up being about any of those things. Maybe it would be about all of them.
Curzon locked on to me with a brain freeze of a look. Then, he nodded sharply.
I decided that was a go-ahead. “How you are characterizing Jost’s death? Suicide?”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure he’d answer. He blinked twice and the tired lines beneath his eyes revealed the flicker of tension he tried to hide. “What else would it be?”
“Accident.”
“No. The report won’t call it that.”
Which wasn’t what I’d said, of course. “Why not?”
“No reason to. Jost wasn’t on duty. He wasn’t vested in his pension yet. There’s no insurance. Why do that? Guy has a family. Such as it is.”
“But if that’s the truth?” I didn’t believe Jost had killed himself accidentally in the throes of a sex act. But a sheriff must have a reason not to believe. “Wouldn’t you have to report it?”
Curzon snarfed loudly. His expression was quite the cocktail of dry humor and skepticism. “What’s this? A reporter who’s concerned about truth?”
“Yeah,” I laughed along, irritation locking my back teeth. “About as rare as a cop who’s interested in justice.”
Both of us spontaneously leaned backward. Sarcasm like that’ll scar at a close range. Curzon relaxed his arms and fiddled with the papers on his desk. He started to say something and stopped, then like a bolt from the blue, he asked, “Would you like to come to my father’s for dinner tomorrow?”
“Excuse me?”
“My family’s getting together for a cook-out. It’s casual. Nicky will be there. You two can…talk.”
“Yeah, sure,” I answered, trying not to sound suspicious. “That would be great. Can I bring a camera?”
“No. But you can bring your niece. There’ll be other kids there.”
“Well.” I stood up. I couldn’t think what to do next. I knew it wasn’t, but I felt like he’d just asked me for a date.
“Funny.” He tilted his head and that reluctant smile crooked his mouth again. He was back to studying me like a specimen, hardly blinking. Days gone by, mobs would drown people with eyes his shade of spooky green.
“What?” I did a quick visual check down the front.
“The way you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Come on like a light bulb when there’s an audience, but here, the two of us behind closed doors, it’s all frosty-” he sliced a finger through the air, “-back-off.”
It wasn’t his comment, so much as the implication that threw me. I slid sideways toward the door, opened it and threw back over my shoulder the first playground defense that came to mind. “Yeah, well, I think you’re cute when you’re pissed-off, too, Sheriff.”
Somebody heard me and whistled. Some other joker called, “Ooh-so do we, Sheriff.”
I could feel the heat in my face.
Should have kept it simple and gone with oh, yeah?
5:27:54 p.m.
“Are you okay?” Ainsley asked me for the third time.
“Same answer. Stop asking,” I said. Town hall was not where I wanted to be. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s blow.”
“Not much of an afternoon person either.” Ainsley amused himself. “Follow me.”
My funk made it hard to appreciate either the tour by the mayor-elect or Our Town’s Sesquicentennial celebration. College seemed to have a vision, so I let him go with it. He shot general footage and some distance shots of Amish mingling with the crowds, selling vegetables and sizing up livestock. I interviewed a couple geezers in plaid shirts about how the town gets along with the Amish community. Unraveling a story with so little of the groundwork prepped was tricky. The whole thing could end up flat, dull or predictably salacious. After an hour of shooting B-roll we had decided to call it quits.
While Ainsley packed the truck, I phoned home. Tonya reported she and Jenny were on the way out to the Sally’s Discount Beauty Supply-no need to hurry back. She also told me they’d taken a weird call an hour before.
“I think it was a kid,” T explained. “Said her name was Rachel and you were expecting her to phone. Told me she’d wait in the Buona Beef parking lot until sundown.”
“Until sundown?”
“Yeah. Sounded like she’d been watching too many old movies.”
More like living them. I’d be willing to bet Rachel Jost didn’t own a watch. “Thanks, T. See you back at the house.”
Two hours had passed since Ainsley had last put food in his mouth, which meant the boy’s blood sugar was plummeting. He whined about making another stop until I told him where we were going. Buona Beef is a Taylor Street original, straight from the downtown Chicago neighborhood where real Italians have lived and cooked since before the city had indoor plumbing. The suburban copy isn’t totally authentic, but they serve a decent beef sandwich “joo-zee, wid peppas.” It was one of the few signs I’d seen that civilization had crept west with the population.
“There she is.” Ainsley pointed as we rolled into the lot.
Rachel Jost was sitting at a picnic table in the dusty grass that edged the parking area. She’d changed from her dark gown, white apron and bonnet, into jeans and a shirt that would blend at any mall. Her braid was tucked down the back of her collar, disguising the length. But everything she wore was a size too big, and her shirt was mis-buttoned; the tail long on one side, collar cock-eyed at her neck. Her feet were bare, her heavy farm boots abandoned nearby. She looked like a runaway in stolen clothes. I doubted it was ignorance of modern clothing that rumpled her. It looked to me like grief, that great disheveler.
Ainsley brought both cameras from the van. Rachel eyed them like attack dogs.
“What are those?” she asked bluntly.
“This is my assistant, Ainsley Prescott. He helps me make the TV show.” I sat down beside her on the wooden bench. Ainsley sat down at the second table with the cameras. I settled in for a wait. Sometimes an interview only happens if you’re willing to sit first. I doubted we’d get any footage but maybe I’d get an idea about where to go next.
Ainsley was rapt. He stared at the girl with the expression of a big game hunter on his first safari. I wasn’t sure if he had work or recreation in mind. The girl was pretty enough. She made me think of that statue of The Little Mermaid-classic features, solid feminine curves, all frozen forever in a permanent state of yearning.
She glanced at Ainsley and blushed.
“College, how about you get us some Cokes?”
“Sure. Do you drink Coke?” he asked her tentatively.
Rachel nodded without making eye contact. Her arms were wrapped tight around her middle in the teen-girl hunch that disguised the shelf of the bust, while otherwise fortifying the heart. I wondered if she’d called my house today hiding in the same bush where I’d first seen her.
Together, we watched Ainsley walk into the restaurant.
I started with the simplest question. “Why did you call, Rachel?”
“My father won’t tell me what happened.” She straightened and took a breath. “To Thomas.”
“You mean yesterday, after the fire truck took him down?”
“The fire truck that was on the other side of the field?” She wrinkled her nose in confusion.
“Yes.” I drew the word out, hoping to see comprehension. No such luck.
“Before that.” She blinked at me and looked away. “My father wouldn’t let us watch. He ordered everyone to stay away from the fence for the day. The younger children weren’t even allowed out of the house.”
“Oh.”
She waited for me to say it.
“You want me to tell you?”
She nodded, fast.
“It won’t be easy to hear.”
Her eyes were dark and wide and wiser than I’d have wagered. “If I wanted easy, Miss O’Hara, I would have stayed at home.”
True enough.
“He killed himself,” I told her softly, pretending to be completely absorbed by the coming and going of cars through the parking lot.
She didn’t move at all. I glanced over every five seconds or so, watching her face shift to whiter and whiter shades of pale. There was the sound of air moving, a whiney hiss. I couldn’t say if it was going in or out.
“You still with me, Rachel?”
“Ja,” she whispered. “My fault.”
We’d never come to terms on metaphysics, but I tried anyway. “What happened to Tom was a terrible thing. But how could it be your fault?”
“So many wrongs. I don’t know how-” She spoke simply, her voice thin and high. “I am alone. Help me.”
“How?”
“My father and the bishop, they speak of love and forgiveness but do not offer it.” She started to squirm, looking at me, looking away, twisting where she sat. “It is not gess. But how can I obey? How can I be humble before those who break the laws?”
Talking to people for a living makes for curious dichotomies. I’ve interviewed a thousand people, most of whom are still a mystery to me, but every now and then, I’ll have a moment of perfect understanding with a total stranger.
“The world is unfair, Rachel. You find a way to live with it. That’s all you can do.”
“How?” She looked at me, really studied my face as if I was saying something new. Something she hadn’t heard before. Her face was almost unreal, it was so fresh, clear of makeup, earrings, hair doodads. She still had a hint of baby-fat double chin, a last trace of innocence.
“How do we live with unfairness?” I repeated, rejecting the accurate, inappropriate answers flashing across my mental big screen: alcohol-sex-drugs. “People are different. You kinda have to feel your way along. Fall down a few times. Try again.” I laughed at myself. My ineptness. “Sounds like learning to ride a bike, doesn’t it?”
“No,” was all she said, over and over. The teenager’s anthem.
Could you blame ’em?
Across the restaurant parking lot, Ainsley was jockeying with the door, holding it open as an older couple entered. Nice manners.
Wish I had been the one sent for drinks.
I felt as if something had locked me down, forcing me to search for words that might connect with Rachel. “I guess I survive unfairness by listening to other people’s stories. I bear witness. Then, I’m not alone.”
She didn’t say anything, but I caught the tiniest nod of recognition.
“Cokes all around!” Ainsley announced.
Rachel looked up at him as if he’d just beamed down onto the planet.
“Great timing, College.”
Rachel held her drink with two hands and ducked her head to sip. There was a furious sort of concentration on her face.
“Hungry?” Ainsley asked, exactly like they do at Irish wakes.
“No one but you, is my guess.”
He waggled his eyebrows and shoveled another handful of fries in his mouth.
“Get your camera box,” Rachel said. “I will tell you a story.”
“You want us to interview you on camera?”
“No way,” Ainsley whispered.
Rachel made a pinched-lip nod. The look on her face explained everything. Every teenager who’d ever lived had worn that expression, I’ll get you yet, oh mighty parent.
“No,” I interjected. “Beside the fact that you’re a minor, your father will have a cow.”
“He has many cows,” she replied with a frown. “It cannot be worse between us. I am eighteen now, a month ago. Thomas told me I’m free to make all my own choices with this age. Is this true?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t believe him. It didn’t seem possible. To decide such important things, without others, without question.” She did an odd sideways duck of her face that turned into a sip of her drink. I’d seen her do it twice and suddenly realized it must be the way she hid her face behind the stiff brim of her bonnet. It wasn’t only shyness. She seemed ashamed. I wondered if the camera were a punishment she meant for herself, as well as her dad.
She straightened her spine and announced, “I am ready.”
Ainsley raised eyebrows-of-concern in my direction.
“Are you sure?” I asked her, soft and serious.
“Yes. Do not look so worried,” Rachel assured me. “I am not confirmed. It is not so bad. I will tell you what I know of Tom. In return, someday, you will tell me what you know. We have a bargain?”
“All right. Set us up,” I told Ainsley. “I’ll dig up a release form.”
The parking lot backed up to a field of autumn-tall weeds. There wasn’t much wind, and the road traffic was shielded by the building. With the right mic and a lot of luck, we might get something decent.
“Tell me about how Tom came to live with your family.” I moved across the picnic table from Rachel, putting Ainsley behind my right shoulder, forcing him to frame her tight.
“He…Thomas was the son of a man who worked on our farm many years, a good friend to my father. He married an Amish girl. The year I was born, there was an accident. A fire.” Rachel stared at me. “Terrible. Several died. My mother and Thomas’s mother both. His father left our community shortly after that and took little Tom with him. He wished to return to the place where he was raised. Along the way, there was an accident. Thomas never spoke of it to me. I do not even know what kind of accident. Such a little boy and he was orphaned.
“Thomas told me once he thought there had been a mistake; he should have passed on then, to be with his mother. Well, I often reminded him, the Lord does not make mistakes. His life was spared for a reason.” The words faded into her thoughts with a sigh. “It was a long time before the members of our community learned that his father died as well, and longer still before they were able to discover where the little boy had gone. Foster care.” She made it sound as dire as it probably was.
“How long?” I asked.
“Too long.” Rachel shook her head and sighed. “My father never remarried after my mother died. He asked to adopt the boy. Some said it was a blessing for us, as Father had no other children. Thomas would be raised Amish with the family he might have had. But when Thomas finally came to us, there were many difficulties,” Rachel summarized bluntly. “He was no longer Plain. But neither was he quite an Englischer.” It was clear by her tone, the meaning of the word was something closer to “outsider,” than a Merrie Olde import. “Everyone was ferhoodled…um, mixed-up crazy. Thomas had it worst. He was afraid. It is hard to live within the Ordnung, to be… gelassen, when there is so much fear inside.” Her frustration was clear. We didn’t just speak different languages; we spoke different life experiences.
“I don’t understand-‘gelassen.’”
“Peaceful? But more, to give over. To yield yourself to higher authority,” she tried to explain. “Yield to God and the community. It is a peaceful feeling.”
“He couldn’t yield?”
“Sometimes he was grenklich…um, sick?” she translated. “Upset.”
I didn’t mind that she was having a hard time sticking to English; it was a sign that she was talking from the heart, talking truth in the words that came first. I’d seen people who spoke six languages fluently revert to their native speech in the midst of a crisis when no one could understand a word they said.
“So Thomas felt sick when he had to follow the community rules?”
Rachel shook her head and pinched her mouth tight for a moment. “He wanted to follow. He wanted to be good. But maybe, I don’t think Thomas ever left that place-in between.” Her eyes and the tip of her nose began to glow pink with Technicolor teenage empathy. “Not Plain. Not English. Not ever.”
“Is that why he finally left the community?”
“I can’t say,” she mumbled.
“How did your father feel about Tom leaving? What did he say?”
“To me?” She sounded surprised. “Nothing, of course. I suppose Father had many feelings when Thomas left. He was angry, of course, but also…disappointed, ashamed. He had tried to do the right thing and somehow, it came out wrong.” She clammed up and swung her feet to skim the stubble of grass.
“Tell me more about Tom. What was he like?”
That brought out the smile. “Oh, he liked the animals. The dogs all slept in his room. Barn cat would come to him if he-” She flipped her fingers against her pants, and then again in the air for Ainsley’s benefit, as if she were fluttering hello. “He even made pets of mice.”
“Mice?” I returned her smile.
“Thomas could be very…still. Animals appreciate that. But he could move quick, too. Especially, when he was afraid. Then he moved-quick. Without thinking.” Her eyes drifted out of focus as a memory seemed to flash through her mind. Her words stalled.
“Tell me about a time he moved quick.”
“I…don’t remember,” she mumbled. A flush spread up her neck into her face.
“Okay. Tell me about a time he was with the animals.”
She thought a moment. “He was always in the barn when he was supposed to be working the field. He liked to be around the animals, pet them, curry the horses’ hair. Once, for my birthday, he braided Foxglove’s mane and put flowers in her hair. It was a Sunday. I took her to church that way.”
“Pretty.”
“We were punished for it,” she added, matter-of-factly. “Father thought it was prideful, showing off. It is hard for me to turn away from pretty things,” she admitted as if it were a terrible fault.
My empathy meter kicked into overdrive. I kept flashing back on my own heartfelt confessions: age seven, eight, nine. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I lied five times. I broke the glass on purpose…stole the bottle…started the fight.
“After Thomas left, I missed him greatly. Once I was sixteen, we found a way to meet in the town. He took me to see things. The zoo, the mall, movie theaters. Have you ever been to the O’Hare International Airport?”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen the great hall of lights that sing above the moving walkway?”
That would be the tunnel that connects the two wings of the United Airlines tunnel. There’s a light sculpture above, glowing paneled walls and a new wave music audio track.
“Yeah, I’ve been there.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Her voice breathed awe. “We spent the whole day at the airport once.”
“So that was a good day. When was that?”
“Right after he first went away. Before I finished school.”
Melton’s research figured Tom had left his Amish home about four years ago. “When did you finish school, Rachel?”
“When I was thirteen.”
“Thirteen? What about high school?”
“It’s not Ordnung,” she said. Absolute is the only way to describe the tone that word invoked.
“You mentioned Ordnung before. Could you explain it?”
“Most do not attend high school because it’s not Ordnung, um, not according to the community’s rules.”
I kept my face blank. “Ah. Well, then the airport was a long time ago. What did you and Tom do more recently?”
“My father would not be happy that I see Thomas.” She ducked her chin. “Not so much time for trips to the airport these days. We stayed closer to home.”
“Your father didn’t know you saw Tom?”
“No.”
The change was so abrupt, I could almost feel her guilt swell between us, big and dark, swimming right beneath the surface. The small hairs on my arm prickled.
“It’s not forbidden yet,” she assured me. “I have not been baptized. The rumspringa,” she confided.
“Sorry, I don’t know.”
“It’s the time between childhood and being baptized in the community. It is a time between-of adult choosing. I must choose.”
I looked at the girl sitting in front of me. Reporters have a voice that comes out when they ask the questions that mask a strong opinion. I could hear the voice when I asked her, “How long have you been an adult, Rachel?”
“Since my sixteenth birthday.”
“That long?” I said. “But then why were you surprised when I said you could make your own choice about being interviewed at age eighteen?”
It flustered her. “Well, I may choose to do things that please me, but I must think if they affect others. If others are affected, they ought to be considered. Yes?” She said it with such simple sincerity, we took a minute of silence before I could think of my next question.
“Makes sense to me. What sort of things did you and Tom do ‘closer to home’?”
Her eyes flashed up and away. “Oh, things…you know,” she lilted with an elaborate shrug.
’Til now, Rachel Jost had reminded me of my farm-raised grandma. Lots of straight talk, in short declarative sentences. We must be getting to the good stuff; Rachel suddenly sounded like a teenager. She glanced past the camera at Ainsley’s bright head, his eyes down, discreetly monitoring the recording.
“College, is that your stomach I hear again?” I called out. “How about you take a break for a minute and go get all of us some fries?”
The boy didn’t argue. He nodded, pulled out his ear piece, fiddled with the tripod lock-down and left.
“Now that we’re a little more private…what sort of ‘you know, things’?”
Give the girl credit. She didn’t dodge twice. “We have a custom called bundling.”
“As in keeping warm in winter?”
She squirmed where she sat. “Between people.”
“I don’t think I know about that.” After a long silence, I added, “Would you tell me about it?”
“People…when they are of an age to marry, sometimes… It is good to marry. To have children.”
“Sure.”
“And when you think of marrying, it is very important to choose rightly. There is no divorce for us. We remain together until death.”
“You’d definitely want to choose the right guy.”
Rachel studied the hole her toe was making in a scruffy tuft of grass. “Sometimes, you must get to know him.”
“‘Get to know him’? In what way?”
She met my gaze with a look that was twenty percent guilt and a surprising eighty percent wit. Rachel Jost had a sense of humor.
“Ah. That way.”
Neither of us rushed to elaborate.
I tried again. “You and Tom have been spending time ‘getting to know one another’ to help you decide whether to marry?”
“Oh, Thomas wanted to marry me,” she admitted, face turned away.
“But you weren’t sure.”
Slowly, she brought herself to look at me. Her mouth was pressed tight, holding back words and tears. The effort had mottled her face into a raw blotch.
Oh shit. Teenagers are a danger to themselves and others. All that emoting from full-grown hearts without any adult-acquired immunity to suffering.
“Lots of people have trouble being sure,” I said, as if I knew.
“To marry Thomas,” she began, “and live with him in the world, I would have to accept Meidung-leave my community, leave my father forever. To marry and be Thomas’s-” She seemed to be struggling for the right word.
“Wife?” I suggested.
“Amish wife,” she answered firmly. “Then he would have to leave the world forever. How could that be right either?” She looked at me with a helpless expression. “There was a disagreement between us. Thomas thought that more would convince me.” The pain in Rachel’s voice put a kink in my neck.
“What kind of ‘more’? More time? More money?”
She looked confused for a moment. “No, no. Can you remember, Miss O’Hara, what it was like before, before you knew there was something else?”
Riddles inside of riddles, but I didn’t want to interrupt her flow. I shook my head.
Rachel sighed a little. “I don’t remember anymore, what it was like not wanting to be different, to be with Thomas. Oh, and kissing,” she whispered. “How much easier it would be, not to know. My father says true sin is not done in ignorance. We must have knowledge to sin. I understand now. That’s why Thomas was always between. He knew both worlds. It surrounded him.” Her voice was small as a child’s. “He was lost and he needed me. If my faith had been stronger, perhaps.”
“You could have saved him?”
“He asked me to marry him. And I refused him.”
The kid had eighteen years of experience, an eighth-grade education and some of the damndest questions of the human experience to digest. Twice her age and double her education, I hadn’t come up with anything better than Life Isn’t Fair. As a motto, it wasn’t much comfort. For me or Jenny.
The only remedy I know is to put the worst into words. “You think Tom killed himself because you wouldn’t marry him?”
She nodded, so tight lipped I was afraid she might implode. An ill-timed flashback to Jenny’s face this morning caught me in an empathy ambush. I could see it in Rachel’s eyes; she was disappearing down the well-hole. Sinking into crushing, septic darkness. Sometimes, if you throw the right distraction, a person will try to save themselves.
“People aren’t that easy to control, Rachel. There was more on Tom’s mind than just marrying you. That much I can say for sure.” Thanks to Curzon’s cousin, Tom had been embarrassed at work, reprimanded by his boss and fought with his more-than-a-friend Pat. Rachel was only part of what pushed Jost over the edge. “I’ve got one last question for you.” My voice went cool, enough emotional crap, back to business. “Who owns the binoculars? You, or your dad?”
“What?” She blinked back into herself.
“Do you or your father own a pair of long-range binoculars?”
“No. No,” she said quickly. “I think maybe Mrs. Peachy owns a pair. Her grandson gave them to her for watching birds on the feeder. The bad leg keeps her inside most days.”
“Ah, right. Does your dad have people helping him with the farm, since Tom left?”
“Of course. Always.”
That didn’t narrow down who might have been watching when I took the photo of Tom coming down from the tree. Nothing like real life to keep the story messy. “How could I get your dad to talk to me, Rachel?”
“Heaven only knows,” she answered quietly. “I don’t. I must go now.”
Those last minutes of an interview are often awkward. The camera seems to re-materialize. Everyone becomes self-conscious. Most people fumble their farewells. Some shake my hand and ask me to call; some duck and cover. Rachel ran.
With a quick goodbye, she picked up her clunky boots and walked away. She wouldn’t accept a ride, even halfway. Someone was meeting her in the Walmart parking lot, she knew a short cut, needed to walk. In other words, leave me alone.
I didn’t push.
She picked her way across the traffic, carrying the clothes of her other life under her arm. The sun was low and sinking fast. I wondered if she’d make it home before dark.
Ainsley wandered out across the parking lot. “She gone?”
“Yeah.” I sat down and made some notes for later.
Photos: iso Rachel boots? (Juxta. Firehouse boots.)
Need school house.
Airport pick-ups? (Stock/news library might carry.)
Ainsley checked the images before breaking down the tripod.
“How’d that last bit look? Enough light?” I asked. “Did she stay in frame?”
“Of course I kept her in frame,” he snorted indignantly.
“What about after you left?”
“After I left?” Ainsley repeated. Slowly. “I turned the camera off when I left.”
“You what?” I felt a sick sort of lurch, the kind you get on a downhill.
“I thought you wanted privacy.”
“From you, you bonehead! Not the camera. Never, never from the camera.”
I sank down onto the picnic bench and tried to give myself the pep talk. It’s not brain surgery. It’s only television. Unfortunately, the you are fucked voice was too loud for me to hear anything reassuring.
“Sorry,” Ainsley offered, sinking down next to me. “I misunderstood. I didn’t think she’d want to talk on camera if she didn’t want to talk in front of me.”
“Not again, that’s for sure.”
“What did we lose?”
At least he said “we.” “Oh, stuff like she was pretty much sleeping with Tom Jost and if she’d agreed to marry him, he wouldn’t have killed himself.”
“No way.” He was so full of Disney-earnest shock, the sick feeling in my stomach doubled. “She looks so innocent.”
“She is innocent.” I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or punch him. This business makes it very clear: what you think you know, based on what you think you see, tells more about who you are, than what you saw.
“Listen up, College Boy.” I rolled my head and cracked off the tension building in my right cross. “That was one. You get to three, I tell Uncle Richie you and I are breaking up, and you are going back to baby J-school classes. Got it?” Journalism school would beat the impulse for privacy out of him.
“Yeah. I got it.”
“Good. Here’s rule numero uno: never, ever turn the camera off. You hear me? You’re walking backward into traffic or running for your life-I don’t give a shit-you keep taking pictures. You work for me, you will die with your finger on the trigger. Are we clear?”
“Clear.” He didn’t sound too upset. Either Ainsley was one of those kids who didn’t let much bother him or he got yelled at so often, he was immune. “Anything else?”
“You know the old saying, ‘seeing is believing’?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Well, here’s a clue, it means believing as in faith.”
Ainsley frowned. “I don’t follow you.”
“What you see is you, College. Whether you’re looking in a mirror, or at some Amish girl-next-door, whatever you see, describes the inside of you.”
He took the hint, pulled in his chin, packed the equipment without a word and drove home the same way. Every so often he’d give me a sideways glare.
He was mulling it over.
My whole career has been about making pictures that would break enough hearts to change the world. All I ever saw were tragedies.
7:12:04 p.m.
Tonya rushed out to meet me as soon as Ainsley pulled into the driveway back at the house. As much as you can rush in heels.
“Hot date?” I asked, getting out of the truck.
“We’ll see. Tell you about it next week.” She smiled toward Ainsley but he didn’t bite. “Baby’s out back.” She tossed her evening-knapsack into the backseat of her car and blew me a careful air kiss, so as not to ruin her lipstick. “You watch her close, you hear?”
“I’m on it.”
How she folds those long legs, in those high heels, into that midget Escort is an eternal mystery.
That was all the goodbye I got from either of them. Ainsley roared off.
The party lights hanging around the living room window were plugged in. The TV was on. I could see everything because I’d pulled the curtains down the day I moved in. Unlike my sister, I never could stand my mother’s old Woolworth’s lace anywhere in sight.
My father was a drunk. I know most people say alcoholic nowadays, but he was old-fashioned. Drunk suited him. Friday nights, he liked to hit the Pete’s Tap on the way home from work. If he made it to the door, he’d inevitably drop his keys, curl up on the front stoop and nap. In the morning, Mother’d open the door to take in the milk and call, “Come grab his ankles, Magdelena. Let’s get him inside before the neighbors see.” Mom always claimed I got the ankle end because it was lighter. I think it was because half the time he’d pissed himself. Once we’d lugged him inside behind a closed door, she’d go to the window and peek around the lace sheer, checking up and down the street to see if we’d gotten away with it.
I never put curtains on my windows.
Once I got inside the house, the first thing I did was check the thermostat. Even living in this house for months, all through the dry blaze of a midwestern August, walking into the place still made me shiver. It was still my sister’s house-her dopey chili-pepper party lights, her basket of nursing magazines, her crocheted granny blanket over the back of the couch. The place was a hash of hand-me-downs and modest extravagances. Personally, a decent-sized television didn’t count as extravagance, but for her it did.
The living room walls were thumbtacked with Jenny’s art projects, some so old they’d dried and yellowed at the edge. Fragments would occasionally drop off if someone brushed the wall by accident. Once an entire sheet cracked and crumbled to the ground, a painting of two stick figures and a pair of stick flowers; Jenny cried in her room for hours afterward.
I walk carefully through this house.
The light from the television bounced across the unlit living room and gave everything the familiar blue flicker of the electronic hearth. Tonya liked to have the TV on, whether she was in the room, watching or not. She lived alone in a little apartment in Wrigleyville and I suppose the voices and the flickering lights masked neighbor noise and made the place feel lived-in safe. The white noise of the machine did not comfort or bother me. Surrounded by stimulation all day long, the ability to ignore it was part of my job description.
Jenny had not learned that trick yet. Whenever I saw her cross a room with the TV on, she’d lock eyes on the screen and freeze midstep. My sister had set all kind of rules about television time for her-how much, what channels, what time of day. Those rules had evaporated since I’d arrived. They were ancient history whenever Tonya took the remote in hand. Sometimes Jenny’s reaction bothered me, which was why I’d started getting her to count commercials and promos. I figured she’d grow out of it. I did notice after Tonya spent time with us, Jenny often chose to play on her own out in the yard or in the driveway. Through the glass door to the patio, I looked for Jenny. It was nearly dark outside and colder than it looked. No sign of her. I thought of Rachel. Who would be looking for her as dusk settled?
I buttoned my jacket and wandered into the backyard. Found her sitting in the birch tree-a big old tree, with papery white bark and leaves that September’s chilly nights had recast in sunlight yellow. In the gloaming, the white tree stood apart from the rest of the yard, melting into the dusk. The thickest bottom branch had grown almost horizontal to the ground. It’d be an easy climber.
“Hey. I’m home.”
Jenny looked down at me. “Hey. You’re home.”
“Kinda late to be climbing trees, isn’t it?”
No answer.
I switched to the imperative. “Time to come in. I’ve got to go into the station tonight and do some work. Pack up something to keep you busy and we’ll head over. I’ll show you around. Make some popcorn. There’s a video player. You’ll like it.”
“Okay.” She flipped onto her stomach and her feet twitched in the air, looking for a place to land. “Tonya’s leg was really hurting today. Why does her leg hurt because of her back?”
“The injured nerve starts in her back. It’s all connected.”
“That guy who died, the one in your picture, remember? Do you think it hurt?” She slipped down to the lowest limb and jumped.
“Huh?” I caught a breath, nervous and suddenly aware of dangers everywhere, the sharp stick pointing toward her face, the rock right behind her head, the smallness of her bones. My threshold for fearlessness had shifted; it made me irritable. “When?”
“You know, when he got dead.”
“Sure. I think it hurt.” I herded her toward the chili-pepper lights surrounding the backdoor. This line of questioning was definitely creeping me out.
“Yeah, me too.” Jenny didn’t sound surprised. “Once, I had to get this shot. A really big one ’cause I fell and there was this rusty can right there. Mom said I bled like a stuck pig.”
“Really? I never saw a stuck pig.”
Birch bark had left white streaks down her jeans and when she brushed her hood back, a chalky smear of white appeared on her temple and forehead, as well. Tonya had braided her hair as promised, and added a bead and feather frill to the plait beside her ear. She looked like an elf in the middle of some night-forest ritual. The thought gave me an urge to cross myself, something I hadn’t felt in years.
“Mom said it was a lot of blood. The shot was huge and I was scared, so the doctor was like holding my arm, really tight, and then Mom said ‘Jenny?’ and pinched my leg really hard.”
“What’d you do?”
“Said ‘ow.’”
Conversations with eight-year-olds can be very Zen.
“Right. Why’d your mom pinch you?”
“She said it’s impossible to feel more than one pain at a time.” Jenny bumped me with her shoulder as we walked along. “Do you think that’s really true?”
“Impossible to feel more than one pain at a time?” Un-fucking-likely. “Your mom was the nurse, she should know.” My skin started to prickle. “Why’re you asking?”
“Just thinking,” she answered and wouldn’t look me in the eye.
We passed under the red twinkle of lights and into the cool glare of the television.
Jenny froze, mesmerized by the screen. My hand floated over her head and settled between her shoulders near the top of her spine as if we were caught in slow-pause.
No pinch could camouflage what she felt. What Rachel felt. What we all felt.
I patted her gently instead. The words echoing back to me, it’s all connected.
7:51:43 p.m.
“My mom used to take me to work with her all the time,” Jenny called to her aunt from the back seat.
It was dark outside. The radio was off. Aunt Maddy turned it off. She was trying to think. Jenny was trying not to think. The car door was too cold to lean on. Jenny’d packed her pillow and her Nintendo and her softie pig in her backpack, but Aunt Maddy had put everything in the trunk.
“Used to take you to work, huh?” her aunt repeated eventually.
“Yeah. It was fun. There were machines with food and ice cream and stuff. And a cafeteria, too.” Jenny looked out the window. At a stop light, the pretty lady in the car next to them smiled at her. It was so surprising Jenny didn’t smile back quick enough; the light changed and the lady drove away.
“Sounds like an Ainsley Prescott tour.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
“How long do you have to work?” Jenny asked.
“We’ll see.”
“Do you like work?”
“Yeah.”
Jenny was quiet after that. She picked her finger and bit the skin next to the nail. Nobody ever told her not to anymore, so all her fingers had rough spots that were good for catching between her front teeth. Aunt Maddy didn’t like to talk. She liked to ask questions. She liked to listen sometimes and watch people. She wasn’t too chatty, though.
The TV station was far away in an empty place. The antenna had a red light that Jenny could see. Slowly, they got closer.
“I got to ride in an ambulance once. When I went to meet my mom at work,” she mentioned. “It was a special deal.”
“Really?”
Jenny could tell she didn’t care. She bit her thumb skin until she felt a warm prickle of blood. It never hurt when she made it bleed. Sometimes it hurt later though. Lots of things were like that.
Aunt Maddy parked and popped the trunk. Jenny felt better when she had her backpack in her hands.
“I want to carry it,” she said. “Don’t put it in the trunk any more. Please.”
“Sure, Jen, whatever,” her aunt said.
Inside the station was actually not so bad. No weird people. All the lights were on, so it wasn’t scary. And there were TVs everywhere. Every room had one; some had more than one. The editing room where Aunt Maddy had to do her work had a whole mess of them, but they were all mini-sized.
“Come on.” Her aunt led the way down the hall. Jenny hurried to keep up. “There’s a couch in the break room and a VCR. You can watch a movie.”
“Where are you going to be?”
The break room had a cabinet with snacks next to the fridge. Her aunt grabbed a package of popcorn. “I’ll be in the editing room. Where I just showed you.”
“Can’t I watch in there with you?” Jenny asked. The couch looked pretty scuzzy.
“No.” Maddy slammed the microwave door and hit the power button. “You’ll be fine here, kiddo. I’ll be right down the hall.”
Jenny didn’t answer. Her heart started beating really hard, like she’d been running a monster lap in gym.
Aunt Maddy fumbled around with the video. The preview started and the familiar music helped Jenny catch her breath. She looked over at the screen and nodded.
“Look, the faster I get to work, the sooner we can go home. Here’s the popcorn. I’m right down the hall. Okay?”
“Okay.” She repeated the word because it was what her aunt wanted and sometimes if you did what a grownup wanted for a while, they would give in and do what you wanted for once.
Jenny didn’t watch her leave, but she did slip over to the doorway and peek down the hall to be sure which room her aunt was going into.
The previews ended and the movie started. Jenny went to the couch and let the story take her mind away. She’d watched it almost every day since her mother was gone. The girl in the story didn’t even have a mother. Sometimes Aunt Maddy said, “This one? Again?” but she never made her choose something else.
Jenny hadn’t been watching very long when she heard voices, loud voices. She hit the pause button and listened.
“…and I don’t have time to play any fucking sales games tonight, Schmed. I’m working here.”
Jenny’s face got hot. That was the baddest word there was. She’d only heard it in school twice. She went over to the doorway, backpack in hand, and tucked herself into the door jamb close enough to hear and see what was happening.
A tall man was talking. “…like I’m not? It’s practically my office you’re getting.”
“Get over it.”
He snorted before he spoke again. “All I’m asking is you go talk to him. Is that too much to ask? A little cooperation between departments.”
“Take it up with Gatt.” Her aunt sounded more than angry. She sounded mean.
“Fine. I will.”
The man stepped out of the room and looked up the hall. His clothes reminded Jenny of this one neighbor on the block who was always playing golf.
When he caught her watching, Jenny froze.
“Hello? Who’s this?” he called out. His voice was icky-happy. “You have a kid with you, O’Hara?”
Aunt Maddy came back into the hall. She turned toward Jenny with a look that meant everything all right? “Yeah. She’s with me. Come here, Jenny.”
Jenny walked slowly at first, then faster, up the hall. She kept her eyes on the man as she slid in beside her aunt.
“Jenny, this is Mr. Schmed. He works at the television station.” Her aunt sounded angry.
“Hi there, honey.” He smiled a big white grin at Jenny. His eyes creeped her out, even more than his teeth. “You’re working late, aren’t you?”
Jenny didn’t say anything. She tried to smile but her lips felt too stiff.
“Pretty girl, O’Hara. You should put her on TV,” he said.
“You’re just full of good ideas tonight aren’t you, Jim?” Aunt Maddy answered. She put her arm around Jenny and directed her into the little editing room. “Nice chatting with you. I’m going back to work now.”
“We’ll talk Monday, O’Hara. After I see Gatt.”
“Great,” she said, but Jenny could tell she was lying. Maddy shut the door and added, “Bite me.”
“Whaaat?” Jenny giggled. She didn’t even know what that one meant.
“Technical talk, kiddo.” Her aunt rubbed her face with her hand. She looked tired, like she was trying to scrub herself awake. “Movie over?”
Jenny shook her head no.
“Oh. You want to stay in here with me for a while?”
Jenny nodded yes. She sat down in one of the spinner chairs and tried to pay attention to the mini-screens flashing around them. Her aunt stopped noticing everything but the picture in front of her. She watched the screens while both hands moved over something that looked like a giant computer keyboard and a PlayStation controller. The picture on the screen would stop, go back, play, go back, play, stop, go faster, stop again. It made Jenny dizzy. Every now and then, her aunt would write something down or lean back and hit a button that made a bunch of machines all clunk and whir at once.
It was boring. All Jenny had to do was sit and spin and think. After a while, she had to ask. “Were you fighting with that guy?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Aunt Maddy mumbled.
That was one of those things grown-ups said all the time that Jenny really hated. Things like how are you? or see you later. Things that didn’t mean anything. Did they think she was stupid? If Aunt Maddy wasn’t getting along with the people at work, Jenny knew she wouldn’t want to stay in this job. Where would they go? What would they do?
Inside, Jenny got that scary feeling again. It felt like shrinking, like all her guts were disappearing. Jenny felt if she breathed too hard, her hollow inside might pop and she’d vanish, like a bubble. Forever. She bit her finger where the blood had come out before but it didn’t help. “Aunt Maddy?” she said, real soft and quiet. “Aunt Maddy, I feel shrinky inside again.”
Her aunt leaned closer to the screens, straining to see or hear something Jenny didn’t understand.
“Damn,” Maddy whispered. The picture flashed. Stop. Go again. “What? Sorry, Jen, I gotta work here. Don’t talk to me, unless it’s an emergency.”
Jenny stood up and walked to the door, dragging her backpack. She didn’t try to be especially quiet. She didn’t have to.
(Rachel, V.O./Audio only): “Thomas said something once, when I first visited him and I was stiff about the Englischer. ‘The closer you look at Plain people, the more you see that things are not always so good. And the closer you look at the Englischer, the more you see it is not all so bad.’”