Joe
“DON’T KNOW WHY YOU’RE ALL LOOKING IN THE WOODS. She ain’t there.”
Mom sat by the fire, her shoes cast off to the side, the soles worn thin from age and use. She dug her toes into the loose dirt around the fire, a potato in one hand and a peeling knife in the other. “Doing nothing but wasting your time looking for her back there. She’s out there somewhere.” She lifted her arm, the knife still clutched in her hand, and waved wide, taking in the whole world.
In the years since Ruthie went missing, Mom had come to a soft understanding of the situation. She would try her damnedest to not be sad. She couldn’t promise complete happiness or fully rid herself of the anger, no matter how many times a week she put on those shoes and walked to the big stone church in town, but she would harness the sadness. She would harness it and tame it and keep it still and quiet. And she did this by believing that Ruthie was out there somewhere, growing up, eating ice cream, reading books and remembering her mother. We let her. But we still looked. We scoured those woods, that lakeshore, the faces of any new girls who might be around Ruthie’s age. We looked but we never found her.
“Joe, come on over here and sit with me.” She waved the potato at me. Ben, Charlie and I had just returned from another brief sweep along the back of the berry fields, and I was scratching the new mosquito bites on the back of my neck. I wandered over and sat down beside her. She used her hands, covered in potato starch, to rub my neck. Her hands felt cool against the burn of the insect bites. I wouldn’t say I replaced Ruthie, but when she went missing, I became the youngest child. A responsibility comes with that, being the youngest, the last baby. I never did live up to the responsibility. Because, like my mother, I was convinced Ruthie was out
there somewhere, just waiting for us to find her. Until we did, I was the closest to Ruthie Mom could find, so I sat with her. I walked her to church sometimes and tried my best to listen when she talked. And on the rare occasions when the sadness reared its head, I held her hand while she cried. I am not a wise man. I think the actions of the last few decades prove that, but I have learned things along the way. The ones that stick with me from those years between losing Ruthie and leaving Maine for good are these: it’s hard looking for someone who can’t be found, and it’s even harder replacing that someone in your own mother’s heart. Not saying I didn’t want to see Ruthie again—I did—but I tended to side with Mom. Ruthie wasn’t in those woods, and even if I was wrong and her tiny little self was still lying out there somewhere with only the sun and moon as friends, I didn’t want to find her that way, dead and nothing but bones. So, it was hard looking for her, but we did it anyway. Searching seemed to mean we still cared, still loved her. Up until the day we left that year, early in mid-August, on the cusp of grief once again, we ate our dinner and used the last of the summer sun to search through the brush and under fallen
trees, but we didn’t holler her name anymore. No one would hear it but us. “We just keep shrinking.” Mom was sipping tea after dinner was done.
The quiet buzz of mosquitos and the snapping of the fire were the only other sounds. “Won’t be able to work these fields if this keeps up.”
Dad nodded and bent closer to the fire to see the writing on his notepad. “People are just finding better work back home, I suppose. It’s a long trip if you don’t want to make it.” He pulled out a knife he had attached to his belt and sharpened the end of a pencil into a perfect point before checking the rest of his record for the day. The number of boxes, the weight per box and the name of the picker were all arranged in neat columns.
We were a small lot by that summer, the summer we quit Maine for good. Our camp housed the familiar faces. Ben came up from Boston and Charlie took the time off his job to make better money in the berry fields. The only other pickers were Old Gerald and Julia, the twins Hank and Bernard, and Widow Agnus and three of her children, the other three having gone off and become adults with jobs and families of their own. And, of course, there was Frankie. Years later, to my amazement, I would find Frankie again, alive and still drunk, picking blueberries in those same fields, his face craggy and his mouth empty of almost all his teeth. His breath could knock you on your ass if you got close enough. But he was
still Frankie, someone who, in his rare moments of sobriety, remembered Ruthie.
I was fifteen that summer, when the blistering hot days seemed to drag themselves into the damp, cool nights. I was itching to be grown, to go to the fires up at Allen’s Mountain, to drink some of the beer Ben bought but hid from Mom. But just as the berry pickers were staying away now, the fun seemed to wither and die, too. I do remember waiting for the weekends. Even if there were no parties on the mountain anymore, there was still swimming at the lake and a girl named Susan who wore a yellow bathing suit and, when her parents weren’t looking, snuck glances my way. And that summer, there was the carnival.
I was at the end of my row, waiting for Dad’s truck to come and signal it was quitting time, and if I’m going to be honest—and when you’re almost dead, honesty is so much easier—I wasn’t picking many berries. Ben and I were still partners in the work, but he was at the other end of the row, looking like he was working. It was hot and we knew that a carnival was coming to the town just a couple of miles down Route 9. I was using a small twig to clean under my nails like Mom said to, when I felt the rumbling under my feet. The ground itself was vibrating. I dropped the twig and stood with my hand to my eyes as I watched all those trucks go past carrying rides and tents, freaks and magicians, fortune tellers, and animals I had only ever read about in books. I could almost smell the cotton candy. Ben was beside me by the time the last truck drove past.
“It’s not like the carnivals at home, ya know,” Ben said as we walked back along the row we’d been working.
“What do you mean?”
“They have good rides down here, not just those little trains and pony rides. They have Ferris wheels and rides that spin so fast you might lose your lunch.”
“I can handle it.” Truth is, I didn’t know if I could handle it. I just wanted the chance to buy Susan some cotton candy and maybe get her to kiss me.
It was a clear Saturday night, a night that Ben, Mae and Charlie joked was perfect for earning the sins they would have to repent for the next morning. I was aching for some of those sins. It was like there was a rope pulled tight, the threads twisted somewhere inside of me, ready for the release. And we needed to get away. Away from the shadow of those trees,
of the ghosts of our own voices calling for Ruthie. Away from the constant fear that I might find her back there somewhere. In bad dreams I sometimes did find her, her bones bleached by the sun, her little dress draped over what was left of her. Those dreams were hard, and I tried my best to forget them, working myself into exhaustion the day after. Sometimes I would wake up crying tears of both fear and relief. Because, while I never believed Ruthie was dead, wouldn’t it be better to know for sure? Wouldn’t Mom be able to throw those shoes away if she just knew that Ruthie was gone?
The night was warm and dry, with a breeze just soft enough to keep you cool but not enough to cause a shiver. We could hear the carnival and see the bruise the neon lights punched in the sky. The continuous sound of high-pitched bells shot through the dark to meet us. I remember that my legs, long and skinny, bones pushing against my summer skin, seemed to move faster and of their own free will, pulling me toward the smell of cotton candy, machine grease and public toilets.
Charlie ran up to walk beside me, punching me in the arm. “Slow down there, Joe. Gonna get yourself all tired out before we even get there.” I punched him back and broke into a run. Ben and Mae followed, the sound of their shoes crunching the gravel fading into the dark.
I’d never been allowed to go to a carnival before. The others started going when they were thirteen, but Mom held me back because of Ruthie going missing. I didn’t see any logic in it, but I also didn’t question it. This year, after a sideways look from Dad, she finally let me go. Dad kept the money we earned hidden away under the seat of his truck. Each kid under the age of sixteen, which by then was only me, had their own envelope, Dad’s hen-scratch cursive identifying the fruits of each child’s labour. The money was tucked away and meant for boots and notebooks for school. Even though I’d quit school, Dad still didn’t let me have it all. He said that if I was going to be an adult, I’d have to start paying my fair share of the bills. But on that night, he let me make a small withdrawal. Before we headed out, before the sun was settling in, he snuck a couple dollars in my hand and gave me a pat on the back.
“Spend it wisely. It’s all you’re gonna get until we’re home.”
The bills felt damp in my hand, and I pushed them into the deepest part of my pocket. I kept rubbing my leg every couple minutes just to make sure they were still there. I’d just checked my pocket for the tenth or maybe the hundredth time when Charlie ducked under a rope strung between two
tents. I followed close behind. We waited in the shadows until no one was near. Neither one of us wanted to waste our hard-earned money on admission. As I was about to step into the artificial brightness of neon lights, my foot caught on something, and the ground came up at me fast. I put my hands out in front and twisted, my hip taking the brunt of the fall. The grass was starting to cool, damp with the night air. I jumped up fast, wiping the grass and dirt from my pants. Charlie doubled over laughing.
Lying on the ground next to me, his body contorted into an L-shape, an empty bottle lying just outside the grasp of his dirty fingers, was Frankie.
“Jesus, Frankie. What the hell?”
“You woke me.” He struggled to his feet, falling twice before he was upright.
“You tripped me.”
“I did no such thing.” His words slurred as he turned and walked around the back of the tent, dropped his pants to his ankles and pissed on the rope we’d just crawled under. I shook my head and turned back to Charlie, who was still laughing.
“Screw off,” I said as I turned and made my way into the crowd.
You never know what your last words to someone are going to be, and it’s hard to reconcile it when the deed is done and the person is gone. For years I tried to think of something else I might have said to Charlie, something that would’ve let him know how much I looked up to him, how much I loved him. Words I don’t think he ever heard from me. But I’ve lived so many years with the memory that the last words my brother heard were not ones of love or encouragement, but words of anger, stained by my own embarrassment. The last thing I said to Ruthie didn’t even have the dignity of being a word. A finger pushing into my lips, a shush to keep my secret. Words are powerful and funny things, said or unsaid.
The carnival was teeming with life, people of all ages and sizes. I watched a fat man squeeze himself into the Ferris wheel seat next to an equally fat woman and wondered at how they would be sustained in the air, if the steel was strong enough for the both of them. Children gripped the poles extending from the necks of wooden horses, the pastel paint chipping off with each new rider. I glanced at the local teens sneaking diluted whiskey. Animals in cages or behind fences were prowling or sleeping, mewing or growling. As I walked around, my eyes flitting from one thing to the next, taking it all in, I breathed in the smell of summer sweat and sugar.
Cooking oil hissed and popped, and alarms signifying victory battled excited cries over stuffed animals and balloons, cheap watches and plastic pearls. I eavesdropped on conversations and ate my first corn dog. Ben and Mae had gone off to sit on the bleachers with a few friends from the berry fields, and Charlie caught up to me and gave me a soft punch in the arm. I wish I’d said I was sorry for telling him off, but I didn’t. We turned at the Tilt-a-Whirl to head toward the fortune teller’s tent, when we heard Archie Johnson’s voice from behind the line of temporary toilets.
“You son of a bitch. Give me my money back.”
Charlie turned toward the sound of the brewing fight. I felt my stomach lurch. Archie Johnson was a big guy, just a bit older than Ben and angry all the time. They say he came out of his mother punching and cursing. In the dim light of the rides, we could see Frankie on the ground, Archie’s foot on his throat, foam forming at the corners of Frankie’s mouth.
“Let him go, Archie. Don’t be an ass.” Charlie stepped toward them. I reached out to grab his arm, but he was too far from me now.
Archie’s brothers, almost as big as he was, started laughing and talking to their brother in our language, the one our parents didn’t teach us. I understood almost none of it, but I knew from the way they stood tall and leered that they weren’t saying anything good. They came from a place a couple hours away from us back home. A rough place my parents abandoned long before any of us were even thought of. “Those Johnsons were no good when I was a girl, and they passed their badness on to their kids,” my mom said each time one of them caused trouble during our summers in Maine, getting into small fights with the locals and shoplifting from the store where we got our supplies, whiskey and cigarettes mostly. They always seemed to be looking for a fight, but no one ever took them up on it, leaving them to take out their violence on each other most of the time. It’d be nothing to see at least one of them on a Monday morning with a shiner or bruised knuckles. But on this night, they found victims in a hapless drunk and someone young and idealistic. One of Archie’s brothers
—I don’t remember which one—stepped out of the shadows and pressed his hard, calloused hands against Charlie’s chest and shoved. Charlie stumbled and fell to the ground, which only made him madder as Archie continued to press down on Frankie’s throat.
“Let him go.” Charlie got to his feet and started toward Archie, looking him in the eye.
“No.”
“Let him go.”
“What are you going to do, you fuckin’ high and mighty Indian,” Archie sneered.
Even in the dark I saw Charlie’s face go hot as he stepped forward again, almost chest to chest with Archie. The only thing separating them was the drunk on the ground struggling to breathe.
“He’s a harmless drunk. Let him go.”
Archie threw his brothers a look, and quicker than I thought those big guys could move, two of them had Charlie, his arms pulled behind him. Archie lifted his foot off Frankie and punched Charlie so hard in the stomach I swear I heard the air leave my brother. I turned and ran for Ben. I ran like my legs weren’t attached to me. The carnival lights streamed by in a bright streak of neon. The sound of blood pulsing in my ears replaced the sounds of bells and tinny music as I ran. I found Ben and Mae on the bleachers, smoking a cigarette and sharing a bottle with some white folk I didn’t know. Mae had her hand on the leg of a skinny fella, his yellow hair slicked back and a perfect row of white teeth shining in his mouth. I didn’t have the air left in me to explain, so I grabbed Ben by the arm and pulled until he and Mae were on their feet running behind me, demanding an explanation. When we rounded the toilets, the light retreated. The dark and the quiet were unsettling. Archie and his brothers were nowhere to be seen, and there on the ground Frankie sat covered in blood, Charlie’s head in his lap. He was rocking back and forth, crying and mumbling the Lord’s Prayer. “Nujjinene wa’so’q epin jiptek . . . hallowed be thy name.” He stopped and looked up at us. “I just wanted a drink and the money fell right out of his pocket,” Frankie sobbed. “They just kept kicking him. Kicking him in the belly and all around his head. They just kept kicking him, Mae.” Frankie was slurring and crying, still rocking Charlie and wiping his nose with the sleeve of his shirt, covered in Charlie’s blood. “He went all quiet
and stopped movin’ and they just kept kickin’.”
“Shut it, Frankie.” Mae bent low to the ground. The man who’d been with her on the bleachers came to stand behind her. “Charlie. Charlie, it’s Mae. Wake up.” But Charlie didn’t wake up. Charlie didn’t move. The man with the yellow hair lifted Mae off the ground, and Ben bent down, lifting Charlie into his arms. Frankie was still snivelling.
“Shut up, Frankie!” I yelled. All I wanted to do was punch Frankie in his rotten, drunken face, but I turned and followed my brothers instead.
Ben, Charlie’s limp body in his arms, stepped over the rope between the tents like it wasn’t even there. Mae and I ducked under. The night was quiet. The creatures hiding in the woods and in the soggy ditches along Route 9 seemed to know we were coming, seemed to understand the gravity of it all.
“What happened, Joe?” Mae tried to whisper. Something about the quiet, the dark, the violence softened our voices.
“It was Frankie.” I stumbled over my words. “Frankie did this?”
“No, Mae. Charlie, he was trying to defend Frankie. Frankie stole his money.”
“Whose money? Charlie’s?”
I was getting it all wrong. I was finding it hard to think. Ahead of us Ben walked quietly but slowly now. Ben was strong, the strongest of any of us kids, but the longer we walked, the more I could hear his breathing, laboured and rough.
“Archie Johnson. And his brothers. It was their money.”
“I hate that family. No good, not one of them. If Charlie . . .” Mae’s voice trailed off.
“He’s gonna be okay, right, Mae?”
She didn’t answer, and just when I was about to question her again, headlights cut into the dark, and the man with yellow hair pulled up in a car as big as a boat.
“Get in. I’ll take ya the rest of the way.”
I got in the back seat and Ben laid Charlie’s head on my lap. Ben held his feet and Mae rode in the front. Charlie didn’t stir. The only sound was the occasional gurgle from his throat when he took a breath. When we pulled up to the camp, headlights shining on the fire, Mom and Dad stood, their hands to their eyes, blinded and confused. The four of us managed to get Charlie’s limp body out of the back of the car and into the cabin, Mom screaming for a reason the whole time.
“What . . . Charlie? Ben, what?” Dad stammered.
“He was defending Frankie, and the Johnson boys went at him.”
Mae was already heading to the door, the bucket used for collecting drinking water in her hands. Mom sat on the cabin floor beside her son,
running her hands along the side of his head. I stood in the corner, feeling the anger build in me. It burned the skin from underneath and tightened my muscles so hard that my fingers rounded themselves into tight fists. I turned to leave, determined to find Archie Johnson and beat him the same way he’d beat on Charlie. In my head I could see it, my fists powered by rage, Archie defenceless and cowering.
“A flight of fancy,” Ben told me years later. “He would have done the same to you as he did to Charlie, and where would that have left us?”
I got as far as the fire, the flames shrinking from neglect, when Ben stopped me. He grabbed me around my midsection, pinning my arms to my sides, and held me that way, speaking not a single word. I think he thought he was doing a good thing, keeping me from dying at the hands of the Johnson boys. I think he thought that if he kept me there, locked in his arms, I’d be okay, I’d make it through this a normal teenage boy. I wish he’d been right. Instead, I bottled that rage, and it came out in ways I will be ashamed of until the disease drags the last breath from me. I could never reconcile my leaving Charlie there alone with a drunk who couldn’t stand, let alone fight. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t stay with them in the dark shadows of those tents, why I didn’t stand beside him, why I didn’t take some of the beating. If the fists had been parcelled out, maybe we’d have both come out of it alive, bruised for sure and maybe a little embarrassed, but both alive.
Mom bathed Charlie’s bloodied face with tears and prayed over him day and night until exhaustion forced her into a restless sleep. “Don’t you go and leave me, Charles Michael. Don’t you go and leave me. You wake up. I’m your mother and I’m telling you to open those eyes and look at me.”
But he didn’t, and we left Maine under a heavy sadness. Dad bundled Charlie in blankets, and he and Ben placed him gently on a mattress. We’d taken the mattress from the cabin, and Mom used belts and twine to harness him to the bed of the truck. I sat on one side and Ben on the other, holding the mattress in place, staring down at Charlie, unrecognizable under the swollen flesh. Mae followed in the car. We left the fields in mid-August, turning over the foremanship to a Mexican fella named Juan.
We didn’t look for the Johnson boys, but when we were packing up to leave, someone said they’d hightailed it for the border just after they’d kicked the life out of Charlie. Their fields lay abandoned, and Mr. Ellis was in a temper that only got worse when Dad told him that we were leaving
early. I saw Archie a few years later, just after he got out of prison. I was on the road, leaving everything I knew and loved behind, and he was hitchhiking along the highway, on his way to New Brunswick. I recognized him from a distance by his bigness. When he stuck out his thumb, I swerved, aiming that beat-up truck right at him. When I hit the dirt on the side of the road, he jumped into a ditch. I missed. I don’t know if I meant to miss, but I did. Maybe if I’d drove straight and hit him, I’d have kept going, never giving another thought to Archie Johnson. Regardless, I hope he broke a bone or something or at least shit himself. There’s got to be some justice for what he did.
Charlie left this world somewhere in New Brunswick. I imagined each and every bump meant pain for him even though his face didn’t show it. Twenty minutes across the border, he heaved a sigh that could have brought the clouds down if there’d been any. It was a sunny day, a beautiful, cruel day. I watched his chest, waiting for the rise, but it didn’t come, and Ben knocked on the back window of the pickup. Dad pulled over and Mom wailed. She screamed into the trees as we stood at the side of the highway, our dead brother in the back and our grieving mother thrashing the tall grass that grew along the side of the road. She cut her hands to bits, thin lines of red criss-crossing her palms as my mother, a woman of faith, cursed God.
