The Memory Closet: A Novel (30 page)

No, he was more than dangerous. He was evil. But he always had been evil; it just wasn’t the kind of wickedness a little girl could see.

“The Little Princess did grow up to be a looker after all.” He leered at me. “I always thought you might. You’re even prettier than your mother was when I first met her, before she crawled into a bottle. You still got all that hair, too. I used to watch Bobo braid it, and I always wanted to run my hands through it, feel how—”

In a sudden, blinding flash, fury burned away every particle of fear.

“You repulsive, pathetic, fat pig!” I spit the words at him like the taste of them in my mouth made me sick. I felt the same rage I’d felt when I saw the tarantula crawl on Windy; Jericho Johnson was a tarantula spider in a human being suit. “Touch me and you’ll draw back a stump!”

His face hardened; menace oozed from his voice. 

“Well, now that’s not going to be the way of it, Annie girl, and that’s a fact.” 
He shook his head in mock perplexity. “Why couldn’t you just let it alone, huh? Why couldn’t you just let it rest?”

I could see he was judging the distance between us, planning how he was going to grab me. Well, I was measuring the distance, too. When he laid his hands on me, he would pay dearly for the privilege.

“I swear I tried every way I knew to get you to quit digging around in the past.” He sounded aggrieved, like he’d taken it as a personal affront that I hadn’t been willing to sing from his song sheet. “You was such a mousey little thing, afraid of your own shadow, I figured I could unhinge you so you wouldn’t trust what you remembered or scare you so bad you’d give up trying to.”

He somehow managed indignant. “Shoot, I went all the way to Amarillo to buy parakeets to hang up dead in that cage, and it took a week to find a new face for that clock.”

Then he grinned, a wicked grin. “I thought when you set the garage on fire, I’d finally drove you over the edge.” He made a “whew!” sound in his throat along with something that approximated a laugh. “That was one bad acid trip, Sweetheart, bad as any I ever seen and I seen plenty!”

Acid? The hallucinations were LSD? He’d drugged me! The cereal Bobo said she didn’t set out for me. The odd taste.

He saw me connect the dots.

“I tried to send you on a couple of other trips you didn’t take, though. You’re a sight harder to drug than your mama was 'cause sometimes you didn’t eat the little treats I set out for you.”

“You drugged Mama?” My mind spun like the Tilt-A-Whirl at a county fair. “Why?”

Jericho was enjoying this.

“Now your mama, all I had to do was get her hooked on booze and then any other little present I wanted to give her—speed, PCP when I could get it, meth, crack—it was just plop-plop, fizz-fizz, into the bottle and down it went.”

I was literally speechless.

His face darkened. He was beginning to tire of the cat-andmouse game.

“It doesn’t do anybody any good to dig around in what’s over and done with. You should have let the dead stay dead.”

“She wouldn’t
be
dead if it weren’t for you! You killed her. You stuffed her down in that garbage bag and suffocated her.” I tried not to cry. Crying was weak, and I didn’t want to sound weak. But the tears came anyway, and I sobbed out the rest. “Why? Why would you do that? She was just a little girl—
your
little girl! Why would—?”

“Don’t be so sure she was my little girl. I never was.”

He was trying to sound casual now, like he and I just happened to bump grocery carts in the produce section and were having a nice little chat. But I could see the muscle in his jaw twitch, and he clenched and unclenched his right fist.

“That idiot Joel looks just like me, but Windy didn’t take after me at all. I never did trust Little Dove. I always suspected she was cheating on me.”

Cheating on you? You were a married man and she was a hooker!

“I watched her like a hawk, but I worked nights. And being around all those soldiers … I think back on it now—I bet she was always fooling around, made it with every man had a zipper to pull down. Windy could have been anybody’s.”

“You killed Windy because you didn’t think she was your little girl?”

“The little rat was too much like you!” He began to inch closer. “Couldn’t mind her own business.”

I slowly pulled my feet under me so I could spring up when I had to. We were both getting ready.

“When her mother started in on me that last time, Windy was supposed to be spending the night with that little Anderson girl— the one lived in the trailer by the road. See, Little Dove had got it into her head to threaten me, said she was going to tell Susan about us. And, of course, I couldn’t let her do that. I’d waited all those years, put up with your mother’s whining and clinging and bossing me around. I couldn’t let Little Dove charge in and ruin everything just because she was impatient for us to run off together.”

I had my feet set now, my legs coiled.

“I tried to tell her it wouldn’t be long, that we were finally getting to the end of it, to just hang in there a few more months. Susan’d turn 30 and collect that inheritance—a quarter of a million dollars!—and by then I’d have her so drugged up and boozed up she’d sign anything I put in front of her.”

He stopped talking, stopped inching toward me. When he continued, there was a pathetic sincerity in his voice.

“Shoot. I didn’t want to kill Little Dove.”

He killed her!

“She just wouldn’t shut up and I didn’t have any choice. But I hated it, I really did. I loved that little squaw.” His voice deepened. “No woman in the world could make it with a man like Little Dove. Windy’d a'been a fireball, too, in a few years—just like her mama. I was looking forward to showing that sweet thing a good time!”

Maybe I could kill him. Maybe I could launch myself at him and rip his face off!

“So I packed a suitcase, got her purse—so it’d look like she just up and left—put her in the back of the station wagon and dumped her naked way out on the prairie. I figured the coyotes and the buzzards would do a better job of getting rid of the body than I could.”

He was in position now. Cocked and ready.

“I shoved all her stuff into that big Dumpster behind Piggly Wiggly, and by then it was daylight so I just swung by the trailer park like I’d come to pick up Windy a day early and didn’t know her mama was gone or nothing. Only Mrs. Anderson said Windy wasn’t there, that she’d sent the kid home because she wet the bed.”

Any second now, he’d pounce.

“I went looking for her, and soon’s I found her, I knew she’d seen. She was hiding under her bed, didn’t even have the sense to run until she saw me. Then she hightailed it out the back door like a jackrabbit. I’d a'had her though, jumped off the porch to grab her. But I landed right on top of a broken whiskey bottle. Went through my moccasin, all the way to the bone.”

He snorted and shook his head.

“So there I am in the emergency room, all worried about what Windy might say to somebody, and then Susan tells me the kid wouldn’t open her mouth at all and that she had her tied up in a bag in the closet! Can you beat that? Windy was right here, waiting for me.”

“And you killed her.” The words growled out of my throat. “You murderer!” I’d spit the same words into my mother’s face, sitting on this floor in this kitchen 25 years ago. The words had ripped out her soul; Jericho didn’t even flinch. He just looked at me with the oddest smile.

“Well, well, Little Princess. Looks like you ain’t got all your memory back after all. Because if you remembered it right, you’d know I didn’t kill Windy.”

“If you didn’t, who did?”

“Why,
you
did, Baby Girl,” he purred. “
You
did.”

Surprise knocked the wind out of me and that was the moment of inattention Jericho had been waiting for. He leapt across the space between us and reached out to grab me. But I came up off the floor like a kangaroo, propelled upward as hard as I could with all the strength in both legs. The top of my head slammed into his chin and snapped his head back. He grunted in pain and staggered backward, and if the table hadn’t been there, he’d have gone all the way down.

I lunged for the screen door, shoved it open and was half a step out onto the porch when he grabbed my arm and yanked me backward so hard I thought he’d dislocated my shoulder. He wasn’t expecting me to spin instantly around, and it caught him off guard when I raked my fingernails across his face, digging deep, clawed for his eyes. He bellowed, let go of my arm and reached for my neck. I tucked my chin and that’s when I got him.

I caught Jericho’s right thumb in my mouth and bit down with all the strength in my jaw, as hard as I’d ever bitten anything. I tasted blood, felt the bone crunch and kept biting. He screamed—a shriek of agony and rage—and slapped me with his other hand. It wasn’t much of a blow, he was too off balance, but it connected solidly on my right cheek and knocked me to the floor. Then he kicked me in the belly with his pointed-toe cowboy boot. Once. Twice. I doubled over, couldn’t breathe, curled up in a fetal position on the floor, and tried to spit his blood out of my mouth. Jericho stood over me, cradled his ruined hand and roared curses at me.

“You’ll pay for this,” he rumbled. He held his right hand with his left, squeezing below the thumb, trying to stop the bleeding. If I could just get my breath and run, he’d have a hard time holding onto me. As if he’d read my mind, he started to kick me again. My knees were drawn up to my chest, and I took two agonizing blows to the shins—in silence. I didn’t have the air to cry out. A third caught me in the butt, another in the right arm. Then he stopped kicking and stood above me, panting. I was in pain; Jericho was in agony. The tip and first knuckle of his thumb dangled off his hand by tissue and tendons; the stump squirted blood in heartbeat bursts onto the floor.

I warned you about drawing back a stump!

“Oh, I am going to
hurt
you, Annie girl, you need to believe that sure!” He actually snarled. “I’m going to make you wish you was dead long before I kill you.”

He kicked at my face. I ducked my chin and tried to dodge, but the tip of his boot struck a glancing blow on the top of my head and ripped a river of pain down my scalp. I felt myself slipping away, losing consciousness. With all my strength, I fought the roaring, wom-wom-wom buzz in my ears, the growing darkness.

The candle on the windowsill. I focused all my attention on it, clung to reality, struggled desperately to remain conscious. The flickering flame danced in my vision, red and yellow, a jiggling, shimmering tongue of fire.

And then I remembered.

“A
nnie, get up, Sugar. This is a family thing and we all got to do our part.” Then Bobo continues in a whisper, “You got to go with Windy now. You can’t leave that poor little thing alone, all by herself. She needs you.”

I get up off the floor and walk past Mama collapsed in a heap, crying softly. Joel is wailing in the background. Bobo hugs me but I don’t respond. I just follow Jericho like a robot out onto the porch.

I cross the backyard grass to the side door of the garage and haul out the can of gasoline. The can is full and heavy, and I have to half-drag, half-carry it to the car. Jericho stands by the open back door watching, unable to help, until I finally set the can down wordlessly next to his uninjured foot. He leans against the car for balance and hefts the can up onto the back seat. I only catch a glimpse of the small form wrapped in a white sheet, stretched out in the cargo area behind the seat. All I can think is that she looks so little, a person so small, will anybody even notice she’s gone?

Jericho hobbles around the car and slams the tailgate shut. I get into the front seat and close the door; the hot stench takes my breath away. The car has been sitting in the sun with the windows rolled up. If it’s 100 degrees outside, it’s 120 inside the car, and the reek of diarrhea rising off the little bundle in the back is a putrid, suffocating fog.

Jericho starts to get in, but can’t. The heat and stink hit him like a fist, and he literally staggers backward and almost falls off his crutches. Then he stands beside the open door, reaches in and fits the key into the ignition, and uses the master control to roll all the windows down. I just sit; sweat rolls down my face and plasters my T-shirt to my body.

There’s not a breath of breeze. I can’t tell any difference at all in the temperature in the car, but apparently Jericho can because he finally shoves his crutches over the front seat into the back, gets in and pulls slowly out of the driveway. He has a hard time negotiating the accelerator and break with a foot bandaged like a soccer ball. He tries using the other foot, but the injured one is so big, it gets in the way. He finally settles for using the bandaged right foot on the gas pedal and the left on the brake.

When we get to the stop sign on the corner, Mrs. Oliver smiles and waves to us from her porch. Jericho smiles and waves back. I stare straight ahead, my face immobile. If I tried to smile, the vast hole in my belly would gobble up the motion before I could engage the muscles in my cheeks. Jericho’s isn’t a real smile either; it drops off his face like an old scab as soon as we turn right. Ours is the last street in town. Beyond lies open prairie.

A small part of me wonders where Jericho’s going to find a place to stage this accident, but the rest of me doesn’t care. I am silent, staring at nothing with unseeing eyes. As soon as we speed up on the highway, wind whips through the car and blows the super-heated air and much of the stink out the windows. Jericho turns on the air conditioner, and as soon as he feels cool air coming out of it, he rolls the windows back up.

Gradually, the car cools and the smell returns. But not overwhelming now--in the cool air it is merely unpleasant. I’m sitting in the direct blast of cold from a vent, and chill bumps quickly pop up on my arms. I suddenly realize: Windy’s cool now. Finally, after the sickening oven in that closet, Windy’s cool.

We drive in silence across the empty prairie. On and on for what feels like hours. Jericho obviously has a particular spot in mind, and I see what it might be up ahead before we get to it. There’s a stand of trees on the left side of the road. Just past the trees, the road curves sharply to the right to avoid a deep gulley.

Jericho slows and drives straight off the road instead of following the curve. He pulls to a stop when the car’s close to the edge of the gulley, then gets out on one foot and looks both ways up and down the highway. On the flat prairie, an approaching vehicle is visible for miles. The road is empty.

“This is the spot,” he says.

I get out of the car.

Keeping his injured foot off the ground, he hops around to the back door, opens it and lifts the heavy gasoline can off the seat and onto the ground.

“Take this and move it out of the way.”

I pick up the can and move it a few feet toward the road. Jericho slides back behind the wheel and leaves the door open. He carefully eases the car closer to edge of the gulley and when the front tires are resting on the rim, he kills the engine, puts the car in neutral and gets back out.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he says as he leans over the seat and retrieves his crutches. “You get over there.” He points to the back right bumper. He moves to the left side.

“Now, when I say push, you push.” He drops his crutches in the dirt and gets into position, holding his cut foot off the ground. “OK, push!”

I push as hard as I can. Nothing happens.

“Harder, not just with your arms. Lean over and get your shoulder into it.”

I plant my feet, hunker down and shove with my legs. The car moves forward a few inches. Jericho lets off pressure and the car settles back.

“Again!”

We push and the car rolls.

We let go; it rolls back.

We rock it back and forth like that a few times, and suddenly the front tires go over the edge and the car vanishes. Both of us fall forward into the dirt, and we can hear the car bang, clunk and clatter its way down into the gulley.

But we when scrambled to the edge and look over, Jericho barks out a curse. The car didn’t roll all the way down and out onto the flat bottom of the gulley like he’d planned. It’s stuck halfway down the incline, with the grill smashed against a big bolder lying on the gulley floor.

“Go get the gas can and take it over there,” Jericho growls, indicating a spot about 20 feet away.

The side of the gulley is not steep and rocky there. It’s just a dirt slope all the way to the bottom. He hops to his crutches, picks them up and hobbles to the top of the slope. I retrieve the gas can and meet him there. When I look down the slope, I’m certain I can’t possibly carry the heavy can down to the bottom. But Jericho has it all figured out.

He bends down and tightens the can lid, pulls a rag out of his pocket and stuffs it into the hole of the spout, jams it down as far as it will go. Then he carefully eases the round can over onto its side.

“Now, I’m going to start this can rolling and you keep up with it. Don’t let it go crashing down to the bottom. Do you understand?”

I nod.

Jericho loses his patience. “Then say so!”

“I understand.”

With his weight on his good foot and his crutches to balance him, he puts the toes sticking out of the mound of bandages against the side of the can and nudges it to the edge of the slope.

“You ready?”

I nod, then catch the look on his face. “Yes, I’m ready.”

“OK, here it goes.”

He gives the can a little shove, and it begins to roll down the hill. I stumble along beside the rolling can, grabbing it to slow it down and pushing to direct its path. When the spout strikes the ground on every revolution, it acts as a brake, too, but it also shoves the can off course. The system works for about two-thirds of the distance, then the can gets away from me and rolls all the way down to the bottom. As I chase after it, I can hear Jericho cursing from the top of the embankment.

When I catch the can and stop it, Jericho tells me to set it upright and pull the rag out of the spout. It is soaked with gasoline.

“Now, splash the gas all around, all over the car. Coat it good.”

That would be a simple task if the car were sitting flat on the gulley floor. But it’s not. It rests at an angle—the back end facing uphill, the front smashed into a boulder.

I drag the can to the front of the car where the grill rests against the rock. The can is so heavy, I don’t splash gasoline so much as pour it out on the hood and front tires. I have to climb up the slope to make my way around the rest of the car, dragging the gas can with me. But as the can gets lighter, I’m able splash higher and higher up onto the sides of the vehicle.

I look down at the dirt as I circle the car splashing gasoline on it. Resolutely down. I refuse to allow myself even one little glance in a window. The impact of the crash may have moved the body; maybe Windy fell into the back seat. But I don’t look, won’t let myself look. I make two trips around the car before the gasoline’s all gone.

“It’s empty,” I shout to Jericho.

“Bring the can back up.”

I reach for the rag to put it back into the spout.

“No, don’t bring that. Leave the rag down there.”

Even empty, the can is heavy, and it’s hard for me to haul it up the dirt slope. I slip and slide backward in the soft earth, and Jericho keeps looking over his shoulder, searching the empty highway in both directions.

“Hurry up! Somebody’s bound to come along pretty soon.”

I finally get the can to the top of the hill, and Jericho tells me to hide it in the brush around the trees up the road. When I rejoin him at the edge of the gulley, I glance down at the car. From this angle, it’s impossible not to look into the back window; it’s facing uphill. There’s no white-shrouded body in sight.

Jericho leans his weight on his crutches and takes my shoulders in his hands.

“Look at me!”

I raise my dead eyes to his.

“Now listen. Here’s what I want you to do, and you have to do it exactly the way I tell you to. Will you do that?”

I forget and merely nod, and he shakes me hard. “Talk to me!”

“I’ll do what you tell me.” I sputter.

“I want you to take this butane lighter,” he hands me a yellow plastic cylinder shaped like a Pez dispenser, “and go back down the hill. Pick up that rag with gasoline on it and light it. Be careful; it’ll catch quick. When it does, you throw it onto the car where you splashed gasoline, and you hightail it back up here to me. You run as fast as you can, do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

I make my way back down the slope to the bottom and pick up the rag I left there. I glance into the car then, for the first time. I can’t help it. I don’t see Windy. I am suddenly seized with an almost irresistible urge to go to the window and look in. To see her one last time and say goodbye. I actually take a step forward to do that when Jericho yells at me.

“Burn it! Go on. Do it, Annie. Set it on fire.”

I lift the soaked rag up in front of me.

“Light it, quick! I think I see somebody coming.”

I flick the lighter and put the flame to the cloth. It catches so fast I fling it onto the car to keep from burning my hand. I hear the “whump” sound as the gasoline catches. Then I turn and run back up the slope as fast as I can.

When I get to the top of the hill, Jericho’s on his hands and knees in the dirt, rubbing it into his clothing. He answers my unasked question: “So it’ll look like I crawled up the hill.” Then he wordlessly takes the lighter out of my hand and shoves it down into his pocket.

There is, indeed, somebody coming, but they are a long way off. Jericho looks anxiously at the car below us in the gulley. Fire has encircled it, black smoke has begun to rise into the air, but the car isn’t yet burning.

“Now, we tell people …” He sees I’m staring at the car. “Annie, look at me.” I turn to face him; he's on his knees so we’re almost at eye level. “We say that I was afraid the car was going to explode, so I got you out of it and back up here to safety.”

For the first time, he notices my face.

“Where’d you get that black eye?”

Mama slapped me, said she’d whip me with a belt.

He doesn’t wait for an answer. “That’s good, the black eye and the bruise on your cheek—that’s good. That happened in the wreck. OK? That’s what you say, that it happened in the wreck.”

Over his shoulder, I see the truck, you can tell it’s a pickup truck. It’s still the only vehicle on the road. Surely, the driver has seen the smoke by now.

“And we say that I started back down for Windy, but the car exploded and it was too late to help—”

“Help! Annie, help me!”

The voice is faint, calling from a long way off. It is as pure as tiny bells.

Jericho and I turn in unison toward the gulley. Windy is in the back of the car, banging her hands on the window, wailing, “Help! Annie, get me out!”

“Windy!” I scream her name, my voice only a faint whisper, and leap to my feet.

Jericho reaches for me, catches my braid instead of my arm, and yanks me backward with such force that I land flat on my back in the dirt in front of him.

“You stay right here!” he growls in a voice I’ve never heard before.

“You set her on fire; now you can watch her burn.”

“Nooo!” I shriek, instantly hysterical. I writhe on the ground, kicking, squirming and screaming. I manage to get up on my knees, then yank my head brutally from side to side to wrench my braid out of his hand. “Windy’s alive! I have to help her! She’s ali—”

Suddenly, there is a loud whump; all the gasoline has caught and the car is instantly engulfed in flames. Windy is pressed against the back glass, her eyes full of terror, her face contorted in a scream. Her hair catches on fire and—

Kaboom!

The force of the explosion lifts the car into the air and sends fire and smoke like a flamethrower up over the edge of the gulley. Jericho ducks and releases my braid. I remain perfectly still, watching the car dance in slow motion as pieces of it fly off in all directions. Then it settles back to the earth with a sickening crunch and burns like the gates of hell had opened up a crack in the earth right there in the bottom of the gulley.