27 A Phone Call
A Phone Call
The interview room smelled of vomit and sweat and urine, albeit faintly.
They’d locked me in a couple of hours earlier, but had the decency to remove my handcuffs.
For a while, I’d paced the dirty floor, still barefoot, every now and then staring at the video camera up by the ceiling.
A red LED was turned on; the camera was recording every move I made and every word I said.
I didn’t say anything. I knew better.
The room was small, with latex-painted walls in a grayish-cream color, slathered thick over older scratched obscenities and scuff marks.
Newer such statements had been scratched since, exposing the white Sheetrock underneath—mostly the four-letter words one rarely finds in the dictionary.
After about two hours of waiting, I could think of a few myself.
I sat at the metallic, dented table, on the matching chair that balanced on three of its legs, not all four, wobbling back and forth.
I had to keep my weight more to one side, if I wanted it to not move.
I sat looking at the two-way mirror, wondering how many people were on the other side, staring at me, and how long they were going to keep me there.
My bare feet were freezing on the cement floor, and I kept rubbing them together to keep them warm, but I didn’t think of my personal comfort.
My racing thoughts were trying to find a way out of this mess. And failing miserably.
Most of all, I desperately tried not to think of Winston. It would’ve broken me to pieces.
When the door opened, I flinched. The chair tilted with a scratchy thud.
The detective who’d read me my rights walked in with heavy, determined steps and dropped a thick folder on the table.
His salt-and-pepper hair was pasted on his forehead with sweat, and his face looked drawn, tired.
The sleeves of his jacket were shiny around the elbows, and a couple of grease spots stained his red tie.
He was about fifty-five or so, bulky, with a potbelly that promised some liver problems down the road and some torn shirt buttons quite soon.
“I have some questions,” he said, letting himself drop in the chair opposite me. “I want to know—”
“I’m sorry,” I replied, holding my hands up in a pacifying gesture. “We can’t speak without an attorney present, and not before I have my phone call.”
His eyes glinted at me. “All right, if this is how you want to play it. It’s your life to fuck up. All opportunities for a deal walk out the door with me.”
Exhaling sharply, he grabbed the folder and walked out, leaving the door open. I craned my neck to look after him. He stopped at the nearest empty desk and unplugged the phone, then brought it into the interrogation room, slamming it on the table. “The plug’s in the wall. You have ten minutes.”
“Thank you,” I said, circling the table on the balls of my feet and plugging in the phone. I lifted the receiver and heard a dial tone.
“Jeez, people!” he shouted from the doorway. “Someone get her some goddamn shoes.”
“Thank you,” I said again, but he was already gone, the door slammed behind him.
I slipped back into my old seat at the table.
It was the only thing that felt remotely steady in my new circumstances, and I clung to it.
My hands hovered over the phone, the keypad a blur through the sting in my eyes.
I should’ve been calling a lawyer. That would’ve been the smart move. The reasonable one.
But reason had deserted me. More than anything, I needed to hear my brother’s voice. Ten years of silence weighed heavy, and in this moment of weakness, I longed for Billy Ray, for the one person who’d known me before all the lies.
I dialed the number slowly, hoping the call would be answered, and fearing it at the same time.
“Hello?” a man’s voice said, and I recognized it instantly.
Tears burned the corners of my eyes. “Billy Ray?” I asked, my throat thickening, my chest silently heaving.
For a moment, all I could hear was his choked gasp, then silence.
“Sis? Is that you?”
“Uh-huh,” I whispered, “it’s me. How are you doing?” The Texas drawl had returned to my voice as if I’d never lost it. With it, memories came crashing in. The sound of my little brother’s voice, that night on the porch. The way he’d pleaded with me to not leave him alone with our father. To stay.
“So, you finally called me, huh?” Bitterness was thick in his voice. He sounded choked, just like I was, but also angry. Resentful. “It only took you ten years.”
“I’m sorry, Billy, I couldn’t—”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for all the money you sent. God only knows I wouldn’t have made it without it, but all I wanted for my birthdays was to hear your voice.” His words trailed off, his voice shattering. “Goddamn it, sis! He was beating on both of us, you know.”
My fingers clutched the receiver until my knuckles whitened. “It was different for me.” I paused for a moment, hearing his deep breaths on the other end of the call. “I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t take it anymore. I hope you can forgive me.”
“You’re saying he . . .”
He didn’t finish his question, and I didn’t want him to. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying, Billy Ray,” I replied quietly. “You were very young, just a little boy. You didn’t know what was going on.”
“I . . . I suspected,” he said, his voice unsteady. “You should’ve told me!” The raw helplessness in his voice shattered something inside me. “Son of a fucking bitch . . . We could’ve done something!”
The anger in his voice filled me with a different kind of fear. “Now, don’t you go doing anything—”
“He’s already rottin’ in the ground, don’t worry.” He drew air forcefully, then mumbled an oath under his breath. “I might dig his bones up and stomp them till they’re nothin’ but dust. If he were alive right now, I’d kill him right where he’d stand.”
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. My father was dead. The sick son of a bitch was gone from this earth and couldn’t hurt me anymore. Only, he kept on hurting me from beyond the grave, and would do so until the end of time. “How did he die?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer.
“A big ol’ rattler got him. The week I turned eighteen.” A shuddering sigh escaped my brother’s lips.
In the dark space behind my closed eyelids, memories started coming together like snippets of a movie.
Colton, Billy, and me, catching rattlesnakes with a rake and a burlap bag, so they wouldn’t go into the stables.
The boys putting the rattlers in old coolers and leaving them by the edge of our stables near the road, with an empty can of beer on top, to keep thieves from coming after our horses. A hillbilly’s alarm system.
The images from my past shifted. In my mind, I saw Billy putting a rattler into an old cooler and leaving it by the house, in my father’s path.
The beer can must’ve gotten his attention; my brother would’ve used one of my father’s.
The old man must’ve opened the cooler to see if Billy had stolen more of his beer.
Then the rattler must’ve leaped from inside, crazed from heat and hunger and being trapped in that cooler.
“Where did they find him?” I asked.
“I found him myself, by the house, near the well. The rattler got him good. Bit him several times. He tore the snake in half before he died.”
Billy must’ve waited for a while after he heard the shouts and grunts, then checked to see if the bastard was dead. Then he must’ve taken the cooler and hid it somewhere before calling the police.
My heart ached for my little brother, all alone on that wretched farm, battling life. Had I known our father was gone, I would’ve called. I would’ve gone home to visit. For Billy, I would’ve risked never being able to leave Texas again. Because I would’ve never been able to leave him behind again.
“I need you, Billy,” I said instead. “I don’t have—I don’t trust anyone else.”
“You in trouble? Should I bring my rifle?”
“No . . . just come get me.”
“Where are you, sis?”
“In Las Vegas.” He whistled in surprise. “I’m in jail.”
“Jeez, Hattie . . .” I could hear him breathing heavily and stepping in place.
“Don’t call me that!” I snapped, louder and harsher than he deserved. I hated my name, and always had. “My name is Olivia Taylor now.”
A beat of silence. “All right, sis, I’m coming. What did they bust you for? Did you steal something?”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. “They say I killed a man,” I eventually said, my voice raw, scraping like sand over stone. Heavy silence filled the air between us. “I swear I didn’t do it, Billy Ray. I need help.”
“You want me to break you out?”
“No, of course not.” Another long moment of tense silence passed.
When he eventually spoke, his voice was different.
More mature, hardened. “Funny how you remember me when you need help. Been waiting for you to call since the day you left. Been waiting for you to show at the bastard’s funeral, to have a drink with me by the graveside.
Maybe hurl some boulders at his coffin and wish him good riddance. ”
Guilt twisted in my chest. “Billy . . . I didn’t know he was dead.” My voice was barely above a whisper. “And I was afraid to come back.”
“Damn it . . . You could’ve still called me!”
“Yes . . .” I clung to the hope that he’d eventually understand why I hadn’t.
I’d been a homeless runaway for a while, and then a stray, moving from place to place and learning how to give men just enough of what they wanted so they’d keep chasing me.
Punishing them for lusting for someone so much younger than they were.
For something another man had done to me.
But perhaps Billy Ray would never find out about that, and I wouldn’t have to face the shame of him knowing.
Even if that meant he’d never forgive me for not staying in touch.
“What could you possibly think I can help you with?” he asked, his voice resigned, defeated.
“I need help posting my bail, and you have to help me find a lawyer while I’m still locked up. This was my only call.”
“I don’t have much, but—”
“I have the money,” I started to say, but then realized the cops could be listening. And how could I explain to my little brother, born and raised on that shitty farm, that I kept all my funds in cryptocurrency? “I just need you, Billy. Please come.”