Also Known as Rowan Pohi Read online

  He was talking to her. Talking gently.

  She couldn't stop crying.

  They argued again, almost tenderly this time.

  Him: You need to go to the hospital.

  Her: I'm okay.

  Him: I'm taking you to the hospital.

  Her: No, I'll be okay by tomorrow.

  Him: You're not okay. I'm taking you to the emergency room.

  Her: I'll be okay, Bobby.

  Finally she gave in.

  She told me: "You're the man of the house. Keep an eye on Cody."

  By some miracle, my brother slept through the whole thing.

  They left in a taxi.

  I didn't know what else to do, so I turned on the TV

  They came home two hours later.

  Mom's arm covered in gauze from the elbow up.

  A trying-to-be-brave smile on her face.

  "It looked worse than it is. The doctor said I'll be fine."

  Dad poured himself a drink. Old Smuggler Scotch.

  Turned on the TV to catch the end of the baseball game, but it was over.

  Fifteen minutes later the doorbell rang.

  Two police, one tall, one short.

  "I need to speak to Robert Steele.

  " My father came to the door.

  "Mr. Steele?"

  "That's me."

  "We have a warrant for your arrest."

  "But I don't want to press charges!" Mom protested.

  "It's out of your hands, ma'am. This is a criminal matter.

  Sorry."

  They handcuffed my father and took him away.

  For a few weeks our life at home was like a circus.

  A stream of strangers tramping through our apartment.

  Police who needed to talk to Mom.

  A lawyer who needed to talk to Dad.

  Two social workers who needed to talk to me and Cody.

  I didn't want to talk to anyone. Not even Marcus or Big Poobs.

  One day I had had enough. If I didn't get out, I would start throwing things at people.

  So I went for a walk. Bought the local paper at the newsstand.

  There he was. On the front page.

  My father.

  Dark circles under his eyes.

  Looking like the kind of man who really could do such a thing.

  The headline: IRON STEELE.

  I sped through the article, soaking up the missing facts and details nobody had bothered to tell me.

  Marilyn Steele suffered second-degree burns.

  Robert Steele was charged with aggravated assault, a felony.

  The article quoted a nurse in the emergency room: "The pattern of the iron had been branded into the victim's skin."

  A man approached the newsstand. He plunked down two quarters and grinned at Ivan, the guy who sells the papers.

  "Now, that is a man who knows how to make a good impression!"

  The two of them shared a laugh.

  Dad didn't want a trial, so he copped a plea.

  Except I didn't call him Dad. After what he did that night, I would never think of him as Dad again.

  He was sentenced to ninety days in the county jail.

  Mom brought us to see him every Sunday afternoon. Trust me: it feels surreal to visit your father in jail, but it's amazing how fast you get used to the routine. We had to go through a metal detector. One time Cody pulled a plastic pistol from his pocket, just a toy squirt gun, but the guard confiscated it and didn't give it back when we left.

  My father looked tired. He grew a little beard, sort of a goatee thing, but I didn't much like it, and I don't think Cody did either.

  I don't know whether Mom liked it or not. I didn't know what she was thinking. While my father tried to talk to us she sat without speaking, a tight little half smile on her face.

  The doctor removed the bandage on her upper arm. She said she was completely healed, but the skin looked different—darker and shinier—than the surrounding area.

  With time credited for good behavior, my father got released in sixty-five days. We had to talk to the social worker a few more times after he came home, but it seemed like things might finally go back to normal. Mom got rehired at school. My father went back to brake jobs and timing belts at his repair shop. He also had to take an anger management class.

  One afternoon I came home. The apartment felt different. On the kitchen counter there was a note with a gold wedding band sitting on top of it. Like a tiny paperweight to prevent that note from blowing away.

  Dear Bobby and Cody,

  I love you so much

  goodbye

  Mom

  When my father came home from work, he read the note.

  "Well, boys, your mother's left and gone."

  "Where?" Cody asked in a small voice.

  "I don't know."

  "Is she coming back?" he squeaked.

  "I doubt it." He shook his head. "Looks like we're on our own."

  He never talked about her after that.

  SIX

  IT WAS HARDEST FOR CODY. HE CRIED ALMOST EVERY NIGHT. It wasn't easy listening to that.

  My brother began acting peculiar too. For instance, if he and I were walking in the city, and Cody saw some woman who looked even remotely like Mom, he'd start hyperventilating with excitement, jumping up and down.

  "I see Mom! Look, Bobby! She's right over there!"

  "No, she's not," I'd tell him. He wouldn't believe me, so I'd have to bring him closer until he could see for himself that it wasn't Mom.

  He pulled this stunt again and again until finally I couldn't take it anymore. One afternoon when he swore he saw Mom, I grabbed his shoulder and dragged him to where the woman was standing.

  "See? What did I tell you? That's not Mom!"

  The woman looked at me, startled.

  "But it looked like Mom," he whimpered.

  "Stop saying that!" I yelled. "Mom's gone! Get that through your head."

  Cody burst into tears. He cried all the way home.

  Next morning was the first time he showed up at breakfast with a feather in his hair, sticking up in back.

  My father sat up straight. "Well, I'll be."

  "I'm a Indian boy," Cody declared.

  My father rubbed his chin.

  "Is that so?"

  "Uh-huh." Cody nodded. "My mommy lives in a tepee."

  Wacky stuff. But after he started wearing that feather, Cody stopped "finding" Mom on the street. Which was a big relief.

  SEVEN

  THE POLICE CONFISCATED THE IRON. EVIDENCE, THEY SAID. Eventually they returned it, but I never saw Mom use it again. Or my father either. He could rebuild a transmission but wouldn't be caught dead ironing a shirt, so that iron stayed in the closet.

  I didn't know what to think about what my father did. Many times I tried hard to think about it, but I never got very far. I'm not naive. I realize that very few married couples live in happily-ever-after-ville. Lots of husbands find ways to ruin their marriages.

  Drinking themselves silly.

  Cheating with other women.

  Gambling away the food money.

  Abandoning their families.

  Beating their wives.

  But a man who burns his wife with a hot iron? Who leaves an impression of that iron on her skin?

  One morning I woke to discover that during the night my life had divided itself into two pieces: Life Before and Life After. Life After did have its pluses. With Mom gone, we ate more meat and fewer vegetables. The guy at Movie Palace let me rent R-rated movies—my father didn't care. Sunday morning my father didn't drag us to church either, like Mom used to do.

  Life After felt different in other ways too. After my father got out of jail and Mom left, I didn't feel quite so relaxed when he was in the house. Jacqueline, a social worker, came every so often to check on Cody and me for the first few months. She was a friendly lady who smelled really nice and always brought a bag of butterscotch candies. Jacqueline must have sensed something
because one day she asked me: "Are you afraid of your father, Bobby?"

  "No," I told her.

  That was true, though it wasn't the whole story. I was definitely more aware, more watchful, around my father. Even when he was asleep down the hallway in his bedroom, even when I was asleep, some part of me stayed alert.

  I'm not saying that I considered him some kind of monster. I knew my father loved me and my brother. But facts are facts: he hurt Mom. Now that my eyes had been opened, I couldn't completely shut them.

  Mom once told me he'd never physically hurt her before that, ever. So what was the deal? How had he gone from Dad Before to Father After? Was this one of those once-in-a-lifetime things, a freak event that would never be repeated? Or did it signal some kind of ominous crack in his foundation?

  One thing's for sure: my father proved that your life can change for the worse because of one thing you do, one act you commit. Sometimes I wondered if it could also work the other way around. Could you do one reckless thing, throw one desperate Hail Mary pass to transform your life from Before to After in a good way?

  My father was trying hard to clean up his act. He had finished his anger management classes and stopped drinking. Still, I did have nagging worries. I didn't obsess about it, but, well, maybe one day he would lose his temper again and try to hurt me. Or worse, my brother. That was not going to happen. Not Cody. Not on my watch.

  EIGHT

  ON THURSDAYS I WORKED FIVE HOURS AT MY FATHER'S garage. I didn't help on any of the serious repairs. Mostly he kept me busy doing oil changes and vacuuming out the cars before we gave them back to the customers. I knew how to rotate tires too, though he didn't have me do that yet. All in all it wasn't bad work. The other mechanics treated me fine. I got paid twelve dollars an hour, off the books, which was more than I could earn anywhere else. And I needed the money.

  That afternoon I took Cody to the bead store, like I'd promised. Its real name was Kopsky's Gifts and Novelties, but Cody called it the bead store because there was a huge section devoted to beads for making jewelry. It was by far Cody's favorite store. It wasn't so much the beads that interested Cody as the large selection of Indian stuff.

  As I stepped into the store, a wave of incense smell washed over me, sickeningly sweet. Mr. Kopsky stood behind the counter, arms folded. He was a big, lumpy man with thick black hair, and he wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs. I had been to his store at least a dozen times and had never once seen him smile.

  Cody made a beeline for the far wall, where a sign proclaimed GENUINE NATIVE AMERICAN CRAFTS. I wasn't convinced about the genuine part. A few items looked real; for instance, some arrowheads displayed in a locked glass cabinet, but there were lots of cheap items (wallets, leather moccasins, purses woven from beads, toy headdresses) that could have been made by anyone.

  Naturally, my brother ignored the inexpensive stuff and zeroed in on a necklace made of porcupine quills and three large bear claws. The kid had good taste—the necklace looked like the real deal. There was a tiny white price tag lying face-down on the display table; when I flipped it over, I almost gagged.

  'A hundred bucks!"

  Cody gave me a pleading look. "I want it."

  "You can't afford it." I steered him to the bins with the low-priced items. "You better stay over here."

  Cody twisted his neck to look over his shoulder. "But I want that necklace!"

  "Then you have to save your money. You can do that, but that means you won't be able to buy anything today."

  I knew Cody pretty well. I figured there was no way he'd be able to leave that store without buying some kind of treat.

  "Oh, okay." He sighed.

  I left him looking at smudge sticks, miniature drums, and dream catchers while I wandered around the store. A few minutes later I went back to check on my brother.

  "Made up your mind?" I asked him.

  He showed me a small toy hatchet decorated with feathers.

  "It costs ten dollars," he said.

  It was a flimsy thing that would likely break in less than a week. I felt a pang in my gut. "Is that what you want?"

  He nodded without a lot of enthusiasm.

  "We can keep looking," I told him.

  He spun the hatchet in his hands. "No, it's pretty cool."

  We took the little hatchet to the front of the store. Cody handed his ten-dollar bill to Mr. Kopsky, and we left.

  When we got back home, I checked our mail slot. I was excited to find a thick envelope from Whitestone Preparatory School addressed to Rowan Pohi. I took it up to our apartment, went to my bedroom, and closed the door so I could read in privacy.

  The envelope contained a personal welcome from Dr. Paul LeClerc, the headmaster of the upper school. I thought that title sounded very exclusive and private-schoolish; for some reason, it made me picture Hogwarts. There was also a form asking for certain information (phone number, Social Security number) that I had left off the original application. I found a tuition bill to the tune of $13, 848. I let out a soft whistle. As if to soften that blow, the envelope also contained lots of Whitestone paraphernalia: car stickers, a pen, a mini-pennant, even a little stack of Whitestone sticky notes.

  At the IHOP my buddies were delighted when I showed them all the Whitestone loot. Big Poobs waved the little pennant back and forth. "Rah-rah White-stone! This is awe-some!"

  "Did you check out that tuition bill?" I said. "They want about fourteen thousand bucks."

  Big Poobs smiled. "Piece of cake. Rowan's got a rich uncle, I heard."

  I made a sour face. "Rowan's got squat, and you know it. They want his Social Security number and his phone number too. I can just imagine them calling my house and having my father pick up the phone. You want to give them your phone number? Huh?"

  Marcus blinked at me. "Are you saying—"

  I shrugged. "What I'm saying is ... Look, I haven't had so much fun since my cousin Corey let me shave off half his hair, but—I don't know—maybe this is where we get off."

  Poobs stuck out his lower lip. He picked up the Whitestone car sticker and held it against the window. "But this stuff is hilarious. This is a letter from the headmaster."

  "If you worked at Whitestone," Marcus told Poobs, "you'd be the bellymaster."

  Poobs grinned and patted his stomach. "Damn straight!"

  For a moment nobody said anything. Then Marcus nodded. "Bobby's right. Time to pull the plug. Soon. Let's do it tomorrow. Let's give Rowan one more day on this earth."

  So we agreed to wait until tomorrow, only it didn't turn out that way.

  I had barely gotten home from the IHOP when Marcus sent me a text:

  Rowan's sick. Stomachache or...?

  Big Poobs: Might B Ebola virus that's the one that turns your brain to diarea

  Big Poobs was a terrible speller, but I got the point. I sat on our stoop and fired off a reply.

  Relax. Rowans fine. Chill.

  Big Poobs: Not sure about that Rowan said take him to the hospital so we did

  Marcus: Yeah we're at the ER right now

  Now that I could see where this was heading, I decided to relax and go along for the ride. What else could I do?

  Me: How is he?

  Marcus: BAD They took him to ICU

  Big Poobs: Temp is up face is hot

  Marcus: His nurse is hot!!! A real QT

  Me: Will he get better?

  Big Poobs: Worse

  Marcus: Doc says his pulse is slowing ... he's bleeding from his ears

  Me: TMI!

  Marcus: LMAO

  Marcus: Shhhhhh critical condition

  Big Poobs: Emergency! Cardiac arrest!

  Nobody texted anything for a full minute. I tried to be patient, but the suspense was killing me.

  Me: What the & is happening????

  Marcus: Cant see the letters on the keyboard

  Me: Why not?

  Marcus: 2 many tears

  I was chuckling now, despite myself.

  Me: Is he dead? />
  Poobs: Yeah Gdby Rowan

  Marcus: Dude fought hard right to the end

  Poobs: gr8fl I knew him

  I paused, not sure what to say.

  Me: What now?

  Another long pause. Finally...

  Big Poobs: We gotta bury him before he gets riga mortis

  I was thinking, Bury Rowan? How?

  Me: Where?

  Marcus: Meet at 10 2nite crnr of sibberson and spence

  Me: OK

  Marcus: Sad day

  Me: ur messed ∧

  Marcus:

  Me: Xtremely messed ∧

  Marcus: Rowans last words: MY #1 REGRET IS ILL NEVER GET 2 B A STONY

  NINE

  THE ABANDONED LOT WAS CORDONED OFF WETH HIGH chainlink fencing. For years we'd heard rumors that they were going to turn this lot into a park for kids, a farmers' market, a community garden—but nothing happened. Nothing ever did. The lighting was bad. At night it felt dangerous, the perfect place to get mugged, though I'd actually never heard of anything bad going on here. It was just a forgotten square of the city.

  We followed the fencing until we came to a part that had been lifted. The three of us shimmied underneath. "Think this is okay?" Big Poobs murmured. I glanced up and down the street; the only thing you could see was a line of parked cars. "What's wrong with it?"

  "I dunno," Poobs said. "It just seems so ... exposed. Couldn't we at least find someplace over there in the corner?"

  Marcus snorted. "You gonna come every Sunday to put flowers on his grave? It's good enough, genius."

  "I guess."

  We crouched down. Marcus had brought some sticks that we used to start digging a small grave. Big Poobs turned on a tiny flashlight and set it up so we could see what we were doing.

  "This dirt is like cement," I muttered. "How deep should we go?"

  "Four inches," said Big Poobs.

  I laughed. "Why exactly four inches? Why not three? Or five?"

  "Four," he repeated.

  "Poor guy," Marcus said. "Dude didn't last very long once he took sick."

  "You guys are even more twisted than I thought," I told him.