Francie's Got a Gun, page 5
Sam was fast. But Francie was faster.
She grabbed him and hauled him down to the bottom of the stairs. His slippers were covered with grass and dirt. Sam fought back. He gripped clumps of his sister’s hair and pulled till tears squeezed from her eyes and she let go of him.
Dad got ahead, up the stairs. Still wearing his boots. Saying Mom’s name.
Sam climbed, knee up, hands pushing, but his sister grabbed his foot, again. He kicked, again. This time she got the slipper off. He screamed. She yanked off the other and threw them by the door.
Sam crested the last step, zipped across the bumpy linoleum. Grass, dirt. Stuff. Francie was clattering plates and forks to the table and Sam dodged her feet. Mom came out from her room carrying fire in her hand. Sam sat down on his bottom. He smelled the heat, the wax, the sulphur as Mom set the fat yellow candle on the table. Now he couldn’t see it. He could hear Mom’s music spilling from her open bedroom door, spooky silver voices singing the song that never ended.
Mom wore soft pants that Sam tried to grab. Her feet were bare.
Sam listened to Mom’s voice. Sometimes Mom was a long way away behind her eyes and her voice came quietly from wherever she was, and sometimes she was very here, too much here, and her voice shot high and fast.
Which mom was this mom?
“Wash your hands.”
Sam looked at his hands, he turned them in front of his face.
Francie had something she wanted to tell Mom, she was following her very close and her voice was very loud, but Mom was pouring steamy water from a pot into the sink, she was mashing, her elbow jumping up and down, she was slamming the fridge door.
Sam clapped his hands.
Mom bent down to look. He reached up, up, up, he tried to tell her.
“Wash his hands!” Louder voice. Full eyes. Rat-tat-tat.
Francie picked Sam up and he pinched her cheeks, hard. Alone in the bathroom, Francie slapped his hands and Sam started to cry, but she held him pressed between her body and the cold hard sink, and she turned on the tap and let him play in the cold water flowing out, splash, splash! She slicked his hair down with her fingers and lifted him up so he could see himself in the mirror.
When she turned off the water, Sam heard the sound of Mom’s voice grinding away. In the mirror, Sam looked at Francie and Francie looked at Sam. Quietly, she set him down on the floor and dried them both off, and then she tried to dry the floor and the wall too. They were waiting for something to change.
Francie sang a bit of her song for him, very quietly. The same song she was singing in the backyard, when they were playing. The same song she was trying to tell Mom about in the kitchen.
Sam sat very still, listening. Listening. Till something changed.
“Supper!”
Francie opened the bathroom door and Sam crawled ahead of her. There was nothing soft about Mom, except for her voice, sometimes. Mom was made of pointy parts, not like Renee, who babysat Sam during the day. Renee was soft all over. But he was used to Mom’s elbows, her chin, her knees, her ribs, he wanted them close, stabbing into him. It didn’t hurt. But before Sam got to Mom in the kitchen, Dad caught him and picked him up, and tied him into the wooden high chair using a red woolly scarf. It scratched Sam’s tummy where his shirt rode up over his belly, and he yelled and hammered his fists on the tray.
Mom scooped soft potatoes from the pot on the table. She walked with each plate to the stove and ladled hamburger gravy on top. The gravy had peas in it. Mom filled Sam’s bowl last. His belly itched, but the tray blocked it from reach. He threw his head back and howled, feeling hot.
Mom sat on the chair beside him. “Sam,” she said. She held out his spoon. Sam threw the spoon on the floor. Mom picked it up, wiped it on a napkin, set it back on the tray. Sam threw it down. Mom picked it up. She said, “This floor is already filthy, and I just swept it!”
Sam threw the spoon. Mom picked it up.
“For Christ’s sake, he’s just going to keep doing that, Mari.”
“I’m not giving you your spoon till you stop throwing it,” Mom said to Sam. She set the spoon on his tray. Sam looked at everyone looking at him and he knew exactly what to do.
He threw the spoon on the ground.
“Enough.” Dad kicked the spoon across the kitchen. It clattered against the electric radiator that ran along the baseboard under the window. Sam had burned his hands on it in the winter, but only once. He didn’t remember, only that he had an aversion to that part of the kitchen.
Mom took bites from her food.
Sam stuck his fists into his bowl and rubbed the food in his hair.
Mom put her face in her hands. Crying?
Francie stood up. She pushed her chair back and it crashed to the floor. “Ooo!” Sam wiggled against the woolly scarf. Mom’s face was surprised. Not crying. Francie set the chair upright and climbed onto it, she stood on the seat. “Ooo!” Sam clapped and clapped. The potatoes squeezed through his fingers. Francie was singing the song again. Sam was singing too. He had two teeth on top at the front of his mouth and his tongue mashed against them.
Francie was loud and she sounded angry. Sam was louder.
Francie stopped. She stepped down off the chair and she sat and stared at her plate of food. Mostly gone. Sam stuffed his fist into his mouth and sucked off the potatoes. He stuck his fist into his bowl, sucked it.
Mom stood up. “Does anyone want seconds?”
Dad started wiping Sam’s head with a paper napkin.
“Seconds, anyone?”
Dad wiped Sam’s face.
“Am I talking to myself?” said Mom. Which mom was this mom?
“It was fine, Mari,” said Dad.
“Everything’s going to shit around here,” said Mom. She picked up Sam’s spoon from where it had stopped under the radiator. Dad untied the red scarf. He lifted Sam out of the chair. Clumps of potato plopped off Sam and onto the floor.
“Everything’s going to shit,” Mom said. Her voice was very, very quiet. But her eyes were very, very here. Sam looked at her and he didn’t know what she was feeling, and he did not like that. He kicked and fishtailed as Dad carried him away from Mom to the bathroom.
Dad set Sam into the bathtub. He turned on the water and it came down on Sam like rain from up above, freezing cold and spraying them both. Dad jumped back and roared, “SHIT!” Dad left. It was Francie who came to see what was happening, Francie who turned off the taps. Mom followed behind Francie, she stood in the doorway of the bathroom and said, “Don’t worry, this isn’t about you, nothing is about you, don’t worry.”
Sam stretched out his arms, but Mom didn’t see him. She wasn’t in the doorway anymore.
Francie saw him.
She put the plug in and turned the water on, and it came out from the right spot. Warm water. Sam grabbed her face as she leaned over him with a washcloth. He pinched her. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know what was inside him, but it roared, it was itchy, it hurt.
His sister pinched him back.
That made sense, it made everything make sense, somehow.
THREE
Gun Run
Francie could hear Diego the dog barking as her legs kicked into high gear, maximum output, pedal to the metal, like Dad said when he floored it to zoom around a minivan or sedan going too slowly on a country road. “Lousy lady drivers!” he always said, even when the driver they passed wasn’t.
It was true that driving with Grandma Irene was not the same as driving with Dad. Mom never drove, she didn’t know how. Sally was another lady driver who Francie had driven with.
Francie didn’t know why her brain was listing these facts exactly, only that it felt necessary, it had got her to the end of the alley, and now she just had to cross the street to get to the woods. Alice and Francie never crossed here, they walked down two blocks to the crosswalk because Alice’s sister, Kate, told Alice that cops arrested people for jaywalking. Kate didn’t always tell the truth, Francie knew, but Alice believed Kate almost all the time. It was something they argued about.
The cars kept coming, but Francie didn’t have time to walk down the sidewalk and push the button and wait for the crosswalk!
A lot of things were going wrong.
The cars. The dog, barking. And when she glanced over her shoulder, fully expecting to see Diego and his big dripping mouth running after her down the alley—she saw Sally.
Never look back. Never never never.
Click, click, the picture of a cop car snapped into her brain, too late, Francie was already in the street, bolting between cars, sneakers jumping the curb, slapping the sidewalk, carrying her directly into the thicket of trees on the other side. Whatever was behind her was behind her: barking dog, hollering woman, the blip-blip of a siren, flashing lights.
If it’s help you want, never trust a cop: Dad.
If it’s help you want, never trust your dad, she heard clearly, as if Dad were inside her head, laughing at twisting his own words into a joke.
Francie ran, pushing through the messy brush on the other side of the street. If you walked down the sidewalk and crossed at the crosswalk, there was a paved path into the park, and you could follow it to get to the woods. Here, there was no path—just a wall of scraggly trees, and messy undergrowth, vines and dead leaves and brambles and slapping branches that grabbed for Francie’s hair and scratched her face. Tiny burrs stuck to her favourite shirt and she couldn’t brush them off. She was hot and sweaty and moving as fast as she could, which wasn’t fast enough. Her sneaker caught on a root and the sole ripped right open.
She was pretty sure these trees belonged to the woods in the middle of the park, where she and Alice liked to play, but nothing looked familiar.
You’re a horse. No one can catch you, you’ll never be broken.
Grandma Irene had a prayer she prayed a lot, out loud, and Francie heard it now. It began: Our Father who are in Heaven. Hollow be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. On Earth as it is in Heaven.
What came after Heaven? Bread?
Francie couldn’t remember how the words all fit together, even though Grandma Irene had been trying to teach her, urging her to memorize it: “This is something you can use any time, whenever you need it.” Why would you need it? What would you need it for? Francie hadn’t asked Grandma these questions.
The words started over again in her head: Our Father who are in Heaven.
But who was that? Our Father? Father. Like a dad. Dad.
Francie was very thirsty. She sank into a crouch in a patch of something that looked like ivy, hopefully not the poison kind, because it was too late, she’d already touched it.
Here was the gun, stuck in her hand. She looked at it. Black. Scuffed, not shiny. It looked almost like a toy. Like if it was pointed at you and went bang, you’d only pretend to be dead. But you wouldn’t be dead. You’d fall down like you were dead and your eyes would be open and looking up and just pretending.
Here. Take it and go.
Francie felt a rush of panic, the way the gun was stuck to her hand, like it belonged to her now.
Dad would say—Take a deep breath, kid. Don’t worry so much, it’s the worry that’ll kill you.
Francie could hear him saying it.
We’re not going to sit here all morning waiting for some cop to come and help us, Dad was saying. Francie could see him, climbing out of the Caddy, steam rising from under its hood. They were on their way to Grandma Irene’s, just the two of them, they were out in the country, somewhere Mom called “the middle of nowhere.” Dad opened Francie’s door and she slid out of the car and landed hard on her tailbone. That’s how steep the angle was, where Dad had stopped in the gravel, like the whole car might slide down into the ditch.
“What are you so scared about?” Dad said. “Take a deep breath, kid. Don’t worry so much.”
The car door hung open, but Francie wasn’t strong enough to push it closed. Dad was headed down into the ditch. She followed, heavy grasses soaking her jeans. A crooked stream of water flowed along the bottom of the ditch—“Isn’t this something else,” Dad said. He took one big step across with his long legs, and reached back for Francie.
“Give me your hands.”
He swung Francie up and over the trickle of water. His limp hardly showed at all as he climbed the little hill. They walked right up to a line of cedars planted as a windbreak to protect the big green field beyond, a lush carpet of fresh green. “Winter wheat,” Dad said, telling her about the windbreak, about how the farmers planted this crop in the fall so it came up before everything else. She noticed he was breathing hard, sweat broken out across his forehead.
“Wait here,” he told her.
She did what he said. She didn’t look around. There was a smell, like something burnt. After a while, Dad came back, his eyes soft and a bit dusty or woozy, he smiled like he was glad to see her. He said this was just what he needed, a dose of nature. He sat down in the weeds, even though the ground was wet. Look, he told her. Look at the cars going by, they don’t even know we’re here. Look: he showed her tiny yellow flowers growing on tough stems. None of them even know this exists. We’re the only ones. This is just for us.
When he stood up, his pants were wet, but he didn’t seem to notice.
It was going to rain. The sky was dark, even though it was the morning. They walked all the way across the field till they got to a long gravel lane, and they walked up the lane till they got to a tall house made of yellowing boards, with a big barn on the other side of a gravel yard and a machine shed in between.
“Hello? Anyone home?” Dad was holding her shoulder, leaning hard. They’d walked so slowly. It was starting to rain, big fat drops plopping out of the sky.
“Can I help you?” A man and his little kid came out of the machine shed.
“Overheated,” Dad said, thumb to the road. “Old rad. Needs water.”
“That all?”
They drove down the lane in the man’s pickup. The Caddy hadn’t slid into the ditch, but the door was hanging wide open. Something about the way it looked made Francie’s stomach flip-flop. She was hungry. All she’d eaten this morning was a doughnut. Jelly-filled. But still.
The men shook hands after they closed the hood.
“You’ve done us a kindness,” Dad said.
“Try it once,” said the man, and Dad sank into the driver’s seat and turned the key.
“That does ’er!” The man picked up his little boy. Francie climbed in through the open door, and the man walked around to her side of the car and slammed it shut. Francie waved goodbye to the little boy, but he buried his face in his dad’s shoulder.
“Strangers are better than friends,” Dad said, looking in the rear-view mirror.
“What about me?” said Francie.
“What’s that?” Dad said. He flipped on the wipers. The rain was really starting to come down now. Francie’s stomach grumbled. But she knew where they were going. They weren’t far from Grandma Irene’s house. And Grandma Irene always had food.
Of course, it wasn’t always the best food, Francie considered, sitting in the patch of ivy (probably poison).
A lot of things were going wrong.
She shrugged off her backpack and checked the lunch box with the rainbow pony on its front. She almost cried, seeing the rainbow pony—why?—or maybe seeing the broken zipper, Mom was so mad when it broke right away, cheap piece of garbage, but Francie wouldn’t let her take it back to the store, she loved that pony too much. She even loved the broken zipper.
It was hard to open zippers with just one hand, especially broken ones.
Squashed sandwich crusts. Carob oatmeal cookies, crumbled into bits. A bunch of twenty-dollar bills—don’t think about that! No water bottle, she’d left it at school.
Also, she might be lost.
There were no trails in this part of the woods, no signs, no arrows spray-painted onto tree trunks, no flapping plastic ribbons knotted around branches.
Francie returned the backpack to her shoulders and stood up. It was better not to be on a trail, she thought, because she didn’t want to see a stranger, and she really really didn’t want to see a friend.
Throw it away. Throw it away!
But the gun was stuck in her hand.
FOUR
Gym Bag
Irene switched the wipers on high, put her powder-blue sedan into reverse, and began backing down her short driveway toward the country highway, quiet on a rainy Sunday morning in May. Irene was not looking for trouble when she checked the rear-view mirror, but she could hardly have said she was surprised when the next instant she had to stomp on the brakes, as with much honking and flashing of headlights her son Luce turned his golden boat of a Cadillac into the driveway and blocked Irene’s sedan. He climbed out before she’d even pushed the gearshift into park.
Irene rolled down the window a crack. “What a wonderful surprise!” she called out. “You’re just in time for church!”
Her son pretended not to hear. “House open?” he said, leaning down to her window. He wasn’t even wearing a rain jacket, holding one arm over his head.
Irene dug into her purse, through the lipstick and powder and comb and roll of mints, the chequebook and coin purse, the scraps of grocery lists and reminders, and retrieved the key that unlocked the back door. You could never be too careful living alone, out here in the country. “Dare I ask?” she said, as she rolled the window down a little further and stuck out her arm. It was a simple silver key on a cheap metal ring, attached to nothing else.
