Halloween Candy Read Free Page B

dead. So Mama, I had her sew the flies in, but they keep laying eggs and more and more, and the kids, they got the minds of flies, and sometimes they rip out the threads, so sometimes flies get out, but it’s a tiny price, ain’t 27

    it, lady? When you need to love little ones, and you ain’t got none, it’s a tiny price, a day in hell’s all, but then sunshine and children and love, lady, ain’t it worth that?”

    Ellen had a migraine by the time Papa Neeson dropped them off down at the junction. She barked at Joey. Apologized for it. Bought him a Pepsi from the machine by the restroom. People were boarding the train. She went to the restroom to wipe cold water across her face—
    made Joey promise to stand outside it and not go anywhere. The mirror in the bathroom was warped, and she thought she looked stunning: brown eyes circled with sleeplessness, the throbbing vein to the left side of her forehead, the dry, cracked lips. She thought of the threads, of the children tugging at them, popping them out to let the flies go. Ran a finger over her lips, imagining Mama Neeson taking her needle and thread, breaking the skin with tiny holes. Ears, nostrils, eyes, mouth, other openings, other places where flies could escape. Flies and life, sewn up into the bodies of dead children, buried by other grieving 28

    parents, brought back by the country folks who ran the bed-andbreakfast, and who spoke of children that no one ever saw much of.

    And when they did…

    So here was Ellen’s last happy image in the mountain town she and her son were briefly stranded in:

    Mama Neeson kissing the bruised cheek of her little girl, tears in her squinty eyes, tears of joy for having children to love.

    Behind her, someone opened the door.

    Stood there.

    Waiting for her to turn around.

    “Look who I found,” Frank said, dragging Joey behind him into the women’s room.

    Two weeks later, she was on the train again, with Joey, but it was better weather—snow was melting, the sun was exhaustingly bright, and she got off at the junction because she wanted to be there. Frank was dead . She could think it. She could remember the feel of the knife in her hands. No jury would convict her. She had been defending herself. 29

    Defending her son. Frank had come at Joey with his own toy dump truck. She had grabbed the carving knife—as she’d been planning to do since Frank had hauled them back to Springfield. She had gone with the knowledge of what she would have to do to keep Frank out of her little boy’s life forever. Then, she had just waited for his temper to flare. She kept the knife with her, and when she saw him slamming the truck against Joey’s scalp, she let the boiling blood and rage take her down with them. The blade went in hard, and she thought it would break when it hit bone. But she twisted it until Frank dropped the dump truck, and then she scraped it down like she was deboning a chicken.

    All for Joey.

    She lifted him in her arms as she stepped off the train, careful on the concrete because there was still some ice. Joey, wrapped in a blanket, sunglasses on his face, “sleeping,” she told the nice lady who had been sitting across from them; Ellen, also wearing sunglasses and too much make-up, a scarf around her head, a heavy wool sweater around her shoulders, exhausted and determined.

    Joey’s not dead. Not really.
    30

    It hadn’t been hard to track down the Neesons. She had called them before she got on the train, and they were not surprised to hear form her. “It happens this way,” Mama Neeson told her, “our calling.”

    Ellen was not sure what to make of that comment, but she was so tired and confused that she let it go. Later, she might think that something of the Neeson’s had perhaps rubbed off on her and her son. That, perhaps just meeting them might be like inviting something into life that hadn’t been considered before. Something under your fingernails.

    She carried Joey to the payphone and