T. Parker: California Girl

Monika cut her son a look when he introduced Barbara Brewer as his fiancée.

“Fiancée?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be damned!” said his father.

“I’m happy for you both,” Monika said with another measured smile. “But David, you should have given me a chance to get ready for this. I mean-”

“It happened quickly,” said David.

“When? This morning?” she asked with pleasant sarcasm.

“It was one-twenty this afternoon,” Barbara said cheerfully.

A brief hesitation while his parents waited for him to say something and David wondered exactly what.

“The greatest of these is love,” he said.

“I’m just awfully goddamned happy for you two, son.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Max spread his arms and hugged them both again.

JANELLE VONN SHOWED UP for David’s service on a drizzly Sunday in mid-November. She slouched in a chair at the back of the snack bar chapel. He recognized her immediately but still couldn’t quite believe it was the smart little eleven-year-old he’d invited to Thanksgiving dinner almost three years ago. He’d seen her a few times since then, around town. Each time a little older, bigger, a little more sure of herself. He’d always thought of her as unfortunate.

She was dirty and poorly dressed-jeans with holes in them and a T-shirt dyed in competing colors. Barefoot even in the chill. Hair long, no style. Same black eye that had been swollen nine years ago when he stood on her porch and apologized for his brothers beating up hers. She looked worse than the inmates he counseled at the jail. At least they were clean. In spite of everything she was startlingly pretty and obviously drunk.

After the service was over Janelle wobbled up to him and plunked herself down in one of the folding chairs. She almost missed.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“What’s wrong, Janelle?”

“I took some reds and don’t feel too good.”

“Red whats?”

“Pills. Downers.”

“Stand up and come with me.”

David helped her up but she folded into him. He got an arm around her and towed her back to the office. The girl smelled strange-human body odor undercut with something green and pitchy and new to him. Her feet were dirty and she wore a toe ring.

Barbara was at the desk making phone calls. She hung up hard and stood. “What’s this?”

David explained as best he could and lowered Janelle onto the big green Naugahyde couch where he napped and wrote his sermons. Got a pillow under her head.

“Can you drink some coffee?” asked Barbara.

Janelle shook her head no. David saw her pupils were large and he smelled the funny green smell again.

“She’s high on marijuana,” said Barbara. “I can smell it.”

“That’s what I thought,” said David. He’d read about the stuff, knew it led to heroin addiction, but had never once seen or smelled it.

He put a blanket over her. Barbara stood beside the sofa with her hands on her hips, looking down.

“God, that feels good,” said Janelle. She shivered once and looked up at the ceiling.

David snugged the blanket around her feet, then sat and felt her forehead. It felt cool. “When did you take the pills?”

“This morning early.”

“Why?”

“Just for fun.”

“When did you smoke the marijuana?” asked Barbara.

“On the way here.”

“You drove?”

“Hitchhiked. He had some. A cool guy. The thing about these kind of ceilings is all the shapes. I can see an octopus on roller skates and a flower growing out of a clown’s head.”

David glanced up at the old acoustic ceiling, two decades of shapes and stains.

“What happened to your eye?” asked Barbara.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s black.”

“Oh, that. Casey came over.”

David looked at Janelle’s dreamy expression, then up to Barbara’s sharp, assessing face. Barbara had turned out to be six years older than him and wiser.

“Why hit you?” she asked. “What did he want?”

David had never heard a silence say so much.

“Nothing,” Janelle finally said.

“But you said no,” said Barbara.

“Yeah. That’s all I did.”

David looked at Barbara but she was focused on Janelle.

“Was your father there?” Barbara asked.

“Casey wouldn’t a tried that with Dad there.”

“Tried what?” David asked.

Barbara glanced at him quickly but said nothing.

“Just the old thing. No big deal.”

“Does your father know what Casey does to you?” asked Barbara.

“He beat up Casey and Lenny for it. A long time ago.”

“Lenny, too?” asked David.

“He started it.”

David felt a great anger rise up in his chest. He thought of that day by the packinghouse, how he’d ended up on the ground covering up against the blows. How he’d let his man get away to bash Nick with the branch. Wished he could go back, beat the living shit out of Lenny and Casey all by himself. He thought of the long prayers he’d said the night before that rumble, for the courage and strength to fight. Wondered why the Lord had not given him those things.

“We should call the Albert Sitton Home,” he said.

“No,” said Barbara. “You should call Nick.”

“No cops,” said Janelle. She slapped one hand onto the sofa back to pull herself up. Barbara removed it.

“Make the call, David,” she said.

WHEN NICK got there half an hour later Janelle was snoring loudly. David and Barbara looked like a thousand other parents he’d talked to in the last year or two. Just dawning on them that young kids were prone to dope and sex. Though from what David had told him this was quite a bit worse.

Goddamned brothers and who knew about the old man. No wonder the mother had done what she did.

David woke Janelle and sat her up. She took one look at Nick and shook her head.

“Tell me what happened,” he said.

“Nick the cop.”

She flopped back to the sofa and pulled the blanket over her face. She moaned.

“That black eye didn’t just grow there,” said Nick. He sat down a couple of feet from her. “Come on, Janelle. Sit up and act like the young lady you are.”

She struggled back up and pulled away the blanket. Her long dark hair washed over her face. She blew a part in it, looked out at Nick. Then she shook her head and the thick hair fell back over her face. “I kinda dig it like this,” she said. “Here, in my secret cave.”

“Nice, isn’t it?” asked Nick. “No creeps.”

Janelle nodded.

“No brothers,” said Nick.

“I hate my brothers,” she said. “It was neat when you guys beat them all up. Ethan’s all the way in Florida now.”

Nick smiled and shook his head. “That was a long time ago.”

“I had the biggest crush on you guys. All four of you, but most on Clay. Where is Clay?”

“ Vietnam.”

“Doing what?”

“Advising the government.”

“How old is he now?”

“Twenty-four. A year younger than me,” he said.

“Far away,” said Janelle. “That’s too bad.”

“He’ll be back for Christmas. Maybe we could get the families together.”

“Have eggnog with lots of rum?”

Nick looked at David, then Barbara, then at the hair-shrouded fourteen-year-old. “Janelle, are you going to tell me what happened or sit there and act like a child?”

Janelle was still for a long moment. Then blew another opening in her hair. “It’s no big deal. It’s a small deal.”

David said, “You wouldn’t have hitchhiked all the way here for a small deal, would you?”

“True,” said Barbara. “And a black eye on a pretty girl, that’s not a small deal.”