Flowering Judas(37)

There was a tear in the white plastic shade that covered the bedroom window. Light came streaming through it and hit Althy in the eyes. She rolled over a little. There were clothes in the bed with her: a pair of Mike’s pants; a sock that smelled odd and not just dirty; a bra. She pushed them aside and sat up a little. Her cigarettes were next to the lamp that was next to the mattress. The lamp was on a popcorn can they’d had popcorn in one Christmas, Althy couldn’t remember when. Christmases tended to come and go. The only good thing about them was that she could almost always get work, and if she did, she knew she wouldn’t get fired until Christmas Eve.

She felt around the base of the lamp and found her Bic lighter. Mike had boosted a dozen of the things from a 7-Eleven just a couple of weeks ago, and come out with a six-pack of Molson’s Ale and forty Slim Jims in the process. Mike was really good at boosting things, and he never got caught. He always looked around until he found a store that was empty and only being looked after by some kid who was on his own. The kids never paid attention to the security cameras.

“Someday I’m just going to go into one of these places and take the money,” he kept saying, but Althy knew this wasn’t true. Mike had already done one two-year jail sentence. He wasn’t the kind of person to go looking for more.

Althy got the cigarette lit. It was some local bargain brand, and the tobacco was harsh against the inside of her throat. Here was something else she considered completely unfair. Cigarettes used to cost about a dollar, and then they jacked the prices up and now they cost almost ten for a single pack. That was crazy. She had to find somebody going to North Carolina, or buy what she could black market on the street, or give up having a sandwich for lunch just to get something to smoke that they wouldn’t put her in jail for smoking.

Of course, sometimes she smoked the stuff they did put you in jail for smoking, but she didn’t give a rat’s ass about that. She’d stopped it for a while when those people from Children and Family Services—OCFS—were coming around, but they hadn’t been around for years now, and they wouldn’t be back. Haydee was over eighteen.

At the thought of Haydee, Althy thought she ought to get up. She did get up, stepping on even more clothes on the floor, a couple of T-shirts, a couple of pairs of boxer shorts. Mike wore boxer shorts when he wore anything at all. He said the other stuff cramped his balls and made him impotent.

Althy went down the hall into the living room. It was bright daylight out. Haydee would not be home. She would either be at school or working. Althy thought about the night before and then let it go. It wasn’t fair, Haydee living here like this and not contributing anything to the household. That’s all that was about. That’s all any of this was about. Haydee ought to grow up and act like a person one of these days.

The light hurt her eyes. She tried the television set, but there was nothing on it but a blue screen. In the old days, the cable company used to have to come out and shut your cable off at the street. Now everything was “digital,” whatever that was, and they could turn you off with a computer somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.

Althy went to the door and opened it a little. There were a bunch of women out there, standing around and smoking. There was fat old Krystal Holder with her hair in a net. What did the stupid cow need with her hair in a net? There was hardly any of it left, anyway. She’d dyed it so many times it was just falling out of her head.

Althy went out and down the two steps to the dirt, leaving the door swinging open behind her. It wasn’t as if she was going anywhere. It wasn’t as if she had anything to steal. They’d finished all the beer last night, and this was her last pack of cigarettes.

The women were all looking at the other trailer, the empty one that Charlene Morton paid for in case her darling son came home. That was a crock. The darling son had done a nice little disappearing act, and that after twelve years of making them all think he was dead at the bottom of a ditch. Althy should have known. People don’t end up dead at the bottom of ditches unless they deserved to be.

Of course, Chester Morton was dead now. There was that.

Althy went out to the women. They were all smoking, too, and she was willing to bet they were smoking the same kind of bargain brand she was. There was a time when people like them could afford to have Marlboros and Winstons. That was before the prissy-cunts got into the business of telling everybody else how to live.

Krystal Holder was waving her cigarette in the air. The few hairs she had left on her head were bright red.

“I’m just telling you,” she was saying. “It’s been all over the news for days, and I’ve got Dwayne out there at the police department—”