The Scamp (28 page)

So, what? It's time to go?

Yeah, he says. It's time to go.

Right now?

He shrugs. Why wait?

We're an hour before the fishermen get up in the earliest light. We've heard them, sometimes, the bark of a dog, the crunch of gravel down by the creek, or smelled their cigarettes, their coffee brewing in nearby camps. Couper pulls the car and the Scamp out the long road through the campsite, only his parking lights on, five miles an hour over all the humps and holes in the gravel, while behind us, everything in the Scamp is shifting.

The road to the market is just that—FM12, farm-to-market route 12. Two-laned, forty-five-mile-per-hour zone. I've done seventy when I thought no one was watching. The windows down and the radio on. No one is ever watching. Right now, it's still dark, the sky just beginning to leak a purple-gray light through the farthest trees.

What did you find out? I ask Couper. I expect him to say there was another murder. Another girl.

Her last mailing address, he says.

Khaki's? I say.

He nods.

I would kill for a cigarette. And some coffee. I will try to steer him into Patty's market when we get closer.

How do you know? I ask. The last address took us back to where we'd already been, I say. I yawn. The seat is chilled and clammy, the air damp with fog low in the fields. The road, dew-speckled.

Couper says, I called your dad.

He doesn't know, I say.

This part of the road is flanked by tall, uncut grass on either side, high, up to your waist or higher if you stood in it. Driving through, in the first morning light, is like going through a parted sea. Like the earth has opened up for us right here, where it wasn't supposed to, and let us through. Like it'll close behind us.

He's not my dad, I say.

Who is your dad? Couper asks, and I laugh, but he's not joking. They're so fucking cagey about everything, he says.

Who? I say.

Your parents, he says.

I picture the way Chuck stands inside of the trailer, tall, caged. A little bit wild. An animal that might eat out of your hand, or might bite it to pieces. His knee wobbling with restlessness. His gaze fixed on the road, on some far-off point he'll never tell you about.

How did you find the number? I say.

Couper shrugs. It's listed. It's obvious to him, but it's not to me. I just thought I would try, he says. Out of
curiosity. To see what they remembered or knew about where she went.

And? I say.

I got an earful, he says.

Who did you talk to?

I talked to both of them, he says. But I got the information from Chuck.

He has known where she was, I say, all this time.

No, Couper says. That's not the impression I got. What he told me is that she contacts him from time to time, and he . . .

He what? No one has even fucking tried to find me, I say, and Khaki and Chuck are talking?

But before I get any further into my rant, an animal darts in front of us and Couper slams on the brakes. The car lurches. I slide hard into the dash, and the Scamp bumps the hitch on the car and jackknifes to the side.

But it's not an animal. It's a girl, run out of the tall grass. She's wearing a torn shirt, and no pants, with a rag tied around one leg. Her hair, matted like it was wet from the river and dried with sticks and algae in it. Her arms and legs, scratched. Her feet, bare and bleeding.

She stands in front of the car and opens her mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. She shakes her head, looking through the windshield at Couper, but manages only a hoarse wheeze and then coughs.

Couper shifts the Gran Torino into park. I hold my arm where it hit the glove box. I wasn't buckled, just
sitting sideways and sleepy, arguing with him. No one's ever watching.

He gets out in unreal light. The sky, purple and glowing. The landscape lit but indirectly, with nothing, like the light is coming up out of the ground instead of down from the sky. He tries to approach her, the way you would a wild animal or a trapped bird. She shakes her hands like they're wet, her body shivering.

Oh Jesus, she says.

Let me help you, Couper says. Rayelle, he calls to me, call 911.

No! she says. It's the clearest thing from her throat. She paces up the double yellow line and back, up and back.

I hold the phone in my hand, ready, and stand between the open door and my seat. I notice that it's the sleeve of her shirt, torn and wrapped around her leg, and that she's bleeding through the fabric.

No cops, she says. Please don't call the cops.

You need an ambulance, Couper says. What happened? He speaks soft, higher pitched. Where did you come from?

He looks off into the field, the grass tall, moving in the breeze.

Behind her, the grass rustles open, and she screams, an awful dry, bleeding throat rasp, and ducks her head into Couper's chest. A deer darts out. A big-bodied doe, leaping onto the pavement, startled by us, by the parked car. It freezes, as deer do when they notice people, and then launches the rest of the way across the road, into
the field on the other side, the grass like paper, like pages, closing up behind it.

Couper holds the girl's shoulders. Is someone chasing you? he says.

I don't know, she says. Then, No. Not anymore. No, not at all, she says. She looks back in the direction she came from.

The sun comes gold down the center of the road, just above the horizon behind us. It shines in her face, over her cut knees, the dirty white T-shirt, wet and then dry again, stained greenish from river water and algae. She has nothing underneath it. From behind, the rounds of her ass peek out. In the front, you can see her brown nipples.

How far did you run? Couper says.

I don't know. She shakes her hands, her head. She shivers, and crosses her arms over her chest like she's holding herself together.

Let me give you a ride, Couper says.

No.

There's nothing out here, he says, sweeping his arm around, for miles.

She shakes her head again. Looks up and down the road, which is straight and flat to the horizon. There's nothing. But she seems to weigh which direction is better, as if she'll just keep running.

I won't take you anywhere you don't want to go, Couper says. But there's a market a little ways up. You can get some water. And bandages, he says. You need both of those things.

I flip through the phone in my hand, to look at his recent calls. Kaplan, twice. Amanda. Most recently, Carleen Reed. Three times.

She grunts, desperate. No cops, she says. It works into a whine that she repeats. I can't. There can't be cops.

I'm not a cop, Couper says.

Who is she? the girl asks, pointing.

Her? Couper says, looking back at me. That's my girlfriend, he says.

It's not a good time to laugh, but I snort, and toss the phone onto the seat.

He convinces her to let him walk with her. And convinces me to drive the car, five miles an hour, alongside them, with the window down, escorting them down the highway with the blinkers on, the Scamp careening slowly along behind. Less than half a mile in, she leans over, holding her thigh.

How far is it? she says.

It's still a little ways, Couper says. He stops with her, and is careful not to touch her, but holds his hand open and near her back like he would, if she'd let him. It's okay to get in the car, he says. I promise you.

I wonder how many times he's said those exact words, in different scenarios. I reach over into the glove box for my cigarettes, light one and hang it out the window in my hand. This car is old enough to have a push-in lighter, with the bright red coil inside, the kind you can press into the vinyl seat, or your hand, and leave a
circular brand. Couper scowls at me. I blow out the window, but the smoke just comes back in.

The girl leans, and presses on her thigh.

It's okay, Couper says. Just let me get you to the market, he says. I don't even know where the nearest hospital is.

It's not till Delta, she says. It's a shitty hospital.

You need a better bandage, Couper says. Hospital or no.

She stops walking altogether. I'm not getting in with her, she says.

I put it in park in the middle of the road and get out. I walk around the hood of the car and cross over to the right-side shoulder, which there isn't much of. Not enough to park on. It's mostly gravel, and then a soft decline to a field. The grass blades, wide and sharp enough to cut you. A ditch that's dry now, but in the spring probably runs with a small creek, some lilies or cattails springing up from the green water.

Drive her, I say to Couper, walking ahead, my feet hard on the pavement.

Rayelle, Couper says.

I turn and face the sun, blinding me, the car facing west toward the market. He holds her elbow. I don't know what she has against me, I say, but you go ahead.

He folds her carefully, bare bottomed, onto the seat where I normally sit. And drives off, faster than I was going, leaving me trailing behind, on the side of the road.

I stand on the shoulder smoking and listen to the grass, moving, breathing.

I think about Khaki calling my parents. If I was there when it happened. If my mother answered, or didn't, or if Khaki waited until the middle of the night and called only Chuck.

I used to worry that something had happened to her. The worst things. A man, a knife. That she was working somewhere against her will. Had to turn tricks. Was in jail. Was homeless. I would lie awake sometimes, looking up at the seamed aluminum ceiling, wondering if she was sheltered, or if she slept outside, hungry, like an animal.

The farther I get from home, or the closer I get to her, I find it harder to imagine that she doesn't have exactly what she goddamn wants.

Couper could have dropped the girl at the market and circled back around to get me, but he doesn't. I must be too able-bodied, too protected, too clothed, to warrant picking up on the side of the road. Instead, I walk the last two miles to the market, the sun getting higher and hotter behind me as I go. I finish my cigarette and toss it into the field. I kind of hope the whole thing catches. I could burn the world down right now.

When I get there, she's still in my seat. Still with her naked twat on the vinyl.

Couper's inside.

Well, you're early, Patty says to me when I jingle the copper bells hanging on the door. I see Couper in an aisle with a big bottle of water, rolls of bandage and tape.

Not by choice, I say.

You by yourself? Patty says. She pours me a cup of coffee without asking and hands it over, black.

Nope, I say. I point.

He your fella? she says. She tips her nose toward Couper. He's not your age.

Nope, he's not, I say.

Outside, the air has that wet you-shouldn't-be-awake-yet feel to it. Still burning off the humidity of overnight. The grass and trees wet. The road, steaming in the sun. We come out with the water and bandages and the girl gets out of the car, and then Patty comes out too.

What in the hell is this? Patty says. She yells around the side of the building for Burt, the five-foot-tall wrinkled raisin of an attendant. Burt, she says, call the goddamn cops.

The girl waves her hands. No, she says. No calls. But Patty goes back inside without asking, and without listening to any pleas the girl might offer. Couper has her sit on a bench outside the door, her legs so thin that when she presses her knees together, none of the flesh meets in the middle.

He kneels down and pours the water over her feet.

What's your name? he says.

She huffs. Depends on who you ask, she says. Then, Virginia. Please don't call the cops, she adds.

When he pours the water out of the bottle and onto her feet, it makes a bloody puddle in the red mud. One at
a time, he holds each foot up by the heel, the way you'd put shoes on a baby, washes it, dabs it with clean gauze, and then wraps it, bundling it thick and dry. He takes a pair of white plastic flip-flops, breaks the tag with his teeth, and slides them on, where her toes emerge from the gauze. Her toes have a perfect French pedicure.

I'm not a cop, Couper says. Who hurt you?

I won't tell you that, she says.

Why not?

She looks at me before she'll answer him. She'll kill me, she says.

I might, I say. If you don't back off of him.

Rayelle, Couper says. He looks back over his shoulder at me, standing there, holding my arm where it aches from hitting the dash.

I didn't even mean you, she says.

Couper opens a new bottle of water and hands it to her to drink.

You need medical attention, he says to her. For your leg, and whatever else happened to you.

There's no medical attention for that, she says.

Where did you come from? Couper asks. He holds her by the ankles now, his fingers working her Achilles tendon.

This time? she says. Or the time before that?

Either one, Couper says.

Delta, she says. Yellow Springs. Then, over his shoulder, to me, she says, You're going there.

I don't know where I'm going, I say.

I know your type, she says.

The hell you do, I say. I know your type, I shoot back.

Girls, Couper says.

You sound just like her, Virginia calls out to me. Except, she says.

Except what?

She's got a dead look, she says. A crazy dead look. You know who I mean, she says, don't you. Jesus, she wails. Jesus Christ.

Patty pokes her head out the door. On their way, she says to Couper.

No! Virginia cries. No, no, no. She gets up from the bench.

Couper follows close behind her, but she is running the best she can. She takes the flip-flops and chucks them, and runs on just her bare padded feet.

Virginia, he calls.

I watch her stop, right before the field behind the house, where the propane tanks sit, and a shed with the tools that Burt needs for changing a tire, fixing a belt. She turns and faces him.