What Comes After Read online

  “The first time my mom brought me to this mall was when she bought my confirmation dress,” said one of the girls.

  “You’re a Catholic?” said the other girl.

  “Yeah. A lapsed Catholic,” said the first girl.

  “What does that mean?” Opie asked.

  The other boy said, “It means she lost her virginity in like the fourth grade.”

  “Shut up,” Other Girl said. “It just means she doesn’t go to Mass anymore.”

  The guy who wasn’t Opie asked Lapsed Catholic if she’d ever been molested by a priest, and she told him to shut up, too.

  Opie said, “Hey, you know Mr. DiDio, the guidance counselor? I heard he used to be a priest.”

  Littleberry gave a last lick to the cigar paper to seal up the blunt. “Nah,” he said. “Mr. DiDio, he’s not Catholic. He’s, like, a Buddhist. I bet he’d smoke this blunt with us if we asked him to. I mean, if nobody would find out and all.”

  From what I remembered of my one brief meeting with Mr. DiDio, my first day of school, I had to agree.

  Littleberry struck a match and handed me the joint. I took a small hit, but it made me cough so hard that I nearly fell off the berm.

  “You OK, Iris?” Littleberry asked, his hand hovering over my back, ready to give it a helpful slap.

  I nodded vigorously even though I kept coughing. I finally managed to pass the joint on to Opie. Opie took his hit, then passed it on to Lapsed Catholic, who gave it to Not-Opie, who handed it to Other Girl. Each one took a hit. It went around three times, and then Littleberry swallowed what was left.

  “Littleberry ate the roach,” Lapsed Catholic said.

  Somebody laughed, but it wasn’t me, even though I thought it was kind of funny. I guessed I might have been high. I couldn’t be sure, though, since I’d never been high before. Some minutes must have passed without my being aware of it, because the next thing I knew, I had my shoes off and was clapping them together for no particular reason except that I liked the sound.

  I’m not sure how softball came up in the conversation, but it did. I said I loved softball. Somebody said we should play. Littleberry and Other Girl and Not-Opie left. They said they were going to Dick’s Sporting Goods to get equipment. They vanished somewhere into the black parking lot. Opie and Lapsed Catholic and I lay on our backs and looked up through the pine branches to the smoky sky. Three jets went past in precision formation, leaving vapor trails that looked like scars, but then dissipated slowly, imperceptibly. Stars managed to break through the clouds.

  I asked them why Littleberry knew so much about head wounds.

  “Oh, yeah,” Opie said. “You mean that thing he wrote for his class, that thing about his dad? He showed me that. That was sick.”

  I kept studying the vapor trails. “That was about his dad?” I asked, surprised. “It didn’t ever mention his dad. Just how to treat the wound. The bandages and gauze and shaving around it” — I gestured at the sky — “and the discharge and infection, and antibiotics and saline solution.”

  “Had to be his dad,” Opie said. “His dad was in one of those wars, like Afghanistan, and a bomb blew a hole in his head. A chunk of his skull came off or something. I heard his brain leaked out. Some of his brain.”

  “Ew,” Lapsed Catholic said. “That’s not even true. He’s got all his brain. There’s just the wound, and some kind of trauma. He has to go to the VA hospital at Camp LeJeune a couple of times a week. They’re having a hard time getting it to heal up. He can walk and everything. They just have to keep changing his dressing where it won’t heal.”

  “Well, that’s kind of like his brain leaked out,” Opie said.

  “Maybe,” said Lapsed Catholic.

  I wasn’t sure how the two of them went from that conversation to making out, but they did. I got lost for a few minutes, feeling bad for Littleberry and his dad, and wondering what happened to the vapor trails I’d been watching earlier.

  Lapsed Catholic and Opie stopped making out as abruptly as they’d started.

  “Hey,” Opie said — to both of us, “check this out,” and then he rolled down the berm. He landed hard on the pavement at the bottom. I heard the splat.

  “Oh, man,” he moaned. “My elbow.”

  Lapsed Catholic and I burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing we’d ever seen. Soon we heard Opie laughing, too, from down there on the ground.

  We were still laughing when Littleberry and the others came back, which could have been a minute later or an hour. Not-Opie pulled something out of his long coat. It was an aluminum softball bat. He held it high over his head as if it was a sword. Excalibur or something. I slid down the berm and asked if I could see it. I felt so good holding it that I nearly started giggling. I choked up on the handle a little and took a couple of loose swings. I hadn’t had my hands around a bat since July, when I quit the select team in Maine. I positioned my feet, laid the bat on my shoulder, choked up on the bat again, and swung a few more times. The bat weight was good for my size, though I generally preferred something shorter.

  “We got these, too,” Littleberry said. He held up some balls. The others did, too. Regulation softballs — some white, a couple orange — and baseballs, and even a few rubber T-balls.

  “Where’d you get all this?” I asked.

  Littleberry laughed. “Borrowed it.”

  I didn’t know what to think. My dad would have been disappointed in me for having anything to do with stealing. Then again, he would have been disappointed in me for smoking the blunt, too.

  “Pitch one to me,” I said.

  “Which one?” Littleberry asked.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “OK.” He lobbed one of the orange softballs at me, underhand. I cocked the bat, rotated my hips around, let shoulders and arms and bat follow through, and crushed it — deep over the berm and through the pines.

  Somebody whistled.

  “Another one,” I said. “A fast pitch this time. And step back more. I don’t want to kill anyone.”

  A white softball came at me, faster, but still with some arc. I cracked it straight back at whoever pitched it — Opie, maybe — and it hit him hard in the thigh. He yelped in pain, which made us all laugh.

  Littleberry pitched the next one, a baseball, overhand, and I fouled that one off. He threw another baseball, harder, and I blasted that one into the trees just like the first softball. In Maine I’d been a singles hitter, a spray hitter. A contact batter. I didn’t have much power, but I always put the ball in play. Coach had me second in the lineup, so I bunted a lot, to move our leadoff hitter over. I worked hard on my sprinting; I killed myself getting out of the box and down to first. I beat out a lot of throws, too, even when they played the infield in.

  Tonight, though, I was a power hitter. They kept firing balls at me, all of them overhand now, each guy trying to throw harder than the others. None of them had strong arms, though, and I murdered every pitch — I was just crushing them — except one so far over my head I would’ve needed a ladder. After five minutes, maybe not even that long, they ran out of stuff to throw, and everybody just stood there.

  I leaned on my bat and smiled. It was the most fun I’d had in months. Since Maine. Since before Dad died.

  I raised my hand to wipe the sweat from my brow and realized I was crying, too, even though I had a big grin on my face. It was a surreal moment.

  “Wow, man,” Littleberry said, finally breaking the silence.

  We all continued to stand there in the middle of the per fect night.

  This time Opie spoke up. “Y’all want to fire up another blunt?”

  We didn’t get the chance, though. Lapsed Catholic yelped, and we all turned to see the blipping blue light of a security van lumbering toward us across the now-empty lot.

  Littleberry yelled, “Haul ass, everybody!” I dropped the bat and immediately wished I’d kept it, but didn’t have time to go back for it as we all scrambled over the berm and ran off into the
night.

  Littleberry had his motor scooter parked on the other side of the mall. Everybody else scattered in different directions, but he said he’d give me a ride out to Aunt Sue’s, so we snuck back around to his Vespa and hopped on. The trip had taken fifteen minutes in Tiny’s truck, but the scooter was old and slow and had a top speed of thirty-five, so going home took half an hour. I leaned to the side to see the road in front of us and was surprised by all the wildlife that was out: a turtle and a raccoon, even a fox in the high grass on the side. I knew it was supposed to be cold, but I didn’t really feel anything. It was a nice change.

  Finally we turned onto the long driveway down to Aunt Sue’s. It occurred to me that Littleberry might want to kiss, or make out, or whatever, and that that’s probably why he offered to drive all the way out here. I thought about how I hadn’t kissed a boy in a long time, and I leaned a little closer against Littleberry on the scooter.

  Halfway down the driveway, I heard a loud grinding coming from the direction of the farm — tires spinning through deep gravel. I saw headlights, then a car suddenly careened around a blind corner and was heading straight at us — a big silver Lincoln Town Car. Littleberry swerved off the driveway as the Town Car roared past, and we nearly fell over. Immediately after that, we heard the pop-pop-pop of a rifle and saw bullets kicking up rocks in the drive where we’d just been. Somebody was shooting at the car, which had now vanished behind us into the night.

  Ahead of us, outlined in Littleberry’s headlight, Aunt Sue had come around the blind corner. She had on a T-shirt and boxer shorts, but no shoes. Her hair hung wild around her face and she was panting. She held a rifle, now just in one hand. She was cursing, but it was as if she was running out of gas. Her voice got gradually lower, until finally she stopped altogether. She lowered the rifle and looked dazed. I wondered if she even realized we were there.

  I waited a minute. Littleberry and I both held our breath. She didn’t move.

  “Aunt Sue?” I said tentatively.

  She turned her head and looked at us dully. Littleberry reached back and blocked me with his arm. “Stay behind me,” he whispered.

  “Why?” I whispered back.

  “For protection,” he said.

  “Oh, please,” I said, pushing his arm away and climbing off the Vespa.

  “Aunt Sue?” I said again. She still hadn’t moved. Finally she shook her head, looked down at the rifle, turned, and walked back up the driveway to the house.

  Littleberry was shivering. “Now what?” he whispered. “You’re not going home, are you?”

  I thought about the look on Aunt Sue’s face, just before she wandered off: drunk, and sorrowful.

  “She wasn’t shooting at us,” I said, sounding braver than I felt. “It was just her company.”

  I started walking toward the house. Littleberry puttered beside me on his scooter.

  “You don’t have to come,” I said, hoping he would. “I don’t need protection.”

  “Yeah,” Littleberry said. “Only my dad always told me to be polite and walk a girl to the door. And make sure she gets inside OK.”

  “What if her aunt has a gun and is shooting at cars?” I said.

  Littleberry laughed. “He left that part out.”

  He was still shivering.

  “Are you cold?” I asked.

  “Nah,” he said. “Just scared.” That made me smile. I’d never heard a boy admit to being scared.

  “You think she’s scary now,” I said. “You should see her when she’s not drunk.”

  “Book Allen’s mom, right?” Littleberry said.

  “Does that explain anything?”

  “Well, you don’t mess with Book,” he said. “Not even when we were little. I can tell you that.”

  The Vespa coughed out when we got to the back porch.

  Gnarly was on his chain and hiding under the Tundra. He came out when he saw me, and I hugged him and petted him. He seemed nervous, maybe frightened by the gunshots, and whatever else had happened here tonight with Aunt Sue and her company.

  “You want me to come in with you?” Littleberry asked, probably hoping I’d say no.

  I’d been pretending to be braver than I actually felt, but I couldn’t keep it up at the thought of Littleberry leaving now, before I went inside. “Yes,” I said. “Thanks.”

  We tiptoed up the back steps, eased the door open, and waited.

  We heard snoring coming from the living room.

  “Is that your aunt?” Littleberry whispered. I nodded. We slipped inside, crossed the kitchen, then peeked into the living room. Aunt Sue lay half on and half off the couch, the rifle beside her on the floor. I stepped past a broken lamp, also on the floor, and a neat line of a dozen beer cans on the coffee table.

  “You want me to put a blanket on her or something?” Littleberry asked. I shook my head, though I did pick up her legs and shove them onto the sofa. I unloaded the gun and put it in a closet. Dad had kept a rifle at our house — also a .22, which he only brought out to put down injured animals in the wild — and made sure I knew how to use it and take care of it.

  Book wasn’t home yet, and I wondered if he might be looking for me back at the mall. Probably not. He and Tiny were probably out at another field party and too drunk to remember to go get me from the mall.

  I walked Littleberry back outside. I couldn’t imagine he’d try to kiss me now, after everything that had happened. He probably just wanted to take off as quickly as he could, and who could blame him?

  But Littleberry stopped at the bottom of the steps and grinned. “Kind of a fun date, huh?”

  “Were we on a date?” I asked, surprised.

  He shrugged. “A secret date.”

  “You mean like nobody knows about it?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just us.”

  Gnarly poked his head out from under Aunt Sue’s truck to see what was going on. The goats maaed softly from the barn.

  Littleberry heard it, too.

  “And them,” he added.

  Dear Dad,

  I met a boy.

  I hadn’t written Dad a letter in a while, so I thought I’d have a lot to say. But once I got that part out, I wasn’t sure what else to write. I didn’t want to tell him about Aunt Sue hitting me, or about her stealing my money. I might have told him about taking batting practice at the mall, but I didn’t want to mention getting high, or Littleberry and his friends “borrowing” the bat and balls from Dick’s. I was glad I had something good to tell Dad for once, and I hoped I’d have more soon. But I figured he didn’t need to know everything.

  I had just walked up to the house the next morning after milking the goats when I heard Aunt Sue’s muffled voice on the other side of the kitchen door.

  “I want to go ahead and butcher up them kids this morning,” she said. “Get the rifle when you’re finished breakfast. Be sure you shoot them in their brain.”

  “No!” I shouted, slamming open the door, my heart pounding wildly. I threw the bucket on the counter, and milk sloshed over the side. “You can’t!”

  Book looked up. He had a mouthful of his usual cereal. Aunt Sue was packing coolers for the farmers’ market.

  “Keep your mouth shut and finish your chores,” she said. “You don’t get a say in the matter.”

  “But — but you said you’d wait a month,” I stammered. I’d thought I had another week to work out a way to save them. “You said you wanted to fatten them up. They’re still so little.”

  Aunt Sue just looked over at the spilled goat milk on the counter, dripping onto the floor. Then she looked back at me dismissively. “Clean up this mess.”

  But I had to save the kids. That’s all I could think about. I had to hide them somewhere before Book came out with the gun.

  “I have to get the eggs,” I said, backing away. “I’ll do it when I get back.”

  “Like hell you will,” Aunt Sue said. “You’ll do it right now, like I said.”

  I did
n’t respond. I just stared at her, continuing to back out of the kitchen and then out the back door, letting it slam shut behind me as I ran down the steps and sprinted over to the barn.

  I didn’t have long. Book would have to find bullets for the gun, plus he and Aunt Sue both had hangovers, so they were moving slowly, but I still didn’t have much of a head start. My plan, such as it was, had been to see if Aunt Sue would let me get a job after school so I could buy the kids from her. Then I would ask the Gonzaleses or someone else at the farmers’ market to take them in.

  But there wasn’t time for that now. I could tell by the stony resolve in Aunt Sue’s voice that she just wanted the kids dead. She probably didn’t even care about the meat. So for now I had to get them away from the farm before Book found those bullets. I’d figure out the rest later.

  I grabbed a length of rope off the wall as soon as I got to the barn, shaking the whole time. I tied loops around Huey, Dewey, and Louie the best I could, then dragged them off through the field behind the barn. Patsy escorted us to the fence, which might have helped keep the kids calm. She calmed me down some, too, and I finally stopped shaking. I rubbed her head and thanked her, then I lifted the kids over the fence one by one and led them into the woods. Gnarly came with us.

  The other goats maaed behind us — Reba loudest of all. I heard them from deeper into the brush when we waded in to find the trail.

  Soon I heard other sounds — Book cursing and Aunt Sue yelling, “Iris! You don’t bring back those goddamn goats, it’s your ass!”

  A gunshot echoed through the trees, and I stopped cold. Was it just a warning shot, or had Aunt Sue killed one of the other goats in her rage? I thought of the nannies back there with no one to protect them and turned to go back, but after a few steps I stopped. Aunt Sue wouldn’t shoot a nanny. She’d never give up the milk, and the money. She must have been shooting to scare me. And it worked. I snapped the ropes taut and pulled hard. The kids stumbled forward. We ran.