What’s Fair
by Daniel Bradley
“Yep, it’s him,” Fred drawled, dropping the blind and stepping away from the window.
Ellen felt an invisible insect the size of her scalp find a grip under her hair, tightening the muscles and sending unfriendly chills down her spine that found access to her gut. “Get back from the window,” she muttered, “you’ll just confirm what he thinks he knows.”
“What he thinks he knows,” said Fred, “Is that my niece is some kind of bail skipper.”
“It’s true.”
“Then explain to me why I don’t open these blinds right now and put up a sign, Ellen is a little wuss.”
“Shut up.”
“Or what, manslaughter plus murder?”
Ellen heard her own feet stomping into the kitchen, distant from the frantic pull of her mind toward the back door. The marshal probably had people back there, though. “He wouldn’t have come alone, would he?” Ellen whispered.
Fred still heard her from around the wall that divided the living room from the kitchen. The wall didnt’ reach the vaulted ceiling. That was one of the worst things about this house, carrying sound. If the Marshal did bring people, they probably heard even just the twinging nerves in her skipping heart like they were just having a simple electric conversation. “I’m not going to open the blinds,” Fred said. “Not until you’re ready.”
She flipped the switch on the faucet filter, letting the water splash over the ice she’d just put in her cup. It cracked in the changing temperature. Once upon a time she thought that might happen to her teeth. As the ice rose from the bottom of the glass, warm tears stuck to her lashes. “I don’t wanna go back.”
Fred came around the dividing wall and pulled up an old stool. There was a notch on the gound next to one of the legs. “Talk to me, Ellen.”
Ellen rolled her eyes, feeling the tear ducts halt before spilling more emotion. Words wanted to come out, real ones, but they found their way into the eye roll, too, like a tumble dry setting for tough girl. “I…” She finished her drink.
Fred waited.
“I wish I could live in a world that isn’t about my worst moment.”
It was Fred’s turn to cry, but he didn’t let his tears fall out either. That was only fair. His voice let out only a faint beat, one singe moment of waver that spoke more feeling in it than any intelligible words that actually left his drawling mouth. “Justice isn’t a victimless crime.”
No one ever used the door knocker, so when the metal clank of it hit Ellen’s ears, the sound shook her. It reminded her of metal bars and leather-faced guards with their humiliations.
The door knocker clanked again. Let’s go back to jail.
“I’m not going with him,” Ellen whispered. “Tell him I’m not here.”
Fred started to protest, “Now, Ellen, there may be a time for…”
“Just shut up and tell him you haven’t seen me. Tell him I went to Mexico or Canada or something.”
She could see what she was doing to him. Fred’s face was a flexing broadcast of autonomic honesty. Ellen was stupid to have come back here.
But she didn’t have to worry for long, because Marshal Grayfoot had already probable-caused his million-laces boots into the front entry. “US Marshals,” he said with a slight reservation accent. “Stay right there, Ellen, I’m coming in.”
Ellen thought of all the ways she could run from the situation, all the roads that led her to this spot in the kitchen and all the roads that might lead from it. There weren’t any that got her feet to move.
Fred wheeled around. “Sir, had you knocked I’d have let you in.”
“I don’t doubt it. It’s Fred, right?”
“Yes, officer.”
“It’s Deputy.”
Ellen sized up the pistol on his hip, somehow inconspicuous yet incredibly glaring under his leather jacket and tight jeans. It wouldn’t be hard to reach for it, if she were close enough. Would that be worth another day of freedom, or a week if she was lucky? She wasn’t getting out of that place any time soon. Once she was inside, she wouldn’t see outside until she was an old lady, used up to uselessness.
The Marshal saw her looking but didn’t seem to care. “Let us have the room, Fred.”
Fred went downstairs, too frazzled to look at her one more time to say goodbye.
“Why’d you run, Ellen?” the Marshal asked, not taking Fred’s stool.
“I wanted one more glass of cold water.”
“Was it worth it?”
Looking into her glass, she could see the hard water stains a ring at the bottom that the dishwasher hadn’t cleaned right. These were all signs of a home. “Sure.”
He kept his hands on his hips, but his posture was relaxed. You could afford to be that way if you were six-foot-four and built out of reinforced concrete. “Did you grow up here?”
“No.”
“But this is where you feel safe.”
“Why all the questions if you know so much?” Ellen walked to the pantry, still away from the big man, afraid he would grab her.
“I can’t figure out why you would run like this, run here like this. You know the judge isn’t going to play fair now. You’ve broken trust.”
Ellen put down the glass and faced the lawman that had come to take her away. “I didn’t trust them first.”
The marshal looked her up and down, making her feel small, yet somehow not underestimated. “Are you going to come quietly?”
“Let me hit the head first, then we’ll see.”
She could hear the marshal and her uncle from the small half-bath next to the laundry room. They weren’t far up the split-level part of the main floor of the house, but they seemed to think their conversation was private.
“She was never a bad girl,” said Fred. His voice had empathetic undertones. She wasn’t sure if his concern was for her, the marshal, or both.
“I’m sure she wasn’t,” the marshal said, sounding like he was leaning back, tired.
“Then why does the state have it out for her? She didn’t mean to kill that boy.”
“Manslaughter ain’t murder, but it isn’t not a crime.”
She could feel the kid in her arms. Teenager. Punk. Waste of oxygen, not worth more than dried puke on the sidewalk, the kind of kid you walk around, the kind of kid you don’t see when driving impaired. Tears spilled into the running water of the bathroom sink. They were out of body tears, like she was seeing them from the outside, immune to their warmth as they spilled off the edge of her nose. She could taste the salt, though. Salt like a bitter cell and women she could never call friends.
“Can you put in a better word for her?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Ellen saw herself climbing through the laundry room window. It was small, just level with the ground, and just forgotten enough that she could squeeze through and and get a head start. She watched herself wriggle through, panting in small bursts of ecstasy, freedom pulsing in and out of her lungs as one more flight meant one more minute.
She saw more than herself. She saw a cloud behind her. It nipped at her heels like a dog. The dog was society. It was her. It was judgement and God and everything mercy wasn’t.
“She’s running!”
All the freedom in her breath was squeezed out of her lungs in a moment of sudden clarity. She wasn’t in the bathroom anymore. She was in the neighbor’s backyard. There was a treehouse on stilts and a sandbox where a boy had been mean to her once.
There were so many of them, had the marshal brought the whole police department?
“I think she’s delirious, call the fire department.”
A sudden scream?
“She got him in the eye, hold her legs down!”
The marshal stood above her, his hands on his hips. The world seemed to center to him, like he was all gravity. “Hey,” he said. “Welcome back.”
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