Armadillos Page 8

  I stepped inside. It was tiny. We’d be able to lie down but that was about it. I took two steps over to the high round window. It was still raining outside.

  ‘Take this.’ She shoved a sleeping bag at me. ‘It was here when I moved in. It might smell.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said, as tears pricked my eyes. ‘Thanks.’

  Freak grinned. She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a tight hug.

  ‘Come and meet the others,’ she said, and vanished again.

  I wiped my eyes and followed the sound of her footsteps back down to a large rectangular room where a small group of people sat around a marble fireplace. Conversation stopped when they saw us. Beast Woman scowled and I turned to go, but Freak grabbed me and pulled me in.

  ‘Everyone, this is Aggie.’

  I almost forgot to breathe. I’d never met so many people at once.

  ‘Hey, Aggie.’ A black woman with a crazy frizz of hair smiled at me, revealing a gap where her front teeth should have been. ‘I’m Tawanna. Sit yourself down, honey, and tell us all about yourself.’

  ‘Or don’t,’ a guy with a guitar said. ‘Tawanna thinks she’s a talk show host.’

  Tawanna frowned. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. You don’t have to tell us nothing if you don’t want to. But you been living on the street, huh?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Come sit here.’

  I sat down beside her and she shuffled herself closer to me. She gave me another gummy smile and opened her mouth to speak when the guy with the guitar cut across her.

  ‘Leave her alone, Tawanna.’

  ‘Jeez, Monty. You wanna try being friendly. It won’t kill you.’

  ‘I’m friendly enough.’ He shrugged. ‘But you’re too friendly.’

  She laughed. ‘What can I say? I got love inside. Where you from anyway, Aggie? Stay calm, I’m just teasing,’ she said, before Monty could say anything.

  She leaned over and bumped her shoulder into mine. It was alright.

  Freak had taken up residence beside Ade, who sat on a beat-up sofa with his nose in a book. On the other side of him, Beast Woman swigged from a bottle of Bud, and stared at Freak hard enough to bust her eyeballs.

  Tawanna rocked and hummed gently beside me like she was trying to soothe all her questions to sleep. I concentrated on the fire, trying to ignore the fact that everyone was looking at me, trying to size me up. Monty continued to pick out a tune on his guitar. A long white arm extended itself. I looked beyond it to find its owner, a woman, tall, slim, white. She was older than the others but I couldn’t pin an age on her.

  ‘Virginia,’ she smiled, and all the lines in her face stretched and deepened. ‘Aggie, is it?’

  I shook her hand and nodded. She folded herself onto the floor beside me, tucking her orange tie-dye skirt behind her.

  ‘That stuff’ll kill you,’ she said, as Tawanna lit up a cigarette.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, so you say.’

  ‘You a smoker, Aggie?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Thank God for that.’ She leaned in and smiled. ‘I need a little back up here. Look at all these cancer dodgers.’

  Freak, Ade and Beast Woman were all rolling cigarettes.

  ‘And that there is Brandon.’ She nodded at a thick-set guy with brown curls. ‘He’s a smoker, too. You won’t get conversation out of him.’

  Brandon nodded at me without smiling.

  ‘I don’t mind smoke. Everyone at home’s a smoker.’

  ‘Oh, really? Where’s home then?’ Tawanna asked, shuffling closer.

  Monty laughed. ‘Down, girl! Let her settle in before starting with the questions.’

  ‘Oh, it aint my fault, honey. I’m just excited to meet someone new. Been hanging around this bunch of jokers too long. Hey, Lloyd, come on over and meet our new girl.’

  I looked over my shoulder. Two new guys had arrived. Lloyd was black and turned out to be married to Tawanna, and the other, Ricardo, was Mexican.

  ‘You legal?’ The words were out my mouth before I’d even thought of them. Ricardo’s brown face turned purple. Tawanna tipped her head back and laughed.

  ‘And you think I’m bad?’ she said to Monty.

  From the sofa, Ade was frowning at me.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, horrified. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  In my head it was Pop’s voice that said it.

  ‘I don’t give a shit. Honest,’ I continued.

  Ricardo mumbled something and left the room. Tawanna was still laughing, but I caught a glance fly between Monty and Virginia, and Ade still looked unhappy. If I was going to be spending any time with these folks, I’d better sharpen up my people skills.

  You heard talk about the Mexicans all the time. We were lucky we lived in the north and not the south. Pop had been to El Paso one time and said they had more Mexicans than roaches in that town.

  Back home, the only Mexican I ever met was a guy called Eduardo. Cy got tight with him for a while, more than likely trying to annoy Pop. Eduardo barely spoke a word of American, but somehow he’d got himself a job on a nearby hunting ranch. I didn’t see the sense in being friends with someone you couldn’t talk to, but Jojo said sometimes that was the best type of friend. Pop was so mean towards Eduardo, it got so he wouldn’t set foot on the farm. He’d wait for Cy at the bottom of the track and if Pop was in a good mood, he’d yell from the porch, Come on up and I’ll show you my gun. No need to be scared, you fence-hopping border bandit!

  No need to be scared at all.

  One time, after they’d been out together, Cy came back full of excitement. Eduardo’s boss had gone on vacation with his family, leaving Eduardo in charge, and Cy, being the good friend he was, had left Eduardo drunk in town, having swiped the keys to the ranch.

  Cy wanted it to be a boy thing, just the two brothers and Pop, but Pop said us girls had to go along. Of course, the farm couldn’t be left empty so Ash had to stay behind. Just another random way of Pop making himself feel big. Ash accepted it without a word, but me and Jojo didn’t want to go, and Cy was mad. But Pop had laid down the law and it must be obeyed. Me and Jojo bundled up together beneath a blanket in the back, Cy sat in pissed-off silence in the passenger seat, while Pop ranted about something or other the whole way there.

  Eventually we arrived at a big metal gate and Cy jumped out to open it before we’d even stopped moving. It was pathetic how desperate he was to impress Pop.

  This is one of the biggest in the state, Pop. We got deer, hog, birds and bobcats to choose from.

  Pop grunted in response and switched on the truck’s work lamp. A wide pool of light spilled in front of us, illuminating rows of trees standing guard on either side of a wide track. We trundled through the gates and Cy stayed behind to lock them. He ran to catch us up but Pop took off, going through a stop-start routine of swerving the truck into Cy, and laughing at his panicked attempts to climb back in. Me and Jojo held on tight in the back until eventually he picked a good spot, flicked the light off, and ignored Cy when he finally managed to climb back in. We stared into the blackness and I thought of all the wild animals, all fenced in, all ready to be taken down.

  They got any hog candy laid out, boy? Pop asked, after a while.

  Naw, Pop. He said the traps are clean.

  Pop snorted.

  This better not be a waste of my time, boy.

  It felt like hours passed before there was a flurry in the undergrowth and we heard a whisper of what sounded like birds taking flight. Cy switched on his headlamp, and he and Pop leaned forward and peered real hard out the window.

  There! Cy whispered. There by the bush.

  Me and Jojo craned our necks to see what he was looking at. Just a few feet away, a dozen or so hog had gathered around an old trap, burrowing the ground for traces of old bait. Pop’s door clicked open and his seat creaked as he shifted himself out. He bid us follow him but before me and Jojo had untangled ourselves from the blanket, a shot blasted the nig
ht and the air came full of terror and the rush of tiny hooves scattering.

  Cy whooped and hollered, his headlamp casting crazy strobe shadows in the undergrowth, as Pop closed in on the injured animal.

  Oh yes, Pop! You drilled him! Cy yelled.

  Hush, now. It aint finished yet.

  He went that way, Cy said. He was tracking blood on the ground. All four of us set off after it. Me and Jojo kept back but a strange kind of fascination took over, and I was eager to see what they had. Fifteen minutes later we found it. A male hog. A shame, Pop said, because the females were tastier. I shivered. The hog stared right at me with eyes too intelligent for the present company. In my head, I said sorry.

  Cy lifted his shotgun for the final shot but Pop put his hand up and pushed the gun down.

  Don’t waste the bullet, he said.

  Cy dropped the rifle straight away but it was clear he was pissed. Come on, he whined. Are you the only one allowed to shoot a gun around here?

  Pop pulled a knife out of his pocket and flipped it open. We do it this way, he said, and offered the knife to Cy.

  Cy looked at it and shook his head. Keep it. I got this. And from his rucksack he pulled out the scariest-looking knife I’d ever seen. Looked to be about seven inches long with a gut hook on the end of a drop-point blade.

  Suit yourself, said Pop.

  They approached the animal, which had taken shelter beneath a mesquite tree. It pushed up against the trunk, trying to hide but there was nowhere to go when the knives began to fall.

  Strike after strike after strike the animal squealed, but not loud enough to disguise the sound of steel stabbing through flesh. Cy’s knife looked a lot more effective than it was, or maybe it was the way he used it, back and forth, arm up, arm down, puncturing the skin over and over but never killing it.

  Jojo grabbed me by the arm, pulled me back. She picked up the rifle, walked right up to the beast and shot it between the eyes. After the blast, the new silence was louder than anything else we’d heard that night.

  What the fuck you do that for? Cy burst out. I was doing it! Blood spattered the front of his clothes, little flecks all over his face; he was nearly crying like a child.

  Jojo stared at the hog like she didn’t know where it had come from or why she might be in a dried-up creek past midnight with a rifle in her hand. Pop took three steps over and took the gun from her. I was frozen to the spot waiting for him to blow up, but instead he grinned like a jackpot winner. He nodded at Cy, who seemed to wither and shrink before him.

  Now that, Pop said, eyes gleaming. That’s how you kill a pig.

  I’d spent two nights in the attic room with Freak, and a bucket to catch drips, when the rain finally stopped. It occurred to me that I should be on my way, but Freak frowned and shook her head when I mentioned it.

  ‘Not unless you want to?’ she asked.

  We were hanging out in the backyard, surrounded by trash, which Freak was arranging into piles.

  ‘What you doing anyway?’ I said, avoiding her question.

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘Ade makes us do this. He thinks if we send the trash out wrong, the authorities will use it as an excuse to get a warrant.’

  ‘Huh?’

  She suddenly got super focused on a bag of empty cans.

  ‘Nice job, Freak,’ called Monty, walking out from the house with Ade, who looked less than impressed. Ade upturned a box of empty cans, scattering them at our feet.

  ‘How many times have I told you? You’ve got to CRUSH them.’ His hair swung along with his arms as he stamped down.

  Monty reached out and placed a hand on Ade’s arm.

  ‘It’s cool, bro. I’ll take care of it.’

  Ade looked up from between the greasy curtains of his hair. I thought of the time Ash sleepwalked into my room. I hadn’t known not to wake him up. Ade had the same look of fear.

  Monty nodded and smiled, gently. ‘I’ll take care of it,’ he said again.

  Ade frowned, and at last, nodded. ‘Reuse everything. The less we throw out the less we need to bring in.’

  ‘Sure, Ade. Sure.’

  ‘The less we bring in the harder it is for Them.’

  ‘Sure, Ade. I understand. Come on.’

  Monty slipped his arm around Ade’s shoulder and walked him back to the house, while I helped Freak pick up the cans and plastic bottles.

  ‘Ade can be a little intense from time to time,’ Monty said to me, when he came back.

  ‘Aint that the truth,’ replied Freak. ‘He needs to chill the fuck out.’

  ‘What’s his problem?’ I asked. I’d seen a lot of crazy in my time on the road, but this was a whole new level.

  Monty took the box from Freak and began flattening the trash beneath feet so big they could have been made especially for it.

  ‘Ade’s okay,’ he said. ‘He just gets a little anxious about the times we live in, that’s all. We all got a common enemy, you see.’

  ‘Shit. Who?’ I asked, and they laughed at me.

  ‘He means the government. He aint being serious though, are you, Monty?’ Freak threw another can over, which he caught with one hand. His hands were big, too.

  ‘That’s why we aint allowed cells or computers,’ Freak continued. ‘Cameras, bugs. That sort of thing. Nobody listens to him.’

  ‘Not us, not the CIA, not nobody. Easiest thing is not to get into it with him,’ said Monty, and passed me a can which I stamped down on.

  I’d heard of the government being our enemy before. Pop hated those bastards. Went on about it a lot. He was no fan of technology either, and I wondered if he’d like it here, but as Monty wiggled a finger through the quarter-sized hole stretched into his earlobe, and Freak squealed, and I giggled, I reckoned he probably wouldn’t feel quite as at home as I was beginning to.

  10

  When I was a child, I had a lot of bad dreams. When I woke up, Jojo was always there. I’d sit up and cry in her arms and she’d hush me by kissing my cheeks and stroking my hair. She’d ask me what was wrong but I could never find it in me to tell her. I didn’t want it out in the real world. And what to say anyway? Truth was my dreams were nothing. No monsters, no big bogeyman. Just dark.

  And fear.

  Fear of what, I didn’t know, but it sank inside and made like it would never leave. This was way before any of that shit started on me but I know now it was happening. Had always happened in that sub little family of mine.

  I woke up so many times crying, eventually Jojo put a lock on my door. Told me only I could open and close it. It meant she couldn’t sneak in at night the way she used to. Meant we couldn’t cuddle anymore. One night after I bolted it, my dreams changed. It wasn’t me in the dark, it was Jojo. And I’d locked her in there myself. I never used the bolt after that.

  Freak was sitting on top of me, squeezing my breath out and shaking me like I was pancake mix. I struggled and she rolled off but kept her face right close.

  ‘You okay?’

  I sat up, nodded, tried to get my bearings.

  ‘You were crying.’

  I looked around, took in the bare walls, the wooden floorboards. It was our room. Just our room.

  From the darkness in the hallway, an unwelcome voice sniggered.

  ‘Freak’s got a freak for a friend. Figures.’

  ‘Fuck off, Marjorie,’ Freak said, and Beast Woman cackled her way down the stairs.

  ‘Did you unlock the door?’ I asked.

  Freak shook her head. ‘Naw, it was like that. What were you dreaming, Aggie? Tell me. I love scary stories.’

  I got up and shut the door, sure I’d locked it earlier. I slid the bolt in place and rattled it to make sure.

  ‘Nothing. Didn’t dream nothing.’

  Freak snuggled back down.

  ‘Must have been good, whatever it was. Crying like that? You sounded like a little kitty cat.’

  I slipped back inside the stinky old sleeping bag Freak had dug out for me. She was
asleep in seconds. It was a talent she had.

  The moon wormed its way through the clouds and shone bright outside the window, bleaching out her crazy pink hair. She looked softer when she was sleeping.

  I lay on my back and counted the cracks in the ceiling. There were more than ought to be for such a new house. When that was done, I rolled over and counted the webs in the window. A dried out fly dangled and spun. Guess some spider forgot about him. Such a sad thing to die for nothing.

  Freak taught me a lot about the city. We didn’t much like being criminals, but once you realize that some people are so stock-stupid they’re just asking to be robbed, and especially when your belly’s rumbling, it’s not always easy to be a good girl. Freak taught me there’s satisfaction in teaching people the error of their ways. Everybody knows you don’t put your wallet in your back pocket but still they do it. And you shouldn’t leave your bag sat there, wide open. After a while, it got too easy and we started doing stuff just for fun. We’d go into Starbucks or some such place and mosey around the counter, waiting for someone’s coffee to be made. When it landed on the counter, and if the waitress was too busy to be paying attention, we’d take that double-shot, skinny, piece-of-shit drink with sprinkles for ourselves. If they objected, one of us would politely inform them they must be mistaken as we’d been in the queue in front of them. We always backed each other up. They just accepted what we said. I have no idea how long most of them stood waiting for some coffee that was never going to come. Sometimes we drank the coffee, but sometimes we just put it straight in the trash. A person has to find their amusement somehow.

  ‘You’re getting good at this shit,’ she said, one day.

  I’d never considered myself bad at it, but I took the compliment anyway.

  ‘Reckon you’re maybe ready for something bigger. We get you shopping in the department stores, I can set you up with someone to sell it to. If you wanna make some money. Regular money, that is. You can’t always depend on a fool leaving their purse open just because you’re hungry.’

  I turned the idea over and over. Stealing from a store wasn’t like taking a man’s wallet. No amount of pretty tears would stop them calling the cops if they caught you.