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  Much to his surprise, and mine, my mother agreed.

  “Okay,” Emma said. Her tone was suddenly reasonable, quiet and persuasive. She smiled, a terrifying sight, and not just because she wasn’t wearing her partial plate. My mother treats her teeth like a cocktail dress, wearing them only on special occasions. “Okay, I’ll do that. I just want to see him first.”

  I felt like I was watching a cobra mesmerize a rat. Donny shook his head. “I can’t, Mrs. Hardy. Visiting hours aren’t until . . .”

  “Visiting hours are now,” she said matter-of-factly. “We’re not going to make a break for it, Smith. I don’t have a file or dynamite in my handbag.”

  “I don’t know,” Donny hesitated. “The lieutenant wouldn’t like . . .”

  Emma leaned forward and poked him on the chest with her forefinger. He winced and rubbed the spot, smearing the remains of his doughnut all over his necktie.

  “Ow, Mrs. Hardy! You didn’t need to do that.”

  “I want to see him now. You can search me if you like.” She put her palms on the counter and spread her legs.

  Donny shook his head desperately, and I stifled a laugh. He looked as if he’d rather chew his own hands off than pat down my mother. Fishing a key ring out of his pocket, he stepped from behind the desk. We followed him through several barred gates to the back of the jail, where he showed us into a long, narrow room.

  “Wait here,” he instructed, as if we had a choice. There were three stools in the room facing three windows, each of which was no larger than the glass on a ten-gallon fish tank. Next to the windows were telephone receivers on short metal cords. I cast a surprised glance at Emma.

  “We’re not going to get to see him in person? They’ve always let us meet him in the cafeteria before.”

  She didn’t answer. There was a tap on the first window. Donny’s face swam into view.

  “Five minutes,” he mouthed, holding up five fingers in case we couldn’t read lips. He stepped out of the room, and Sam shuffled in. He was shackled and cuffed. It was with some difficulty that he sat down on the stool facing the glass.

  Emma was shaking, but she picked up the receiver and held it so I could listen. Nothing happened. Sam stared down at his hands, moving them back and forth so that the cuffs caught the light.

  “Pick up the telephone,” Emma shouted.

  Sam looked up and glared at her. Then he picked up the receiver on his side. “I’m not stupid,” he said. “I’ve been in here before.”

  “Don’t I know it, you rotten little shit. Do you know how sick I am of coming down here and bailing your tired ass . . .”

  Sam hung up the phone and stared into space. My mother beat on the window, first with the palm of her hand and then with the earpiece of the receiver.

  “Knock it off,” I said, taking it out of her hand. “Do you want to get us arrested as well?”

  I tapped lightly on the glass with my index finger. Sam picked up the phone.

  “No,” I slapped Emma’s hand away. “You’ve had your chance. It’s my turn. Okay, Sam, what’s up? Why have you been arrested? Donny wouldn’t tell us what the charge is.”

  Sam shrugged. He still had his wig. It was sitting on his head slightly askew, which for some reason made him look cock-eyed. Or something. I peered at him more closely. He wasn’t cock-eyed, he was black-eyed. Two swollen half-circles, one under each eye. There was also an inch-long cut on the bridge of his nose and an egg-shaped lump on his forehead.

  “Jesus, Sam, what the hell happened to you? Donny said that you resisted arrest, but he didn’t say they had to use a baseball bat to get you into the squad car.”

  “Police brutality!” Emma squawked. “I knew it!”

  Sam shook his head and smiled lazily. “Take a chill pill. The cops didn’t hit me.”

  “A chill pill?” My gaze shifted and I looked him in the eye. The Plexiglas between us was thick, which distorted his features a bit, but I recognized those grotesquely enlarged pupils. He was stoned out of his mind. “You are in such trouble. What have you done?”

  He looked away. In a voice almost too low to hear, he said, “I didn’t hit her.”

  “Who didn’t you hit?”

  My mother snatched the phone back. “You hit someone?” she said. “Was it a cop? Did he hit you first?”

  “Not he,” I said. “Her.”

  “What?”

  “Her. He didn’t hit her. He’s been fighting with a girl. I’m sure you can guess who.”

  Emma stared at me. “Bullshit. What are you talking about?”

  “Into the phone, Emma. Ask Sam.”

  “Sam, what are you talking about? Who’s this her you didn’t hit?”

  “Francie,” Sam said, still not looking at us.

  “Francie! You mean to tell me that you’ve been fighting with a fifteen-year-old girl? Of all the worthless, clapped-out, addle-brained . . .”

  I took the phone. “Did Francie give you those black eyes?”

  Sam shrugged, which was answer enough for me. My mother, however, had changed tack.

  “He hit her?” she scoffed. “I don’t believe it. That corn-fed slut makes three of him. I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that she . . .”

  “Hit him,” I finished, covering the receiver with my hand. “Probably. But I’ll bet you that he hit her back.” Francie Stokes, my brother’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, was a hardened juvenile delinquent—drinking, drugs, and grand theft auto. She smoked like a chimney, dressed like a hooker, and got into cat fights with other trampy girls. I spoke into the phone again. “Is that right, Sam? Did you and Francie beat the shit out of one another? I’m not judging you. I think you’re pretty evenly matched. What you lack in size, you make up for in age.”

  In the pause that followed while he worked this one out, my mother launched a sneak attack. She shoved me off the stool. “Now you listen to me,” she yelled into the phone. “Who did that to your eyes? Francie or the cops?”

  “Who did what?” he asked nonchalantly, or as nonchalantly as someone can who’s sitting in jail with a crooked afro and a kippered brain.

  Emma inhaled deeply, her chest shaking with the effort. She held her breath for a moment, and then she let him have it. “When are you going to get wise to that fat-assed hussy? Francie Stokes doesn’t give a damn about you! You’re a convenient source of booty and beer. That’s it. Sometimes you are as dumb as a bag of rocks. I’ve a good mind to leave you in here until you get some sense!”

  “Call my lawyer,” Sam said. “I want bail.”

  “Your lawyer?” Emma shrieked. “Your lawyer? I think you mean my lawyer. Or do you mean your sister? I certainly hope not. Naomi has no interest in defending you—she knows a hopeless case when she sees one. Your father’s going to go through the roof this time. You know that, don’t you? And for what? For a two-bit, shit-brained . . .”

  I’d had enough. I grabbed Emma by the arm and gave her a look that was meant to simulate a bullet to the head. “Knock it off. Just ask him the essentials and let’s get the hell out of here. In case you’ve forgotten, today is Friday. We can’t bail him after five o’clock. Do you want to spend the entire weekend taking his collect phone calls?”

  “My god,” Emma said. “You’re right. We’ve got to find your father and figure out how much this is going to cost.”

  She turned back to Sam, who appeared to be contemplating his navel through his orange jumpsuit. Emma tapped on the glass. “Look at me. Is there anything else I need to know before I leave? How are you feeling? Are you tired? I can’t believe you’ve gotten yourself arrested again. You have chemotherapy tomorrow morning! What the hell were you thinking?”

  Sam dangled the receiver in front of the glass, watching it like a cat watches a yo-yo. It didn’t matter anyway; our five minutes were up. Donny came in through the door behind my brother and gently took the phone out of his hand. Then he waved at my mother, who was hyperventilating with rage, to indicate that the interview was t
erminated.

  I patted Emma on the shoulder. “One of these days, you’re going to give yourself a stroke. You need to be more Zen about these things. Om.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Come on. No matter what, they’ll have to let him out for his ten-thirty chemo appointment. Let’s go home and figure out our next move.”

  “My next move,” she observed tersely, “is a lawsuit. Did you see what that bulbous oaf did to his eyes? And that lump on his forehead. She beat up on a cancer patient, Bil. A cancer patient! And who’s in jail? Who, I ask you, have they thrown in jail?”

  “We don’t know what happened,” I said, adding disingenuously, “Sam didn’t actually say she did that to him.”

  “Which is proof positive, if you ask me. Why would he tell us that his fifteen-year-old girlfriend blacked his eyes? It’s too humiliating!”

  It certainly was. I hated to think of Sam brawling away with his jailbait girlfriend like a trashy loser on the TV show Cops. I hated that he was a trashy loser. There was no denying it. The evidence was in. Francie was a big girl and mean to boot, a bad-tempered cow with the same IQ as a bowl of cold mashed potatoes. Still, a grown man fighting with a teenage girl. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  I mustered my strength and gathered my aplomb. “Right, Emma. At this point it doesn’t matter what happened. If we want to get Sam out of here, we have to get organized.”

  Under duress, my mother could swing into efficiency mode with disconcerting speed. “Yes,” she said crisply. She stood up and banged on the door. “Donny! Let us out of here! We’ve got business to attend to. Hey! Don-boy! Jesus wept. Get your thumb out of your ass and . . .”

  Donny opened the door. His face had assumed a hangdog expression. “If you’ll just follow me, Mrs. Hardy, I’ll . . .”

  “Not so fast,” Emma cut in. “The last time you had my son in here, a man in the cell with him died. Sam said he yelled for five minutes before any of you bothered to come and see what was wrong.”

  “It wasn’t that long,” Donny objected. “And we were . . . under-staffed.”

  Emma poked him sharply in the ribs. “No excuses,” she said. “This time, if my son so much as whispers, you hop to it. If he wants anything, you get it for him. Do you understand me? My eye is upon you, Donny Smith. If you put a foot wrong, I swear to God, you’ll be shitting out of a brand-new asshole by quitting time.”

  Chapter 3

  The cigarette was back in my mother’s mouth, only this time, it was lit. I decided to let it go. She was sitting very still in the passenger seat, smoke puffing out of her nostrils. With her bosom heaving and her eyebrows drawn down over the bridge of her nose, she looked like Mount Vesuvius sitting on a tack.

  “It’s weird to watch you in action,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Donny Smith. The way you kept poking him—you’re not allowed to poke the police. He could have arrested you. I don’t know how you get away with it.”

  “It’s not about me,” she replied. “I’ve got to do whatever it takes to protect your brother. Donny’s a wimp. He’ll be more careful if he’s afraid of the consequences.” She crossed one leg over the other and tapped her foot on the armrest of her door. “You drive like an old lady, Bil.”

  “Would you shut up about my driving? If I were you, I wouldn’t be quite so eager get home. Do you really want to tell Hugh that Sam has done it again?”

  “Don’t worry about that. I know how to handle your father.”

  Poor Hugh. My father longed for a quiet life. His hobbies were reading and falling asleep in front of the television. He did not enjoy the drama and excitement of Sam’s escapades. Had it been left up to him, the Lewis County Jail would have been my brother’s permanent address. But it wasn’t up to him. Cancer had given Sam carte blanche with my mother. As long as he seemed to be living life to the fullest—and she took his determination to leave this world in a hail of gunfire as proof—she was always willing to fly into battle on his behalf.

  I shook my head. “You know, Emma, I think Sam secretly likes it in jail. He gets to lie in bed all day, watching cartoons, smoking, and hanging out with other petty criminals. It’s his idea of heaven.”

  I expected my mother to argue with this. Instead, she laughed. “Probably. If I keep poking Donny, maybe I’ll get to give it a try.”

  We were silent for the rest of the drive. The family homestead was about eight miles outside of the Cowslip city limits, a small white farmhouse on a twenty-acre parcel. If you didn’t count the gravel pit across the road—and we didn’t—our nearest neighbor was a mile away. The house was old by Idaho standards. The oldest bits, the kitchen, the living room, and my parents’ bedroom, were built in 1898. The rest had been added room by room, as the house changed hands and the families who lived in it grew. When my parents bought it, the house was generously described as a fixer-upper. The plumbing was bad, the floors were warped, and the foundation was crumbling. Twenty-some years later, the whole thing was finally weatherproof and no longer falling down around our ears, but it was still a little rough around the edges. The four shutters on the front windows were painted four different colors, and one of them was hanging by a single hinge. There was a big hole in the front porch, right in front of the door, and two dead cars sat on blocks in the yard. My mother sometimes talked about turning them into chicken coops.

  As I pulled into the driveway, I saw my sister Naomi’s jeep. As usual, she’d parked in the best spot, right beneath the cottonwood tree. I pulled in behind her, blocking her in. My mother raised an eyebrow.

  “She’s hogging the shade,” I explained. “Her car has air-conditioning. Yours doesn’t.”

  Emma nodded sagely. “Middle-child syndrome. Always has to be compensated for her contested place in the birth order. Also, it’s raining.”

  “She’s no more a middle child than I am. And I don’t care if it’s raining. It’s a question of principle.”

  “You’ve parked in a mud puddle. Better get out my side.”

  I climbed over the empty cigarette packs, old coffee cups, and fast-food bags my mother had piled on the front seat. In the meantime she, unencumbered, had leapt over the hole in the front porch and was already through the door. I walked slowly up the gravel path. It wasn’t actually raining anymore, just misting. There was even a hint of sun visible through a chink in the clouds. Jed, the family cat, was lying in the tulip bed, chewing something hairy and gray that made a nasty crunching sound. I decided not to investigate.

  I stepped into the living room to find Emma in the middle of a high-speed monologue.

  “I said, you’ll let me see him, or my daughter the lawyer will . . .”

  “I wouldn’t have a relative for a client, Emma,” Naomi interrupted. She was sitting on the sofa facing the door. She had my latest copy of Muscle & Fitness in her hand and was waving it around for emphasis, thoughtlessly—typically—wrinkling the cover. “Come to that,” she went on, “I wouldn’t have Sam, period.”

  My mother decided to take this as a sporting challenge. She often paid a ridiculous amount of deference to Naomi’s opinions, probably because she so often needed legal advice. “Fat lot of good it would have done to tell Smith that. Where is your sense of dramatic effect?”

  “In the same place as your sense of the truth,” I said, rescuing Muscle & Fitness from Naomi’s mangling grasp. “I save these, you know. Don’t screw it up like that.”

  Naomi rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Can you tell us what’s going on with Sam? Emma’s making no sense. Again.”

  “You don’t listen,” Emma objected. “It’s perfectly clear. Sam’s in jail.”

  My father was sitting in the overstuffed chartreuse recliner that my mother calls Archie Bunker. Next to it was the matching but smaller chair, Edith. Many years before, the purchase of these chairs had led to a lengthy argument about sexual dimorphism in living-room furniture. I can’t remember who won. It might have bee
n a draw. Anyway, my mother always sat at the head of the table in the dining room.

  Hugh yawned. There was a copy of The One-Minute Manager on his lap and an unlit pipe in his hand. It was clear that he’d just woken up. He looked at Emma over the top of his black half-glasses, blinking every couple of seconds as he worked up the revs to speak.

  “What’s he done this time?” said Hugh.

  “Fine way to talk about your son. He’s done absolutely nothing.”

  My dad shook his head and yawned. “I’ll try again. What’s he charged with?”

  “Taking a swing at Francie,” I said. “Emma wants to bail him out, but she can’t because he hasn’t been arraigned yet.”

  “When will he be arraigned?” Naomi asked.

  “Should be any time now. Donny Smith said he’d call us. He’s waiting for Lieutenant Young to get back from somewhere.”

  “So I suppose the question,” Naomi mused, “is do you really want to bail him out?”

  Emma hopped from one foot to the other like a hyperactive chicken. “Of course I do!”

  “I was including Hugh in that question,” Naomi said. “The you was collective.”

  My mother shrugged impatiently. “Well, of course your father wants to bail him out. You do, don’t you, Hugh?”

  “Hmmph,” said my father.

  “Okay,” Naomi went on. “As soon as he’s arraigned, you can call Slinky Nilsson and get him to post bond. But if I were you, I’d consider leaving Sam in jail. It was only a week ago that he was released on his own recognizance. The judge isn’t going to like this assault charge. It’ll make him look stupid for letting Sam out on O-R.”

  “O-R?”

  “Own recognizance,” I explained. “Haven’t you been listening?”

  “You can get your attorney or his public defender to sort it all out on Monday,” Naomi said. “A weekend in jail might teach him a lesson.”