“Hello, slut.” Cassie Moore, sitting cross-legged against plumped-up pillows on her bed, grinned her usual insult.

“He said it again.” Brenda, who had just climbed the stairs to Cassie’s room, halted in the doorway, stopped by the hamster smell.

“The same as before, Brenda?”

Brenda made a glum face.

“Miss Tits? Is that what he said?” Cassie’s grin vanished. She reached across her jumbled blankets to choose a cookie from a bowl. “What did you say his name is?”

Brenda whispered. “Tate.”

“He’s immature. That’s my opinion, Brenda.”

Brenda stepped into the messy room.

“I’ll bet Tate’s not his real name.” As she spoke, Cassie nibbled on the cookie.

“It’s what Cam calls him.”

Cassie’s cat had killed her hamster the week before, but the small animal’s stench still lingered.

“Cam is a child’s name. You should call your brother Cameron, Brenda. That’s his real name.”

The boy Tate had come home with Brenda’s brother from the army. While they waited for jobs they shared Cam’s bedroom. Tate had been in the house for eleven days.

Cassie took another bite. “Cam should beat this Tate guy up. How old is Tate?”

“Nineteen?”

“He’s too old for you, Brenda. He’s four years older.” Cassie finished the cookie. “That doesn’t make him mature.”

Brenda said nothing. She closed the door and crossed to Cassie’s window. On carpenter horses in the yard below a rowboat rested bottom up. Cassie’s cat had taken shelter under the boat, but Brenda, from her second-floor perspective, saw only its front paws.

“What I’d do is slap his face.” Cassie rattled her bowl of cookies for Brenda’s attention. Even as Brenda reached for one, though, Cassie snatched the bowl back. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

Brenda didn’t have time to answer. Cassie shouted, “Kirby, that’s you! Get away from that door. This is private. Get lost.”

Cassie’s brother, Kirby, was only ten. “He sneaks up to listen whenever you’re here, Brenda. He thinks you’re like a princess.”

“He doesn’t think I’m like a princess.”

“I can make him say he loves you if you want.”

As Cassie made that offer she cleared space among her romance magazines. Brenda had come to borrow a few. Stretching for the magazines made Cassie’s dark hair fall forward. She pushed it back from her face but it slipped back over her plump shoulder. “Tell Cameron Tate got fresh with you. Your brother’s mature. He’ll know what to do.”

Brenda touched her stringy hair. She studied the magazines Cassie had spread out on her bed. She and her friend agreed on four she could take, and Brenda, holding the cookie with just a thumb and one finger, made her way down the stairs.

Kirby stared up from the bottom.

Did the little boy love her? Brenda couldn’t think of an answer she would like, but at the bottom of the stairs, she silently offered him the cookie.

Kirby shook his head to say no.

Brenda sat down on a middle step. After a moment of stillness, the brown-haired boy sat on the stair below her. She had to move her feet to give him room.

Brenda broke the cookie. She tapped Kirby’s shoulder. When he turned she gave him the bigger part. That left just a bite. She put it in her mouth. When Kirby saw it disappear he fed himself his part, solemnly staring at Brenda. Then they sat in silence, watching each other chew.

Tate had arrived in Boon with his duffle bag in one hand and his rifle case in the other. His hair, which was reddish gold and which he wore down to his shoulders, swayed like silk at every movement of his head. Cam already knew the Miss Tits name. He called Brenda that himself in the sneering way a big brother has. Tate echoed him in saying it, but he didn’t sneer. For him, it seemed to Brenda, Miss Tits might be a joking thing to say, like a person’s nickname.

Brenda’s route home led through town and then followed a winding street beside Boon Creek. Where the creek and pavement separated, her yard started. The yard was full of salmonberry bushes that had grown to crowd the gravel driveway on both sides. As soon as she turned into the driveway, she saw a light in the building that would have been a garage if her mother still had a car. Now its sliding door had been down so long no one could make it go up anymore. The light was from a window on a side door. Brenda knew, from the boom of his voice, Cam was inside.

Through the garage’s dusty window, she watched her brother and his friend play a game with guns. Cam, with Tate’s revolver stuck in the waistband of his pants, demonstrated his quick draw. Tate’s rifle rested on a bulging box. Tate grabbed for his rifle at the same time Cam reached for the revolver. It was like they were enemies except it was pretend. Tate, between pretended shootings, showed Cam how to draw the revolver faster. Each time he made his demonstration, Brenda saw his hair’s molten sweep.

A sense she was being watched made her whip around. She saw a boy dart like an animal out of the driveway and into the salmonberry bushes.

“Kirby! Is that you?”

As soon as she yelled, Cam shouted from inside the garage. “Get lost, Brenda.”

She was already fleeing. She reached the house. She slammed the door. Cam had stormed out to the driveway. From the kitchen window, the one above the sink, Brenda looked to see if Tate would follow him.

That night, at the table Cam complained. “Macaroni and cheese? That makes three times this week.”

“Only two,” Mrs. Wrenn told him.

“Wrong,” Cam said. “Friday. Monday. And today.”

“Friday was last week,” Mrs. Wrenn explained.

Cam pounded his fist. That meant, Don’t argue.

His mother answered him but looked at Brenda, as if it was Brenda who needed correction. “When you put your feet under my table, you eat what I give you.”

Tate, their guest, bowed his head and kept his eyes fixed on his plate. Cam told him to hurry, and Brenda, not looking at anyone, found it difficult to corral her macaroni. The pasta slipped away from her fork. She had to push her food aboard it with a finger. She was licking that finger off and feeling stared at when she heard stomping on the porch. The familiar noise was her father was pounding mud off his shoes. Brenda froze with her tongue still on her finger. Mr. Wrenn hadn’t lived with his family since Brenda was nine. Even before that, his work kept him away. He was a merchant seaman.

“You get my card?” he said to Brenda as soon as he’d opened the door. He seemed to rumble like a bulldozer while he waited for her yes.

Her father sent her postcards from his sunny ports of call. She had five of them taped to her dresser mirror.

Mr. Wrenn turned next to the stranger, Tate. Not smiling, he said, “You get enough to eat?”

He watched Tate nod, then he said, “You know who pays for that?”

He didn’t want an answer. He rolled up to the table and dug in his back pocket to tug out his fat wallet. The bills he produced he placed on the table one by one. All were twenties. When he had counted out a hundred and sixty dollars he held the next bill back. His sharp look went to Cam. “You get a job?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Cam told him.

“You’re looking, aren’t you?” Mr. Wrenn waited until Cam nodded yes, then he resumed putting down twenties. Everyone stayed silent. When he reached four hundred dollars he said, “There.”

To Brenda he said. “How’s school?”

“Good,” she told him.

He kicked Cam’s chair. “Job,” he said. Then he was gone, slamming the door and clumping down the stairs.

Cam reached for the money. His mother moved to slap his hand. He caught her wrist and held it. He lifted a bill from the top and tucked it in his shirt pocket.

“We’re going,” he said to Tate. He rose and strode from the room. 

Tate cast a sheepish glance at Brenda, but he pushed back his chair and followed Cam. Seconds later the two of them came back, pulling on their jackets. Tate was still struggling with his zipper as he and Cam stepped out the door.

“Do the dishes,” Mrs. Wrenn told Brenda when they were alone.

Brenda snapped. “I always do the dishes.”

“I don’t like that mouth on you, Brenda. This is your mother speaking.”

Brenda spurted Palmolive in the sink as it filled with water. Mrs. Wrenn, behind the bathroom’s closed door, sprayed on cologne. When she passed through the kitchen, Brenda could tell she had freshened her lipstick. “Where are you going, Mom?”

“Out,” was all Mrs. Wrenn said. If this was Thursday night she would have been on her way to pray for sobriety with the Presbyterians. But it wasn’t Thursday, and Brenda, after she’d hung up the towel, watched her mother navigate around the driveway’s puddles. When she reached the street, Mrs. Wrenn turned toward town.

No money remained on the table. Brenda, after she’d checked, went up to her room and started thumbing through the magazines she’d made the trip to Cassie’s to bring home.

No good music came on the radio until after ten o’clock. Brenda was supposed to be in bed by ten, but her time was her own when she was alone, so she read stories about romance in Cassie’s magazines until dance music started, then she rose with her eyes closed and swayed to the music. Her reflection came and went in the dark window. She wished for someone to dance with, and in her mind’s eye saw Tate, his auburn hair swaying.

In her pajamas at last, she had just begun to gather Cassie’s magazines into a pile when she heard the downstairs door. She lifted her head to listen. Her mother would use the bathroom. Cam would eat. Brenda heard no bathroom noise, nor footsteps in the kitchen. What steps she heard—Tate’s steps, she guessed—moved toward the stairs.

She hopped into bed. Overhead, her light still burned. She sat with the covers pulled over her lap, reviewing what she knew and what she did not know about the name Miss Tits. She believed it was not harsh when it came from Tate. She didn’t know what to believe he meant, whether it was a joke or friendly teasing. Cassie called her Slut, and what did that mean? Not an insult. With Cassie, Slut was teasing.

She saw Tate’s shadow before she saw him. It was the only warning she got before he paused in her doorway. “Your mother’s really drunk,” he said. After that, he was gone. Brenda heard him close the door to the room he shared with Cam.

Brenda’s mind remained blank. Tate passed down the hallway again. She heard him use the bathroom. After he’d returned to Cam’s room and his noise there quieted, Brenda rose and turned her light out.

Next day, after she’d been hollered into Cassie’s house, Brenda saw Kirby at the bottom of the stairs, his arm draped on the newel post. He looked straight at her, as if she were a danger he might have to flee. But when she touched his shoulder, he didn’t pull away.

She let her fingers trace their way down the boy’s arm and then gripped his narrow wrist. “Kiss me.”

When Kirby didn’t answer she pulled him to her and kissed him so hard she felt his teeth behind his unresponsive lips.

He wiped his mouth when she let him go. She climbed past him, anticipating the unpleasant hamster smell.

# # #

Robert Kinerk’s fiction has appeared in Narrative Magazine, SLAB, Lunch Hour Stories, the Harvard Summer Review, and a story will soon appear in The Hunger Journal.

Photo: Belle Ensor