Written by Stephen F. Moloney
The acrid smell of oil and engine grease stung Ray’s nostrils as he slipped in through the narrow opening between the two large, metal doors that fronted Teddy’s garage. That was the problem with living somewhere like Marais des Voleurs, thought Ray, as he crept further into the dark interior of the garage, the poured concrete floor gritty beneath his boots. At one point in time it may have lived up to its translation as ‘Thieves’ Swamp’, back in its days as a French military outpost and then throughout the 19th century when it became a haven for moonshine producers, highwaymen, and river pirates. But ever since the end of the Second World War when a police officer by the name of Lieutenant Tom McCabe – a particularly fearsome third-generation Irish-American – led a crackdown on crime so infamous it drove any would-be criminals fleeing for the relative anonymity provided by the likes of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Marais des Voleurs had become the kind of small-town where you could leave the front door of your house unlocked when you were going to bed and sleep easy in the knowledge that you wouldn’t be robbed. And, as it turned out, it was clear this same ‘laissez-faire’ attitude to security measures had allowed Mustang to slip seamlessly into Teddy’s garage like it was the middle of the day as opposed to coming onto nine-thirty at night – a point he’d most definitely be bringing up with Teddy the next time he saw him.
With his eyes after growing accustomed to the darkness by the time he reached the middle of the garage, Ray came to a stop and peered through the gloom for signs of Mustang. Given he’d been inside there on so many occasions thanks to his own reliably problematic car acting up every few months, Ray already had a pretty detailed layout of the interior of the garage at his disposal and used this in order to get a bearing on where everything was. Off to his right-hand side, there was the office – this tiny box of a space behind a small, single pane of glass where Teddy’s wife, Melissa, could often be found lamenting her husband’s lack of organization skills when she was trying to sort through the mountains of receipts and delivery dockets he just dumped in there and forgot about. To his left was the dust-covered promotion stand from a long-since-defunct car accessory company still filled with the same “revolutionary” air-fresheners Big Teddy had been convinced into stocking by a smooth-talking sales rep in the mid-’00s, but ended up only ever selling one of when word got out that if they got too hot they would start to smell not unlike a bucket of bait that had been left out in the sun for too long. And just in front of him, though it was currently covered up by the Trudeau’s station wagon – a vehicle which, like its owners, may have been in its prime back in the ’70s, but in direct defiance of time itself was somehow still going strong – was the inspection pit where Teddy, on more occasions than Ray would care to remember, had called out the always ominous words, “You don’t need this back today, do you?!”, after spying yet another problem that would see Ray needing to dip into his scant amount of savings in order to get it fixed.
With no sign of Mustang in any of those three places, however – including both inside the Trudeau’s station wagon and down in the actual inspection pit itself, because he checked both – and with nowhere else to search, Ray moved stealthily towards the rear of the garage in order to continue his search.
Having been built onto the original garage by ‘Big’ Teddy in the early ’80s, the rear of the garage was a far larger space than the section Ray had just come from. The roof, made up of sheets of corrugated steel, was a good thirty feet above his head and the floor space was at least double that of the original garage. There were two more inspection pits, one on either side of the space, that Ray had yet to have the pleasure of standing beside and hearing he’d be needing to spend more money to fix his broken-down jalopy of a car. Then right in the middle, interrupting the long, continuous workbench that wrapped right the way around the sides and rear wall of the space, was the most recent addition to the space in the shape of a large, electronically controlled roller door which Teddy had installed two years previously.
And there, parked right in front of this door, its nose facing out towards it, was a certain yellow ‘65 Mustang Fastback with a black stripe running the entire way up the middle of it.
A Mustang with the certain fourteen-year-old kid Ray had come looking for sitting quietly in the driver’s seat.
Feeling an equal measure of both relieved and sympathetic, Ray let out the smallest of sighs before walking plainly over towards the front passenger door of the car – there was no need for stealth anymore. He popped open the door, bent down, and peered in at Mustang, who, as he’d seen from outside, was, indeed, sitting in the driver’s seat, but could now see that he also had his two hands gripped either side of the large steering wheel and was staring idly down at the famous logo of a horse in full flight set into the centre of it.
“Mind if I get in?” asked Ray quietly, thinking it best to approach the situation somewhat cautiously at first in order to get a read on Mustang’s state of mind.
Instead of answering him, however, Mustang just continued to stare down at his namesake forever frozen in mid-gallop behind a small circular piece of acrylic.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, then,” said Ray, taking his opportunity to fold all six feet and two inches of his frame down into the bucket-style, black leather-covered front passenger seat alongside Mustang.
After making the necessary adjustments to get suitably comfortable, Ray closed his door, sending a satisfyingly heavy, metallic thud echoing around the lofty interior of the garage.
“Sorry for taking your car,” said Mustang a touch sheepishly, his eyes still firmly locked on the steering wheel.
Having expected that he’d have to be doing most of the talking, to hear these words come out of Mustang’s mouth before he’d even had a chance to speak himself caught Ray completely by surprise – but, regardless, he was going to try and make the most of it.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” he replied in a deliberately nonchalant manner.
“And I didn’t hit anything either,” added Mustang. “Just in case you were worried.”
“Well, the only thing I was worried about was you,” said Ray, turning to look at him. “But I’m glad to hear it; I mean, we wouldn’t want to go addin’ ‘criminal damage’ to two charges of ‘grand theft auto’, now would we?”
Mustang’s head immediately snapped in Ray’s direction, his jaw nearly hitting the floor such was his state of panic at what he’d just heard – is that why Tess had been with a cop?! he wondered.
“Relax, kid!” said Ray, quickly smiling in order to put Mustang out of his misery. “I’m only kiddin’! Ain’t nobody pressin’ charges!”
After letting out a sigh that was equal parts relieved and irritated, Mustang turned his attention back onto the steering wheel. Though convinced he’d seen the slightest hint of a smirk on his face before he looked away, Ray moved quickly to keep Mustang talking just in case he was imagining things.
“So … this is your grandpa’s car, huh?” he said, matter-of-factly, as he took a brief look around the interior of the car.
“I see Tess didn’t waste any time in telling you all about me then,” replied Mustang, more than a hint of resentment in his voice.
“Ok, well, first of all, she’s just doin’ her job, man – so give her a break,” said Ray, firmly, but not in an overly critical manner which might get Mustang offside. “And, secondly, while she did, yes, tell us some things about who you are, she didn’t actually know anythin’ about the car; I just put it together when she mentioned your grandpa in Texas.”
Mustang let out another sigh. This one, however, was different. It was weary; too much so to be coming from a kid so young. And, yet, here he was, sounding as though he’d been carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders for the past month or so – and in a way he had. But now he knew he’d reached the end of the line. His plan had gone up in smoke and there was nowhere left to run anymore – the firmly locked roller door sitting in front of him had guaranteed that.
“He gave it to my mom a few years ago,” said Mustang, the words falling tiredly from his mouth. “Said it would be better than having to rely on getting the bus all the time. Looking back now, though, I think he knew he wasn’t going to be able to drive it for all that much longer, and given he’d never sell it, he thought he’d, at least, keep it in the family if he gave it to us. When my mom saw it would cost nearly six months’ rent to actually insure it, though, she said we’d be better off just to keep on getting the bus.”
“So if your mom had the car …” asked Ray, his curiosity getting the better of him. “How did Tess not know about it?”
“Because it wasn’t at our house,” answered Mustang, his tone hushed like he was letting Ray in on a state secret. “See, where we live-…”. A frustrated Mustang cut himself off before he could finish. He still had those slips. Even now. Seven months later. Those momentary lapses when he forgot how everything had irreparably changed; how anything to do with him and his mom was no longer just explained with a “we”, it now had to have “used to” come after it. He wondered when they’d stop.
“Where we used to live …” continued Mustang, a touch sternly, as if he were trying to use the moment as an opportunity to retrain his brain not to make the same mistake again. “Wasn’t that great a neighbourhood. So, knowing that having a car like this sitting outside in the driveway would only be looking for trouble, mom asked one of our neighbours, Mr. Lopez, if we could put it in this small, old garage he had right down at the back of his garden – you know, to keep it out of sight – and he said we could.”
“So on the day you ran away …” mused Ray, thinking aloud in order to put together the puzzle that wound up with Mustang finding himself stranded at the Creek. “Your foster parents thought you’d gone to school as normal, but in actual fact, you’d gone back to you and your mom’s place to get the car?”
“No, I went to school,” said Mustang, calmly explaining. “Because I knew if I didn’t show up they’d only call Louis and Rachel – those are my foster parents – and then Tess to see where I was. So, I waited for school to be over, then got one of the city buses back to where we used to live, got the car out of Mr. Lopez’s garage, and hit the road.”
Though quietly impressed at the level of thinking he’d put into his plan, Ray was conscious that the time he’d been afforded to speak to Mustang by Tess was quickly evaporating, if not already after disappearing – so he needed to get a move on.
“And by ‘hit the road’,” said Ray, attempting to nudge the conversation in the direction he wanted. “You obviously mean head for Houston, yeah? To see your grandpa?”
Mustang paused for a moment. He knew that if he told Ray he had, indeed, been trying to get to Houston to see his grandfather he’d almost certainly be guaranteeing that he’d be ruling it out as ever being a future possibility; a plan to try again at a future date when things had inevitably died back down. Deep down, though, he knew that despite the fact he’d framed it as a question, for Ray to mention Houston and his grandfather in the same sentence meant he’d already figured it out – so he conceded defeat.
“They said I couldn’t go to stay with him,” replied Mustang, sighing heavily once again as he allowed the words to just flow out of his lungs. “Cause he was sick.”
“What do you mean ‘sick’?” asked Ray, almost able to see the chip rolling off Mustang’s shoulder.
“He has Parkinson’s,” replied Mustang, valiantly attempting to keep his voice from shaking as he said the words.
“So that’s what you meant when you said he knew he wasn’t going to be able to drive for that much longer,” said Ray, the pieces beginning to fall into place. “He already knew what was wrong with him.”
“Yeah … and, apparently, it’s only going to get worse.”
Ray knew life wasn’t fair – when you join the military, it’s one of the very first lessons you learn. But seeing the hand Mustang had been dealt at such a young age, he couldn’t help but feel that life had been particularly unfair to him because here was this kid, sitting no more than two feet away from him, who’d already been through enough hardship in his mere fourteen years on this planet to last a lifetime. His father walked out on him and his mother; she then died; and then, to cap it all off, when his world was crumbling down around him, he couldn’t even go to stay with the one remaining relative he had left because he had been diagnosed with a disease that would slowly but surely rob him of his independence.
Yes, life was unfair; but sometimes it could just be downright cruel.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that …” replied Ray, choosing his words carefully but making sure not to sugarcoat them either – he knew Mustang would smell that out like a sniffer dog. “But, at the same time, it’s not a death sentence; I mean, he could still have another ten, twenty years – maybe even more.”
“That’s what I said!” said Mustang, turning sharply to look at Ray, his eyes lighting up energetically. “To him and Tess! But they wouldn’t listen to me! So, I thought I’d make them.”
“Meaning what exactly?”
“Meaning I thought if I could just get to Houston and show my grandpa, not only how easy having me around would actually be,” said Mustang, half turning in his seat in order to fully get across the logic behind his plan. “But also that I could help him out when he’d start to … you know … get worse, then he and Tess would have no choice but to let me go stay with him. I mean, that makes sense right?”
At that moment, for the very first time since they’d met, Ray felt as though he were truly talking to a “kid”. He, of course, knew Mustang was a kid – just one look at him would confirm that – but he’d always seemed older than what he was. The way he spoke. The way he acted. It all leant itself to painting a picture of a kid who seemed a good two or three years his senior. And after everything he’d been through, that really wasn’t all that surprising – after all, that’s what prolonged adversity does, it ages you. But to look at him now, his eyes wide with hope, the sense of desperation just pouring out of him to be agreed with, Ray was having a hard time trying to convince himself to say what he knew Mustang needed to hear.
“It does …” began Ray, carefully unknotting the words as they popped into his head. “But with situations like this one … sometimes it’s not just about the practical side of things.”
The look of hope immediately drained from Mustang’s eyes. He’d had enough conversations with Tess, Tess’ boss and even Tess’ boss’ boss about going to stay with his grandfather to know when things weren’t going to work out the way he wanted – and just the tone of Ray’s voice was enough to let him know that he wasn’t going to be siding with him either.
“Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve no doubt that you’d be more than capable of doin’ all the things you just mentioned,” continued Ray, recognizing he needed to move quickly or risk losing Mustang’s attention. “You know, takin’ care of yourself, takin’ care of your grandpa if he needed it – I mean, the fact I found you after drivin’ halfway across the country by yourself is testament enough to that.”
“But …” said Mustang, eager to get it out of the way as he knew it was inevitably coming.
“But …” replied Ray. “Did you ever consider that maybe your grandpa – and Tess … well, that maybe they want more than that life for you?”
“But I told them over and over again that I don’t mind doing it!” argued Mustang.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” said Ray, keeping his voice nice and calm in order to offset the increased amount of emotion beginning to creep into Mustang’s. “And the fact you feel like that is what makes you such a special kid. But, whichever way you look at it, you are still a kid, Oscar …”
This was the first time Mustang had heard Ray call him by his name. His real name. And, bizarrely, it felt strange. As if he’d made an error. Mistaken him for someone else. But he had to remind himself that he wasn’t incorrect. Because he was Oscar – baggage and all.
“And when it boils down to it?” continued Ray. “If an adult has to make a decision about what’s best for a kid they have a … how would you put it? … ‘duty of care’ over? Then any adult worth their salt is gonna make the one which allows that kid to be a kid.”
“I could still be a kid if I was living with my grandpa,” said Mustang, though it lacked the vehement punch of someone who truly believed what they were saying.
“Maybe, yeah …” replied Ray, he, too, sensing that Mustang’s resolve was running out of steam at a rapid rate. “But I think Tess and your grandpa care about you too much to risk what’s best for you and your happiness on a ‘maybe’.”
Mustang turned back around in his seat so that he was, once again, fully facing the steering wheel. His eyes fell back down onto the logo at the centre of it as he thought about everything Ray had just said.
“I have to go back, don’t I?” he said, the quiet resignation in his voice indicating that he already knew what the answer was.
“It’s for the best, kid,” answered Ray gently, aware how very delicately poised this moment was. “Trust me.”
“Alright …” said Mustang, turning to look at Ray after taking another few moments to quickly mull over his options. “I trust you.”
“Good,” smiled Ray, reassuringly, as he stuck out his fist for a bump. “Then let’s go do this, uh?”
The smallest of smiles flashed across Mustang’s face. He didn’t know what it was about Ray, but he just had the uncanny ability to always seem to know what to say in order to put him at ease. Whether it was right then in the front of his grandfather’s car or that very first night in the trees by the range when he convinced him to crash at his place.
He was going to miss that.
“Let’s do it,” said Mustang, balling up his fist and knocking it against Ray’s.
With that, the pair of them popped open their doors and got out of the car. No sooner had their feet touched the concrete floor, however, than the sound of Tess’ voice echoed through the darkness as she came rushing across the garage towards the car, “Oh thank God!” – obviously, she’d grown tired of waiting to see the results of Ray’s negotiations outside in Malcolm’s car.
“Do you realize how worried I was about you?!” she said as she grabbed Mustang and gave him the biggest hug she could muster. “How worried we all were?!”
“I know, I’m sorry,” offered Mustang, his voice being somewhat altered due to Tess trying her best, it seemed, to squeeze every last breath of air out of his lungs in order to make sure he wasn’t just a figment of her imagination.
Suddenly, the slightly muffled sound of a cellphone ringing from somewhere on Tess’ person began to fill the garage. Frustrated at having her hug with Mustang interrupted, Tess reluctantly released him from her grasp, plunged her hand into the pocket on her jacket, and fished out her phone.
“It’s Louis,” she said, reading the name of Mustang’s foster father off the screen before looking across the roof of the car at Ray. “Would you mind watching him while I go deal with this?” she asked, gesturing her head towards Mustang. “Given he’s shown himself to be a flight risk …”
“I’m gonna be getting that a lot for the next while, aren’t I?” asked Mustang, dryly, after Tess’ not-so-thinly veiled comment.
“Oh yeah, for sure,” she confirmed with a smile and an assured nod before sliding her finger across the screen of her cellphone and lifting it to her ear. “Louis, hi – yeah, I found him …”
With the faint sound of a relieved Louis just about audible through the earpiece on her cellphone, a smiling Tess turned around and began to walk briskly back across the garage towards the doors.
“He sounded happy,” said Mustang, sounding slightly surprised as he looked across the garage at Tess slipping out through the doors and out of sight.
“Of course he did,” replied Ray, making sure to up the enthusiasm in his voice. “He and Rachel would have been worried sick about you.”
“Yeah, I guess …” muttered Mustang, not sounding overly convinced. “I just hope things won’t be weird when I get back.”
“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” said Ray, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. “They’ll just be happy to have you back safe and sound – you’ll see.”
And how Ray hoped he was right.
*
Having licked her bowl clean of any and all remnants of the entire can of dog food he’d scooped into it just a few minutes previously, Lola waddled her way across the porch of the clubhouse towards where Ray was sitting on an old, wooden chair.
“Oh, let me guess …” he said, smiling, as he reached down and held her caramel-coloured head in-between his two hands. “You want more, don’t ya? Don’t ya?!”
Knowing he probably wasn’t going to magically produce another can of dog food for her to devour, Lola seemed happy enough with the vigorous ear scratch Ray was now giving her, as evidenced by her rapidly wagging tail – though, in truth, it had been doing that since she’d first spied him and Maggie walking up the avenue towards the clubhouse where she’d been patiently waiting on the porch. “I found her over by the workshop last winter,” Ray had said when Lola first bounded off the porch and began the very important business of curiously sniffing around Maggie’s sneakers and legs to see who she was. “It was pourin’ down with rain and she was just limpin’ around the place lookin’ for somethin’ to eat – poor thing was just skin and bone. But, after a lot of coaxin’, she eventually let me pick her up and I brought her back down to the cabin; set up a little bed for her then next to the stove, and after about two weeks she was right as rain – and she’s been here ever since.”
Though she hadn’t said it when she’d first thought of it – in part because she didn’t want him to think she was pitying him, but mainly because she was too busy rubbing Lola and involuntarily speaking to her like she was a big, hairy baby – Maggie had felt a great sense of relief at knowing that Ray wasn’t entirely alone in the massive expanse of acreage that was Crescent Creek; this quasi-shrine where everything couldn’t help but be a constant reminder of Mustang.
“So what happened then?” asked Maggie from where she was leaning up against one of the four large columns which fronted the clubhouse, the painted white stone refreshingly cool against her back. “Did Tess and Mustang stay the night or …?”
“Nope, they headed straight back to Orlando,” replied Ray, not taking his eyes off of Lola, who had now taken to sitting in front of him with her eyes closed in satisfaction as he continued to scratch her ears just the way she liked.
“Wow, just like that?” said Maggie, a touch surprised.
“Yep …” said Ray, continuing to stroke Lola, but now inadvertently giving off the distinct impression that he was only doing so as a means of distracting himself. “Tess came back in after talkin’ to Louis; said it was time to go; she thanked me for lookin’ after Mustang; he thanked me for lettin’ him stay with me, and then … they were gone. Of course, I asked if they wanted to swing by my place real quick and pick up the few things Mustang had there, but when Tess asked if I wouldn’t mind just mailin’ them, I kinda knew she was just eager to leave as soon as possible.”
“And how did you feel after he’d left?
“Honestly? At first, I just felt relieved that he’d seemed alright ‘bout headin’ back to Florida – I mean, that’s why I’d asked if I could speak to him in the first place, you know?”
“But after that?” probed Maggie, sensing there was more to come.
“Yeah, I felt a little strange – I’m not gonna lie,” answered Ray, still rubbing Lola but now looking across the porch at Maggie. “Like, I spoke with Jeanie for a bit, and that was fine. But when I finally got back to my trailer and went inside … it just felt ’empty’, if that makes sense? I mean, in reality, things were ‘back to normal’, right? But to see Mustang’s things lyin’ around – the few clothes that he had, his 5-iron up on his bed … I dunno … ‘normal’ just suddenly felt a whole lot lonelier than what it had done before I met him.”
“And how long did you feel like that for?” asked Maggie, trying desperately hard to conceal the fact her heart had broken just the tiniest little bit at hearing Ray say he felt lonely after Mustang first left.
“Probably right up until Teddy called me the followin’ Thursday at work to tell me Mustang’s car was ready to be picked up,” said Ray, after taking a second to think over his answer.
“How come?”
“Cause when I called Tess to ask her what I should do with the car – you know, whether I should bring it to Florida or maybe take it to Mustang’s grandpa in Texas – I wound up askin’ her how Mustang was doin’ …”
Ray trailed off into silence. Unlike when he’d done this before, however, Maggie could tell that he was doing it, not because what he was about to say was making him feel upset, but because it was making him feel angry.
“And she said that he was stayin’ with her ‘cause he was about to move into a residential facility for kids waitin’ on a new foster family,” growled Ray, clearly still annoyed at even the mere memory of that conversation. “Because Louis and Rachel had said they didn’t want to be his foster parents anymore.”