My Dearest Jonah (14 page)

This is a lie. He does not remember this. For whilst it may well have happened these are not the things you remember. These are photographs taken, around which you build a story. Edit. Redraft.
Tint. These events drop from your memory like pennies in a handful of notes. The things you remember are those that change you, the encounters that leave scars. The man in Chicago who said I love
you only when you had your back to him. The husband who went out for milk and cigarettes six years ago. The smell of your father’s cologne still clinging to your skin as the police car pulls
onto the drive. These are the things that make you; that you remember and that are true. The rest is just fiction, or some variation of.

“Tell me something, Veronica,” he says one lazy day over a scant feast of dry toast and black coffee. A jukebox changes its track. I lean back on the cash register
and flex the arches of my feet. “How come you always answer to a different name?”

“What’s that, honey?” I say, picking an imaginary ball of fluff from my apron.

“I must have been coming to this diner every day for two weeks now and you never once corrected me when I got your name wrong. I do it on purpose now, see if I can’t catch you
out.”

“Because between eleven and four I’m whatever you want me to be, so long as it’s upright and behind this counter.”

He laughs to himself, standing up. “God damn Verity, you can’t know anyone in this life can you?”

“Amen to that, honey,” I say with a smile. A careful smile. Not too certain. Not too sad. A perfect smile. A novel of a smile.

“So,” he says, now heading to the exit. “That’s my story, what about yours?”

I do everything in my power to stop myself from blushing. “What’s that?”

“You know all about me.”

“I know what you tell me.”

“Clever girl. How about we go out one night, under less... commercial circumstances? We can get to know one another properly.”

“I’d like that a lot. Only night time’s tricky for me.”

“A dark horse?”

“Something like that.”

“I bet you’ve got the boys lining up round the block,” he says, now out of the door.

“More braying mob than orderly line.”

He chuckles and lets the weight of the door press against his mighty chest. “Well you just rearrange some dates and find a night for you and me. I could do with a friend in this town. And
you may well be a valuable girl to know.”

“I’ll see what I can do. But like I said, I’m a busy woman.”

He shakes his head and looks to the floor, and I can tell that he enjoys how difficult I am making the whole situation for him. “Until next time,” he says quietly, with his back to
me, as the door closes behind him.

He doesn’t leave a tip.

“What’s that you got there?” I ask back at the trailer. Eve is crouched on the floor at the side of the bed, studiously rifling through her suitcase. I walk
towards her to try to get a better look.

“Nothing. Just some of my things,” she says, slamming the lid and throwing the case deep beneath the bed. “Well, well, well Verity you’re positively glowing. You look
like a satisfied woman if ever I saw one.” I kick off my shoes and swoon onto the bed. Eve sits beside me and begins braiding my hair. “Don’t tell me it’s love?”

“No!” I yell, turning onto my back to stare up at her, fully aware that were our roles reversed Eve and her poor Labrador heart would very much consider what J and I have to be some
version of love.

“Well then?”

“Like,” I say, finding myself suddenly embarrassed. “Like... with a boy from the coffee shop. He wants to take me on a date.”

“VERITY!” she yells, standing up on the bed and running to the drawers at the farthest corner of the room. There is the sound of a mess being created, clothes being upturned,
something knocking against wood, and then Eve skips back towards the bed carrying a half empty bottle of scotch and a full packet of cigarettes. “Who? When? I want to know all.”

“Don’t know yet. He wants to take me out one night.”

“And... ”

“And night time’s too profitable to be squandering on lust.”

“Lust?”

“You know what I mean!”

“Love’s worth any price,” says Eve, glugging her first sip of scotch.

“Rent’s not though. Which reminds me... ”

Eve gives me an old fashioned look and pushes her hands into the back pocket of her jeans. “There,” she says, handing me a fistful of crumpled fifty dollar bills. “Consider it
paid. Now, you and I aren’t moving until this bottle’s empty and I’ve been given every last detail of this handsome stranger that’s given you a blush. But first - ”
she said, leaning over the bed and pulling a package from the floor, “ - this arrived for you this morning.”

I tore open the package - tiny, magnolia, bound with red ribbon - and pulled out a small printed card, which read, simply:

Sometimes it takes more than the bottle. Let it not be said girls like us aren’t prepared. With love
.

At the base of the envelope, still swaying with the weight of its package, was a tiny pewter pistol, heavy with bullets.

All my love,

Verity

Dearest Verity,

The days leading up to my meeting with Michael seemed to pass in spurts; dreamy stretches of the most basic undertakings during which I found myself silent and distant, followed
by long periods of contemplation as an acidity swamped my stomach until all I could do was lie, sleepless and anxious, watching the moments pass by until our arranged reunion.

“The coffin dodger been sniffing around my girl again,” said Harlow as we walked back from work. “She says she’s giving thought to moving in with him.
Said he has a spare room. Odd jobs need doing around the house and the like. I have a fine idea as to the sort of jobs he needs doing, and it’s no work a lady should be receiving payment for
if you catch my drift.”

I muttered a nonsensical noise, if only to prove I was listening. In truth I couldn’t bring myself to care.

“Says she thinks is could be true love. God help the girl, she’s as clueless as I don’ know what. Just worry where it’s leading is all. Those scars on her arms
weren’t no household accident if you catch my drift.”

“I guess I could talk to her... ” I said, scanning the horizon blankly.

“You okay boy? Been on a different plane best part of this week. Hope two jobs isn’t causing you bellyache.”

“No sir, not the jobs. I’m just distracted.”

“You can say that again. I don’t think your brain and your mouth’s been in the same room since weekend gone.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologise, not to me.” Harlow began shifting his weight awkwardly as he walked. His face, usually kind and welcoming, became a kaleidoscope of sharp folds and angry reds. “Hope you don’t mind me suggesting as much... ” he said slowly, as if treading on cracked paving. “But
would I be right in thinking you’ve not always lived such a righteous life?”

“Excuse me?” I said, still not entirely engaged.

“What I mean to say is... God damn boy you are somewhere else today. What I’m trying to say, Jonah, is am I right in thinking you’ve served time?”

My thoughts snapped to the present like whiplash and I felt my knees weaken beneath me.

“Now now,” said Harlow, patting me on the back. “I’m not here to judge. Far as I’m concerned whatever went on, you served your time, this is a clean slate
you’re working from. With me at least.”

I carried on walking, my head hung and shamed.

“All I meant was that I assume in such instances you make contacts. Acquaintances and such, of likeminded persuasion.”

“I tended to keep my head down.”

“Well knock me down with a feather boy you sure know how to surprise me,” Harlow laughed to himself. “What I’m asking, I suppose - ” he said, shiftily checking to
see that the workers’ frogmarch was dispersed enough to allow at least basic privacy between us, “ - is whether or not you’d know of anyone who might... I don’t know...
voice my displeasure to a certain gentleman about the company he’s keeping... should the situation ever arise.”

I caught his drift and dismissed it in case it was a trap. “Why don’t you just try talking to him?”

“If you say so. I’m not a violent man Jonah. Never have been never will be. But I’d give my life for those girls. I’d certainly give my freedom if it meant keeping them
safe.”

“It won’t come to that. He seems a reasonable enough old man. Besides, at his age he’s working on borrowed time as is. I doubt you’ll have a care in the world come
winter.”

“Let’s pray you’re right,” said Harlow. “Let’s pray you’re right.”

I met Michael when he was sixteen-years-old. Already by that point his face was beginning to crack and break into the bloom of adulthood – his jaw line becoming defined
where previously it hung loose and gormless, his eyes deepening into their sockets, his forehead only just learning the art of worrying. Though still he was little more than the bare foundations of
himself. Enthusiastic, certainly, and as excitable as he is now, only with the benefit of youth, which diluted the menace his impulsiveness now seems to imply. At first his manner bemused me and
postponed our inevitable friendship for quite some time. Of course before long I came to find it endearing. We were so different, he and I. Michael was excitable, enthusiastic, erratic. I was
reserved, suspicious, demure. He was just so damn happy all the time, no matter how hellish his past or how dire his actions; throughout it all happiness spread like veins through cheese until you
couldn’t help warming to him. I suppose to me that’s the main difference between people, the universal which fundamentally separates them. Some people are predisposed to happiness. It
is their default setting. The walk through life with a sense of wonderment; each new experience an opportunity for joy, for fulfilment. Others live in a state of constant anxiety and uncertainty;
they tread more carefully, as though being forced to live life carrying a priceless and delicate vase that belongs to someone else. They, too, have the ability to feel happiness - they have a
capacity for it - but it must be presented to them through some external source; they must be shown something, provided with something, which they then consider and, if lucky, decide to allow
themselves to enjoy. I suppose the difference between people is whether they are a dog or a cat. Whether they jump through life wagging their tails until given reason not to, or whether they stalk
life’s perimeters, shunning and shying from others and themselves until provided with an enjoyable and fleeting excursion from their usual state of mild depression. I myself am of a feline
persuasion. Michael an eternal Labrador.

‘Boy’s a liability,’ said Jack to me the day he became part of our circle. ‘Only reason I let him hang around is he’s crazy as I don’t know
what. Like some damn kamikaze pilot or some shit; there’s nothing that boy won’t do.’

Jack was a large man with few morals and a steady aim. He had grown into his own legend almost tacitly, riding the crest of his lineage without ever actually proving his worth as any sort of
mastermind. His family’s dealings within the town I had arrived at were legendary and longstanding. He sat atop a heritage of blood and mug shots, and was considered the most volatile of the
bunch; his prominence a result of a mass court case two years previous which had culminated in just about every male relative’s temporary incarceration.

Of course by the time I arrived on the scene Jack and his kin had taken a backseat when it came to direct involvement in any of our jobs, and so he became the pied piper of fallen angels; taking
in us lost boys and training us in ways of speedy acquisitions. We were initiated as couriers. Unmarked packages were to be exchanged for cash in alleyways, toilet cubicles, backseats, and bars.
Our cut was paltry but enough to survive on. If we proved our worth, or indeed survived unscathed, eventually we would rise through the ranks. We’d graduate to driver, lookout, fall boy, red
herring. And then, how proud, we’d become armed.

After this our involvement became vital and our egos massaged to the point where we’d fly so close to the sun our wings could melt clean off and we wouldn’t even notice. Jack would
arrange the jobs, mark maps and plans. Each of us a coloured pinpoint on a shoddily drawn diagram. There were stores, bars, houses and the like. Nothing sacred, everything gained. Like most of the
boys working with us I had little to lose, only difference was I didn’t care about myself, and so I soon became Jack’s favourite ammunition; fine china removed from its shelf for only
the haughtiest of occasions.

Michael entered our upper echelons almost two years later. By this point I must have been circling twenty-one and he was barely scraping adulthood. We’d served one or two jobs together, as
part of a group, sometimes individually. Nothing spectacular. We’d pull down our hoods and change into shapes, into fear, into memories that would cloud each life we touched forever,
brandishing guns, sneaking through shadows, always leaving heavier than when we arrived.

It was a cold night in November when everything changed.

The Mayhills’ farm was a rumoured goldmine. Mr Mayhill was a wealthy man whose land was for entertainment value only. He’d made his fortune through crops and now
tended to plants for he knew no different. Mostly they went to charities, occasionally he would sell them when the mood took him, but on the whole his wealth was established and everything else was
just cream.

They were to be an easy and profitable target, and like most things where Jack was concerned they had been carefully selected as if winners of some bastardised lottery. Their lure was that along
with their fortune they were but two generations removed from the Amish way of life, yet their sensibilities remained steadfast. Everyone knew Mr Mayhill seldom troubled the bank. Whatever he had
was in that house, and according to Jack it was enough to retire from several times over.

We drove three miles out and carried our tools as close to the house as we could get without leaving the mask of the hedgerows that hid us so perfectly. Myself, Michael, Herman
and Pete sat and watched as one by one the house lights grew fewer, until we were staring at a black shape in a black night.