The Square Shoulder of a Man Named Butch
V
The office was dark and quiet, except for them. In the dim bathroom, the handsome Judge and the lovely social worker straightened their suits in front of the mirror, the woman patting soft fragrant powder on her smooth face. From a distance she looked smooth and young, but he knew every line that framed her pursed lips and fanned out from her bold, dark eyes. Back in the spacious office they grabbed briefcases and overcoats and turned out the lights.
“Dinner tomorrow at my place,” he asked, with a knowing smile.
“Only if you’re cooking,” she replied.
“Reservations for two, then,” he said, laughing.
Claire wound her way through the maze of cubicles that made up the outer office space. No one else was there so late, it was nearly midnight, and it was Friday. She imagined her co-workers and associates downing stiff drinks at the bar down the street, the co-mingling smells of expensive whiskey and leather booths and for a moment wished that they could go there together. But not yet. Not yet.
In the employee parking garage adjacent to the court house they walked to their cars in silence. Outside the wind had quickened, just enough to moan between the close buildings and stir the litter in the streets. No rain, but she could smell it coming, over the smells of oil and old fumes in the garage, she could smell the wet, earthy smell of rain to come. The wind seemed to be singing to them, a sad song, low and long, with a sound that was almost weeping. As they neared their cars, parked only a few spaces apart, the weeping grew louder. No, it was not the wind or the rain to come. It was a child crying; dirty and alone, tucked into the dark cold concrete corner of the far end of the garage.
“Are you lost?” he asked the child. Claire stepped from her car door, shifting her keys, hand bag, and briefcase in her hands, taking a few timid steps toward him, straining to see the child more clearly.
“No,” she spoke in a hoarse whisper, “I was waiting for you,” inclining her head toward Claire. He was close enough that he saw it was a young girl, about fourteen, maybe fifteen years old, with wide fearful eyes.
“And instead I see you! You took me away from them! And now I have nothing!” The girl cried weakly. She stood from where she was crouching, her long legs unfolding her full height. She was not that much shorter than the Judge, who graced 6’ 3.” The girl’s pants were crawling up her socks above the dirty sneakers she wore. She had been crying some time and her green eyes were red, the skin around them puffy and raw. She wore a holey flannel sweatshirt over a faded black t-shirt, her long chestnut hair flowing in stringy waves down the back.
“I’m sorry, I—,” he started to say, but she narrowed her eyes and silenced him with a voice growing stronger in anger.
“You may not remember but I do. And you, what do you have to say for yourself?” she took a step closer, coming a little into the pale yellow of one of the lights that were scattered down the wall of the garage. The judge and the woman both saw her more clearly now. One of Claire’s cases, Roxanne something, the Judge thought, how could you forget that face?
“Roxanne James. Your foster parents have been worried about you,” said Claire, “They called me the other day; they said you ran away.”
“I had to. Mr. Trenton told me I had a snowballs’ chance in hell of being emancipated! On visiting day, they wouldn’t even take me to see my parents. He was drunk again. You told them to take me every week. But he wouldn’t let her take me! He said it was just one weekend and that they wouldn’t even miss me!” her sobs grew louder now.
“Let me just call the Trentons—“
“No! No. They don’t want me to leave them. But they’re not my family,” Roxanne’s tears made salty stains on her nearly black shirt.
“I’m sure they would want to know that I’ve found you—“
“You found me?” she said incredulously, “I just came here because I thought you would understand; that maybe you could find me another place to stay. Instead I find you here with him! Isn’t it just dandy that you and Judge Gabeheart are fucking around—you could have helped me two weeks ago—but you said wait! And the whole time you’re fucking the guy who could grant me emancipation!”
Claire took a tentative step forward, “Listen, maybe I was wrong. I didn’t know how bad it was for you. But here you are, it’s a miracle you aren’t hurt. Let me help you.”
“Let us help you,” echoed Judge Gabeheart, “We can call someone, Claire could wait here with you for an escort, Claire could go with you and speak to your foster parents” and when her eyebrows flew up and her eyes flashed with anger he said, “It would be so much safer for you if you would just let us get you home.”
Roxanne was retreating already, “I went home, but not to the Trenton’s. And now some guy lives in our house. It doesn’t even look like our house. The neighbor told me they auctioned our house and all our stuff after they took me away,” she was losing her breath, the sobbing gone now, taking with it her energy.
“Let me help you, Roxanne,” said Claire, stepping closer, reaching out her hands. “I think I can help you to be on your own. It will just take a little while; we’ll get all this sorted out.”
“You. Have. Helped. Me. Enough!” she looked from one to the other with accusing eyes, she started to cry again, rivulets of tears dampening her cheeks and neck, the back of her hands. She backed away toward the concrete half-wall that was between her and the alley.
“Roxanne, wait. Don’t run again. Come with me,” Claire stepped closer, extending her hands, and as she did Roxanne snatched her hand bag and vaulted over the concrete, into the darkness, followed by Claire’s pleading calls that echoed in the narrow alley.
VI
When Carl was thirty five, his parents passed away, first Mr. Rhodes, dying peacefully in his sleep at the hospital where he was being treated for pneumonia. And then his mother, only months after her husband, a heart attack claiming her life as she was watching television at home alone. He saw his sisters and their husbands at the funerals, promising each other to visit, though knowing that he would drift farther with these losses. He lived downtown, much closer to the family home than his sisters, and he was left to go through their things.
In the attic, in a box that was marked his birth year, he found pictures, documents. He found the truth. He phoned his eldest sister to ask her, and eventually she gave in. She told him about his mother and father, older brothers. But she knew nothing more than what she had overheard their parents discussing in heated whispers in the room next to hers, the night her mother had brought him home. Phrases like, “deplorable conditions,” “couldn’t possibly leave him there,” “we don’t have to tell him the truth,” and then finally, “I’ve hired a lawyer, and I’m going to get custody.” He hung up the phone feeling very alone in the world. He hired a removal service to clean out the rest of their parent’s belongings, only packaging and sending the things his sisters had requested. He talked to his sisters occasionally through email or by telephone, and received Christmas cards from them every year, their family picture selves growing and changing progressively in the Christmas card album he kept.
He went to work every day and treated ailing networks and computers up and down the long hallways of cubicles. But in his mind pathways were forging. Somehow he had found that place, the dark growing stain, where the evil lurked down deep in his soul. When he found the place, he found possibilities he had never considered before. Hurting people was possible, probable even. His desire to inflict pain swelled and crested, stronger and quicker and focused on violence. But he held back. Always, he heard his mother’s voice telling him to be good. All his life he listened. He tried to listen.
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