On the Edge

Every Friday night, the four of us met at Buck’s. We got the booth in the back corner that had the words “Randy is a taint liker” etched deeply into the wooden table. We’d had many debates over the years if Randy liked taints or if the writer had intended to write “licker”. I liked to think that the author was intentionally vague for just this purpose. Pitchers of beer were $2 until 7:00 p.m. and there was a lot of binge drinking before binge drinking had a name. A big popcorn machine sat next to the toilets, and you could fill up a basket as often as you’d like, if you could ignore the slightly off smell of the old oil. It was still possible to smoke in those days, and a waitress came around every so often with an old Folger’s can and an eyeroll at the ashtray overfilled with butts, unpopped kernels, and Mandy’s chewed gum.

We hated Mandy’s gum in the ashtray but we knew it meant that she’d given up on giving up smoking at that point and we could go about puffing without too much guilt. She was the baby of the group and we were usually fiercely protective of her. She had giant, wounded brown eyes and slightly bucked teeth from having sucked her thumb well into adulthood. Her smile was infectious and she could mimic anybody, which made her the favourite class clown all four years of high school. She could keep her dark side at bay long enough to spend eight hours entertaining children at the local day care but we knew how much effort it took for her to get out of bed sometimes.

I was a waitress at a diner about two miles down the highway from Buck’s. Rather than go to university and learn what a lot of other fusspots had to say about the written word, I’d thought that the salt of the earth people of my hometown would be my portal to creative expression. I’d planned to do my 7:00—3:00 shift and then spend the late afternoon transcribing the day’s overheard human dramas into the next great Midwestern novel.  Instead of getting material, I got bunions, and the most I wrote was a variation of “Have a nice day!” on the bottom of their bills.

Trish and Tammy, “TNT” as we called them in high school, worked together on a production line in the factory on the other side of town. They were an inseparable double act and told stories about confrontations between their floor supervisor and the less intelligent members of the crew, which left us gasping for breath. I thought for a long time that one of those nights, they’d put their joined hands on the table and make an announcement but they eventually found men and were each other’s bridesmaids a few years later.

Though we inevitably ended the night singing too loudly with the jukebox, crying over some recent hurt or injustice, and hugging each other tightly, we never went home together. Trish and Tammy used the battered phonebooth outside to call John, who owned a towing service and made a bit of extra money as the town taxi driver. I always stubbornly stumbled the 20 minutes to the center of town to my upstairs apartment with fantastic windows and shitty carpet, where the rooms still smelled of the original owners when they held a growing family and hadn’t been nipped and tucked into four rentals.

Mandy usually ended up on the porch of her ex, who depending on his mood and her state, either put her on his sofa or brought her to his bedroom. We were fiercely protective of her but at 2:00 am were often too hammered to take care of ourselves.

Buck’s was on the street that turned into a highway out of town. Once we exited the bar, we all turned left to get home. Turning right would lead you out to the highway where there was no other town for 23 miles and where there were off shoot gravel roads that lead to shacks, lakes, and sometimes nowhere.

Nowhere is exactly where Mandy was found two days later by a hunter looking for a duck blind. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, the sleeves of her sweater pulled over her hands which were curled tightly to her chest. But under her head was a large pool of blood and next to it, a large stone.

The entire town was in shock and the police were dumbfounded. Mandy’s pants were down around her ankles but there was no evidence of a sexual assault. There were only two possibilities of what happened. One, that she got lost, needed to relieve herself, stumbled and hit her head on the rock. Or two, someone hit her over the head with a rock before or after failing to rape her. One, senseless the other, heartless. Neither made losing her any easier.

After the three of us told the police how we failed to make sure our friend turned left instead of right, we went to Buck’s, as if maybe we could sense the breadcrumb trail that the investigators failed to pick up on. We only managed to get drunk and resentful.

Trish and Tammy stopped going to Buck’s and stopped talking to me altogether. I’d taken to drinking alone at Buck’s and then retracing Mandy’s steps, more than once being brought back to town by a local or the police. When it was the latter, I berated them for determining Mandy’s death was an accident, shouting again and again, “She wouldn’t turn right!! She wouldn’t be so stupid!”

One night, after another fit behind the cage in the cruiser, Tom who was on patrol, screeched the car to a halt. He turned and fixed his eyes on me until I calmed down.

“Have you thought that maybe she was trying to do what you desperately need to do?

“What?”

“Escape.”

 

The Blackberry Jam

When Helen’s shirt became tangled and ripped by the blackberry vines, it wasn’t her mother’s wrath she feared but that of Mrs. M., who despite her flowered shirt and orthopaedic shoes, was more terrifying than bogey monsters, clowns, and snakes combined. The children of the blocks south of Wilbur Street had for years, used a complicated and treacherous path of alleyways to get home from school. There were holes in fences to be climbed through and fallen trees to scale. But the most spinetingling leg of the journey was past the Doberman whose chain allowed him to run across the alley, meaning a short-legged human had to run quickly into Mrs. M’s yard, lest be mauled by the sad and angry creature. Just on the edge of Mrs M’s yard was a garden full of thorny rosebushes and a scratchy web of blackberry vines. The children usually ended up precariously stuck between frothing canine jaws and prickly foliage. While waiting for the animal to get bored and trot back to his spot in the shade next to his owner’s house, they sampled a few berries and looked nervously at the windows of Mrs. M’s house. Eventually, she exploded out the door, wooden spoon in hand, shouting “Bugger off, ye nasty devils!”. The only positive outcome when this happened was that the dog ran away too though not with a purple-smeared face.

The year Helen entered 4^th grade, her mother decided the best way to soften her rebellious and sullen child was to make her join the local Junior Girl Scout troupe. Having read a pamphlet about it from the library, she was sold on the laws of “A Girl Scout obeys rules” and “A Girl Scout is cheerful.” Helen suffered through the meetings in her scratchy uniform, humming through the songs and trying to become invisible. Soon it was cookie-selling season and everyone was in a frenzy to sell the most boxes to win the coveted prize of a Miami Miss BMX bike.

Helen allowed herself to be dragged door to door by her mother, knocking softly and mumbling a “Excuse me, Ma’am would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies,” in a small voice, eyes downcast. Her mother usually mouthed the request again, pointing at the order form and shrugging as if to say, “What can I do with this one?”

When one woman answered the door, Helen turned to flee, smacking right into her mother whose face turned bright red. It was none other than Mrs. M, looming taller and meaner close up. Having never seen the front of her house, Helen didn’t realise where she was. When Mrs. M invited them in, Helen thought she sounded a bit like Mary Poppins and the Wicked Witch mixed together.

As they sat at a table in a sunny room, Helen felt sure they would never be allowed to escape. Something was stabbing in her stomach trying to get out and a lump was forming in her throat.

“These are scones dear, what you probably call a biscuit. Try it with some blackberry jam. I made it myself.” Her mother tore open the lopsided round bread and spread some jam on it and smiled tightly as she gave it to her. Her look told Helen to eat or else. Helen took a bite, forcing the sweet, bready bite down past the lump and found that it was much better than the toast and grape jelly she was used to.

Mrs. M told her mom that her husband had brought the vines all the way from a tiny village south of Birmingham in England, which confused Helen as she thought villages were places like she saw in National Geographic where women didn’t wear any shirts. She wondered if Mrs. M took off her cardigan and flowered blouse when no one was around. When Helen’s mother asked, “What does your husband do?” Mrs. M voice got a bit shaky and she said he died of cancer a few years ago. She looked at Helen for a long time before adding, “I like to think he’s out there watching over the roses and berries for me.”

A few weeks later it was time to make the cookie deliveries. The money had long ago been turned over and the bicycle awarded to Christy Malone, who everyone called “a ray of sunshine” and “a lovely young lady”. Helen’s mom decided to wait in the car, hoping that Helen might be forced to have more confidence when dealing with her customers. Luckily, she wasn’t there to witness the “Here” as she thrust boxes into hands, before turning and running down the porch steps.

At Mrs. M’s house, as Helen turned to escape, the woman told her to “wait right there” and she came back, holding a bag, eyes blazing above a tight smile.

“I made this jar especially for you, Dear. You needn’t share it with anybody. All right?”

Skin burning with adrenaline and heart racing, Helen tried to say, “Ok” but nothing came out. She’d had the same sensation in a nightmare where someone was chasing her and she couldn’t scream. She tried several times to open the car door before scrambling inside. She wouldn’t move, so her mother delivered the rest of the cookies.

The next morning when she came downstairs, a piece of toast was waiting for her.

“I don’t want it!”

“What’s the matter with you? You eat toast every day.”

“What’s the purple stuff?”

“Jam. From Mrs. McGuire. Somehow it ended up in the trash, but we’re not going to waste it.”

“No! It’s poison!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not going anywhere until you eat that toast.”

Several hours later, Helen had a realisation. She’d been a brat and a troublemaker her entire life. She’d tried to control herself but the bad kid always won. Bad kids deserve punishment and this was hers.

Sighing with profound regret and remorse, she lifted the toast to her lips and took a bite.