Stacking in Rivertown Read online

  They went away.

  I don’t know how long I was left like that. The way Kat talked about it afterward, I must have been lying there for weeks.

  They would come down in different groupings, Kat and Matt, or all three. I never knew when they’d come. And they’d make over me, kiss me, run their hands over my body so soft and gentle. They let my legs loose and walked me.

  In my blindness, the room shrank, being nothing but my legs, my arms, the feel of the gag, the tape on my eyes. I ached for them to come.

  When they arrived, one would screw me while another would take out the gag and feed me by hand. They touched, sucked, rocked, talked to me, so gentle, so kind. I cried like a baby, begging them not to leave, to protect me from Ben, to help me get out.

  There’s nowhere to go, Beth, one would say, patient and loving. There’s only here for you now.

  Oh how sweet, how strange their voices coming from the far side of my blindness as they washed my body and hair. And they tended my bruises and cuts that weren’t healing.

  Blindness took me over. I melted down. I collapsed. That basement became a single pee-soaked mattress upon which I floated. Their voices, their caresses, all of their cleaning became liquid, flowing around me like water.

  I loved Kat’s touch. Ben kept her around because of her timing, her skill with the babies. That’s what I was then. A new-born.

  She taught me to count my breaths, one to five, back to one again. For hours, days, weeks, bound in the same position, blind, gagged. I watched the lights flash.

  Don’t worry the lights, Beth, Kat whispered. Watch them come and go. They flash and spike, don’t they?

  I nodded, afraid of her voice, without body as it was, sweeping over me. Her hands were swirls of pleasure.

  Count your breathing, she reminded. Let the lights spike, let them strike.

  I counted. I waited. I made a horrible mess of that mattress.

  Then the ghosts came.

  She’s got the ghosts, I heard them saying.

  When you get the ghosts, you’re near ready.

  * * *

  I wake in the morning to a downpour. Peeking out the side window, I see that Jill is under their kitchen tarp, cooking already. Sarah slumps on the picnic table.

  After I hit the john, I sprint over to see Jill.

  “You still leaving this morning?” I say.

  “If the rain lets up.”

  I sit quiet, listening to the rain. I smell resin, rain, and wood-smoke. “I think I’m going on somewhere else.”

  She nods. “Back to Ohio?”

  “I’m thinking that way.”

  She gets a funny smile and says, “I’ve got something for you.” She opens her car door. “Sarah, the rain’s let up. Why don’t you go to the bathroom now?”

  Sarah shrugs and leaves.

  Jill hands me another copy of Time. I stare at it.

  “So I guess maybe I need a nose job or something. The hair change isn’t good enough?”

  Jill sits beside me. “Most people wouldn’t work it out. I notice little things. And besides, I don’t believe a thing that I read.” She waits as I fidget. “You’ve got a husband. A family. You could go back.”

  If she’d said that to me a few days ago, I would have wanted to choke her, but now I know there’s something deeper, like she knows the cold and the ache down there, but it doesn’t work her bad like it does me.

  “It’s worse than that, Jill. My past wants to eat me alive. They beat the shit out of my husband that night. You don’t want to know what they did to me. God, do you think I would have jumped off that bridge if I didn’t have to? And there’s something else, not just the guy that’s after me. It chases my dreams. All I know to do is run away.”

  “What about the police?”

  I snort, thinking of Detective Bates. “No offense, Jill, but have you read the paper? ‘Unknown male assailant.’ They know who he is. He was there on the bridge that night, but they can’t touch him. He’s got them all by the nuts. Literally.”

  She’s quiet now. I get up and tell her to say good-bye to Rob and the kids for me. She gives me their address and phone number.

  “Take care of yourself,” she says to me.

  I nod and go back to my car, packing up my stuff, which consists of the lawn chair and a half-full bottle of whiskey. I stop at the john on my way out and change into Becker. As I get into my car, I see Jill watching me. She waves.

  I drive off.

  The night before the two-room burned down, I remember Mama sitting out on the porch in a rickety metal rocker that we found with somebody’s garbage. Mama’s ankles were so wide, she didn’t look like she had any. Instead, they swelled out like she had matching goiters just above her feet.

  The ring of fat around her neck sagged, and she sweated just below that, a triangle of wet at the collar of her cotton dress, stretched to the limit around her swollen body.

  But that night, she sang. Mama knew old songs about blue-bottle flies and train whistles, about some girl who died, and about fiddles and dancing girls.

  I think of it like pictures going into the sky and falling back different, full of moonlight, full of water shifting, rising off the river like ghosts and filling the air, the sky, coming into your face and lungs and making you the same inside and outside.

  When I think of dying, I think of Mama. I want her there beside me, singing me out to where the river goes blue into the sea. I want to be so fine that nothing keeps its hold on me, just passes right through the same inside and out as I’m gliding down the delta with Mama and her fat neck and swollen ankles, perfect as you please. Her dress up in the sky like a willow branch sweet as rain and blowing.

  * * *

  On my way out, I stop at the store and buy some real food and another paper. I don’t buy more whiskey.

  I try to convince myself that I don’t know where I’m going, that I’m heading west, putting more miles between me and the city. I end up in Ohio anyway, and take a campsite in Wayne National Forest. I’m getting to be a real camping freak.

  That evening as I’m reading the paper, I see a picture of an old friend. It’s the venerable Senator from New York. I stare at his picture, remembering that evening again.

  Violet and I had done our ritual early since Ben was taking me to the reception. She kissed me hard before I left because Slim and his friend were in line for a play in a few hours. Our plan was in gear.

  I remember riding in the limo with Ben and then waiting in the reception line. I remember the Senator’s eyes, the look on his face, a mixture of nervousness and lust. Ben has me in a choker and with bracelets on both wrists. And I remember drinking just a few sips of champagne as Ben chatted with other notable clients I didn’t recognize.

  As I sit in my camping spot, I try to keep following my memory, but after that, I draw a blank. I move my brain back and forth as though I’m hoping the trout will rise. Nothing doing.

  I unscrew the cap of what remains of my whiskey, but the smell of it turns my gut. So I drag the Time out of the car and look at the pictures again.

  What about that river? What about the mud and the stacks of the dead? What about Gedders and Mandy? And I get that thing again, like the ghosts, but not. Of movement, of shape. Then one of Ben’s favorite play rooms comes into my head. I begin to feel a little shaky, so I try not to think about it.

  I fall asleep in my little lawn chair, but wake in the middle of the night when the rain takes up again. Then I climb into the car and hold my Uzi close, the only comfort I can get while the rain taps, wanting in.

  * * *

  Ben socks me. “What’s your name?”

  My hands are cuffed back and I’m down in the basement, blind. Kat is behind, holding me in place by my arms.

  She leans close to my ear. “You remember. Say it.”

  “No,” I say, and Ben socks me again.

  “Tell me your name.”

  Kat won’t let me drop to my knees. I’m crying now, ben
ding over at the waist. Ben grabs my hair and jerks my head up. I prepare for a punch to the face.

  “Beth,” I say, having had enough.

  Kat strokes my head, kisses my back. “Good, Beth. That’s so good.”

  She and Ben help me stumble to the mattress. Kat feeds me, even though I don’t want it, even though I think I’m going to be sick.

  “Do you know where you’re from, Beth?” Her voice stretches into darkness.

  “Nowhere.”

  She kisses me. “That’s right. That’s good. A river of nowhere.”

  Of course I went to Dayton. I don’t see how I could have stayed away. It’s not until I’m sitting in the middle of town that I notice I don’t know Dave’s last name. The Time article said he was Betty’s third husband. He wasn’t cursed with a name like Lumley. I find a ripped-up phone book in a booth and flip through it, looking up anesthesiologists.

  There it is, Dr. David Thompson. It gives his clinic phone. I call and ask the address, pressing for directions, which the receptionist is pleased to give.

  Helpful people are such a joy.

  I zip over and wait in the parking lot. Sure enough, out walks Snuff, looking mighty impressive in suit coat and tie. It’s like something in my head explodes. I can’t get anything to fit, and I start to wonder if I made my entire childhood up in my head. Except then I see his feet. White shoes. My feet itch to stomp them.

  Betty must have a fetish.

  I smell the worms on Dave’s hands as he walks by, and I wonder about his two front teeth. I follow him to his house big enough for twenty, maybe twenty-five, and park on a side street like I learned from Detective Bates.

  I’m beginning to get a whiff of the dangers. But this time the dangers aren’t out in the air buzzing over my head. This time the dangers are buzzing in me.

  I begin to make plans.

  As I’m sitting in my car, pondering the details of my play, I notice a car edging along the street. I ignore it at first, but duck down after taking a closer look. It’s a Chevy Caprice.

  I take a peek. The car stops at Dave and Betty’s. Out steps you-now-who with that briefcase. I feel my lip curl. I want to make Bates eat it. I want to change the name to griefcase.

  I watch as they let him in the house.

  It’s getting late, so I find a bright, white shopping mecca. I buy a flashlight. I buy a big gym bag. I pick up a ski mask on clearance, and as a last thought, I buy a roll of duct tape. I don’t know why.

  At one in the morning, I drive back and park about a block away. Dressed as Becker in dark clothes, I sling the gym bag over my shoulder. The semiautomatic is hooked in place, so I mosey over.

  For some reason that I can’t explain, I have a feeling that I can get in through the basement window at the back of the house. I huddle down in the bushes and creep around, finding it just where I assumed it would be, and I push on it, feeling how the latch is weak. After rattling it back and forth, it plops open, looking like a black mouth wanting to swallow me.

  I slide in feet first, dragging my gym bag behind me. Steppingonto a workbench that’s underneath the window, I whip out the nifty mini-flashlight that I picked up while shopping. The beam is sharp and bright.

  I wiggle it around the room. It’s awful neat down here, which reminds me of Jeremy. I imagine him and Betty and Dave getting together and talking about their big houses. I think of them discussing weedkillers and the dandelion problem. It gives me the shivers thinking about them trading pictures and dredging up touching stories.

  Sliding off the workbench, I walk out into the rest of the basement, starting up the stairs. Now that I’ve had practice breaking into my own house the night I died, I’m beginning to feel comfortable with this sort of thing.

  I don’t know what I’m looking for, just something to let me know about these people. I search the kitchen and the living room. I’m certain I’ve never set foot in this place.

  And I really hate the couch.

  I check the other rooms downstairs, then mount the stairs like I live there, slipping on the ski mask, just in case. I slide across the upstairs hall and search the first bedroom.

  Everything in here is frilly and deadly pink. A dated poster of Donny Osmond as big as life scares the shit out of me. God. Donny Osmond? Obviously, this is the wrong lifetime.

  I return to the hall, wandering into a bathroom. I swoop the flashlight over the toilet, bathtub, sink. I open the medicine cabinet. Inside, I find a pharmacopoeia.

  I peruse the bottles and pocket a large bottle half full of Valium. I’m sad to see that the codeine is almost empty. I pocket it anyway.

  Out in the hall again, I hit the next bedroom. This room is different. A kite hangs from the ceiling. Some stuffed animals are huddled together on the pillow of the bed like I’ve frightened them. I’m getting a bad feeling now. I think I smell Ben’s basement. I see a picture on the dresser and pick it up.

  It’s of a girl who could be a young me swinging a bat. I take it and lie down on the bed, trying to get a feel for the room. My eyes start drooping as I gaze up at the kite, then over at some shelves.

  I freeze. Then I shine my light there.

  For God’s sakes, there’s the doll’s head big as you please with one eye popped out. A toupee drapes over its horrifyingly pink head. Next to it is a cup. I jump off the bed and reach up, taking it down. It’s a cup with a dragon on the side curling around. There’s a woman with a parasol and tiny feet.

  God, I feel bad now, like all of me is going to water or something. I sit in a chair nearby and lose my balance, falling backward. Clutching at the desk, I knock off a jar of pens and pencils.

  I lie still on the floor. Voices murmur and a light goes on. I roll over and crouch behind the bed. Dave/Snuff pads down the hall, looking this way and that.

  “Be careful, dear,” Betty says. He stomps downstairs checking the house. Now I hear Betty’s feet whisper along the floor. She pushes the door to this room open farther and flips on the light, seeing the chair that fell back. I watch her looking in the door, and it comes back to me all in a flash, the look on her face years ago when this was my bedroom.

  She had opened this door in almost the same way. At first she looked concerned, then confused, then she went a cold, cruel white. She looked at me direct in the eyes, hate shining not at Dave, for God’s sakes. She hated me.

  She shut the door and left me alone with him, the anesthesiologist, pumping up and down on top of me.

  A baby, I think. A fucking baby. Fucking Dave got me pregnant.

  But this time, in the present, Betty sees me crouching and screams. I leap up and whip out my gun, pointing it at her. She freezes.

  Yep. It ’s the same Betty that used to come with her goddamn redhots. She’s older and thinner, but I bet she has a closetful of white shoes.

  My head is reeling, and for the first time, it all makes sense about Betty visiting us by the river years ago and Mama and her not getting along. This bitch is my goddamn mother.

  Sometimes I can be very dense.

  Dave comes barreling up the stairs and stops dead when he sees me. I want to shoot them both. I want to pour gasoline over them and light a match. I want to be Ben for just one hour.

  We stand there, all three of us frozen. Finally, good old “take charge of everything including your stepdaughter” Dave clears his throat.

  “What do you want?” he says. “We’ll give you money.”

  That’s right, throw money at the situation. That should fix it. Betty and Dave should get together with Ben instead of Jeremy. They could swap stories about screwing me.

  I then remember that I have on the ski mask. How smart of me.

  “Back to your bedroom.” I wave my gun at them.

  They back off, edging toward the bedroom. I pick up my gym bag and follow. Once in the master bedroom, I wave them toward the bed, feeling Ben well up in me.

  “You,” I say to Dave. “Lie facedown on the bed.”

  Betty’s crying now
. I get out the duct tape and throw it at Betty. “Tape his wrists behind his back. Tape his ankles.”

  It takes her awhile as she whimpers. I check her work to make sure it’s tight.

  “Now you,” I say. “Lie down beside him. Same way.”

  She does this, weeping like a train. I tape her the same way. In a moment of malice, I tape Dave’s eyes, thinking of what it will do to his face.