“No,” I said. The sheriff didn’t meet my gaze but continued rifling through the thick pages in front of him. With his head tilted down and his hat removed, I could see his pink scalp through his pale hair.
“You and she were friends, if I remember right.” He kept his head down and turned another page.
“Not really.”
He glanced up. “No?”
“No.”
Sheriff Dawson shot a look at the pudgy deputy. The deputy smirked. Heat rose in my chest, and I wanted to pop his fat face in. I didn’t understand the look, but there was something ugly behind it.
“Hmm. But you were there the night she was attacked at the Stampede, right? You took her home, made sure she was all right.”
I waited, the heat in my chest spreading to my ears. He already knew all this.
“We never really figured out what happened that night.”
He paused again and suddenly slapped the file shut. “So you haven’t had any visions about what might have happened there, have you? Maybe painted a mug shot or a finger print on the side of some barn? You know, something we can use to hunt the bastard down? We don’t especially like people hurtin’ our girls. So it sure would be nice to bring justice to whoever hurt Georgia.”
I said nothing. I had hurt Georgia. I was sure that was what he was getting at. After all, she was the one who called the cops the morning Gi died. She was the one who stood outside and waited for the ambulance. She was the one who found out where I’d been committed and made a wasted effort to see me. But I didn’t think that was what the sheriff was referring to. He obviously thought I’d tied her up too, psycho that I am.
But I hadn’t tied her up. And I hadn’t had any “visions” about who had. So I stayed silent and seated as he rose, along with Deputy Jelly Donut, and headed for the door.
“Moses?” The younger man exited, but Sheriff Dawson paused, his hand on the knob as he placed his cowboy hat back over his thinning hair. “I hear you’re gonna be released in the next few days.”
I nodded slightly, acknowledging that I was. He nodded too and pursed his lips, considering me.
“Well, good. That’s good. Everybody deserves a fresh start. But I don’t think you should come back to Levan, Moses,” he said, stepping into the hall. “We’re all out of fresh starts and second chances.” He let the door fall closed between us as he walked away.
Moses
THEY TOOK US BOTH OFF ISOLATION, and much to my surprise, Tag and I fell into a sort of friendship. Maybe it was our youth. Maybe it was Molly, maybe it was the fact that we were both in a psychiatric facility and neither of us especially wanted to leave—or as Tag put it, “rock bottom with no desire to climb higher”—or maybe it was just that Tag reminded me a little of Georgia with his twang and his humor and his cowboy persona. He was nothing like me, and they would have hit it off, I was sure of it. The thought made me strangely jealous, and I was struck again that she’d ever wanted me at all.
Tag was usually quick to smile, quick to anger, quick to forgive, quick to pull the trigger. He didn’t do anything in half measures and I wondered sometimes if the facility wasn’t the best place for him, just to keep him contained. But he had a maudlin side too. And one night after lights out, he came and found me, creeping down the hall undetected, the way he always did, seeking answers that none of the staff could give him, answers he thought I had.
Tag said I was aptly named. “Wasn’t Moses a prophet or something?”
I just rolled my eyes. At least we weren’t talking about the fact that I’d been found in a basket.
“MO-SES!” Tag said my name in a deep, echoing “God voice,” reminiscent of the old Charlton Heston movie, The Ten Commandments. Gigi had loved Charlton Heston. I’d spent an Easter with her the year I was twelve and we’d had a Charlton Heston marathon that made me want to smear red paint above everybody’s door and burn all the bushes in Levan. Come to think of it, I had smeared paint all over Levan, many times. It was all Charlton Heston’s fault.
Tag laughed when I told him that. But the laughter faded, and he slumped back on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Then he looked at me, measuring me. “If I die, what will happen to me?”
“Why do you think you’re going to die?” I asked, sounding like Dr. Andelin.
“I’m here because I tried to kill myself several times, Moses.”
“Yeah. I know.” I pointed at the long scar on his arm. “And I’m here because I paint dead people and scare the livin’ shit out of everyone I come in contact with.”
He grinned. “Yeah. I know.” But his smile faded immediately. “When I’m not drinking, life just grinds me down until I can’t see straight. It wasn’t always that way. But it is now. Life sucks pretty bad, Moses.”
I nodded, but found myself smiling a little as I remembered how Georgia had lectured me every time I said something similar.
“Georgia’s laugh, Georgia’s hair, Georgia’s kisses, Georgia’s wit, Georgia’s long, long legs,” I murmured. I’d gotten comfortable with Tag and I repeated the list out loud, much to my embarrassment.
“What?”
I felt stupid but I answered him honestly. “Five greats. I was listing five greats. Just something someone used to do whenever I complained about how bad life was.”
“Georgia?”
“Yeah.”
“She your girl?” he asked.
“She wanted to be,” I admitted, but wouldn’t admit how I had wanted her.