Stacking in Rivertown Page 11

  Since her suicide jump from the same bridge on June 21 Mrs. Broder is fast becoming an icon among teens and college students. Flowers are often found placed in the area from which she jumped, possibly fleeing an unknown male assailant. Sales of her novel have skyrocketed, selling out in many locations across the country.

  It goes on to quote a police spokesman and give the same old endline. “Police are still investigating Mrs. Broder’s suicide.”

  My God. What’s the matter with those girls? Are they crazy? Are they out of their minds?

  It’s soon too dark to read. That’s what I tell myself, since the writing is blurred. I’m not in the mood for the paper now anyway. I try to stand up, but can’t. I can hardly get myself out of the screwy chair. Eventually, I fall to the side and crawl to the bushes to pee. As I’m doing my business, I hear a train crying and wailing in the distance. It reminds me of nights sleeping in the two-room.

  After I’m done, I haul myself up like an imbecile, struggling with my pants. I give up and leave them down around my ankles, and I stagger to the car. Once there, I slump into the backseat like I do every night, with a blanket thrown over me, and on my chest beneath it, resting happy as you please, my Uzi.

  Down in Fowler, the trains flew by at night. I used to lie awake listening to their sad weep. Daddy snored through it all like a sick dog. But I’d take his snoring any day. He could butcher a melody better than Grady cleaned his meat. It was all the drink, I guess, made his ears go slack and his voice slip around. But he used it to frighten people off.

  There was a woman came to the house sometimes when I was little. She always acted friendly, handing out hugs and candy to me and Vin and saying things like, “How’s my babies doing?”

  She’d talk to Mama so nice at first, calling her Mama just like me and Vin did. It all just got me mixed up. Mama called her Betty and I recognized her from a picture that Mama kept in the bedroom. Mama and Betty were both in the picture, younger, and standing with some man I didn’t know.

  Every time Betty came, it was in a different car with a different man. They always dressed fancy like they just came from church.

  “We don’t like them,” Vin would say to me.

  “But she gave me redhots.” I was easily bribed in those days.

  “We hate their stupid fat cars. We hate how clean they are. We hate the white shoes on their feet.” I always got the feeling he knew something about them that I didn’t, but I couldn’t pry a thing out of him.

  And he was right of course, not just about the hate, but about the white shoes. To me, it seemed a waste.

  How you going to dig the crawdads? What happens in the mudflats where the gnats swarm over you like sleep? You’d have to be cleaning those white shoes all the time. You’d have to stay way back from the river.

  I tried not to think about that.

  So Vin and me would work the sinkholes good with our feet and zoom in close, aiming for their shoes. That made the woman and her different men not so sweet.

  And that’s when Daddy would start to sing. He’d belt out like a bullfrog all sick from eating bees. Me and Vin would cover our ears.

  I think that was one of the reasons Mama put up with Daddy and his drink. Because Betty and her man would pack up and leave. Then Daddy and Mama would sit in the swing.

  Chewing grass, me and Vin lay around nearby, thinking about the damage we did to their feet. Mama would smile and swing, happy about something I never did get.

  If I asked Mama who they were, she’d shrug and say, “Don’t you worry yourself over Betty and her men. Listen to the river. Listen to the wind in the trees. You can’t do any better than that.”

  I wake, hearing the sound of voices nearby. Startled, I lose balance and fall onto the floor between the seats. My head screams. I need a drink, pronto. So I sneak a peek out my window.

  Shit! Two children are stooped down near my chair. Then I notice that my whiskey bottle is on its side. This makes me sad. It was near to full when I left it to its own devices last night.

  I open the car door and fall out. The two children—one a girl, about eight I’d say, and a boy, ten or eleven—stand up, staring at me. The trees spin as I try to decide if I should attempt to stand.

  “You’ve got ants,” the girl says.

  “Lots of ants and in a long line,” the boy adds.

  I let that settle in around the whiskey in my brain. “I do?”

  They wave me over. I stagger up and weave to the chair, seeing that yes indeed, I do have ants, rather the ants have the whiskey.

  “Do you think ants get drunk?” I ask, trying to keep my flammable breath away from the two of them.

  They both giggle at my comment. Then they begin telling me all sorts of things about ants, most of which goes right by me.

  “Ben. Sarah. Don’t bother this lady, man, lady.” She finally makes up her mind when she sees my breasts beneath my T-shirt. I turn too fast, which sets my head into another spin, and I see a woman about my own age dressed in hiking boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt.

  I notice I’m dressed half as Becker and half as Becca.

  She takes one look at me, and I expect her to pull a face and chase her kids away. Instead she surprises me, which is nice, and she smiles, holding out her hand.

  “I’m Jill.”

  I feel suddenly shy, but shake her hand. “Becca.”

  “I’m sorry about my kids,” she says. “They’re into this ant thing lately.”

  “It’s okay. No problem.”

  I see her eyes fix on the whiskey bottle lying on its side. I feel my face go red. She smiles at me again before she shoos her kids off to the outhouse.

  Later, I notice that they’re in the campsite closest to me. Jill’s husband is decked out in gear. He has on rubber boots up to the crotch, and he wears this cool vest with lots of pockets. Wading out into the stream, he waves a fancy fishing rod back and forth over his head.

  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 mu
ch 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.

  6

  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 ste
adied 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.