Martha turned up, living in what June called “that crack house in Woodway” like it’s a famous attraction. The place we’d picked up Swap-Out that time. June wanted me to go over there and collect her. I said Maggot was friends with those fine folk, so he was her man. Failing that, she should call the law. June said no dice. She’d gotten the tip from Juicy Wills, the sheriff’s deputy that she’d dated in high school. Juicy had been coming over for debriefings ever since Emmy ran off, as full of himself as ever. June only tolerated him on the chance of a decent lead. Now that she had one, she was not blowing it by going over there with a damn peacock in a squad car. Her one goal was to find Emmy, and for that she had to get Martha to trust her enough to talk. Maggot had agreed to help, but only if I did too.
June was persuasive. She knew Martha wouldn’t be glad to see her, even after all she’d done to help her. That was the reason, really. So it was decided Maggot and I should go over. If we could somehow fetch Martha back to June’s, she’d take it from there.
We drove to Woodway in broad daylight, with Maggot too stoned even to remark on my crap transmission. Pulled up to the house and sat in the car, admiring the porch that was its own twisted universe. Old rotten mattress, drawerless dressers, propane canisters, sawhorse, refrigerator on its side with four connected plastic chairs on top. Crutches. Fake palm tree. Little Tikes Cozy Coupe. Huge stack of firewood split by some man in his prime that surely was not around anymore to burn it. This was the dregs of three or more disappeared generations. It took me a minute to see the wisp of cigarette smoke, and Martha at the bottom of it, sitting on a Shop-Vac. We asked if she wanted to come ride around with us. Where to, she didn’t even ask.
You never saw a more wrecked person. Hair, teeth, everything on her unwashed or coming apart. Old striped jeans with a busted zipper. Skeleton arms bare, in that cold. Maggot got in back so she could ride shotgun, and I got the full smell of her, like kyarn. Rotten meat. I made myself ask if she needed to eat, and she said yeah, but then dipped out before we got to a drive-through. I got her a burger, but Maggot ate it, saying there would be more food at June’s. Then he went to sleep too. We drove through the creepy stretch where the kudzu vines are hanging off the trees and reaching over the guardrails like they’re wanting to get at you.
About a mile out from June’s, Martha woke up, saw where we were, and tried to throw herself out of the car. Forgetting she was belted in. I pulled over and let her go, because there was no escaping out there, just the banks of the Powell River where Mr. Peg used to take us fishing. A beautiful place, hemlock trees standing around like bored giants. She stumbled down the bank. I only then noticed she had one bare foot. Probably she’d shot up, dipped out, and forgot. I’d seen Dori do it many times. Having Dori and Martha both inside my skull at the same time scared the hell out of me. I left Maggot asleep in the car and went after her. I squatted on the riverbank, watching her shiver. All hunched, her face pressed to her knees, both hands in her stringy hair.
“I can’t have her seeing me,” Martha finally said. “She hates my guts.”
“June? She doesn’t either.”
“She’s the one made you come after me, ain’t she?”
I said all June wanted was to take care of her. Martha shook so hard, I was afraid something in her might break. She said she wasn’t taking any more of June’s money because it made her more of a bad person and she couldn’t go any lower. She’d tried to kill herself already a couple of times. “June thinks I’m the one that corrupted Emmy.”
I told her nobody thought that. What struck me though was how Emmy had said this too, I’m a terrible person. Fast Forward was out there so cocksure he could do no wrong, with these women run over in the road behind him. I made myself touch Martha’s back, rubbing my hand in a circle on her thin summer shirt, feeling the hard knobs of her spine. Dori’s were like that now.
I told her June was not one to give up on people, ever. And if Martha had any way of getting in touch with Emmy, she needed to tell her that June still loved the heck out of her and wanted her home. Martha sat wiping her nose with the back of her hand, taking this in. I was trying to give her some usefulness, to keep herself going. But it wore me out. By the time I got her and Maggot dropped off at June’s, it was dark and I was one more casualty of the day.
The whole drive home I thought of Dori, where she was headed. God help me if I’d just seen it. Dori was never going to get clean, she had no reason. I couldn’t picture living without her, but neither could I go on being this lonely forever, waiting for Dori to wake up wanting to share my burdens. The only words we had left between us now were the foreplay to fighting.