RE: Trailer Trash 52 pt 2 (Patreon)

“An’ then he just says—yeah she’s into heroin,” Mr. Moore still appeared absolutely flummoxed. “As if it’s no big deal. Just—yep, she sure was. I don’t understand it! I don’t understand it.”

Mrs. Williams had been thrilled when the man had called and asked if they had a copy of Lisa’s record and transcripts. Finally, progress bringing the dolt around! She had whirled off to the police station right away. Bustling through with the usual cordial hellos and thank yous and see you soons after borrowing their big photocopier, she had a stapled sheath of paper to present to the bewildered man when she arrived at his mobile home.

They were sitting now at the tiny dining room table the Moores had, and she was trying to help him process all of this. It wasn’t ever going to be an easy thing to come around to, and he’d barely done more than glance through the papers she’d brought—Mr. Moore had driven out to see his brother at county, who had simply confirmed that yes, Lisa was into heroin. Both of them had been.

We were definitely on the wrong track trying to get through to him, Mrs. Williams wanted to shake her head in dismay. No amount of reports or convictions or statements were gonna mean a thing to him. To him, all of that is noise, bureaucratic noise, and in fact I imagine he immediately distrusts all that. He went and had to go talk to FAMILY. That’s the only thing that was gonna settle it, in his books. Apparently.

It was hard not to remember how family had become a swear word on the lips of that panicking little girl in her car all those nights ago.

“I don’t understand it,” Mr. Moore shook his head again, looking lost.

“Well,” Mrs. Williams cleared her throat. “Was there a—a why, was there some reason your brother and his wife were getting into that whole mess?”

“Just because they could,” Mr. Moore shrugged. “Because they wanted to. ‘Parently, this old boss of his from this place he used to work—movin’ furniture—they’d go and get high or do drugs or all that, just for the hell of it. I don’t understand it.”

“Well, maybe it’s for the best that we don’t understand it,” Mrs. Williams frowned. “So, you think it might be this old employer of his, that got them into these things? Was this in Springton?”

“Sandboro,” Mr. Moore grunted. “They were, you know—movers, sorta. Had a big ol’ box truck, delivered furniture, counters, the big home appliances or what have you. On call for big fridges, storage freezers, AC units too. They weren’t hippies or nothin,’ he said they weren’t shady, or anything like that. I guess the one guy was a Vietnam veteran, couple of the others were just honest folk who needed work—but they were just… doin’ heroin, like it was—like it was just gettin’ together for beer with the boys. Heroin.”

“Do you have the name of the business?” Mrs. Williams whipped a small notepad out of her purse and flipped through several pages of lists—groceries, cookie ingredients (in case someone had one of those dreadful allergies), thank you cards from Christmas, everyone’s availability for a Methodist Men’s retreat she wanted to put together—until finding a blank page.

“Oh, it’s been years since he worked there, but—Bluegrass Moving? Bluegrass Movers, something like that,” Mr. Moore recalled. “Somethin’ Bluegrass. In Sandboro.”

“Maybe they’ll be able to do something with that!” Mrs. Williams smiled, feeling like quite the detective. “Anything helps! Lord knows we don’t want all this mess happening to anyone else.”

“I just… I can’t believe it,” Mr. Moore murmured to himself all over again. “My brother’s smart. Way smarter’n all of that. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how he could get himself mixed up in all of those kinds of things.”

“Have you talked to Tabitha about this yet?” Mrs. Williams asked.

“She already knew!” Mr. Moore exclaimed. “She knew all that way before I did. She was sayin’ to me Christmas morning, how I needed to get a hold of either you, or call up this, this, Kentucky administrative office of the courts, to get all the stuff ‘bout Lisa. Some place in Frankfort.”

Ooh, nice one, Sandy! Mrs. Williams couldn’t help but feel tickled at that.

“It’s all crazy,” Mr. Moore said in a daze.

“I think you should call Tabitha,” Mrs. Williams urged him. “I think you need to talk to your wife about all of this, as well.”

“My wife?” Mr. Moore asked with a distracted look. “No, no—she was sayin’ it too. She was against Lisa just about from the start.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Mrs. Williams shook her head. “This isn’t about who was right and who was wrong, this isn’t an I told you so. You’ve said to me ‘I can’t understand it’ and ‘I can’t believe it’ dozens and dozens of times since I sat down! You need time to process what all just happened, dear, and your partner is the one you need to do that with.”

Mr. Moore stared at her, and for a long moment Mrs. Williams wondered if she was getting through to him.

“Let me put it this way—” Mrs. Williams closed her notepad and tossed it back into the depths of her purse. “You’re in shock. You just had someone very close to you—your brother—reveal that he has betrayed your trust. In a major way! Likewise, this Lisa woman seems to have spouted off all kinds of nonsense, and it looks as though she was trying to take advantage of you. You’re in shock, and also you’re grieving—this whole mess happened very close to home for you, and jail time aside, you’ve lost family, close family, because they gave themselves over to drugs!

“You’re lost, and in shock, and grieving, and you need time to process all of this!” Mrs. Williams summed it all up. “I know you just started goin’ to the Methodist church with us. If you’d been with the group longer, I’d say if you were closer to the men there, you would go to them for support. You still can! I’m sure they’d all help you work through everything you’ve got going on, here. If there’s someone else—I don’t know if you have close people you work with, or someone like that you would talk to about all of this to help you work through all of it. But, the place to start is at home—your wife, Tabitha, your mother Laurie, even those boys! Because, all of them are going through this, too. Listening to what they have to say about it might do more than hearing strangers share what they’ve been through. Do you see what I’m trying to say, here?”

“Yeah, I… yeah,” Mr. Moore frowned. “I just… hell, I don’t even know where to start, right now. Tabitha sure as hell don’t want to talk to me.”

“She may not want to talk to you,” Mrs. Williams rose, crossing over to the kitchen and grabbing the Moore’s handset phone from its receiver. “But, you know what—not calling her about all this? Might be a lot worse. Maybe even just an apology and telling her that you love her, and that would be a good start if she’s not ready to get into more with you, right now.”

*     *     *

“Ughh it’s a stupid bat thing again,” Hannah groaned, letting her head fall back on the couch cushion again. “It’s all stupid bats and dumb Geodudes, and I can’t even find the way out!”

“You’re still in that cave? You can just start running away from battles,” Tabitha advised. “You don’t have to fight every single encounter.”

You might run out of PP for your decent attack moves if you’re in there for too long.

“I know,” Hannah sighed, and the sound effects of Hannah’s Pikachu knocking out a Zubat in one hit was apparent from across the room. “It’s just annoying.”

“Well,” Tabitha quirked her lip in a small smile and dropped her voice to a whisper. “There’s a secret rare Pokemon you might encounter if you’re in Mount Moon battling for long enough!”

“Really?” Hannah looked up from her Gameboy color. “Which one?”

“Clefairy!” Tabitha said. “Like I said though, they’re very rare and they might be hard to catch.”

“I’m gonna get one,” Hannah narrowed her eyes, returning her attention to the little screen. “Clefairy, Clefairy, Clefairy…”

Walking the young girl through the early parts of the Pokemon Yellow she’d received for Christmas was fun, but Tabitha worried Hannah wouldn’t have the patience to deal with some of the more frustrating stretches of the game. Certainly not if she kept turning up her nose at Pokemon she thought were ugly—Hannah was picky, and because of this, she was already as far as Mt. Moon and still couldn’t fill a roster of six monsters. She had her starting Pikachu, a Pidgey, and a Sandshrew with no HP left, because Hannah had caught it just before entering the cave.

She might actually wipe out, Tabitha fretted. When I noticed she was stuck in there for a while, I asked her if she’d found a hole with a ladder in it—she said she didn’t want to go down further, so she kept looking for another way through. There ISN’T another way! She has to use the passages to get through the mountain.

Though she was looking forward to seeing how her four cousins were faring with their game files, Tabitha’s own game had become a total chore shortly after she completed her competitive team. EV-Training wasn’t exactly a thing in the first few generations, and she did feel fortunate to have remembered that. But, there was still base stat experience to grind, which would update when she used the PC storage box trick, since her monsters could no longer level. The fact of the matter was that base stat training was miserable tedious and boring, but Tabitha could only blame herself for burning through the actual game content in just a few nights with ridiculously overpowered monsters.

It’ll be worth it, Tabitha told herself. Plus, it satisfies that craving for PROGRESSION, which is a must because it feels like my life is standing still right now. Can’t run or jog, can’t properly work out, and aside from storybook time, Hannah has been completely consumed by playing her Pokemon game. So—for now I’ve sidelined a lot of the other activities and fun stuff to do. Don’t want to dampen her enthusiasm for this while it’s still so fresh and fierce! She’s adorable.

Tabitha was just preparing to scooch closer on the sofa and offer Hannah some sisterly suggestions when the Macintire’s phone rang. It was cut short after just the one tone, likely Officer Macintire picking up the other handset from in the master bedroom, and so Tabitha paid it no mind.

“Tabitha?” Darren Macintire yelled out. “S’your dad on the line—should I tell him you’re here, or should I tell him you’re out?”

“I’m here!” Tabitha answered with a wry smile, touched that the man would ask that. “I’ll get it.”

Bouncing up from the living room couch, Tabitha crossed past the dining room table and to the counter that separated the dining room from the kitchen. The main phone dock was there where it could be reached easily from either side, and Tabitha retrieved the white handset and thumbed the talk button to connect to the active line.

“Macintire residence, Tabitha Moore speaking,” Tabitha stated in her neutral tone.

“Hey honey, it’s me,” Mr. Moore said, pausing as with a rustle and click officer Macintire hung up his receiver. “You okay to talk?”

“I’m listening,” Tabitha promised. “What is it?”

“Well…” her father trailed off for a moment. “I drove out to see yer uncle Danny. Had a talk with him ‘bout this whole everything that’s goin’ on.”

“That’s good,” Tabitha remained distant and polite. “I’m sure he was happy to see you.”

“Oh—yeah, yeah,” Mr. Moore let out a nervous laugh. “I’d been meanin’ to all this time, just. I asked ‘im about Lisa, and about the drug stuff, and. All of that nonsense. Turns out… you were right, honey. ‘Bout him. Lisa, too. They were both mixed up in all of that after all.”

“Oh,” Tabitha responded. “I’m sorry.”

The confirmation—and her dad conceding that he had been wrong—didn’t fill her with validation like she had fantasized it would. The righteous indignation, the raw, livid anger at being wronged wasn’t there either, and all that was left was a bit of disappointment. She was just so over it. All of it. She was done, she felt nothing, and she wanted all of them to put this whole stupid episode behind them so that she could forget about it.

“You’re sorry?” Mr. Moore asked, sounding confused.

“I know how difficult that must have been to hear that,” Tabitha tried to console him with a bitter smile. “It’s never an easy thing to find out. Mrs. Macintire lost her brother to opiate abuse—I think we can be thankful that Danny and Lisa were caught before things got worse and they lost their lives. I wouldn’t want that hanging over the kids. We do need to let the authorities handle uncle Danny and aunt Lisa, now. We can’t help them, they need professional help. To be absolutely clear on that. One day maybe they’ll thank us for it, I just—yeah, don’t expect that to be anytime soon.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Moore said. “Yeah, I guess so.”

A long, uncomfortable silence followed, with seconds elapsing one after the other and nothing said between them. The call was still connected, but Tabitha had given him the pre-prepared spiel she’d practiced in her head and she just didn’t have anything else. The mess of raw feelings were tamped down for now and nothing she wanted to dredge back up and sort through right now, so she didn’t have any more words to volunteer.

“Are you still mad at me?” Mr. Moore finally asked.

“No,” Tabitha blurted out a lie on reflex, immediately regretting it. “Maybe. I need some time. I need some time, okay?”

“I get it, honey,” Mr. Moore sounded apologetic. “I was wrong, and—I was wrong. That’s all there is to it. I was wrong. About a lot of things, there. Guess I was too close to see what all was happening like I should have. So… I wanted to say I’m sorry. For everything, there. It’s okay if you’re mad at me. I’m mad at me, I sure screwed up there. I don’t know how I missed all the signs, there. Especially with Danny. Guess I didn’t want to see ‘em—I refused to.”

“It’s okay,” Tabitha found herself choking up. “Let’s just—put all of it past us. If you c-can, if you can give me some time and some space. I want to just forgive you and have things between us just go back to the way they were, but, but—yeah, my feelings don’t work like that, I can’t just choose to flip a switch. It—it really, really hurts that you didn’t trust me. That you couldn’t listen to me. That—sorry. Sorry, I just—sorry. I do love you, dad. I love you. But, I’ve gotta go. Bye.”

She hung up decisively before he could contribute any parting words, and a small sob slipped out as she lost control again. The phone still awkwardly clutched in her good hand, she lifted her arm until she could hide her face in her sleeve, immediately discovering she was a mess of tears. A ragged breath drew in and she slowly exhaled, fighting to regain control. There was a sudden jolt as a seven-year-old Hannah smacked into her out of nowhere and latched both arms around her in a fearsome hug, and Tabitha carefully held the girl against her with her hand that was still trapped in the fiberglass cast.

“I’m okay,” Tabitha laughed, wiping her face and trying to smile. “I’m… okay. Sorry.”

“You’re okay?” Hannah demanded.

“I’m okay,” Tabitha said again. “I just—it’s over with, want to just put it behind us and move on, already. I want—Hannah, I want cookies, right now. How do you feel about baking cookies with me?”

( 52 pt 1 | RE: Trailer Trash | 52 pt 3 )

/// My eyes have been hurting lately. I do a ton of reading every day, and now after just a measly five or six hours of binge reading they're aching and puffy like I've been sleep deprived and I can barely keep them open. Want to go out and get checked for new glasses since that's long overdue, but also it's mid eighties (fahrenheit) and humid af and don't even want to walk across town. Or leave the house. Or leave my room, where at least I have a window AC to keep things from turning into a wretched steaming sweat bog.