The Devil's Stepdaughter: A Bell Elkins Story (Bell Elkins Novels) (3 page)

“Okay,” Belfa replied. She picked at a splinter on the seat beside her. The day was smotheringly hot, and she wondered how the deputy could stand it in his brown uniform. It looked tight and uncomfortable, the stiff shirt buttoned all the way up to his neck, the creased pants tucked into the tops of the scuffed boots. Big loops of sweat with salt-white borders had darkened the fabric under each arm. Fogelsong took off his hat and set it down on the warped wooden tabletop behind him. His hair, Belfa saw, was shaved so close to his skull that it looked like pepper sprinkled on a white paper plate.

“Thing is,” he said, “we’re doing the best we can. We’ll get you out of here, soon as possible. Didn’t want you to think otherwise.” He paused. “That lady you met. Mrs. Perkins. The one who brought you here. She’s a good woman. Does a world of good for this county.” He paused. “She’s got a tough job.” Paused again. “You’ve got a tough job, too, and we know that. The toughest.

“Your job,” he went on, answering the question in her face, “is to trust us. And your job is to get ready for the school year and do your best there, no matter what else is going on. Okay?”

She looked back down at the ground again. “Where’s Shirley?”

Fogelsong made a noise that sounded like a sigh, but then he cleared his throat, and Belfa thought she might have been mistaken about the sigh; maybe it was just part of the throat-clearing. His legs were spread wide, and he put his elbows on his knees so that he could lean out over his dangling hands and look at the ground himself when he spoke.

“I don’t want to lie to you, Belfa,” he said. “You might not see your sister for a long time, okay? Can’t be helped.”

She wanted to ask him why but didn’t. If she started to ask “Why” there would be no end to it; she would be asking it about so many things that Fogelsong would have to stick around for days while she rattled through the list.

Besides, there was a part of her that wondered if Shirley might just show up one day, out of the blue. Belfa would come back from the creek and—
there
. Shirley would be right there, standing in a dazzle of sunlight, holding out her hand, calling to her, whispering urgently: “Come on, Belfa. Quick, now! Before anybody sees us. Let’s go.” It wasn’t completely out of the question. Shirley always had a plan. On the night their father died, Shirley had seemed very certain about all that was to happen next in their lives. Having mapped out the steps and all the possible contingencies, Shirley told Belfa to leave her alone in the kitchen with their father, who slept in a chair, his snores sounding like ripping strips of Velcro. Then Shirley had started the fire; called 9-1-1; gotten herself and Belfa out of the trailer; explained to Belfa that they’d be separated now and that Shirley would be leaving for a long time. She had made Belfa promise not to try to contact her. But maybe Shirley was on her way back, even now. Maybe that was the next step in the plan. And Belfa’s job was to wait, and while she waited, to put up with whatever happened to her. To not make a fuss. Once you learned how to keep secrets, there were always more secrets to keep.

The sheriff talked about other things for a few minutes. He wanted to know how much she was eating. If she was sleeping okay. Mrs. Perkins had left some donated clothes for Belfa when she dropped her off here, and Fogelsong pointed to the sleeveless yellow blouse she was wearing and asked if it was one of the garments supplied by Mrs. Perkins.

It wasn’t—it was an old blouse that Tina had outgrown—but Belfa nodded. She had figured out that it would make Fogelsong feel better. He wanted tangible proof that something Mrs. Perkins had done for her had worked out, even if it was just a blouse.

Once again she considered telling him about Crystal, but then she realized that it wouldn’t help anything. If Fogelsong intervened, then Crystal would retaliate, once he was gone; if Fogelsong didn’t intervene, then Belfa would clearly know the depths of her aloneness, the degree to which she was now subject to the world’s whims. Better to leave well enough alone.

“One more thing,” he said.

Belfa waited.

“I know Herb McCluskey,” Fogelsong went on, after shifting his right boot back and forth a few times, forward and back. “Known him for years. He’s no prince. That’s for darned sure. And Lois—well, you’ll find this out on your own, Belfa, when you’re a little bit older, but sometimes people get beaten down by life and bad luck. A bunch of kids—and not a lot of money—is a heckuva lot to handle. I want you to remember that, if they’re ever short with you. They don’t mean anything by it. Like I said, Herb’s no prince, but he’s not too bad. Got his weak points—but he and Lois, they try. They really do. Anyway,” he said, and his voice changed along with the word, moving away from thoughtfulness and back toward a sort of bland, singsong encouragement, “I want you to take care of yourself, and study hard in school, and make sure you realize that it’s not forever. Nothing ever is. Things’ll be different before you know it. Hang in there, okay? Just hang in there.”

____

It was the habit of the McCluskey children—and now it was Belfa’s habit, too—to spend the long summer days by the creek, sitting in the mud and grass at water’s edge while they threw in rocks and sticks. It was cooler down there, and the woods gave the place an enchanted air of separation from the rest of the world. Summer heat made the air feel heavy everywhere, but at the creek, the heaviness seemed temporarily suspended, raised about the surface of things, like a piano being winched up on a pulley to a second-floor window.

Later that day, after Fogelsong’s visit and the conversation at the picnic table, Belfa lingered down at the creek. The others left. It was the only place where she could be alone, and there were times when she needed that. Her initial comfort with the crowded trailer was diminishing. Sometimes, especially during meals when everyone was present, and too few seats around the table meant that you had to get there early or you’d end up having to sit on the floor or to eat standing up, and a sort of opportunistic chaos waited at the edge of whatever was going on, she wasn’t sure she could breath. Being by herself like this, if only for a few minutes, was heaven.

A bird flashed out of the woods. She watched it leave the green and swing straight up, its wings flat and steady at first. The sky presented the late-afternoon light—it was blue, yes, but by this time it was darkening, as the day shriveled into dusk—the way a bowl holds water, with a tremor repeatedly crossing the surface, an all-over shimmer as one color surrenders fitfully to the next.

Belfa stood by the creek, hands hanging at her sides. This creek was very similar to Comer Creek. It was muddier than Comer Creek, she decided, and Comer Creek was probably a bit wider, but in general, this creek reminded her of the water next to which she’d grown up. All around her, the complicated noise that rises symphonically at the close of a summer day—that thick hum, a thatched weave of sound comprised of furious insect wings and running water and the
tick-tick-tick
release of the accumulated heat as it floats away from the landscape—continued its upward, spreading-out journey. She thought about her father, whom she did not miss, not for one minute, and she thought about her sister Shirley, whom she missed very much, every minute, and she thought about her mother, gone so long now that Belfa hardly remembered her. Could you miss someone you did not remember? Yes, you could.

She turned.

The slap came hard and fast, making her face sing with pain. Belfa wobbled and nearly fell over. Crystal’s nose was almost touching hers, so close that Belfa could see the acne speckled across her cheeks, each sore a brazen pink with an oozing white center. Belfa had not realized that Crystal was right there behind her; the shock, coupled with the fact that Crystal was so much taller and heavier, gave the other girl a crushing advantage.

Suddenly Crystal’s hands were joined around Belfa’s neck.

“The fuck you doing,” Crystal said, squeezing. “Talking to a cop. What the fuck.”

Belfa groped and dug at Crystal’s hands—it felt like a hot iron ring around her neck—as she fought to breath.

“The
fuck
,” Crystal repeated. She dropped her hands and pushed Belfa away from her. Belfa, free now but still stunned, stumbled backward, gasping and frantic. She fell to her knees but scrambled right back to her feet again, afraid of giving Crystal that kind of edge.

“He’s not—he’s—” Belfa’s voice came out in spastic little rags of sounds. “He’s my friend.” She didn’t know she was going to say that until she’d said it.

“Yeah. Right.” Crystal poked a stubby finger in Belfa’s face. “Don’t care who the fuck he is. Don’t want him around here, okay? You tell him to stay away. You tell him.” She leaned close. “You tell him or next time, little girl, I won’t be lettin’ go. Okay? They’re gonna find you in that creek, you hear me? And you ain’t gonna be takin’ no swim.”

____

Crystal could have done a lot worse to her. They’d been alone at the creek that day, just the two of them—yet even if the other McCluskey children had been present, Belfa knew, they wouldn’t have intervened, they wouldn’t have come to her rescue, they wouldn’t have stood up to Crystal, because nobody stood up to Crystal—and Crystal had spared her. Let her off with a warning. So now she owed Crystal. An unspoken but very obvious and particular bargain had been struck, involving Bell’s transgression and Crystal’s forgiveness. Belfa had known bullies before—her own father, Donnie Dolan, was the king of that kind—and that meant she knew about bullies and bargains. You did business with bullies because you were forced to; you had no choice in the matter. But you did do business with them.

“Hey,” Crystal said.

Three days had passed since the confrontation at the creek, and Crystal was still watching her. Every time Belfa turned around—or so it felt—there was Crystal, bottom lip jutting out, an appraising look in her low-lidded eyes.

It was midafternoon. Belfa was hunting for a pink plastic barrette she believed she might have lost in the sleeping couch in the girls’ area when Crystal abruptly came up to her, smirk on her face. Belfa and Crystal were alone in the trailer, which almost never happened. Abigail and Tina had gone into Acker’s Gap with Herb McCluskey; it was time to apply for an extension to his unemployment benefits. The boys were outside somewhere. Lois McCluskey was … well, Belfa didn’t know. Mrs. McCluskey never said. She answered only to Herb. Not to anybody else. Not, certainly, to her children.

“What?” Belfa said.

Crystal lifted a fist to waist-level and opened it. Lying crossways on her broad white palm was Steve’s Swiss Army knife. Belfa looked at it, and then she looked up at Crystal. She didn’t know what was going on. How was she supposed to react?

“Found this,” Crystal said. She gave a little snort of derision. “Guess where.”

“I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

Belfa shrugged.

“I said,” Crystal pressed her, “you gotta guess.”

Belfa hunched her shoulders and crossed her arms, trying to make herself small, because if she could make herself small, then maybe she could take the next step and make herself invisible.

“Just guess,” Crystal said again. Her tone had grown hectoring, aggressive. “Do it.”

The trailer was very hot. The air was like a solid block of something old and yellow, through which you had to carve your way if you wanted to move. The area was messy and crowded; the clothes thrown across the couch tended to dribble onto the floor like lolling tongues. Blouses and shorts and belts and bras and panties. Everything in this place melted into everything else, like a steep hill down which things rolled until they congregated in the crease at the bottom.

Belfa took another look at the knife. “Maybe in a drawer somewhere. Maybe Steve put it there and forgot.”

“
Maybe Steve put it there and forgot
,” Crystal said, in her mocking, snippy tone. She snorted. “Guess again.”

“I don’t know.”

Crystal closed her fist around the knife. Sly grin. “In your stuff. I found it in your stuff. You’re a damned thief, you hear me, little girl? Nothing but a sneaky thief.”

“No.” Belfa shook her head. “I didn’t—”

“Wait’ll I tell him,” Crystal said. “Just wait. He’ll kick your ass. You wait and see.”

Fear bloomed in Belfa’s brain. Fear of Steve, yes, but also fear of Herb and Lois McCluskey and what they’d do to her for stealing. Which she hadn’t done, of course, but that didn’t matter. If Crystal accused her, they would side with Crystal.

“No,” Belfa said. It came in a whisper. “No. I never.”

That was all she could manage to say. Terror was choking off the words at their source.

Crystal laughed. “Yeah. Right. Like Steve’ll listen to
you
. Shit, little girl, he’s gonna kill you. You know that.” Her tone instantly shifted from derisive to canny. “But I won’t tell him, okay?”

“You won’t?”

“Not if you do what I tell you to.”

Relief poured over Belfa, drenching her. Here it was again: Bullies and bargains.

“Okay,” Belfa said. “Sure.”

____

They stood at the side of Gladys Goheen’s trailer. The walk here had been brief but strenuous, owing to thick woods and the lack of a discernible path. When Gladys visited the McCluskeys, she took the long way, first looping over to the hard road. Crystal, though, had taken the shortcut, leading Belfa through the high grass, lurching across the baked ground with its divots and its ditches, thrashing and cursing and hitting at flies and bees.

The woods marched right up to the edge of the place, threatening to engulf it in the very next second. A rust-smeared propane tank squatted on two cinder blocks next to the trailer. Insects were having a field day with Belfa’s bare legs. She was afraid to scratch the itch, though, in case the gesture caught Crystal’s eye and annoyed her. You never knew what might set her off.

“Listen, shithead,” Crystal said. “I want you to keep an eye out, okay? While I go in and talk to Gladys. Anybody comes, you holler.”

Crystal looked around. She mounted the front stoop of the trailer. She looked around a second time and then, without knocking, pulled open the door and just walked right on in.