Canada: A Novel Part 8

"Go back, then," she said. "I won't bother you." A train whistle sounded in the night. My arms were folded. She gripped my hand.

"I'm going to run away by myself," she whispered, close to my ear. She cleared her throat and swallowed and sucked back her nose. "I'm crazy," she said. "I don't care what I do."

She didn't say anything for a while. I lay beside her, breathing. Then she kissed me, suddenly, hard on my neck, underneath my ear and shoved in closer to me. I didn't mind her kissing me. It made me feel safe. She let go of my hand and moved hers, which was rough and bony. "I wanted to do it tonight with Rudy," she said. "But I'll do it with you."

"All right," I said. I wanted to. I didn't care.

"It won't last that long. We did it already, in his car. You should know about it, anyway."

"I don't know about it at all," I said.

"Then you're perfect. It won't even matter. You'll forget about it."

"All right," I said.

"I promise you," she whispered. "It's not even important."

And that's enough to tell. It doesn't bear repeating. It meant little, what we did, except to us, and only for the time. Later in the night Berner woke and sat up and looked at me and said (because I was awake), "You're not Rudy."

"No," I said. "I'm Dell."

"Well, then," she said. "I just wanted to say good-bye."

"Good-bye," I said. "Where are you going?"

She smiled at me-my sister-then she went to sleep again with my arms around her in case she was cold or scared.

Chapter 35.

It was strange to wake up in the house with our parents not in it. We'd waked up without them there not that long before-when they'd gone away to rob the bank-but this time, Monday, everything was different. They were in jail-we a.s.sumed they were-and we had no idea what would happen to the two of us.

I slept all the way to eight-until my room was steamy from sunlight and I woke up sweaty. The hall fan was going again. Berner wasn't in my bed. The sheets beside me were cold as if she hadn't been there for some time. Through the walls traffic hummed on Central. An airplane took off up the hill at the airport. It occurred to me Berner had left, and I would have to make my way through the day alone.

She was in the kitchen, however, when I got dressed. She had re-cooked the steak from last night and eaten part of it and left a square on a plate for me-which I ate with cold milk. The house still smelled like beer and cigarettes. I thought we should take the garbage out before it got hotter.

Berner had dressed in her Bermuda shorts, which she hardly ever wore and that showed her hairless freckled legs and long feet. She had on tennis shoes and a sailor blouse and had taken a shower. She'd brushed her hair back and held it with a red rubber band. There was no talking about what had happened in the night. She didn't seem unhappy about it, and neither was I. We weren't the same people we had been, and that was good in my view.

"We have to go to see them," Berner said, was.h.i.+ng her plate and mine in the sink, staring out the window at the side yard-the badminton net, the neighbor's house, one pole of the clothesline. "If we don't, they'll get taken someplace, and we'll never see them." With her wet fingers she picked up a newspaper off the counter and dropped it on the table where I sat. "Somebody left us a nice present inside the porch screen."

It was the day's Tribune, folded to display pictures of our parents-two separate ones, side by side-taken in jail. They were each holding a white card that said "Cascade County Jail," with a number underneath it. Our father's black hair was disheveled, though he was smiling. Our mother's mouth was tense and turned down in a way I'd never seen her look. She was wearing her gla.s.ses and her eyes were close together and were opened wide and staring out, as if she was gazing at a terrible scene. The headline read "N.D. Bank Robbers." Whoever left the paper had straight-pinned a handwritten note to the top of the page that said: "Thought you'd like to see this. I'm sure you're very proud."

I was surprised anybody would leave this for us. It made my hands tremble when I saw it. Our parents had robbed the Agricultural National Bank in Creekmore, North Dakota, last Friday morning, the story said. A gun had been involved. The sum of $2,500 was taken. Our parents had fled to Great Falls and been arrested in a rental house on the west side of town. Our father, whose name was put in quotation marks ("Beverly," as was our mother's, "Neeva"), was described as an "Alabama native" who was discharged from the Air Force and had been watched for some time by the Great Falls police on suspicion of committing crimes that involved Indians from the Rocky Boy reservation. Our mother was described as being from "Was.h.i.+ngton State" and as teaching school in Fort Shaw. She had no prior arrests, but an investigation of her citizens.h.i.+p was under way. They were to be extradited to North Dakota in the coming week. No mention was made of any children.

Berner was letting water drain out of the sink. "They're just liars. Like everybody else," she said.

I couldn't remember anything they'd lied about. Then I thought of the gun. It was a terrible surprise to read this in the newspaper-almost as bad as to know about it. "Extradited" was a word I knew from TV. It meant they wouldn't come back. The packet of money was probably what they'd stolen, and we shouldn't keep it.

"If we go to the jail, they'll grab us," Berner said matter-of-factly. She walked to the front window that looked out on the street and the park. Morning light was sharp and bright on the top of a car parked in front of the Lutherans. Fluffy clouds ran along above the trees against the perfect sky. "We still have to go, of course. Even if they are liars."

"Yes," I said. "I want to." I didn't want to get handed over to the juvenile authorities, but there wasn't any choice. We couldn't not go to see them. "What'll we do after we see them?" I wanted Berner to be a.s.sured we'd get away.

"We'll go have lunch at the Rainbow Hotel," she said, "and invite all our friends and have a big party."

Berner never told jokes-something our father said was like our mother. She didn't have a funny bone was what he said. But saying we'd go to the Rainbow Hotel and invite our friends made me think maybe she'd been telling jokes all the time, and no one knew it. Nothing about Berner was simple. She turned at the window, folded her arms and looked at me, staring hard at my forehead the way she did when she wanted me to know I wasn't very smart. Then she smiled. "I don't know what we're going to do," she said. "Whatever children do whose parents are in jail. Wait for something bad to happen."

"I hope nothing does," I said.

"You don't have to go looking for it," Berner said. "It finds you where you're hiding."

It's possible some people are born knowing things. Berner had figured out already that everything that had happened in the last day and night had happened to us-not just to our parents. I should've known that. I was so much younger than she was, even though our ages were the same. Over the years, I would never know the world as well as she did-which is good in many ways. But, in many other ways, it's not at all.

Chapter 36.

The jail was in the rear of the cascade county Courthouse, on Second Avenue North. We'd driven past it two days before with our father. I'd ridden my bicycle by it on the way to the hobby shop. It was a large, three-story stone building with a wide lawn and concrete front steps, a flagpole, and the number 1903 chiseled into the stones above the entrance. Old oak trees shaded the gra.s.s. On the high roof was a statue of a woman holding a scale-which I knew had to do with justice. When you pa.s.sed the courthouse you'd sometimes see sheriff's cars, and deputies escorting people wearing handcuffs into and out of the building.

Berner and I made a complete tour around the block before we went in. We wanted to determine if we could see cell windows from the street, which we couldn't. When we walked into the echoing lobby, right in front of us was a sign that said JAIL IN BAs.e.m.e.nT-NO SMOKING. No one else was in the lobby. We went down a flight of shadowy steps to a metal door that had JAIL painted on it in red. This door we went through, and beyond it was a hall that ended at a lighted office behind a gla.s.s window. A deputy in a uniform sat at a desk behind the window, reading a magazine. Behind him-this was unexpected-you could see right to a barred door beyond which was a concrete corridor where jail cells lined one side. Opposite the cells was a long wall with barred windows at the top that let in pale light that looked cool and pleasant, although it was obviously a bad place to be. Our parents would be in there.

When Berner and I had walked from our house across the Central Avenue Bridge, past the Milwaukee Road depot, into the downtown and over to the jail, the morning had been bright and warm with the same high fluffy western clouds that flattened over the mountains, heading east to the plains. The river had smelled sweet in the heated morning breeze. Once again, people were canoeing on it, the last of the summer. We'd brought two paper sacks with toiletries we'd decided our parents would need in jail. My father's safety razor. A bar of soap. A tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, a tube of Barbasol, the bottle of Wildroot, a comb and a hairbrush. Berner had brought things for our mother.

As we crossed the Missouri there was plenty of Monday morning traffic. Twice I thought a car pa.s.sed that had some boy I knew from school inside it. Berner and I wouldn't have stood out-two kids walking across the bridge, carrying paper sacks. Invisible people. Again, though, if I'd thought someone recognized me and had an idea I was going to the jail to visit my parents who were locked up, it would've been too much for me. I might've jumped in the river and drowned myself.

The deputy behind the gla.s.s was a big smiling man with carefully parted short black hair, who seemed glad to see us. Berner told him-through the speak-hole-who we were and that we thought our parents were locked up in there, and we'd like to visit them. This made the deputy smile even more broadly. He left his desk and came around through a metal door beside his window and into the room where we were-it was just the end of the hall and had plastic chairs bolted to the floor, which was painted brown. It smelled like piney disinfectant, plus something sweet like bubblegum. The jail was a place you smelled more than anything else.

The deputy said he needed to see what was in our "pokes," which was a word my father sometimes used. We showed him our sacks. He laughed and said it was nice of us to bring these articles, but our parents didn't need them and jail rules forbid gifts. He'd keep them and we could take them back home. He was a heavy, moon-faced man who filled out his brown uniform. He had a severe dipping limp that made him have to reach and touch his leg above his knee at every step. Each time he did it his leg made a soft, metal click sound. I a.s.sumed his leg was wood. A wound from the war. I knew about that. He could only be a sheriff if he agreed to be the jailer. I believed we might see Bishop and the other, red-faced policeman who'd arrested our parents, that they'd recognize us and talk to us. But they weren't in sight, which made the experience of being there even stranger.

Once the jailer-who didn't tell us his name-had taken our sacks and made us pull out our pockets and show inside our shoes, he went back in his office and came out with a big metal key. With another smaller key, he unlocked the door he'd come out of and that had CELL BLOCK written on it and led us back through. Beyond the metal door the floor was painted pale yellow and felt much harder and colder through my shoes than our floor at home. My shoe soles seemed to stick to it. This was how anyone locked up inside felt-that jail existed for the opposite reason from why your home existed.

While we were walking to the jail, Berner and I had talked about what we would say to our parents. But once we were inside, and the barred door behind the deputy's desk was unlocked using the big metal key, we didn't talk. Berner cleared her throat several times and licked her lips. She was wis.h.i.+ng, I thought, that she hadn't come.

Beyond the first barred door was a s.p.a.ce just big enough for the three of us to stand in, then another barred door, which made breaking out impossible. Inside, it smelled like the same piney disinfectant but with food odors and maybe urine, like the boys' room in school. The door-opening noise echoed off the concrete. A black hose lay coiled below a faucet on the long wall, and the floor, which wasn't painted there, was damp and s.h.i.+ny.

No one was visible down the row of cells. A man's voice-not my father's-was speaking on a telephone somewhere. Outside the high barred windows across from the cells, a basketball was being dribbled and feet were scuffling. Someone-a man-laughed, and the ball bounced off a metal backboard just like in the park where Rudy and I had played earlier in the summer. Except for the watery green light filtering from outside, the only light came from bulbs high in the concrete ceiling and protected by wire baskets that barely let any light reach the floor. It was like a shadowy cave to be there. I thought it was exhilarating, although the feeling was lessened by our parents being inside.

"Not many guests with us, today," the crippled deputy said as he let us through the second barred door and locked it back. He wasn't wearing a pistol. "They check out early on Monday. They've had enough of our hospitality. We generally see them again, though." He was cheerful. A tiny red transistor radio had been propped up on his desk, and I could hear Elvis Presley singing at a low volume. "We're paying special attention to your mom in here," the deputy said. "Your dad, of course, he's a real pistol." He began leading us down the concrete corridor, which shone in the green light and shadows. The first cells we pa.s.sed were empty and dark. "We don't expect to have your folks in here with us too long," he said, his leg clicking and being hauled along. He was wearing a hearing aid that filled his left ear. "They're off to North Dakota Wednesday or Thursday."

Then unexpectedly we were in front of an occupied cell, and there our father was, seated in the partial dark on a metal cot with a bare mattress that had its white ticking falling out in wads on the concrete. Something made me think he'd cut it open himself.

"You two kids shouldn't be here," our father said loudly, as if he knew we were coming. He stood up off his cot. I couldn't see him very well-his face, especially-though I saw him lick his lips as if they were dry. His eyes were wider open than usual. Berner had kept on walking and hadn't seen him. But when she heard his voice she said, "Oh, I'm sorry," and stopped and she saw him, too.

"I just trusted the government too much. That's my big problem," he said, as if he'd been saying this before to someone else. He didn't move closer to the bars. I didn't know what he meant. His face contained a worried, exhausted expression, and he looked thinner, though it had only been a day since we were all at home. His eyes were reddened and darting around the way they did when he was trying to find someone to please. His voice sounded more southern than it had. "I never gave a thought to killing anyone, if there was ever a consideration about that," he said. "Though I could've." He looked at us, then sat back down on his cot and lightly jammed his fists together between his knees, as if he was exhibiting patience. He was dressed as he'd been when the police came. Jeans and his white s.h.i.+rt. His snakeskin belt had been taken away and so had his boots. He was just in his dirty sock feet. His hair wasn't combed and he hadn't shaved and his skin looked gray-exactly like his picture in the newspaper.

A feeling of calm came over me then. Not what you'd expect. I felt safe with him where he was. I intended to ask him about the money. Where it came from.

"We brought you toilet articles, but they won't let us give them to you," Berner said in an awkward, higher-pitched voice than usual. She had her hands behind her. She didn't want to touch the bars.

"I already have a toilet in here." Our father looked to the side of where he sat, at a lid-less commode, which was foul looking and smelling. He rubbed one wrist, then rubbed his other one and licked his lips again as if he didn't know he was doing it. He rubbed his cheeks with his palms and squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them.

"When are they going to let you out?" I said. I was thinking Berner had said they were liars and could now remember other things. North Dakota. His blue flight suit.

"What is it, son?" He smiled a weak smile up at me.

"When are they going to let you come home?" I said loudly.

"Probably someday," he said. He didn't seem interested in it. He rubbed his hand through his hair the way he'd done Sat.u.r.day in the car. "Don't get all bothered around about this. Aren't you about ready to go to school?"

"Yes, we are," I said. It was if he was under the impression he'd been in jail longer than he had. He'd known before when our school was starting.

"Did you and Berner play chess together?" He hadn't spoken to her yet.

"Where's Mother?" she said abruptly. We'd thought they'd be in the same jail cell. Then she said, "Did you rob a bank?"

"She's somewhere in here." Our father motioned his thumb toward his cell wall, as if our mother was behind it. "She's not speaking to me," he said. "I don't blame her." He shook his head. "I didn't hold up my end very well. I hope this isn't anything that seems ordinary to you two." He didn't answer Berner's question about robbing a bank. I wanted him to, because I remembered him saying, years before, "I could give it a try."

"It doesn't," Berner said.

He smiled at us out of the shadowy light. You'd think if you visited your father in jail you'd have many things to say to him. Berner had planned to ask if they needed anything, and if we should call someone, and who that would be. His family? A lawyer? Our mother's school? Almost all the ways I expected to feel weren't the ways I felt. Jail put a stop to everything-which was what it was intended to do.

"We oughta step on down and see your mother now," the deputy said behind us. His radio was still playing at the end of the row of cells. He saw we didn't have more to say and didn't want to embarra.s.s anyone. Someone had begun talking outside the high barred windows. The basketball bounced once and stopped. "There's that satellite wa-a-a-y, way up there," a man's voice said. "Who said?" someone answered. Then the ball bounced again.

"Jail's not a place for you children to come," our father said again, looking up at us in a way that seemed worried. A vein in his forehead was visible.

"That's right," the deputy put in. "But they love you."

"I know they do. I love them," he said, as if we weren't there.

"Do you want us to call someone?" Berner said.

My father shook his head. "Let's wait on that," he said. "I'm talking to a lawyer. We have to go to North Dakota pretty soon."

Berner didn't say anything and neither did I. I still had his high school ring on my thumb. I put that hand behind me, so we wouldn't talk about it.

"I wish I had some ways to make you children happy now." Our father clasped his hands together and squeezed them. "What good can I do in here?"

"They know that, Bev," the deputy said. I should've asked about the money right then, but I forgot.

A telephone rang, its shrill noise echoed down the row of cells. Berner and I stood there a few more seconds. We didn't know what else we were supposed to say. We were just supposed to come.

The deputy put a hand on my arm and his other one on Berner's and moved us away from where we were standing. He knew how everything worked.

"Good-bye," Berner said.

"All right," my father said. He did not stand up.

"Good-bye," I said.

"All right, Dell. Son," he said. He didn't answer about the bank.

Chapter 37.

Our mother's cell was at the far end of the row of unlit cells and wasn't different from our father's, except a white metal sign had been hung on the bars with a thin metal chain. This sign said SUICIDE, painted in red block letters. On the walk down, the deputy told us there were no special facilities for "the girls." The best the county could offer was some privacy.

Our mother was seated on a cot like the one in our father's cell, but it wasn't torn open with wads falling out. She was beside another woman, talking quietly. Another cot was there. The commode wasn't stained and filthy like my father's.

"Here's your children to visit you, Neeva," the deputy said in an optimistic voice. He urged us forward, then stood back against the wall so we could be almost alone with her. "Go ahead," he said. "She's glad to see you."

"Oh, dear," my mother said and stood up right away. She had her gla.s.ses in her hand. She fitted them on as she came to the bars. She looked small. Her skin was blotched. The tip of her nose was red. She was wearing white tennis shoes without laces and a loose dark-green dress b.u.t.toned up the front with white b.u.t.tons and no belt. She didn't seem to have any b.r.e.a.s.t.s underneath. Behind her gla.s.ses her eyes were wide and peering. She smiled at us, as if we looked strange to her. My eyes naturally went to the SUICIDE sign. It had to do with the other woman, is what I believed. "How did you know to come here?" she said. "I said to wait for Mildred."

"We didn't know where else to go. We just came," Berner said. "We saw Dad. He didn't say much."

Our mother put her hands out through the bars. I hadn't said h.e.l.lo yet, but I held her right one and Berner held her left. She squeezed both our hands. She seemed even more tired than when she'd talked to me in my room the night before last. I noticed she'd taken off her wedding ring, which startled me. The other woman was wearing the same green dress and tennis shoes. She was tall and heavy-set. Even with her sitting down you could see that. She got up off the cot where she'd been sitting and lay down on the other one and turned her face to the wall. She groaned when she got settled.

"We brought you some toilet articles, but they won't let you have them," Berner said. "We thought you'd be together with Dad."

"Okay," our mother said, still holding our hands and looking at us, smiling. She wasn't talking very loud. "I feel very light in here. Isn't that strange?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said. Her voice sounded normal, as if she could've come right out and walked around and talked to us. It was a greater shock seeing her-more than it had been to see our father, who didn't seem out of place in jail. I felt unincluded, though, and not light about things. I wondered where her wedding ring was, but didn't want to ask.

"When are you going to get out?" Berner said authoritatively. She was crying and trying not to cry.

"I must've had a little let-down," our mother said. "My friend and I were just talking about that." She looked around to the big woman with her face turned to the wall and breathing deeply, one foot on top of the other. "I tried to call you two," she said. "I only had one call they'd let me make. You didn't answer. I guess you were out someplace." She blinked at us behind her spectacles. A sweat smell came off of her. It was the smell she always had. The starchy-clean smell of her jail dress was also in the air.

"What's supposed to happen to us now?" Berner said, tears draining onto her cheeks, her mouth pressed closed, her chin quivering. Outside the jail, cars were moving on the street. A car horn sounded. Outside was so close to where we were. I didn't want Berner to be crying. It wasn't helping anything.

"Where are we going?" I said. I was thinking about Miss Remlinger, who was coming to our house to get us.