LITMIR.BIZ

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Royal,’ she said as I sat her down on the edge of her bed. ‘You’re my best thing.’

      I knew Jenny could hear, right above us, and I knew Momma’s words would be like those stones hitting her all over again. The selfish part of me didn’t care and was still upset at Jenny for acting so strange so I didn’t try to hush Momma.

      I kissed her on the forehead and guided her head to her pillow. It was too hot for blankets but I draped a sheet over her up to her waist. Momma always said she couldn’t sleep without her ass covered, even if she was sleeping in jeans.

      As I turned to go, Momma found my hand. Eyes still closed, she shuffled over in bed and pulled me down beside her. Arm over me, her heat on my back, her breath on my neck. Smell of beer and sweat but I didn’t hate it. It was Momma smell.

      ‘I love you, John Royal. My best thing,’ she murmured right up close to my ear.

      Jenny couldn’t have heard that.

      ‘I love you too, Momma.’

      Then she squeezed me tight and we lay like that. Her breathing soon turned deep and slow, her arm became dead weight over me, pressing me down into the mattress.

      A creak from the upstairs floorboards said Jenny rolled over in the bed we shared. I was giving her room, I thought, to stretch out her leg and not be bothered in the night. I fidget. I kick out sometimes. If I caught her knee with my heel I’d never forgive myself. Really, it was for the best I sleep down here.

      It was hot as Hell that night and Momma’s sauced-up body heat doubled the sweat on me. But I didn’t move. I must have slept because I remember waking up. Momma’s snores in my ear and the blue dawn light in my eyes. And Jenny. Standing in the bedroom doorway, blazing. The bandage on her leg was red through and a river ran down her shin. Then she was gone and her footsteps, uneven with the limp, trailed off down the stairs. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath of Momma, then, despite myself and all my will, I drifted back to sleep.

      When I woke again Momma was gone. Sound of running water rushed up from the kitchen. I sprang out of bed, sticky and hot, and ran upstairs. No Jenny. Her leg needed attention, I needed to help her before her and Momma got into another fight. Where was she?

      Downstairs, into the kitchen, and there. With Momma. I froze. Momma had filled up a basin and got some clean bandages. Jenny sat up on the kitchen table, wincing through a smile, while Momma redressed the wound.

      ‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ Momma said when she saw me.

      She pinned the fresh bandage to Jenny’s knee then, to my shock and Jenny’s too, dipped her head and kissed it better.

      ‘You’ll have a hell of a scar to show, sweetpea,’ she said, not a hint of slurring or hangover.

      I couldn’t move. Jenny and Momma, getting on, kindness and pet names. It was like I woke up and stumbled right into the Twilight Zone. That one with Barry Morse and the player piano that made people act strange when a roll was playing. I almost listened for the music. Don’t question it, Johnny, you’ll spook them.

      ‘Go on now, both of you,’ Momma said, ‘get ready for school. I’ll drop you both in.’

      Jenny and me looked at each other then to Momma. Surprise must have been clear as glass in our faces because Momma clicked her fingers and said, ‘Go on, get.’

      ‘Thank you, Momma,’ Jenny said and I think she wanted to hug her then but something stopped her. Years of memories maybe, a survival instinct or something like it. Instead she slid off the table and we both got ready for school.

      Momma drove us. Dropped us by the front doors.

      ‘Have a good day, babies,’ she said, hanging out the car window.

      ‘Yes, ma’am,’ we both said, climbing out the truck.

      ‘Be careful of strangers, you hear? After they found the poor girl by the lake, you don’t know who might be a killer in this town.’ Her eyes fell on Jenny. ‘The thought of anything happening to my babies …’ She shook her head, almost welled up, then waved to us and drove away.

      I could count on one thumb the number of times Momma drove us to school. When she was gone, I couldn’t speak. This wasn’t the other side of the coin, this was a whole new coin on the spin.

      ‘What …’ Jenny started.

      ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

      ‘She was …’

      ‘I know. What did you say?’

      Jenny shrugged. ‘She found me in the kitchen trying to change the bandage and, maybe the blood freaked her out, I don’t know.’

      Whatever this new Momma was, we didn’t want to jinx it. We didn’t say anything else about it, just went to class, and carried the tender feeling with us.

       8

      All through school, ignoring the gossip and sharp looks, the question after question, the shouts and stifled giggles at the cuts on my face and arms, two thoughts rolled around in my brain. First, what I’d say to Pastor Jacobs and second, how the hell I was going to solve a murder. Come three o’clock, when I finally got to the church, my head emptied of anything useful. I even thought about asking the pastor how to identify a dead person but quickly shook it away.

      I didn’t like Pastor Jacobs’ office, tacked onto the back of the church like a toenail ripped but hanging on. The tang smell of damp and the uneven floor set my stomach rolling the moment I walked in. Momma told me it was a trailer from Paradise Hill a few miles out of town, that trash land where the junkies and dirty women lived in double-wides. They say the previous owner, one of those fire-and-brimstone congregants, donated his home in his will. The man slipped away in his armchair, Momma said, it was a week before they found him, took them a month of airing and four deep cleans to get the smell out.

      ‘Where was it?’ I asked.

      The pastor, still standing at the door after letting me in, said, ‘Where’s what?’

      ‘The armchair.’

      I scanned the room, looking for some sign of it, four depressions in the carpet from the corners, a stain maybe. Jacobs lowered himself gently into his chair, a big leather thing a kid could get lost in. He rolled up the sleeves of his black shirt, adjusted his stiff white collar. His eyes darted across the map of cuts on my face but he never asked about that.

      ‘Ah, the rumours,’ he said instead, warmth in his words, ‘I’ve heard several so far. A man was murdered for a pack of cigarettes and wasn’t found for a month?’

      Something in me sunk. Had Momma just told me a beer-soaked tale she’d heard at Gum’s?

      ‘Mrs Ponderosa from the Gardening Society said a jealous wife poisoned her husband in this trailer. Left him and ran away with the Clarkesville sheriff who covered up the whole thing. Or maybe the old guy killed himself, I can’t remember. Probably he just died of disease or age, if he died at all. Which did you hear?’

      I felt stung, foolish, still standing in the doorway. ‘Momma said the man died in his armchair.’

      ‘The Paradise Hill church man. That’s a good one,’ he smiled and it was a real smile and that sting of foolishness in me disappeared. ‘Personally, I prefer the one about the man who killed his neighbour over a can of dog food. You hear that one?’

      I shook my head.

      ‘I’ll tell you sometime.’ He gestured to the wooden chair on the other side of his desk. ‘Grab a seat, son.’

      I did and the strangeness of the trailer faded. It was just a room. Just an office, painted and decorated to the best it could be. Despite the damp smell and the heat my chair was comfortable. The pastor pulled off his white collar and dropped it into his desk drawer.

      ‘Don’t

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