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“Hey... hey, there. Sorry about that, Tripod. Thanks, boy.” I was starting to see that even though Joe smiled and laughed a lot and seemed easygoing, he was still hurting inside just like Jimmy. Joe’s pain was understandable since he had endured the trauma of losing his leg. Jimmy had no visible wounds, but maybe they were all on the inside where we couldn’t see them. He finished scratching Buster’s head as his breathing returned to normal, then looked up at me. “Sorry I woke you up. You can go back to bed now. I won’t be sleeping anymore tonight.” He slurred his words a little, as if still feeling the effects of all the alcohol he’d drunk.
I pulled out the wooden desk chair and sat down, my heart rate finally slowing. “I’ll stay up with you for a while.”
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug. He sat with his back against the wall, the blanket wrapped around himself. He patted the bed, inviting Buster to jump up beside him. Buster glanced at me before leaping onto the daybed. He knew he wasn’t allowed on the furniture, but I decided to make an exception tonight. Joe’s hands slowly stopped their violent trembling as he stroked the dog.
“Would it help if you talked about your nightmare?” I asked.
“Nah, I can never remember what they’re about. Just the feeling they leave.”
“Which is...?” I prompted.
He shrugged again. “I don’t know. The same feeling I had after I’d been hit and I realized that my leg was gone and I thought I was going to die. I was scared and mad at the entire universe. And the pain was like nothing I’d ever...” He paused, swallowing. “I saw what was left of my buddy Hank... His head was gone and—” Joe must have seen me shudder. He stopped. “Sorry... sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize. I did ask you to tell me about your nightmare. But let’s talk about something else. Tell me about your motorcycle. How long have you had it?”
Joe relaxed as he talked about his new ride and the feeling it gave him to speed down the open road, passing cars and trucks as if they were standing still. He confessed to ignoring all the speed limits, then laughed at my shocked expression.
“Hey, I already cheated death once before, remember? They say cats have nine lives, so maybe I do too.”
He was impressed that I understood terms like “red-lining” the tachometer. “I’ve been helping Pop in his garage for years,” I explained. “Pop was lost for a while after Mama died, and the bank nearly foreclosed on this place. It was up to me to hold everything together until he found his way again. That’s when I started taking care of the bills and doing the accounting and all that. Pop is a great mechanic when he’s sober.”
“How old were you when she died?”
“Eleven. But I’d been helping Pop fix cars since I was old enough to stand up. He used to like teaching me things.”
“So Donna isn’t your mother?”
I shook my head. “And she isn’t Pop’s wife, either. Not legally, anyway.”
“She was a lot of fun at the bar last night. You should come with us tonight.”
“It’s Sunday. The Crow Bar is closed on Sundays.” I looked up at the window, high on the wall, and saw that the sun was beginning to rise, slanting its rays through the dingy venetian blinds, creating a shadow like prison bars on the floor. “You’re welcome to come to church with me in a few hours, Joe. You can meet Jimmy’s parents. I always sit with them.”
“Nah, I got nothing to wear.”
“I don’t think it matters what you wear. At least not to God.”
“I don’t belong in a church any more than Tripod does. Right, buddy?”
I didn’t push him. I knew very well how it felt not to belong. Around the same time that I was trying to get Pop to sober up, Mrs. Barnett invited me to go to Sunday school and church with her. Jimmy had a record of perfect Sunday school attendance, and his mother showed me a string of little enamel medals that he’d earned, like something a soldier would wear on his uniform. She was proud of Jimmy for all those pins, and I longed to earn that many so she would be proud of me, too.
Sunday school was divided up by grades, the boys separated from the girls, and we sat around tables with the teachers for the lessons. I knew all the other girls from school and they knew me. They acted sweet when the teacher, Mrs. Dayton, introduced me to the class, but whenever she wasn’t looking, they would glance at me and whisper and giggle behind their hands. I heard the word cooties.
“What’s so amusing?” Mrs. Dayton asked innocently after she caught them giggling.
“Nothing, Mrs. Dayton,” Joanie Edmonds said sweetly. Her father owned the pharmacy in town, so she was rich. The other girls flocked around her and teased me unmercifully. I decided the string of perfect attendance pins wasn’t worth going back every week and being laughed at. But whenever I needed to escape from my life for a while, I would meet Mrs. Barnett in the church lobby and she would let me sit with her and Mr. Barnett during the service, even though I didn’t have a hat and white gloves like everyone else. I would pretend that the Barnetts were my family, and I would feel happy for an hour or so, especially when she would put her arm around me. As soon as the service ended, I would say, “I gotta get home and fix lunch for Pop.”
Mrs. Barnett would nod and say, “All right, dear,” as she talked with her friends, and I would squeeze through the crowd and run home. I supposed it was a lie because Pop would still be in bed on Sunday mornings after staying out late the night before, but I knew I was different from all those church people. I didn’t belong. They were just letting me visit because Jesus told them they should. If Joe Fiore went to church with me, people would act polite to him, too. But nobody would invite him home for Sunday dinner.
“Hey, I’m taking off,” Joe said when I returned from church at noon. He had his helmet on and was standing beside his motorcycle, waiting for me. Disappointment made me halt in my tracks, fumbling for words.
“What? You’re leaving? Right now?”
“Yeah, but I wanted to say goodbye, you know? Thanks for taking me in and feeding me and everything.”
“But where are you going? I thought you wanted to visit Jimmy in the hospital.”
“We can’t visit him for two more weeks, right? I’m gonna look up a couple of guys Jim and I knew in the Army in the meantime.”
“Will you do me a favor and ask if they know what happened to Jimmy? When he started to change and get depressed?”
“Sure. Got it. And I’ll ask them about that girl in the picture, too—what’s her name again?”
“Gisela.” I retrieved a pen from my purse and quickly scribbled Gisela on my church bulletin, then tore it off and handed it to him. I wondered if I should write down my name, too. Did he even remember it?
I watched his motorcycle roar away and wondered if I would ever see Joe Fiore again.
