“She wasn’t herself, that day she came to talk to me,” he said. “She was always so professional. She cared a lot for those boys. She’d do them favors, help them out in life. But that time, she was upset. It was right before the center closed and she left town. Funny to think you and I are here, talking, over what, twenty years later? Having a similar discussion. Only you don’t look afraid.”
“She did?”
“She did.”
He stopped and drank.
“At least have some water,” he said. “You’re making me feel alone.”
Amanda waved for the bartender. He soon returned with a glass of ice water. She took a sip.
“Martha asked me why the sleeping giants are empty inside. Thosewere her exact words. She said it bothered her, all of them being so empty inside.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
“Did she ask anything else?”
“Not that I remember. Next thing I knew, she had taken a job in Oregon.”
Amanda put down her water.
“Are there any social workers in town?”
A thousand miles away, Martha King set down the phone. She had recognized the sounds of a desert bar at night, the jukebox in the background. It had been Mitch, the bartender at the pub in Sleeping Giant. The last time she had seen him was at her daddy’s funeral. She had come and gone in a day.
“There’s a young lady in town,” he said. “She’s at a table right now, talking to the historian.”
“Thank you,” Martha said, hanging up.
She looked out her window into the night. The Oregon desert was always cold, even when it was hot. The sun was higher here, and the moon didn’t look right in the sky.
She had been exiled before. She would not be exiled again.
She picked up the phone.
It needed to end, now.
26
Ralph stood over the grave of the rabbit.
He had buried her in the woods, thinking Dennis would want to visit her once he got better. But that was wishful thinking. Dennis spent almost all his time in isolation now, when he wasn’t in treatment. Martha had come in speaking against the cells and then ended up using them even more, for the boys like Dennis.
The rabbit would be bones by now.
Ralph had run out of ideas.
“I don’t know what to do,” he told Dennis.
He had waited until the isolation ward was empty, and chanced using his master key to open the door. Dennis lay in the far corner, a shadow on the floor. The cell was very dark and smelled strongly of urine. One of Ralph’s jobs was to clean these rooms at the end of the day, and lately, horrors had awaited him: crescents of broken nails and smears of blood on the walls, puddles of shit in the corners, dabbled in with bare hands.
Dennis didn’t reply. He just lay there.
“Maybe you’re thinking you can just stop living. I tried that, back at Axis. You know, she still hasn’t recognized me. I don’t think she everwill. She forgets the boys, after she’s done. Unless they please her, and refuse to leave. Some get that way—like whipped puppies, always licking the face of their mistress. I saw that at Axis. Anyhow, I tried what you’re doing right now. There is no winning, son, with what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?” It came as a whisper from the floor.