The Scamp (20 page)

It's about ninety-five degrees in the sun. My feet cover over with red dust. When I take my shoes off later, it'll leave a pattern, like you see on Indian girls. I saw them one time, in Niagara Falls, with Chuck. All these girls with their long black braids and pink and red and gold silk, their hands and feet painted in a pattern just slightly darker than their skin. They giggled in the spray by the falls while a man took pictures of them. He had a white suit that buttoned higher than usual, and a fancy red turban.

Don't stare, Rayelle, Chuck said.

But I wondered about them, because they didn't look much older than me. Because the man took their picture together, and wasn't posing with them. Because I wondered what it was like to be married off to a man you maybe didn't know, wearing red instead of white, your body painted and your hair dressed with jewels.

At the first trailer, a little mommy—a girl with a ponytail high on her head and a couple of toddlers who wander in and out of the front door—slides a plastic baby pool into the sun and lays a running hose in it, leaving it to fill and warm up before she lets the kids get in. The hose makes its own whirlpool, moving in a swift circle around the plastic sides. It would pull you in, that vortex of moving water; you could never fight that. You would just get lost in the current, spinning around with your face against the imprint of blue plastic cartoon fishes.

I grab Couper's hand, cold and sweaty at the same time. My back, dripping, and my arms all goose bumps. He looks at the pool, the twisting water.

Do you want to wait in the car? he says, but he's distracted by the activity of the woman, another car pulling into the park. Couper shakes his head. No, you should come, he says. You can do this. He grips my hand and then lets go, walking ahead.

I watch the slope of his shoulders, the breadth of his back as he walks away. I have to fight not to let the image darken from the outside in, my eyesight fading and my head light enough to faint.

Couper sort of waves before he approaches her. She tries walking away, looking over her shoulder. She probably thinks he's summoning her, serving her papers, coming from the state or from child protective. He has to call out to make her stop.

Sorry to bother you, he says. Can you just tell me which one of these is number seventeen?

There's no number on her trailer, and no number on the one across the street. There's no mailbox on the house, only the metal bank of them in the middle green. In front of the trailer, the steps are warped, untreated pine. They look unstable, dry, splintery.

She walks back and bends down to swish her hand in the swirling pool water, her ponytail swaying to the side. There's more than enough water in the pool. When she stands upright, she's tiny in front of Couper, not even to his shoulder. She wears white sweatpants that come
to her knee, and a stretchy white tank top with no bra, even though she needs one. She has so many freckles on her shoulders, chest, and arms, they seem to overlap in places. When I get closer, her face is the same.

Are you fucking kidding me? she says to Couper, and leans back on her heels, open and confrontational. She eyes the long-haired toddler on the grass, dressed in only a diaper, who picks up a stick, ready to run with it, and all she does is snap her fingers at him. He stops as soon as she snaps. Doesn't look back at her, doesn't even lift his head. He just drops the stick and moves to a pile of pebbles by the steps.

No ma'am, Couper says.

The kid grabs a handful of pebbles and peppers her leg with it.

Tyler! She snaps her fingers again. Go in the house and find Lexi, she says. Have your cereal. You can't get in the pool yet. When he doesn't move she lunges like she'll chase him and he toddles up the steps. Then she sizes us up, her head moving up and down, the pool filling right to the top.

You all the cops? she says, and kind of laughs. You don't look like cops.

No ma'am, Couper says. My name's Couper Gale. I'm an investigative reporter. This is my associate, Rayelle Reed.

He keeps saying my name to everyone, without asking me. Without consideration for my own anonymity. Why does she need to know who I am?

What are you looking for in seventeen? she says.

I was hoping to find the woman who lives there, Couper says.

She smoothes her hand from her forehead back to where the ponytail starts at the crown of her head. Then she clucks and shakes her head. Too late, she says.

She's not there? he says.

She waves her hand around. We're dropping like flies out here, she says. Nah, they don't live there no more.

He glances back at me before he goes on. There was more than one person? he says.

Yeah. I mean, the main one, she says, and then dangles her fingers down. And a few others.

A few other . . . women? Couper says.

She snorts. There weren't no men in that house, if you catch me, she says.

I don't know if I do, Couper says. How many women?

Just one, she says, impatient, but there were always others hanging around. I don't know who all lived there, off and on.

Did you know them?

She looks at me before she answers. No, I did not know them, she says.

Is there anyone left here who might have known them? Couper asks. He looks down the line of trailers. All of them on a tilt, facing the dirt drive, stacked like dominoes, ready for their own demise.

Darlene might, she says, slow. Then she holds up a finger and asks him to wait while she goes to turn the
hose spigot. The pool is uneven. Water sloshes out one side. And why not? If a teaspoon is as dangerous as a gallon, why not give a baby a whole deep pool to drown in?

Darlene. Couper jots down.

Is the manager, she says, and points at the trailer across the way. But she don't have time to talk to you all, she says. We got a bit going on here, you know? She waves her hand around at the construction, the constant drone and pound of so many heavy machines. Dropping like flies, she says again.

I'm sorry to hear that, Couper says. He eyes the row of open basements in the hot field. Are they forcing you out? he says.

They don't give a rat's fucking ass what happens to us, she says.

Behind her, the little one comes back out the front door, leaving it wide open behind him, the sunlight shining in on a living room filled with toys on the rug, a big TV going loud against the wall. A shaft of bright light catches dust floating down. He comes down the front steps barefoot, undoes his own diaper and walks out of it, leaves it on the grass, his fat little legs working him toward the pool with purpose. He steps right in over the side, slips and lands hard on his bottom, the water up to his armpits.

It's too cold, Ty, she says. I told you.

He crawls, his butt up in the air and his nose skimming the water. It doesn't seem to faze him.

Anyone else? Couper says.

She looks down the street. Some are nicer than others, with birdbaths and hanging flowers. Some of them with just dirt lawns, a broken step, the aluminum sides of them rusty or dented. One has a window knocked out, and the curtain blows through from the inside.

Crystal, she says. She picks at a fingernail. The kid puts his face in the water and she stoops real quick, even though her back is to him.

Not your face, Ty, she says. Sit up.

These your little ones? Couper asks.

If I were the babysitter, she says, I'd get paid for this shit.

Where will I find Crystal? Couper says.

Oh, if she's down there, you all won't miss her, she says.

I stroll down the lawn then, back to the road, toward the next trailer and the next. Trying to slow my breathing. My heart, knocking against the top of my stomach, or maybe against the hard wall of my liver. It's a long ugly walk up the little street. I hear Couper thank her, and then he catches up with me. When I look back, she's still standing the same way, arms crossed, the kid wading in the pool now, the water to his knees.

You know, what they say ain't even true, she calls out. It's all a bunch of bullshit.

Couper stops dead and bounds back to her. What is? he says.

She ain't that special, she says. She's no goddamn savior.

Ashley? Couper asks, but I see her face, her eyes narrowed to a cold stare.

Ask Crystal, she says, and looks away, into the trailer, at the open door and another kid coming out, a little girl in a shiny metallic bikini and her mother's sunglasses slipping down her nose. It's all just smoke up your ass, if that's how you like it, she says. That ain't magic. That's just two lezzies and a dildo, she says.

The road has gone to weeds and potholes. At the end of the loop, there's a vacant trailer, dirty white and rusted in parts, that sits at an imprecise angle, like someone pushed it hard, shoving it back from the road. On the aluminum siding, a faded
17
written in marker. The windows are clouded over with filth or fog from the inside, steam from whatever is closed up and rotting in there.

The window of the laundry room at my mom's does the same thing. Opaque with smoky moisture.

There can't be anything living inside that's not wild. The door doesn't even quite close, and hangs off the top hinge enough to be diagonal, letting in light and flies and red dust. The wooden steps don't look like they'll hold any weight, much less Couper's, and the very bottom step has
BAD
spray-painted in orange. Someone has also keyed the word
SLUTS
into the metal door, and what was raw exposed steel is now rusted letters coming through the faded gray.

Couper walks around the perimeter, but the grass is so long, he has to wade through knee-high weeds. He can't get very close.

Because number seventeen sits at the very end of the loop, you can survey the rest of the trailers from there. People coming in and out. Which ones are empty, which ones are still occupied. A dust storm follows a little hatchback, and a woman gets out with plastic bags of groceries. An older couple stretches out their awning, the man up on a step stool, adjusting the corner. Theirs is nice, neat with plants and wind chimes. A younger guy with the side of his belly exposed from underneath a black T-shirt leans over the hood of a Monte Carlo. A woman with wide hips and big legs sits on the lowest step of a trailer and blows bubbles while her girls chase them over the lawn.

And one other girl, who pulls up in an old-style Ford pickup, and steps out in a pair of shorts that are cut so high you can see the rounds of her ass peeking out. She has long black hair and a yellow T-shirt with tiny sleeves that doesn't quite hit the top of the shorts, revealing a line of taut belly and lower back. Her sandals have a four-inch wooden heel.

Oh, Couper says when he sees her. Crystal. He sounds delighted. I'd like to kick him.

I remember Khaki in a pair of high wooden Candies she would wear as Shawn, the club owner, her chest bare under her blazer, her feet high and arched in those shoes.

Ho-ly shit, Couper says when Crystal turns around and bends to take something out of the front seat of the truck. You think? he says to me, checking.

I repeat: You all won't miss her.

Miss, he calls, and starts jogging. Miss!

She spins around, her feet planted in those shoes and her waist turning the way you can twist a Barbie doll's.

Did you just come from over there? she says, to me, though, not to Couper.

I lag on up behind him then, my steno pad loose in my hand, my pen tucked behind my ear and tangled into my hair. The assistant. The babyless mother, following the detective and letting him fuck her in the back of his tin-can camper.

I did, Couper says, pointing at his chest.

Did you go inside? she says.

She's a lot cuter from far away. Up close, her eyes crowd to the middle of her face, her shoulders and knees bony, her tits huge and fake, hard-looking with a deep wrinkly valley between them. Her hair is streaked white blond on the top, like a skunk.

That place is condemned, she says to me. You're going to have to burn that dress to get off all the cunt dust.

Crystal? Couper says, holding his pad and writing. I wish he would drop it. I'm Couper—

No, she says. I don't want your name, she says. And you don't know mine.

Crystal? he says.

Nope, she says.

She reaches into the backseat and comes out with a black instrument case, the kind that might hold a trumpet, but bigger. It has a decal in the corner like you'd see on a truck mud flap, a sitting, bent metal girl with big tits and flying hair.

Can I help you with that? Couper says.

She laughs, low and punctuated. No, she says, and eyes him, up and down, his rumpled shirt, his mussed hair. I might be able to help
you
with it, she says.

She cocks her head to the side, her ear tipped nearly to her shoulder, and holds the case with both hands, hanging down in front of her thighs. What are you looking for? she says to me.

And when Couper tries to answer for me, she hushes him, just as quick as the little mommy. Ah! she says, Shhh.

It takes me a minute to find my voice. Ashley, I say, clearing it. Ashley Dunn.

It's Ashland, she says, and she ain't here no more, and she never had anything you needed to begin with, she says to me.

Can you tell us where she went? Couper says, but Crystal's gaze is on me. It's like Couper has disappeared.

You got a ride out of here? she asks me. Even with this? she points to Couper.

Yes, I say.

Then go. Let me tell you something about Ashland Dunn, she says, coming closer, her heels tapping on what's left of the pavement. She looks nice, when she takes you in, when she washes your feet clean and holds your hand, and sings you to sleep. But she's meaner than fuck and you'll do better to stay away from her.

She looks down at the front of my dress.

You got a belly full of bones? she says.

What? No. And then I think about it, just as she said it, a belly, swelled up with a jangle of baby bones. No, I say again.