Stacking in Rivertown (13 page)

We used to make our rods out of young willow saplings. Vin and me would search the banks to find line and hooks other fishermen had snagged up in trees. Occasionally, we caught catfish, which pleased Mama no end. One time I caught the head off a doll, dripping with water and muck. It scared the living daylights out of me.

That head haunted. It prowled. It was red-cheeked and missing one glassy eye. We used it in the center of our séances, Mandy with our wig on her head trying to rouse the dead.

I kept the doll’s head in the crotch of a willow tree, checking daily to make sure it was still there. I didn’t want it sneaking up on me. I figured there were places for these kinds of things. As long as they stayed put, a person could rest easy.

I slowed on the whiskey that day, fascinated by the activity at that campsite. I’d never seen the workings of a real family before. Around dinnertime, as I was walking back from the john, I passed Jill’s husband. I got a good look at his vest, liking it even more from close up.

“So what are you doing out there?” I say to him, later learning that his name is Rob. I make a back-and-forth movement with my hand, imitating what he did with his fishing pole.

“It makes the trout rise,” he says. “They think it’s a fly.”

The next morning, I stroll over to the stream and sit on a boulder. Rob’s upstream, the sun behind him. He whips his fishing rod back and forth. The line arcs and curves, gleaming in the sun.

It brings the trout up. The trout rise.

I wonder if that’s a good idea, if a person should entice a thing to come up, to know it from one end to the other.

About mid-afternoon, Jill appears at the edge of the stream, asking me to dinner, saying I need to bring something to add to the meal. I bring a can of ravioli. The kids think that’s great. As they go searching for the can opener in their box of kitchen gear, Jill asks me where I’m from.

“Ohio,” I say, stuck on my great lie. Thank God she doesn’t ask me brightly, where in Ohio?

“What about you?” I’m terrible at conversation. I pretty much keep my remarks to wisecracks.

“New York,” she says. I freeze.

She continues, stirring a pan of baked beans. “I thought you might be from New York. You’ve got that feel.” She looks at me. “When I first saw you, I thought I knew you from somewhere. But I’ve never been to Ohio.”

“People are always saying that to me,” I say fast. “They say it all the time.” If I’m going to be such a lousy liar, I should keep my trap shut.

“You look like that woman that jumped off the bridge. What’s her name, Broder.”

I think I might faint. “What? I look like I’ve drowned?” Actually, after so much whiskey, I probably do.

She thinks that’s funny.

After dinner, we sit around the fire. One of the kids hears something and we turn our heads. There’s a doe and two fawns not ten feet away, drinking from the stream.

Sarah whispers to Jill, “I wish I had my camera.”

Jill says, “This is one of those pictures you keep in your head.”

I think about that while I’m lying in the backseat of the Taurus, fingering the Uzi. I wonder what it would be like to have those kind of pictures filling my head.

Instead, the trout begin to rise. At first, I think of Violet in the Dumpster. But then I start remembering something I’d forgotten a long time ago. I remember what happened to me in Ben’s basement.

I woke up in the basement lying on a cold concrete floor. They’d stripped me. The toilet was just a drain, and a dim light flickered overhead. The place stunk.

I remember freaking out, running back and forth from corner to corner, searching for an opening. But everything was bricked in. There was only a stair up and a door at the top.

At first, I sat and waited in a corner facing the stair. Nobody came. So I climbed the stairs and beat on the door. I screamed. I wore myself down.

Nobody.

I went back down the stairs and curled in a corner, so hungry I hurt all over. I remember hitting this point when I decided I was dying. Something changed in me then that’s never changed back.

That’s when he came.

Ben kicked me awake. I looked up at him, remembering Daddy, waiting for what I knew would come next.

“Get up,” he said.

For the first time, I saw Ben’s smile. He dragged me up on my feet and beat me, then raped me.

That’s how it went for awhile. After the first two beatings, I learned him just like I learned Daddy. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d have gotten through it.

After Ben was done, he’d put out a bowl of water and dump a can of dog food on the floor, not letting me use my hands to eat or drink. As days went by, he got me to eating out of his hand.

Between beatings and feedings, if I yelled and screamed, I had to wait longer for Ben to come with the food. It didn’t take a genius. I shut up.

Soon after that, Ben arrived with his famous black bag. He smiled real big as he walked toward me.

The next morning, Jill asks me if I want to drive in to the camp store with her. We set off in my Taurus, talking about the scenery, how beautiful, etc. She spots an eagle floating high.

Then she asks, “Why do you carry a gun?”

I don’t look at her. “Is it that obvious?”

“No. My pop was a cop, so I notice those things. And the whiskey. It’ll kill you.”

If she weren’t so matter-of-fact, I would have ejected her from the car. “I won’t let the kids see it again,” I say. “I felt bad about that.”

“I’m not worried about them.”

She doesn’t know about the teeming arsenal in her vicinity.

“I had a bad year,” I say as an explanation. And I’m thinking, I really am drowned by the way. Then I add, “I think I’m having a bad lifetime.”

She laughs. “I don’t mean to tell you how to live your life. I don’t know a thing about you. But I think you could do better. You seem to be a good person.”

I want to laugh. God, if she only knew. But she catches me. I don’t think I’ve been caught by kindness and honesty before. It makes the push behind get stronger. I begin to want a drink.

We hit the store then, and I’m trying to decide if I want to chance buying a paper when I catch sight of
Time
. I duck my head and shove on my sunglasses. There I am splattered all over the cover in red and black. I’m too shocked to read the headline, but grab one and buy it with my assortment of canned goods, Coke, and whiskey. I head out the door and hide in the car. Jill comes out later, and I zip off as fast as possible.

Back at my campsite, I take out the magazine. The story? “Suicide Author’s Family Discovered. Haven’t Seen Daughter For Years.”

What a grab. What a kick in the guts.

I flip through. There are pictures of me as a teenager and a yearbook picture. There’s me and a supposed sister standing outside a clean white suburban house. I keep staring. This can’t be. Who are these people? The only person I recognize is the man who is my would-be stepfather curling his arm over my thin teen shoulders.

That’s Snuff in the flesh. You know, “wormtree” Snuff. Snuff of the rotten broken-off teeth. Good old “screw her behind the trailer” Snuff.

I read the article, losing my mind with each paragraph. Some editor has carefully excised my remarks from that unsightly interview I had with the
Time
reporter, and placed them neatly into the story out of context from the original questions.

Allow me to summarize.

I was a bright child, an A student until out of nowhere at age fourteen, about the time Betty (my supposed mother) marries Dave, I started to decline.

Betty? The same Betty that used to come visit with redhots? I search the pictures, but there aren’t any shots of my supposed mother.

The story goes on. I disappeared at age sixteen. I had just given birth to a baby (a baby?) and had given it up for adoption. (Betty and Dave don’t believe in abortion. They want to make that very clear.) I left the hospital just before being discharged. They never saw their baby daughter again. They thought I was dead. Now, after all these years, sob, sob, they find me again only to discover that I’m a suicide.

Pitiful.

These people are headline-grabbers. They’re fakes. Their names are Betty and Dave. They live in Dayton, Ohio. (That’s a kicker.) Dave’s an anesthesiologist.

For some reason, I really hate anesthesiologists.

I look up Dayton, Ohio, in the atlas. It doesn’t look familiar on the map, and I don’t see a good healthy river anywhere near the place.

The article says my birth name was Theresa Sue Lumley. (Lumley? My God. No one would want to remember a name like that.) The article says that Betty and Dave plan to meet with the grieving husband, Jeremy, to share stories and pictures.

I’m reading this dead sober. I check the photos again. I have to admit that it sure could be me. But people can do anything with computers these days. It’s Dave that catches me. There’s Snuff all right, written all over Dave’s stolid face. My identity thing is suffering yet another massive blow. And I’m beginning to get a good feel for how my memory problem is much worse than I ever imagined.

I roll up the fucking magazine and pitch it at the Taurus, trying to decide whether or not I should set it on fire.

That evening, I eat with Rob, Jill, and the kids. Their allotted week is almost up. They tell me about another campground nearby where they’re going to move in the morning and invite me to come along. I think I’m getting to be a project to them so I say I’ll think about it.

That evening as I fall asleep, I hold the Uzi in one hand and the semiautomatic in the other.

Dayton

In the basement, Ben stood over me as I hunched on the floor, waiting for the first kick.

“You’re in training now, Beth.”

That was the first I’d heard my new name. Ben stooped and dropped his bag next to me, taking out two pairs of cuffs.

“Kneel,” he said. I pushed myself up, weak and dizzy. Ben steadied me as he cuffed my wrists in back and then my ankles. He strapped them together.

Matt and Toni came down the stairs with an old mattress. Ben ran his fingers down the side of my face. “See? You’ve done so well that I’m giving you a present.”

He kissed my cheek then. “Open your mouth,” he whispered. Ben fitted in a gag. Grabbing my hair, he yanked back my head, almost pulling me over. He placed a round pad of gauze over each eye, then taped them. The boys picked me up and lay me on the mattress.

They went away.

I don’t know how long I was left like that. The way Kat talked about it afterward, I must have been lying there for weeks.

They would come down in different groupings, Kat and Matt, or all three. I never knew when they’d come. And they’d make over me, kiss me, run their hands over my body so soft and gentle. They let my legs loose and walked me.

In my blindness, the room shrank, being nothing but my legs, my arms, the feel of the gag, the tape on my eyes. I ached for them to come.

When they arrived, one would screw me while another would take out the gag and feed me by hand. They touched, sucked, rocked, talked to me, so gentle, so kind. I cried like a baby, begging them not to leave, to protect me from Ben, to help me get out.

There’s nowhere to go, Beth, one would say, patient and loving. There’s only here for you now.

Oh how sweet, how strange their voices coming from the far side of my blindness as they washed my body and hair. And they tended my bruises and cuts that weren’t healing.

Blindness took me over. I melted down. I collapsed. That basement became a single pee-soaked mattress upon which I floated. Their voices, their caresses, all of their cleaning became liquid, flowing around me like water.

I loved Kat’s touch. Ben kept her around because of her timing, her skill with the babies. That’s what I was then. A new-born.

She taught me to count my breaths, one to five, back to one again. For hours, days, weeks, bound in the same position, blind, gagged. I watched the lights flash.

Don’t worry the lights, Beth, Kat whispered. Watch them come and go. They flash and spike, don’t they?

I nodded, afraid of her voice, without body as it was, sweeping over me. Her hands were swirls of pleasure.

Count your breathing, she reminded. Let the lights spike, let them strike.

I counted. I waited. I made a horrible mess of that mattress.

Then the ghosts came.

She’s got the ghosts, I heard them saying.

When you get the ghosts, you’re near ready.

*      *      *

I wake in the morning to a downpour. Peeking out the side window, I see that Jill is under their kitchen tarp, cooking already. Sarah slumps on the picnic table.

After I hit the john, I sprint over to see Jill.

“You still leaving this morning?” I say.

“If the rain lets up.”

I sit quiet, listening to the rain. I smell resin, rain, and wood-smoke. “I think I’m going on somewhere else.”

She nods. “Back to Ohio?”

“I’m thinking that way.”

She gets a funny smile and says, “I’ve got something for you.” She opens her car door. “Sarah, the rain’s let up. Why don’t you go to the bathroom now?”

Sarah shrugs and leaves.

Jill hands me another copy of
Time
. I stare at it.

“So I guess maybe I need a nose job or something. The hair change isn’t good enough?”

Jill sits beside me. “Most people wouldn’t work it out. I notice little things. And besides, I don’t believe a thing that I read.” She waits as I fidget. “You’ve got a husband. A family. You could go back.”

If she’d said that to me a few days ago, I would have wanted to choke her, but now I know there’s something deeper, like she knows the cold and the ache down there, but it doesn’t work her bad like it does me.

“It’s worse than that, Jill. My past wants to eat me alive. They beat the shit out of my husband that night. You don’t want to know what they did to me. God, do you think I would have jumped off that bridge if I didn’t have to? And there’s something else, not just the guy that’s after me. It chases my dreams. All I know to do is run away.”

“What about the police?”

I snort, thinking of Detective Bates. “No offense, Jill, but have you read the paper? ‘Unknown male assailant.’ They know who he is. He was there on the bridge that night, but they can’t touch him. He’s got them all by the nuts. Literally.”

She’s quiet now. I get up and tell her to say good-bye to Rob and the kids for me. She gives me their address and phone number.

“Take care of yourself,” she says to me.

I nod and go back to my car, packing up my stuff, which consists of the lawn chair and a half-full bottle of whiskey. I stop at the john on my way out and change into Becker. As I get into my car, I see Jill watching me. She waves.

I drive off.

The night before the two-room burned down, I remember Mama sitting out on the porch in a rickety metal rocker that we found with somebody’s garbage. Mama’s ankles were so wide, she didn’t look like she had any. Instead, they swelled out like she had matching goiters just above her feet.

The ring of fat around her neck sagged, and she sweated just below that, a triangle of wet at the collar of her cotton dress, stretched to the limit around her swollen body.

But that night, she sang. Mama knew old songs about blue-bottle flies and train whistles, about some girl who died, and about fiddles and dancing girls.

I think of it like pictures going into the sky and falling back different, full of moonlight, full of water shifting, rising off the river like ghosts and filling the air, the sky, coming into your face and lungs and making you the same inside and outside.

When I think of dying, I think of Mama. I want her there beside me, singing me out to where the river goes blue into the sea. I want to be so fine that nothing keeps its hold on me, just passes right through the same inside and out as I’m gliding down the delta with Mama and her fat neck and swollen ankles, perfect as you please. Her dress up in the sky like a willow branch sweet as rain and blowing.

*      *      *

On my way out, I stop at the store and buy some real food and another paper. I don’t buy more whiskey.

I try to convince myself that I don’t know where I’m going, that I’m heading west, putting more miles between me and the city. I end up in Ohio anyway, and take a campsite in Wayne National Forest. I’m getting to be a real camping freak.

That evening as I’m reading the paper, I see a picture of an old friend. It’s the venerable Senator from New York. I stare at his picture, remembering that evening again.

Violet and I had done our ritual early since Ben was taking me to the reception. She kissed me hard before I left because Slim and his friend were in line for a play in a few hours. Our plan was in gear.

I remember riding in the limo with Ben and then waiting in the reception line. I remember the Senator’s eyes, the look on his face, a mixture of nervousness and lust. Ben has me in a choker and with bracelets on both wrists. And I remember drinking just a few sips of champagne as Ben chatted with other notable clients I didn’t recognize.

As I sit in my camping spot, I try to keep following my memory, but after that, I draw a blank. I move my brain back and forth as though I’m hoping the trout will rise. Nothing doing.

I unscrew the cap of what remains of my whiskey, but the smell of it turns my gut. So I drag the
Time
out of the car and look at the pictures again.

What about that river? What about the mud and the stacks of the dead? What about Gedders and Mandy? And I get that thing again, like the ghosts, but not. Of movement, of shape. Then one of Ben’s favorite play rooms comes into my head. I begin to feel a little shaky, so I try not to think about it.

I fall asleep in my little lawn chair, but wake in the middle of the night when the rain takes up again. Then I climb into the car and hold my Uzi close, the only comfort I can get while the rain taps, wanting in.

*      *      *

Ben socks me. “What’s your name?”

My hands are cuffed back and I’m down in the basement, blind. Kat is behind, holding me in place by my arms.

She leans close to my ear. “You remember. Say it.”

“No,” I say, and Ben socks me again.

“Tell me your name.”

Kat won’t let me drop to my knees. I’m crying now, bending over at the waist. Ben grabs my hair and jerks my head up. I prepare for a punch to the face.

“Beth,” I say, having had enough.

Kat strokes my head, kisses my back. “Good, Beth. That’s so good.”

She and Ben help me stumble to the mattress. Kat feeds me, even though I don’t want it, even though I think I’m going to be sick.

“Do you know where you’re from, Beth?” Her voice stretches into darkness.

“Nowhere.”

She kisses me. “That’s right. That’s good. A river of nowhere.”

Of course I went to Dayton. I don’t see how I could have stayed away. It’s not until I’m sitting in the middle of town that I notice I don’t know Dave’s last name. The
Time
article said he was Betty’s third husband. He wasn’t cursed with a name like Lumley. I find a ripped-up phone book in a booth and flip through it, looking up anesthesiologists.

There it is, Dr. David Thompson. It gives his clinic phone. I call and ask the address, pressing for directions, which the receptionist is pleased to give.

Helpful people are such a joy.

I zip over and wait in the parking lot. Sure enough, out walks Snuff, looking mighty impressive in suit coat and tie. It’s like something in my head explodes. I can’t get anything to fit, and I start to wonder if I made my entire childhood up in my head. Except then I see his feet. White shoes. My feet itch to stomp them.

Betty must have a fetish.

I smell the worms on Dave’s hands as he walks by, and I wonder about his two front teeth. I follow him to his house big enough for twenty, maybe twenty-five, and park on a side street like I learned from Detective Bates.

I’m beginning to get a whiff of the dangers. But this time the dangers aren’t out in the air buzzing over my head. This time the dangers are buzzing in me.

I begin to make plans.

As I’m sitting in my car, pondering the details of my play, I notice a car edging along the street. I ignore it at first, but duck down after taking a closer look. It’s a Chevy Caprice.

I take a peek. The car stops at Dave and Betty’s. Out steps you-now-who with that briefcase. I feel my lip curl. I want to make Bates eat it. I want to change the name to griefcase.

I watch as they let him in the house.

It’s getting late, so I find a bright, white shopping mecca. I buy a flashlight. I buy a big gym bag. I pick up a ski mask on clearance, and as a last thought, I buy a roll of duct tape. I don’t know why.

At one in the morning, I drive back and park about a block away. Dressed as Becker in dark clothes, I sling the gym bag over my shoulder. The semiautomatic is hooked in place, so I mosey over.

For some reason that I can’t explain, I have a feeling that I can get in through the basement window at the back of the house. I huddle down in the bushes and creep around, finding it just where I assumed it would be, and I push on it, feeling how the latch is weak. After rattling it back and forth, it plops open, looking like a black mouth wanting to swallow me.

I slide in feet first, dragging my gym bag behind me. Steppingonto a workbench that’s underneath the window, I whip out the nifty mini-flashlight that I picked up while shopping. The beam is sharp and bright.

I wiggle it around the room. It’s awful neat down here, which reminds me of Jeremy. I imagine him and Betty and Dave getting together and talking about their big houses. I think of them discussing weedkillers and the dandelion problem. It gives me the shivers thinking about them trading pictures and dredging up touching stories.

Sliding off the workbench, I walk out into the rest of the basement, starting up the stairs. Now that I’ve had practice breaking into my own house the night I died, I’m beginning to feel comfortable with this sort of thing.

I don’t know what I’m looking for, just something to let me know about these people. I search the kitchen and the living room. I’m certain I’ve never set foot in this place.

And I really hate the couch.

I check the other rooms downstairs, then mount the stairs like I live there, slipping on the ski mask, just in case. I slide across the upstairs hall and search the first bedroom.

Everything in here is frilly and deadly pink. A dated poster of Donny Osmond as big as life scares the shit out of me. God. Donny Osmond? Obviously, this is the wrong lifetime.