Cote Smith - Hurt People

I held my knees and watched my mother work. She touched one part, wiggled another. I knew not to ask her what she was doing because she wouldn’t want to admit that she didn’t know. I wished my brother were here. He didn’t know anything about cars, but he could help me pass the time. He would invent a game, take the scary world that was out there and turn it on its head. We would be dangerous drifters, maybe, a traveling tag team. The night would be afraid of us, not the other way around.

I grew cold on the curb, so I walked over to the side of the van and peered in. The inside was a maze of dark parts. There was a thick smell of burning.

“I thought I told you to stay on the curb,” my mother said. An entire arm of hers had disappeared into the engine and her face was wrinkled with strain.

“What are you trying to get?”

“What part of what I said don’t you understand?”

“I want to help.”

Her arm flinched like something bit her, and she screamed. She held her finger up, put it in her mouth to stop the bleeding.

“Are you OK?”

She turned to me angry. “You can’t help, all right? I wish you could, but you can’t. You can barely see over the hood. Now go sit.”

“Maybe we should call Dad,” I said.

“No. We’re not going to call your dad every time we have a problem. We can’t do that. That’s the old story.” She stepped away from the van and shook her head. She looked up at the sky again, checking the weather, maybe, or waiting for an answer.

“What are we going to do?” my mother said. “What are we going to do?” She stared at the clouds some more, as the wild wind stirred them in the sky. She stared for so long that I began to feel scared. It was like she wasn’t there anymore, like it was just me with the van. No dad or brother to help.

“Mom,” I said, but she didn’t move. I called to her several more times, my voice growing louder. I tapped her on the hip. “Mom.”

She slowly turned her face to me, and it took a second for her eyes to follow. “Yes?” she said.

I stared up at her until she snapped out of it.

“Yes. Yes, OK.” She put her hand on my shoulder and looked around her, as though seeing it all for the first time. “OK, here’s the plan. What does that street sign say? Run over and see.”

I did as she told, though I couldn’t see the sign until there was a flash of lightning.

“It says Pennsylvania. The other one says Tenth.”

“Good,” my mother said. “OK. Here’s what we’re going to do.” She looked around, as if still unsure. “We’re going to walk. That’s it. That’s just what we have to do.”

“To our house?”

“No,” she said. “That’s too far. We’ll have to get help from someone else. Are you ready? Here, take my hand. It’s a bit of a hike, but we’ll move fast. And we’ll stick together, OK? Got it?”

Before I could reply she slung her purse over her shoulder and pulled me along. As we made our way down the road, I kept looking back. At where we were. Where we had been. Behind us, the van grew smaller the more we left it behind, and after walking a few blocks, it started to rain. A drizzle at first, one we told ourselves we could tolerate. But soon the clouds opened up, pouring all they had, not to be ignored. My mother put her purse over my head and told me not to worry, that it would be all right.

“Is it a tornado?” I yelled. I could barely hear myself over the rain.

“No,” my mother said. “I don’t know. But let’s hurry.” She squeezed my hand and began to run, dragging me as best she could, our soaked shoes slapping the sidewalk. But as we picked up our pace, so did the rain. The drops grew fatter, faster, and after another block the only thing I could see was my mother’s arm, tugging me forward, stretching farther and farther away as I tried to keep up. She shouted for me to come on, that we were almost there. I shut my eyes and pretended she was my brother. That we were back at the golf course, where it was dry and familiar, and we were ready to have an adventure.

When we came to a corner, my mother’s hand slipped from mine. She had turned so quickly, and when I reached out for her again, she wasn’t there. Just darkness and rain. I listened for her footsteps. Heard nothing. I called her name but the only sound that came back was the rain lapping my ear. I looked down at my clothes, drenched, painted on my body, and thought of the lake. I rubbed the water out of my eyes, and when I opened them again, a pale hand appeared out of the darkness. One of the lake people, I thought, come to claim me as their own.

“Hey,” my mother said. “There you are. Come on, I think I found it.”

She put her arm around me and we turned again, this time onto a narrow, flooded sidewalk. We passed through a gate that opened and closed with the wind and came upon a house. I could only see its outline at first, but as we approached the porch step, a motion light shot on, spotlighting my mother and me, and the square old home in front of us.

We got out of the rain and shivered under the porch, the wood of which was warped and pocked with holes. Under the front window were two lawn chairs, and under the chairs a few empty bottles of beer, a soggy pack of cigarettes. My mother rang the doorbell. From inside, a dog barked.

The door opened and a big dog came wagging at me. Sandy yelled at it to get back in. Then she saw us. “Holy cow,” she said. “Aggie.”

“I’m sorry,” my mother said. She pushed me in front of her and Sandy gasped again.

“Mother Mary. Well, get on in here.”

* * *

Sandy had just made it home from work and was still in her cook clothes. Inside, the house was warm, but in our wet clothes it felt like we had just stepped out of the pool. Sandy showed us to the kitchen, disappeared to fetch some towels for me, a change of clothes for my mother. Her dog stayed behind, licking the rain off me, sniffing me with its cold nose. It was a long-haired mutt with a muddy snout, and it panted happily as I petted it.

“Sorry I don’t have any clothes your size,” Sandy said to me when she returned. My mother changed in the bathroom and came back looking funny in Sandy’s sweats, which only went down to my mother’s shins. The T-shirt she wore looked more like a cut-off tank top. “You either,” Sandy said.

The two of them sat at down at the kitchen table, a long oval unlike our small square. I wrapped myself in the towels and stayed on the floor, next to the dog.

“That’s Steamboat,” Sandy said. “He used to have a brother, Tugboat. Are you a dog person?” she asked me.

“He is,” my mother said. “I’m allergic. So, if I start sneezing and crying…”

I didn’t know that about my mother. I didn’t remember her sneezing around Baron, though I didn’t remember her petting him a lot either. Especially near the end.

I scratched Steamboat between his ears and he liked it.

“Look at that,” Sandy said. “You’ve got a new friend.” She got up from the table and took two glasses from the cupboard, set them in front of my mother. “You must be thirsty from your jog.”

“A glass of water would be nice,” my mother said, itching her nose.

“Yes, but would a glass of wine be even better?” Sandy opened the fridge and pulled out a box of wine left over from the party and poured two dark glasses. “There we go, something for our troubles.” She sat back down and she and my mother each took a sip. “And for my soaked sailor, there are sodas in the garage. Right through there. Fridge is by the door.”

I looked at my mother. Go on, she said, and started talking to Sandy about the van, what all we’d been through.

I had to go through the laundry room to get to the garage. A single bulb lit the entire room, which was packed with stacked boxes of junk. It looked like Sandy had just moved in, or she was getting ready to go somewhere. Except the boxes were worn, caving in on one another. I checked one with the hope of finding something rare, something I could borrow from Sandy if she wouldn’t mind, and use to win back my brother if the Stranger article didn’t do it. I found a photo of Sandy and a man who wasn’t Cornbread. This man was white and wore a large hat that shadowed his face. Sandy was not wearing a hat. Her face was clear, and she looked much younger in the picture than she did now. Her cheeks were smooth, her hair long and with no touches of gray.