Wiley Cash - This Dark Road to Mercy

“Hold on,” Ruby said. I stopped walking and waited until she was right behind me, and then we went into the kitchen and opened the cabinets and looked for something to eat, but there wasn’t nothing there for breakfast. There wasn’t hardly no food at all. I looked around and realized that we didn’t have anything, and I saw what our house really looked like, and I knew how people would think of us when they came inside in a few hours to get Mom and take us away to wherever we’d be going. They’d see that we didn’t have any furniture except for a plastic deck chair and two folding chairs that you might take to the beach. And they’d see that me and Ruby didn’t have beds but just slept on mattresses on the floor that had mismatched sheets on them. They’d know that I’d called them from the corner store because we didn’t have a phone, and they’d see that even if we’d had food we didn’t have no clean plates to eat from. I stood there looking all around that kitchen with a knot in my throat and an empty stomach, and I swear I could hear flies buzzing in just about every windowpane in that house. I just wanted to leave it all behind.

“You think we need quarters to call 911?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Ruby said. “I ain’t never called it before.”

We spent forever looking for those two quarters. I finally found one in the bottom of my book bag, and Ruby found one behind the dresser in our room. The sun had come up all the way by the time we’d gotten dressed and were walking down the street toward Garrison Boulevard. It would be hot later, but the morning felt nice, and down the hill on the right mist rose up from the creek that ran through the center of Lineberger Park. A few people slept on picnic tables under the shelters. They’d been out there all night because they didn’t have no place else to go.

There weren’t any cars in the parking lot at Fayles’, and I took Ruby by the hand and led her through the lot to the corner where a phone booth sat by the sidewalk. The quarters were ready in my hand, but when we got closer I saw that somebody’d come along and torn the phone loose from the cord and taken it with them. They’d yanked out the phone book too. I stood there looking at that cord where the phone should’ve been, and I held Ruby’s hand and asked myself what Boston Terrier would do.

Then I remembered that you could see a pay phone inside the pool room at Fayles’ whenever we walked past it with Mom on the way to the library. I led Ruby back across the lot to the store, but when I let go of her hand and tried to open the door I saw that it was locked. The sign said they didn’t open until 7:30 A.M. Through the glass, I could see a man inside the store messing with a coffeemaker, and when he heard me tug on the door he turned around and looked at us over his shoulder. He pointed to his watch. “We ain’t open yet,” he said. I had to read his lips because I couldn’t hear him through the glass. Me and Ruby sat down on the curb in front of the store and waited.

“What are you going to say to 911?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’ll wait and see what they ask me.”

A few minutes later we heard the lock turn on the door, and we stood up and walked inside. Smelly coffee dripped into a pot, and the man had already cranked up the hot-dog-turning machine. Hot dogs aren’t good for breakfast, but seeing them laid out and roasting on those rollers reminded me that we hadn’t eaten nothing yet.

I took Ruby’s hand and walked through the store, past the counter, and into the pool room. The man who’d unlocked the door was standing behind the cash register, and he folded his arms and stared at us when we walked past him. I figured he was wondering what two little girls were doing alone at the store this early in the morning.

A cigarette smell came up from the carpet in the pool room when I stepped on it. A big window looked out onto the parking lot, and I could see the phone booth that was missing its phone out on the corner by Garrison. The road was starting to get busy with traffic. In the corner of the room was the pay phone hanging on the wall. A stool was sitting under it. A jukebox sat beside it. I pushed the stool up against the wall and picked up the phone. Ruby leaned against the jukebox and watched me. A plastic Coke bottle sat on top of the phone, and an old brown cigarette was floating down inside it.

I dialed 911 and waited. It rung once, and then the operator picked up. “911,” she said. “What’s your emergency?”

I waited a second before I said anything because I wanted to make sure I used the right words. “I think my mom might be dead,” I finally said.

“Okay,” the operator said. “Why do you think that?”

“Because she won’t wake up,” I said. “And yesterday she was in bed sick and she slept all day. She’s still there, and now she won’t move. I don’t think she’s breathing.”

“Okay,” the operator said again. “And where’s your mom right now?”

I gave her the address for our house, and then she asked me Mom’s name.

“Her name’s Corinne Quillby,” I said, “and she’s twenty-nine years old.”

“All right,” the operator said, “and what’s your name?”

“My name?” I looked at Ruby where she stood staring at me, her back still leaned up against the jukebox. I smiled at her. “My name’s Boston Terrier,” I said.

Ruby smiled back. “And I’m Purple Journey,” she whispered.

I must’ve drifted off to sleep sitting up in my bed, because the next thing I heard was the sound of him tapping on the window outside. Ruby didn’t move, and I figured she was either asleep or pretending to be. I scooted down toward the end of the bed and reached out and unlocked the window and opened it. It was a new window and the frame was made out of plastic, so it slid up easy without making a sound. The window frames in the house we’d lived in with Mom were old and made out of wood. Sometimes we couldn’t get them open no matter how hard we tried. I scooted back toward my pillow and waited for him to climb in.

The windowsill was painted white, and even though it was dark in our room I could see Marcus’s fingers close around it to pull himself up, and I heard the sound his shoes made when they scraped against the side of the house as he climbed up into our room, first one leg and then the other.

“Be quiet,” I whispered.

“I’m trying to,” he whispered back.

Once he’d climbed in all the way he walked right to our closet and stepped inside and closed it behind him. I lay down and covered myself up with the sheet and pretended to be asleep. We always did that in case Miss Crawford or one of the other workers heard him coming in the window and opened our bedroom door to check on me and Ruby. I always imagined hearing somebody’s footsteps coming toward us, the bedroom door opening, and that crack of light coming in the room from the hallway and lying across my bed. “Easter?” one of them would whisper.

I’d stir in my pretend-sleep like they’d just woke me up, and I’d wait a second before saying anything. “What?” I’d say.

“You okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I’d say.

They’d peek in the door, see me and Ruby both in our beds, and decide things looked just fine. That’s what I hoped would happen anyway. I didn’t know what they’d do if they found Marcus Walker hiding in our closet.

I lay there with my eyes closed and waited a few minutes, and then I whispered his name. “I think you can come on out,” I said.

I heard the closet door open slowly, and I could just barely see him as he stepped out and walked toward the bed. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said back.