All the Ugly and Wonderful Things Read online

  Wavy shrugged.

  When Dad came home from work, he and Mom went into the den and argued for half an hour. Then Mom came out and called Aunt Val. The phone rang for ages, before Aunt Val answered. Mom’s whole face clenched up and she said, “Some man came here today to pick up your children. He said his name was Kellen. I was under the impression that Jesse Joe Kellen was a very young man, since Wavy told us he was her boyfriend.”

  There was a long pause, as my mother wound the phone cord around her finger and then released it. Her face relaxed a little and she laughed.

  “Of course, I know girls get crushes, but I am not about to hand your children over to some stranger who claims you sent him.

  “Yes, not a stranger to her, but she’s only ten. She can’t be expected to look out for herself. It is not—”

  My mother was going to have the last word until the doorbell rang. Dad answered it and the sound of Kellen introducing himself ended Mom’s conversation with Aunt Val.

  Donal had been playing with his cars on the floor, but he was up in an instant, running into the front hall. When Kellen stepped into the room, he had a giggling Donal slung over his shoulder. Dad shrugged at Mom and said, “Are you kids ready to go?”

  For once, Wavy led the packing. As Mom watched from the doorway, Kellen held the bag for Wavy to put Donal’s things in.

  Next to my bed was a pile of Christmas presents that technically belonged to Wavy, including a blond Darci Cover Girl Model doll, two stuffed Smurfs, and a Mork and Mindy lunchbox. Ignoring all of that, Wavy pulled a book on constellations out of the pile. She handed it to Kellen with a smile and said, “For you.”

  Mom had been particularly proud of that book. Something Wavy would like. Obviously she did like it, if she was giving it to Kellen, but my mother acted like Wavy had spit in her face.

  After they were gone, Mom called her friend Sheila and said, “I just don’t know what to do about my niece.” I think she only said it to be saying it, because I’d heard enough of her fights with Dad to know there were only three things we could do about Wavy. We could let her and Donal come live with us, we could call Child Protective Services, or we could “leave well enough alone.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it was always the decision Mom and Dad came to.

  3

  KELLEN

  August 1980

  All Liam said about the pickup in Nagadoches was, “Your job is to be the biggest, scariest son of a bitch in the room.” I shoulda known it wasn’t gonna be that simple. What was supposed to take two days took four and when it was over, I’d done the one damn thing I’d always told Liam I wouldn’t do. I killed somebody.

  Driving home, I told myself it was different from Liam sending me to kill some guy on purpose. I didn’t go down to Texas planning to kill them two Mexicans. They tried to kill me first. That was bad enough, but then Vic’s car broke down, and there we were on the side of the road with twenty kilos of coke in the trunk. Plus the cash for the buy.

  Vic drove this white ’74 El Dorado Biarritz with red tufted leather seats. The car was waxed and polished and Armor-Alled like a showroom model, but under the hood, it was a goddamn mess.

  “How long has it been since you changed the fucking oil?” I said.

  Stupid bastard shrugged.

  I’d been trying to keep my temper under control lately, stop getting in fights, but I couldn’t believe he was that stupid. I punched him.

  “What the fuck?” Vic screamed, catching blood from his nose before it could drip on his shirt.

  “You tell me what the fuck, you driving around in a car that doesn’t run. Do you think we can just flag down the highway patrol and get a tow?”

  I pushed the car off the main road, sweating through the last pair of clean clothes I had. Then I spent two hours wedged up under the car, trying to get the bitch started.

  We limped it to the next town, but there was no way that car was gonna make it back to Powell. So I called Danny at the shop and said, “Bring the flatbed.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to get a tow from there?” Danny was a good kid, but he smoked too much dope.

  “Bring the tow truck. Tell Liam we’re running late.”

  Six hours later, we had the car on the flatbed and got headed back to the ranch. I drove. As tired as I was, I was too pissed to put up with Danny or Vic driving. People said I was stupid, but at least I could follow some basic rules. Like don’t go on a drug buy in a car that might break down.

  It was past ten when we got to the ranch, and Dee smirked at me while Liam tore me a new asshole. Like it was my fault the Mexicans tried to double-deal. Like it was my fault Vic’s car broke down. Goddamn, I was done with Liam Quinn. Or I woulda been done with him, if it wasn’t for Wavy.

  I left the flatbed there and rode the Panhead home, just to get some fresh air on me. At the house, I was through the front door, pulling off my boots before I realized the kitchen light was on. Thinking of those dead Mexicans, my guts tightened up. Those boys probably had friends who wouldn’t think much of me plugging them. I walked into the kitchen and leveled my gun right in Wavy’s face.

  “What are you doing?” I said. The no sleep and the running on nerves caught up with me. My hands were shaking as I popped the clip. I slammed open the kitchen drawer and shoved the gun to the back.

  Wavy looked as shocked as I felt. She was sitting at the table, up on two phone books, with her boots off, her bare feet dangling. The overhead light made her hair gold.

  “Come on, pack your stuff up. I’ll give you a ride home.” The back of my shirt was filthy from lying in the dirt working on Vic’s car. Her white sundress was gonna end up covered in it, but that was too bad.

  I went stomping back to the front door to get my boots on, but she didn’t come. When I went back to the kitchen, she was still sitting at the table, reading a magazine.

  “Now. Goddamn right now. I’m not in the mood for this.”

  “Walk.” She slid off the phone books and stood in her bare feet.

  “No, you’re not walking home.”

  “Walked here.”

  “Yeah, well it wasn’t pitch-black out when you walked here, either.”

  She shrugged.

  “And how’d you get in here?”

  She took a key out of her dress pocket and laid it on the table. The spare from under the mat on the back porch.

  Looking down at the key, I got an eyeful of the magazine she’d been reading. A skin mag from out of my nightstand. She had it open to a couple things I didn’t like to think she’d looked at. A blow job on one page and some girl taking it from behind on the other.

  “What are you doing looking at this fucking shit? You can’t be looking at this kinda thing. And where the hell do you get off? Just coming in here and making yourself at home? This is my house.”

  I snatched that magazine off the table and rolled it up. She flinched, like she thought I was gonna hit her with it. The way you’d do a dog. Seeing her ready for me to hit her was a bucket of cold water on me. If I couldn’t be any better to her than that, I didn’t have any business thinking I was sticking around for her.

  “It’s my house, okay? You can’t come in here without me.”

  She gave me the kinda look makes you wanna curl up and die. Just because she didn’t have any titty mags for me to look at didn’t mean I hadn’t snooped in her bedroom. I went around the table, opened the sink cabinet, and stuffed the magazine in the trash.

  “I’m sorry, but I haven’t slept in two days. I’m fucking dirty and greasy and tired and I need a shower and something to eat and there isn’t so much as a clean shirt in this goddamn house, because I had to leave in a hurry. So I’m sorry, but I don’t have—”

  I came that close to saying, “I don’t have time for you.” Except it wasn’t just mean. It was a lie. I had all the time in the world for her. I wanted her to be there, but I was so miserable, I couldn’t even talk to her like I normally would. I didn’t have no busine
ss saying, Sorry I’m in such a shitty mood, but I just killed a couple guys.

  She walked out to the breezeway, so I said, “The bike’s out front, sweetheart.”

  She came back with a bundle of cloth in her hands. She held it out to me: a T-shirt, jeans, and a towel. Washed, dried, and folded. She did my laundry.

  “Thank you. And I’m sorry. I’m just tired and I had a bad couple days.”

  I reached out to take the clean clothes, but she pulled them back and frowned at me. My hands were covered in grease. I followed her to the bathroom, where she laid the clean clothes on the edge of the sink and turned on the shower. She went out, closing the door after her.

  In the shower, I spent a good fifteen minutes letting the hot water pound down on me, trying to be finished with the two dead Mexicans. I needed to stop playing that over in my head. It was done.

  By the time I got out of the shower, Wavy was gone. I worried she’d walked home, but her backpack was still in the kitchen. Weirder, she’d emptied my wallet. It was in the center of the table with its chain coiled up beside it. Laid out next to it, like a game of solitaire, was all the stuff I kept in my wallet and my pockets. A roll of Wint-O-Green Lifesavers, my keys, a bottle of eye drops, and five shell casings standing on end. I pocketed those. I’d cleaned and tossed the gun, but forgotten to ditch the shell casings. I guess I wasn’t much smarter than Vic.

  I was about to put my wallet to rights, when Wavy came through the back door carrying a grocery sack from the store up the road. She dragged a chair to the counter and emptied the bag: a package of liver, an onion, a green pepper, a carton of eggs, and a box of ice cream sandwiches.

  “I think I already got some ice cream sandwiches.”

  She shook her head.

  “You ate my ice cream sandwiches?”

  An embarrassed nod.

  “That’s okay. I’m sorry about what I said before. It’s okay for you to come here.”

  I was so tired, I sat down at the table and drank a beer while I waited. In fifteen minutes, I had a steaming plate of liver with onions and peppers.

  While I ate, she counted my change into piles and sorted through the stuff laid out on the table. She sniffed the Lifesavers and then traced her finger around the spot where the shell casings had stood.

  “Those were trash,” I said.

  She went through all the cards as she put them back in my wallet. My driver’s license, my library card, my blood donor card.

  “O negative,” she mouthed.

  Then she hit on a card that made her frown.

  She primed herself with a big breath and said it out loud: “Barfoot.”

  “I used to have a different name.”

  I put out my hand and she gave me my old tribal ID card with my father’s name on it. I was Junior when I was a kid, but after he kicked me out, I started going by my granny’s name. Tipping back in my chair, I pitched the old card into the trash.

  I finished my dinner, while Wavy watched me. I was never sure what that meant, her watching me eat. I figured she must like it, or she wouldn’t take so much trouble to feed me.

  “I’m about done in, so I better take you home before I fall asleep,” I said.

  “Mama.”

  It made my skin crawl the way she said it. Like you’d say, “Tornado,” if one was bearing down on you.

  “What about Val?”

  Wavy brought her hands to her head and made her fingers stand up, like antlers. Or flames?

  “Is she acting weird? Where’s Donal?”

  “Sandy.” Wavy came around the table behind me and rested her hands on my shoulders. “Can I stay?”

  “I don’t know, that’s not…”

  I didn’t even remember what I was gonna say after she tightened her hands on my shoulders. She squeezed the spot where I’d gotten all bunched up from the stress.

  When I got down on the kitchen floor, she took off her boots and walked on my back.

  “What happened?” she said.

  I knew if I didn’t answer, she’d never ask again. Part of me wanted to do that, but I couldn’t keep it in with her waiting to listen to me. She knew how to keep a secret.

  “I killed some guys. This job Liam sent me on down in Texas. It got all fucked up and I shot these two guys.”

  She stopped walking her feet on either side of my spine.

  “Who?” she said.

  “A couple of drug dealers, so not any kinda good guys, but I guess that makes me about the same. Not any kinda good guy.”

  It didn’t surprise me when she stepped off my back. I didn’t blame her if she didn’t want to be around me. I’d thought I could stick it out with Liam, to stay close to Wavy, but maybe all I was doing was turning into Liam.

  “I’ll take you home,” I said.

  “No.”

  She got down on her knees and slung her leg over me. There I was thinking she’d wanna leave, but she laid down on top of me, and pressed her cheek against mine. She didn’t have to say anything, because I knew what that meant. She still thought I was a good guy.

  * * *

  I drifted off for a second and jerked awake.

  Daylight was coming through the window over the sink. I’d fallen asleep on the kitchen floor and slept the whole night in a blink. When I was younger, I used to get so drunk I passed out, but I hadn’t done that in years.

  On the other side of the table, Wavy was working her feet into her boots.

  “Hey,” I said.

  I was worried it would startle her, but she’d known I was awake. She stamped her feet to seat the boots and pulled on her backpack.

  “Let me get myself together and I’ll take you home.”

  I got up, stiff in weird places from sleeping facedown on the floor, but at least my back didn’t hurt anymore. In my bedroom there was a rumpled spot on the bed where Wavy musta slept. Still warm when I laid my hand on it. In the bathroom, a second damp towel was hanging next to mine. So she’d had herself a shower, too. I took a piss and then splashed cold water on my face, trying to get things into focus.

  In the kitchen, Wavy was standing right where I left her.

  When I sat down to pull on my boots, she slid a piece of paper across the table to me.

  Her school registration form. She’d filled it all out, but she needed a parent’s signature and the twelve bucks to register. Nobody had registered her for school, and that morning was the first day. I couldn’t pass myself off as Val, but I was getting pretty good at playing Liam.

  4

  WAVY

  Mrs. Norton said, “I want each of you to stand up and say your name and one thing you did this summer.” Whispers bubbled up all over the classroom like butter on a skillet before you pour eggs in.

  We went down the rows, following the alphabet, so I was near the end. Maybe something would happen before they got to me. Maybe the fire alarm would go off. Or maybe there would be a tornado like last spring. We all went into the hallway behind the gymnasium and lots of kids cried. I liked the darkness and waiting for a tornado to tear the school away.

  Nothing like that happened. It never did when you wanted it to.

  The girl next to me stood up when it was her turn. Her name was Caroline Peters and over the summer she visited her grandmother in California, where she “went to Disneyland and rode roller coasters and saw Mickey Mouse and…”

  “That’s enough, Caroline,” Mrs. Norton said. “One thing.”

  Then it was my turn. I had things to tell. I visited my cousins. I learned to replace spark plugs on the Panhead. I watched stars with Kellen in the meadow. I taught Donal to swim. I took care of Kellen when he was tired. While he was asleep I kissed him. First on his cheek, then on his prickly sideburns. Then on his mouth, which wasn’t prickly at all. Even though the mouth is a dirty place, he wasn’t afraid of my germs.

  “Go ahead, dear. Stand up and say your name and one thing you did this summer. Don’t be shy.”

  Shy. That was a trick. Like the k
ids on the playground daring each other, saying, “What are you, chicken?” My heart was thumping inside my ears so loud, but I wasn’t chicken. I just wasn’t stupid enough to fall for Mrs. Norton’s trick.

  “Mrs. Norton,” said Caroline Peters.

  “You’ve already had your turn, Caroline.”

  “That’s Wavy Quinn. She can’t talk.”

  “She most certainly can talk. She chooses not to talk. And if she persists with that behavior in my classroom, it’s going to earn her a mark on the board.”

  Mrs. Norton walked to the chalkboard and wrote “Wavonna Quinn” in the upper right corner. After recess, she wrote “Jimmy Didier.” He got a mark for talking too much. You were only allowed to talk exactly as much as Mrs. Norton wanted you to.

  Every day was like that. My name wasn’t always the first one on the board, but it always went on the board. If it wasn’t on the board before lunch, it went on after, because Mrs. Norton said I had to eat lunch. She wanted to see me eat lunch.

  One day, I wrote my own name on the board after lunch. The way I wrote my W was prettier, with arches on both sides and a loop in the middle. Grandma made Ws like that.

  Mrs. Norton clenched her teeth and said, “You are a very disrespectful young lady.” Then she erased my name. She rewrote it with a plain W and put a mark next to it. Not eating lunch. Being disrespectful.

  After nine weeks, my report card had a list of every day Mrs. Norton wrote my name on the board and why.

  Kellen registered me for school, so I gave him Mrs. Norton’s report of bad things. After dinner he sat at the kitchen table with Donal on his lap and read the list.

  He frowned so hard while he was signing Liam’s name, I thought maybe he was mad at me. I put Donal to bed, and when I came back, Kellen was still scowling at my report card.

  “Come here. I’m not mad at you.”

  I went to the table and leaned against his shoulder so he could put his arm around me. For a while, we stared at my report card.

  “When I was in school, they used to paddle kids,” Kellen said. “I used to get sent to the principal’s office all the time. Between him and my pa, they used to whoop me so bad I couldn’t sit down sometimes. They don’t still paddle kids, do they?”