Chapter Sixteen
Quinn walks on the dark road from Ms. Glomm’s house carrying the banker’s box, his trash bag of belongings balanced on top.
He ships out on Monday for basic training and originally thought he could just manage without a place to stay until then.
It’s only two nights, right? Wrong. He’s already regretting not thinking this through.
He could catch a bus to Omaha, stay at one of those cheap flophouse motels.
But he needs to save his money until his military pay kicks in.
Ms. Glomm would’ve put him up for a couple nights, but sleeping under a bridge would be preferable to the clutter and stench.
Should he sleep under a bridge? Maybe Halleck Park, where he used to go to the pool as a kid.
He has the spark of a memory—his father in the over-chlorinated water, throwing Quinn in the air, Quinn laughing with abandon before he came down with a splash.
When was the last time he laughed like that? He honestly can’t remember.
As he walks, he wonders what awaits him at boot camp.
As a member of the military. The recruiter said that it will take a while, but they’ll pay for college, that he’ll see the world.
Quinn is smart enough to know that he says this to everybody, that Quinn could get stuck on some post in North Dakota.
But there’s also that hard truth again: He has no other options.
He thinks about Jules Delaney from earlier today.
She has every option in the world. She’s only gotten more beautiful, he decides.
The long neck, the cheekbones, the big eyes.
She also is from a family of means. Her dad a big-shot lawyer, her pretty mom on those low-budget TV commercials for the car dealership.
At the same time, he worries about Jules.
She had booze on her breath when she arrived at the hospital, and that was before downing one of the mini bottles she keeps in her purse.
And something was different about her. In high school she strutted the halls like a rock star, confidence emanating off her.
Like she was on a catwalk and you’d better get out of her way.
But tonight, escorting her through the grass to the fairgrounds, there was a fragility about her. Like something had been taken from her. A line from Gatsby comes to mind: “I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others.”
He finally arrives at his childhood home, examines it. The grass is overgrown, lights out. He approaches the front door, which has legal notices pinned all over it. No one has moved in. They’ll probably tear the place down and start over. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could do that to a life.
He cuts through the shrubs that line the front of the house, finds the loose brick where they used to hide a key. He slides the brick out, pleased to find the key still there.
Inside the house is dark, but when his eyes adjust, he can see it’s empty, save for some trash strewn about the living room. He wonders where their things are. Probably a Dumpster. The same place his mother was thrown away. He pushes back the urge to cry. There’ve already been too many tears.
He makes his way upstairs. The neighbor’s back porch light provides some illumination through the window of his old room.
He sets down the banker’s box and his belongings and sits next to them.
He’ll spend his last two nights in this town in this house where he grew up.
His thoughts frolic to better times—Dad and Mom dancing in the living room; Mom baking cookies at Christmas; George as a baby before everyone realized something was wrong.
But that rosy retrospection is crowded out by other memories: Mom and Dad worried about money, getting care for George; Mom collapsing to the floor when the police officer came to tell her Dad was gone; Mom’s face when she arrived at the police station on this very day one year ago when they arrested Quinn.
He removes his mom’s possessions from the box and places them on the floor in front of him.
There’s a framed photo of Dad, Mom, Quinn, and George that one of her friends had taken that summer at the company picnic.
George is looking away, eleven-year-old Quinn offering one of his last real smiles.
Even with the cheap dye job on her hair and bags under the eyes, his mother was a beauty.
Dad wears a white T-shirt and jeans and looks like James Dean. Everyone says Quinn looks like him.
Quinn pulls out some envelopes rubber-banded together.
Several are from the bank. One providing final notice that their things would be removed and discarded or sold at auction.
Sending a dead person a legal notice sounds about right.
At least that explains where their stuff went.
The rest just office junk: a stapler, a container with paper clips, a calculator.
The detective told him that they have Mom’s purse and personal effects found on the body. The car was impounded as evidence.
He tucks the photos in the novel he retrieves from his garbage bag of things.
Pressing his hand against the bag, he tests it out as a possible pillow.
It’s going to be an uncomfortable night.
But still better than staying at Ms. Glomm’s.
He thinks about the dirty home, about the parrot in the filthy cage, about the piles of yellowed newspapers.
It’s then he’s reminded about what she said about Mom’s Red Flag file: “Your mom always said she kept her Red Flag file in a cubby, safe and sound.”
He stands, goes to the small room Mom used as an office. In the closet there’s a panel in the wall that provides entry to a side attic. George used to crawl in and sit there for hours, something about the small space comforting to him. Mom called it the cubby.
Quinn finds the space, opens the closet door so light from outside shines on the spot. He opens the panel to the cubby.
It appears empty like the rest of the house. But then the light catches on something.
It’s not a file like Ms. Glomm described.
Quinn gets closer and he reaches in, slides it over. It has a long handle and is heavy.
Then his body stiffens: It’s a hammer.
And its head is matted with what looks like hair and blood.