Page 13 of Locke

“You hurt that little girl.” He glanced at his daughter, unsure what that was all about to them, and said he did it all the time. It only made her stupider. “Get out of here. And leave the children.”

“You taking my kids from me? Nah, I don’t think so. Not without some competition from you. How much will you give me if I sell them both to you?” Gilda agreed that they’d have to come to some kind of payment plan to take them. She said it was going to cost them big time. He liked this woman at times, he surely did. “Christ, you’ll have to have no giving-backs either. Once you give me the money, I don’t want to hear from you that you changed up your mind. What do you say?”

Before he could show off the girls, one of them still laying on the floor with a bloodied nose, he was being read his rights and handcuffed. There wasn’t a single reason that he could think of that would have him being arrested. He finally got an answer from one of the cops. By then, his wife was being arrested, too.

“It’s against the law to sell your children. Or even give them away. We’re arresting you on that charge in addition to other things that you’ve told us about. The car theft ring being just one of many things that you’ve confessed to.” The police officer asked Locke if they could leave the girls there until the county got someone to come and get them. “I know that they’re going to be in good hands while here.”

When they told the officer that they would be in good hands, he started to tell them that they were off-limitations for them to have his kids. Then it came to him that they’d be out of his hair for a while, and he kept his pie hole shut. He noticed, too, that Gilda wasn’t saying anything either. Hating to be around anything smaller than he was, William decided that he might just forget to go and pick them up when he came to get his house in order. Yeah, he told himself, that’s the ticket to getting rid of them.

He didn’t get to ride to the station house with Gilda. So, as soon as the door was closed, William laid his head back and smiled. Air conditioning and quiet time. It was his two favorite things. Besides having a good cold one when he—

“Hey, I got me an idea. Why don’t we run by the convenience store and one of you fellas go in and get me some beer. I promise you that I’ll drink it all up before we get to the station. And if not, then you can sneak it into me later.” He looked at the man driving in the rearview mirror. “I’ll pay you whatever you want if you were to do that for me. I’ve had a rough few weeks here trying to get my house back from them fancy pants men. If you could see your way to doing that for me, it sure would give me a nice little buzz while we way on getting shit done.”

“You know that you’ve just tried to bribe an officer of the law, don’t you? That’s just one more thing to add to your sentencing.” He told him it was only a beer that he’d not be able to pay them back until he got his house from the Eskimo people. “Who are you talking about?”

“We just left their house, dummy. Don’t you know who you were talking to? And they called me a moron. See, you can’t even remember the name of the people that had me arrested. And I’m going to get out of that, too. See that I don’t. You release me now, and I won’t tell that you took me under false pretentious.” He told him that their name was Erikson. “Oh. Well, that’s something that I’ll have taken care of too. Did you know that they kept my mother alive when all I wanted was for her to die? There has to be a name for that someplace.”

“There is. It’s called compassion and kindheartedness.” He told the man he wasn’t too compassion about living on the streets because of the Eskimo people. “Just don’t speak anymore. Please. I have a headache that you are to blame for, and I don’t have time to try and decipher whatever the hell you’re talking about all the time. Just shut your trap.”

He knew what a pain a headache could be. William used to have them all the time when he was a kid. Then his dad told him that a beer or two would take care of them, and he began drinking that very afternoon. Now he didn’t have headaches all the time, and his nose bleeds had stopped. Win-winner for him, he thought.

They were pulling up to the station house when he realized that they’d not gotten him any beer. Someone was going to have to take care of that. Or he’d be tossing up his cookies. Or brats. William thought that was just a fancy pants way to call a wiener on a bun. Whatever. He was looking forward to getting a nicer meal from the station than he was getting at home. Then he remembered Gilda when he saw her there in cuffs too.

“How the hell am I supposed to get money from having kids?” He asked his wife what she was talking about. “When I was willing to turn them over, I never thought about the checks we get every month and the food card. That’s been all I’ve been using since I signed up for it when Rita was born.”

“Who’s Rita?” She told him it was their oldest child. “Why the hell did you name her that? That sounds like an old lady’s name. Rita. What’s the other one called? I’m betting something really stupid, too. If we have any more kids, you’re not to name them. Rita? What a dumbass name.”

“Her name is Rebecca.” He thought that it wasn’t as bad as Rita and told her that while they were waiting to be processed. “And I’ll have you know that Rita was my mother’s name. I thought that if I named a kid after her, she’d be more generous about watching her. But after that first time, she wouldn’t do it no more. She was only there for a week. I have to be with them all the rest of the time. Aren’t grandmothers supposed to want to take care of their grandbabies? My mom has always been the odd duck out.”

“Yeah, mine too. You know what she did about me and my house. I was going to move in with you and that was taken from me. Why on earth did she keep records of what I took from her? For that matter, how did she figure it out? One of those Eskimos told her. I just know it.”

Once they were in their separate cells, he laid down and closed his eyes. He’d been in so many jails that they all looked the same to him. This one was a little bit different in that it had a quilt at the end of the bed when usually you didn’t get crap when you needed something warm to snuggle up under.

Tomorrow, they were supposed to see a court-appointed lawyer. He was going to get his house back, or he’d know what for. Hoping that someone would wake him when food was being served, Willaim started plotting. If he could just get in the house, he knew that they’d have to let him have it. And they were not going to name his home Eskimo by golly, or he’d have to take care of that, too.

~*~

Locke decided that he didn’t like the bedroom that they were in. It had been his when Martha was alive, and he’d not figured out any reason to change it. But he needed a bigger bed, and he knew that the bathroom in the master suite was big. He’d helped install it, and it had heated towels to wrap up in, too.

“Have you ever been in that room? Other than to help with Martha for something?” He told Alex that he’d been in there once to get her funeral clothes to take to the funeral home. “I doubt that you saw much of it then. You would have been preoccupied.”

“You could say that. I miss her every day, you know.” She told him that she wished that she’d gotten to know her too. “She would have loved you. I can almost bet you that she’d be standing beside you and egging you on about things. Oh, before I forget. This is for you.”

He got up off the bed and made his way down to the master bedroom. It was plenty huge and he loved the way that the window on both sides of the room seemed to catch the best light. He was still standing there, admiring the view, when Alex joined him.

“I’m not taking this check. And the county came to get the girls just now. I was trying very hard not to get attached to them. The nurse that came with the county said she’d keep us in the loop as to what was done for the children.” He asked her why not about the check. “Because you’re my family, and I don’t want it. I enjoyed every minute of it. Maybe a little too much.”

“It shows. Did you know how much we were paying out before you took on the lists? Which is what we’re calling what you did. The list. Anway, did you have a ballpark figure for what was there?” She told him all she’d known was that it was going to be a great deal of money. Especially after looking at how much he was paying for his suits to be pressed for no reason. “Was my account the worst? Please tell me they weren’t, even if you have to fib to me a little.”

“No. Dusty’s was the worst. When I called the cable company for him, they asked in what name the account was in because it was the same name on each of the apartments, she told me. Then she told me that they had Dusty Erikson, A D. Erikson as well as two more names that sounded a little like Dusty. One of them was even for a business account to a business in town. She said that she thought it was a bar because they were forever buying all the special sports things like hockey, Football, and fights.” He asked what she’d done about the business. “Oh, that was a good deal more fun than it should have been. Do you watch fights on the television? There was a hugely publicized fight on the cable that night. I had it turned off right in the middle of it. I laughed too long and too hard for that one.”

“Remind me to never piss you off.” They both laughed. “What do you think of this room? I don’t know if I really like it or not. There is another suite up one level that we can look at before we decide.”

“How do you think all these windows will look once it wakes you at a god-awful hour some mornings.” He said he’d not thought of that. “Yeah. Okay, let’s go to the other room. How many bedrooms are up there?”

“One bedroom that consists of a sitting room as well as a walk-in shower on one end of the room and then a bathtub on the other. Also, the closets are huge if I remember correctly.” The room was just as he described it. Not only were there two bathrooms, but there was a nursery next to it. “I don’t remember that it was up here. Want to take a look?”

The door didn’t open easily but Locke was able to get it pushed in. As soon as they walked in, he knew that this room hadn’t been touched since well before William was born. The room was decorated in pink and yellow. There were toys on the shelves, too, that he’d bet no one had touched in a very long time.

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