Francie's Got a Gun, page 23
A euphonic cacophony! Shuffling feet, whispers, laughter, pinging of strings, humming, all charged by an undercurrent, a whirring energy like the soft rush of hundreds of wings.
This could be the concert, as far as Mrs. G was concerned. Imagine the outrage.
She must remember to tell the children: if you pick your nose onstage, everyone will see.
It would be very different this evening; the performance atmosphere could not be adequately mocked up in a music portable, or even here, dress rehearsal in an empty gymnasium. When the children gathered this evening, and the lights softened and dimmed, and the wooden chairs arranged behind her in flat rows on the shiny parquet floor were filled with warm human bodies, it would be like nothing they could guess in advance.
She looked for her soloists, and saw Francie sneaking in through the double doors, shoulders hunched. She waved Francie closer. “Remember to breathe in, and remember to breathe out,” she said, exhaling upon the child the spirit of turmeric and ginger. There was more advice she could offer, but she firmly believed that no child could absorb more than a handful of consecutive words in a row. “Go on,” Mrs. G directed the child.
Francie stepped onto the riser, almost unwillingly, beside her friend. Both looked nervous and stiff as boards.
Good grief! Breathe, I told you, breathe!
Mrs. G gathered all her children’s eyes upon her by means of sheer will, mouthing the words, “Clap if you can hear me, clap if you can hear.”
Slowly enough, they began to clap, and the sound of hundreds of wings hushed.
“Raise your hand if you ate a good breakfast,” she said, “and a very good lunch.”
Everyone’s hand shot up. How she wanted to believe them.
“Let’s practise coming off the risers.”
Something was going very wrong. Everyone looked green, not just Francie. Another sip of tea.
“Yasmeen!” Mrs. G called to the student teacher who was managing the lighting. “Not the green, please.”
Francie would need a box to stand on, or no one would be able to see her.
Shoes squeaked on the slippery gym floor. “No running shoes tonight, please!”
Mrs. G watched as several children took a flying leap from the highest row. The shoes were the least of her problems.
* * *
—
The ukulele chorus had just practised gathering in their formation on the risers, while the rest of the children sat in place. “Will Francie Fultz please come to the office? Francie Fultz?”
Mrs. G could not believe her ears, she could not believe her ears! She stared at the child, baton raised. “You can’t be serious! Oh no, no, no, no, no. We haven’t even practised your solo yet. You are going to march down to that office and tell them—”
Yasmeen flooded the darkness with a deep-purple glow, ominous as a scene in a bad dream. Wake me now!
“Francie Fultz to the office, please.”
Quietly, Francie slid herself down off the riser. Behind her, the other children shifted in heightened silence.
“Oh no you don’t!” Mrs. G waved her arms wildly. “And not the purple, for goodness’ sake, Yasmeen! Not the purple!” The light switched abruptly to red, evoking a different nightmare altogether.
Quietly, Francie trudged toward the double doors. Mrs. G’s high-heeled sandals rapped loudly on the parquet floor, and the waiting choir was preternaturally still—waiting to see what would happen to one of their own. Outside the doors, in a hallway bright with sunlight, Mrs. G caught up.
“What is going on here?”
The child stared down at the running shoes she’d better not wear to the concert tonight. “It’s my dad,” she said at last. She looked so weary, so slack and defeated, Mrs. G flashed to the notion that the child was drifting toward an enchanted sleep.
“I’ll tell him you can’t leave right now. He must know how important this is!”
The child shook her head. “It’s okay,” she said. “I know all the words to my song.”
“Of course you do.” Well, sort of, but good enough! Mrs. G sighed deeply, her eyes bright and wet. She shook her head. She stood with fists on hips, watching Francie walk away. “See you tonight! You’d better be here!”
NINETEEN
Gun Run
Here you are, said Alice inside Francie’s mind. Francie could almost see her, climbing up through the branches. I’ve found you! Come down, Francie, there’s still time to get to the concert. Everyone is waiting for you.
Everyone?
Well, not everyone.
There was always, eventually, an end, to everything, or a time that felt like the end, a last time. Sometimes you didn’t know before it happened, sometimes you could see it coming, like now. I’m not holding you anymore! It was not so hard, after all. Francie put the gun inside the rainbow pony lunch box, she settled the lunch box inside the backpack, she zipped the backpack shut. It was nice not to see the gun. It was nice not to touch it, nice not to carry it. She broke off part of a branch, over her head—the highest branch she could reach—and she slid the loop of fabric at the top of her backpack over its stump—the tip of the tip of the top—and she hung it there.
There.
I did it, Dad. Bye, now.
* * *
—
Grandma hadn’t seen what Dad had in his pocket. Grandma didn’t know about Dad’s gun, or where he kept it.
Grandma said she would drive Dad to his appointment, and Dad said okay, and Grandma carried Sam outside to the car, and Grandma didn’t know that Dad had a gun in the pocket of his jacket.
Dad only wanted Francie to see.
He pulled it out of his pocket to show her, and he winked. Grandma was digging around in her purse for her car keys.
“Wish me luck, kiddo,” he said, and he slipped the gun back into his pocket. “Big day.”
After Grandma’s car drove away, Francie stood outside Mom’s bedroom door, and listened. What if she opened the door and went right up to Mom, stood silently beside her in the dark, would Mom know she was there, would Mom wake up and roll over: What is it, Francie, are you having a bad dream?
Yes.
Francie checked Grandma’s sandwich before putting it into her lunch box—no peanut butter—and she stuffed her feet into her sneakers. In the front yard, she could see Dad’s boot prints in their garden. It was too late to undo what was happening. It was already happening.
* * *
—
Alice was waiting for Francie on her front porch.
Alice smelled like licorice toothpaste. She wore black tights and a black t-shirt, her hair pulled into a high ponytail. She said that Kate did it for her.
Francie said, “It’s just the dress rehearsal. Tonight I can turn my shirt inside out for the concert.”
“Hurry up,” the crossing guard told them.
The morning was like a normal morning. At lunch, Francie ate all but the crusts of her sandwich. She was sorry she’d packed Grandma’s cookies, they were dry in her throat, the crumbs made her choke. She walked to the gym for dress rehearsal. Her feet moved slower and slower down the hallway, but they couldn’t stop her from getting to the gym. She stepped through the double doors and held her breath.
See that girl all dressed in black?
Keep on running, don’t ever look back!
* * *
—
“Will Francie Fultz please come to the office? Francie Fultz?”
Francie’s heart slowed like it would stop, and then began to hammer inside her chest. Her face felt hot, her throat was closing, she couldn’t say a word when Mrs. G started yelling: “Oh no you don’t!”
Francie’s sneakers squeaked across the gym floor (useless for sneaking!). The coolness of everyone’s eyes on her back made her feel chilly and small. She moved deliberately, taking care, one foot set down in front of the other.
“We’ll march right down to the office and tell your dad you can’t leave right now!”
Mrs. G didn’t know Francie’s dad. She didn’t know about the gun. Francie felt afraid for Mrs. G.
She took a big breath and said, “It’s okay, Mrs. G. I know all the words.”
* * *
—
Dad’s eyes shone like glass. “Time for your appointment,” he said, loud enough for the secretary to hear.
The sun was bright—warm.
Francie didn’t ask where they were going.
Dad wiped his face on the sleeve of his jacket, his hair slick underneath with sweat. Francie noticed he had cut the sleeve of the jacket to fit it over his cast. He slipped his left hand in and out of the pocket. He was gritting his teeth. They were walking very slowly.
“Dad?” she said, and tried to hold his free hand.
But it was the hand with the cast wrapped around it, their fingers brushed. “Hey.” He smiled at her, and then his smile twisted up, and she knew they weren’t going home. Was that good or bad?
They followed the sidewalk up into the neighbourhood behind the school. Flowering trees had dropped their blooms, the leaves were lovely and green, and they walked past garden beds of flowers, bushes, flat stones.
The street wound up and up.
Dad was having a hard time. He told Francie to walk on his other side. He held her shoulder tight with his good hand.
“Look at that house.” Dad stopped. “Eats up the whole damn lot. Neighbours must be pissed—they’ve lost their view.”
Dad pointed out the detailing in the brick, the slope of its roof, the ill-fated design decisions, the special glass in the front door, the cobbled driveway that would have cost a fortune. “Looks just like a Mikey special,” he said. “This is why I can’t work with that guy anymore.”
Dad said he hadn’t walked this far in a while. It was okay to stop and rest, right, kiddo? Francie said yes.
“Some people have money to burn,” he said. He reached in his jeans pocket and offered her a mint. She chomped down hard on it, and it hurt her teeth. What should she do with the wrapper? Dad tossed it into the pristine yard and started walking again.
Up and up.
Dad stopped to rest his hands on his thighs. He pretended to be looking at a garden, but really he was catching his breath. Inside this house, behind a large window, a tiny white dog threw itself in a frenzy against the glass, like it was all alone, living inside an enormous terrarium.
Next door was an empty lot, stripped of grass, a construction site wrapped all around with metal fencing, a machine with treads instead of tires parked inside near a large pile of dirt.
And Francie knew: This was where Dad was going.
He noticed Francie looking, and he nodded. But he didn’t move.
A red pickup truck drove up and over the curb and parked in the dirt outside the metal fencing, beside a grey porta-potty. A man—Mikey—climbed out of the cab. Dad’s hand locked around Francie’s shoulder, his fingers tightened. Had Mikey seen Dad yet? He was checking the fencing, unlocking a big padlock clamped around a heavy chain, pushing the gate open. Baseball cap, oversized t-shirt, steel-toed boots.
“Looks like it’s my lucky day.” Dad pushed off Francie and took a big step forward. “Hello, Mikey.”
A lot of things were about to go wrong.
Francie looked down. Dad was wearing his steel-toed boots too.
“Come on,” he said to her, “this won’t take a minute.”
* * *
—
Francie was partway down the tree when she met the policewoman climbing up.
The policewoman stopped when Francie saw her. She was breathing hard. “You must be Francie?” Her tone was cheerful, like this was a totally normal place to be meeting a kid.
Francie decided to keep climbing down.
The policewoman showed Francie the harness she’d carried up the tree. She wanted to strap Francie into it, to attach them together, for safety, she said. But even she didn’t seem too convinced by the plan. Between them, even going down, Francie was the better climber, no matter the cuts on her feet, no matter how thirsty and tired.
Francie glanced at the woman, rustled around to the branches on the other side of the trunk, and slipped through the trap.
“Do you have a gun, Francie?” the policewoman called, climbing down after her. The woman’s boots were too heavy, her buckles and pockets snagged and caught.
Just don’t look down.
“It would be better if you tell me now, about the gun, I mean, because people are waiting for you down below and we don’t want any surprises, any trouble. I can radio down to let them know.”
Francie said nothing. Don’t look down, don’t look down.
But when she looked up, the policewoman was struggling after her, black boots on branches creaking over Francie’s head. “We have reports from people who saw you with a gun, Francie. There’s no reason to lie about it. You’re not in any kind of trouble. We need to know, because it’s a very dangerous situation, Francie, and the people on the ground, they need to know—”
A branch snapped.
“Shit,” the woman said. “Oops, sorry. I haven’t climbed one of these since I was a kid.”
The radio on her vest crackled.
“Soon this will all be over,” she said. She pressed a button and responded and Francie got a couple of extra branches on her.
“It would be better if you waited for me,” the woman called down, but wouldn’t it just be better for her?
Maybe Francie expected a dog, when she crawled out. What she didn’t expect was yellow tape marking off a big circle around the tree. She didn’t expect a man with a bullhorn who knew her name, asking to see her hands, both hands, please, Francie. “This will all be over soon.” She didn’t expect all this attention, trained on her, pointed at her, when, after resting for a moment in the soft, clean nest of needles, she crawled out from under the lowest branches, lifted her face, and stood up.
TWENTY
Gun
Today had been a nice day. A solid start. Good workout at the gym (legs and core), an icy-smooth protein shake from the coffee counter, chocolate with a shot of espresso, enjoyed while sitting in his truck in the parking lot and finding the guts to dial Marietta’s number—and Marietta picked up! She picked up, and she said she’d call later.
A nice day. Right up till just about now.
Mikey could see the personal trainer handing him a towel for his face halfway through their 6 a.m. session. He could have used that towel right about now. He imagined the trainer pressing it against his stomach with her strong hands. She’d know what to do. The trainer liked to say it wasn’t her job to make friends. She said it was okay if Mikey hated her a bit, at some point each session, she could take it, her job was to make him hurt.
Make you hurt, make you better.
Make me better, he said.
He wasn’t your typical gym rat—no shit, Sherlock—but he had to admit he enjoyed those sessions. Didn’t go to the gym in between, which would have helped with his progress, the trainer told him, but he couldn’t seem to get motivated without someone telling him what to do.
Like now. Like what the fuck should Mikey do now? Luce, do you want to give me some tips here? Mikey was pretty sure Luce was still over there where he’d been when he pulled the gun out of his jacket pocket, pointed, and shot: bang, bang, bang. There had been a third bang.
One blew out the side window of the truck—
One in the stomach—
Where was the third?
Luce, Mikey tried to say, but it sounded like a gurgle. Not good, man, not good.
“I believe my days are numbered,” his mother liked to say, it was some kind of comfort to her. “God has written up my days in His ledger, and He will count them out for me.”
This was going to kill her.
He should call her. First, he’d call Marietta, then his mom. Or his mom, then Marietta. There wasn’t exactly time to be weighing this decision, not with so much blood pouring out of his middle section. All those crunches! For nothing? He was slumped in the dirt beside a smattering of glass from the window of his truck, he’d put his hand into it. He wondered why Luce hadn’t just shot him in the head or the heart. Maybe Luce wasn’t much of a shot, like he wasn’t much of anything else.
What a shitty thing to think. Mikey hardly recognized himself. Mister nice guy.
Until this very moment, he hadn’t known he was holding any hatred toward Luce. So much hatred. But I’m a stand-up guy! Standing up for Luce, from day one, every step of the way, even over these past few months, keeping him clear of work sites, keeping him away from trouble, the kind of trouble that seemed to chase Luce wherever he went.
I couldn’t afford it anymore, man, I’m sorry: Mikey laid out his argument.
But that was done. That was over. That fight had been had.
Best buds, best friends, best man at Luce’s wedding. Funny guy, Luce never seemed to notice or comment on Mikey’s weight, which was pretty much the only Mikey-related talking point for most of the kids in grade seven, where they first met. Mikey was the new kid, his mom had divorced his dad and moved back to her hometown, which wasn’t a town so much as a handful of bungalows built on either side of a busy country highway at the bottom of a valley. The bus ride was an hour one way. Mikey sat at the back of every class. He didn’t expect much. He noticed Luce walking the hallway like he was the shit, but Mikey noticed everything. Noticing was what he did, interested in human nature even at the age of twelve.
