All the Wicked Girls

by Chris Whitaker

  Noah brought a hand up to his cheek. “You should see the other guy.”

  “Ain’t a scratch on him,” Purv said.

  Noah sighed.

  Purv looked out across the dark square, streetlights burning despite the hour. There’d soon be a run at Ginny’s.

  “Black ain’t doin’ shit about Summer,” she said.

  “We can go out again later . . . if you want,” Noah said.

  They watched as an ’85 Camaro roared up and Raine stood. “No offense, boys, but I got a better ride tonight.”

  Noah followed her a couple steps and felt the engine rumble right through him.

  The window rolled down. “You been babysitting?” the jock said. He was older, Purv recognized him. Danny Tremane.

  “She’s fifteen, pervert,” Noah fired back.

  The jock made to get out but Raine said something to him.

  She got in and stared out the window at Noah, half smiling as the Camaro tore through the square.

  *

  Noah and Purv caught the Transit bus all the way to Mayland. It was an hour late but Noah couldn’t risk taking the Buick out during light hours.

  He sat on the torn seat and watched the trees slip by in the gray dark of the storm cloud.

  Purv sat opposite. He caught a break getting a job at the Whiskey Barrel during the summer. He was too young to tend but Hank Frailey let him mop up the beer and piss and puke for a couple bucks an hour.

  Sounded rough but it beat being at home.

  Purv needed looking out for, always had done. When they were ten years old Noah hadn’t seen him for a whole day so he stopped by his place and found him beaten bloody. He’d fetched Trix and she’d driven them to Mayland in her orange Maverick, Purv laid out on the backseat and Noah holding his hand tight and telling him he was brave and fierce. Black had hauled Purv’s father in but Purv and his momma wouldn’t say nothing so they couldn’t hold him. Milk and Rusty knocked a shade of shit outta him then dumped him in the center of the square. But that didn’t fix nothing.

  Noah pressed his face to the glass as the bus rumbled outta Grace. The sky cleared as they crossed the border into Windale.

  Noah stood and walked to the back, looked up and saw a stark line that contoured the town. Dark then light like God had forgot to flip the switch in Grace. The storm cloud rose high toward the heavens; a sheer wall of gunmetal that looked about ready to unleash hell.

  “Jesus,” Purv said, from beside him. “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that before.”

  *

  “You’re late,” Missy said, as Noah sat in his chair. Missy was old and black and liked to tease Noah about how pale he was. She’d place her arm beside his and call him a ghost, but she only did that to keep him from staring at the blue machine. She knew he still had nightmares about it. He flinched a little as she threaded the needles into the large scarlike vein that rose from his bicep.

  “The Transit was late,” Noah said.

  “You were in for yesterday, Noah. And no one answers your phone.”

  Noah shrugged. “I was working on real police business.”

  “That’s right,” Purv said.

  “Shut up, Purv,” Missy fired back, then turned to Noah. “Three days is too long, Noah. You dumb or somethin’? You could die –”

  He tried to wave her off.

  “You want me to call Social Services? If you can’t remember, and your grandmother can’t remember –”

  “Sorry,” he said, glancing up and meeting her eye.

  Purv fell quiet beside.

  Missy reached down and laid a hand on his cheek. “I’m just lookin’ out for you. You remember what happened to Landon –”

  “Noah’s tough. And Landon was old,” Purv said.

  “And would’ve lived to be older,” Missy said.

  Noah nodded and Missy smiled at him.

  “Television’s still fucked,” Purv said, nodding toward the screen.

  “You got the video player,” Missy said, as she made notes on the board.

  “Yeah, but we’re at the mercy of that bastard Goodwill lady and she keeps bringing us shit. I reckon she’s fuckin’ someone in Chemo. They got Alien 3 last week.”

  Missy sighed.

  “Ain’t never at the start neither. She never heard of be kind, please rewind?”

  Purv had been a fixture at the dialysis ward ever since he turned eight and Noah’s momma said he could ride the Transit with them. He tried to give Noah his kidney at least once a year, the last time being a couple months back, when they’d seen Dr. Leggette walking his pinscher by the Red. Purv had been lit at the time, he’d taken his shirt off and demanded Leggette remove it there and then.

  Noah had laughed too hard to try and stop him.

  They kept the lights low. Paintings lined the walls, mostly local scenes; a cotton field, a blur of color that Noah guessed was Main Street.

  Purv flipped his collar up then turned it down again. Purv didn’t ever sit still.

  Noah glanced at the blue machine. “Think of it like a washer,” his momma had said to him back when he was small. “It won’t be forever, and I’ll always be here if you get scared.” She’d been wrong on both counts.

  “All right?” Purv said.

  Noah nodded. “Yeah, I’m all right.”

  Purv asked him that a lot. Noah didn’t ever give another answer, even when it was all getting on him. Purv knew though. Sometimes he reached over and put a hand on Noah’s shoulder, other times he told him a fact so random it distracted for a little while. Noah loved him for it.

  “Everyone in the world has a unique tongue print,” Purv said.

  Noah smiled then turned to Missy. “We’re ready for the movie now, thanks.”

  She walked over to the television carrying the tape.

  “Dare I ask what we got today?” Purv said.

  She checked the case. “Babes in Toyland.”

  “Finally, she’s sent somethin’ blue,” Purv said, rubbing his hands together. “What kinda toys? Double-ended –”

  “It’s Disney.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  *

  Peach Palmer lived out in Standing Oak. The drive took a dead hour, from Highway 125 through Tessner and into the pines. It was the kinda haunting drive that kept Black swigging from his flask the whole way. He kept a hand on the wheel and used the other to rub the tired from his eyes. He passed blurred houses, metal and ugly, low-wide churches, and Briar girl ghosts. He slowed the car and cruised mile after mile till he sobered, then he took another drink and hit the gas. His jaw was tight and he caught a glimpse of his eyes in the mirror so he reached up and angled it away.

  He killed the engine at the top of her street and let the cruiser roll the gentle slope to her place. He sat outside, waited for the last of the orange sky to die, and saw Peach watching him from the window, pulling the drape back just so and staring.

  She met him at the screen door, a hand on her hip, then stepped aside as he passed.

  Her place: three beds, a bath and small den, the kitchen opening up right into it. She kept it well enough but money was tight and the men that called regular couldn’t be trusted around nothing of value.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  “Always.”

  “I can fix you somethin’ to eat.”

  “I ain’t here to eat.” It came out bad and he caught it. “Sorry.”

  “How do you want me?” she said with a glare that made him smile.

  “I ain’t here for that, either.”

  He moved a stack of newspapers, sat on the old couch and sunk low.

  She passed him a can of Lone Star and he took it and drank half down.

  “You seen him again? That tall guy that gave you a hard time?” he said.

  “No.”

  “You call me if he shows.”

  She nodded.

  “Serious,” he said.

  “I called the cops last time, they didn’t show
for an hour. Those cops . . . they know what I do.”

  “So you call me, or call Trix and she’ll put you straight through to me.”

  She lit a cigarette. He looked at her hands, at the lines that gave her age a decade older than her face; acrylic nails, one broke at the bed. She was still pretty.

  “We don’t talk about what I do,” she said. “You get all funny and make me feel bad about myself. You want me to cry, Black?”

  “I hate it when you cry.”

  She nodded, her eyes sad.

  “A girl’s gone missin’.”

  She drew a long breath.

  “She ran. Left a note.”

  She breathed out slow.

  “Time is passing . . . the family ain’t strangers to me.”

  “But you’re worried.”

  He nodded.

  “He’s still out there.”

  “He is.”

  He held up a hand and it shook and he took another drink.

  “It’s hot here,” he said.

  She picked up a magazine and fanned him with it.

  “And it’s so dark in Grace. So fuckin’ dark.”

  “I heard,” she said. “Big storm headed your way.”

  “This family. They got another daughter, troublemaker, she stops by the station, looks at me like I got answers to questions she ain’t even thought of yet. I locked up her daddy . . . in another life. She burns with it, you know?”

  “It’s your job to bring her sister back.”

  She moved over and sat next to him, close.

  “It’s comin’ back.”

  “What is?” she said gently.

  “Him. Della. The trouble; devils and all that was. I can feel it, creeping slow enough that most people ain’t even seen it yet.”

  They had a small service for Della, ’cause Peach couldn’t cope no more. Just her and him in the backyard beneath an apple tree that Peach said didn’t ever bear fruit. A service to keep her alive, Peach said.

  “The Bird.”

  He nodded.

  “Maybe it weren’t him that time.”

  “It was.”

  “You didn’t have a clear shot,” she said, repeating what he’d told her.

  “There’s no one lookin’ for Della no more,” she said.

  “There is.”

  “You?”

  He didn’t say nothing.

  Peach handed him another beer, then unbuttoned his fly. He moved to stop her but she pushed his hand away.

  He opened the can as she went down. Closed his eyes and blinked back tears.

  “Peach, I didn’t –”

  She hushed him, then did what she did to make him forget awhile.

  When she was done she wiped her mouth, grabbed his beer and took a long sip, then rested her head on his chest, her cheek on his badge.

  “You ever feel like you’re not here?” he said.

  “I spend most of my life wishing I was someplace else, if that’s what you mean.”

  There was a photo on the sill, parting the drapes. Peach when she was seventeen, wearing the kinda firebrand smile that told him she’d slipped late, that there’d once been another path.

  “I mean sometimes I really feel like I ain’t in the room. Maybe I float outside, but I can’t see myself, my body. I ain’t part of the world. The world that other people live in . . . I shoot the shit with Milk and Rusty, I keep at the bad men.” He rubbed his eyes.

  She brought her face up, rubbed her cheek against his, her lips on his ear. “When I ask why, what do you say?”

  “That y’s got a curl in its tail.”

  She smiled. “Guilt.”

  “For the things I’ve done and the things I should’ve done. Is that easy enough?”

  She kissed him hard.

  “Will you take me somewhere one day?”

  “Where?” he said.

  He was fading now. It was late.

  “Away from this house. I hate it here.”

  He took her hand, squeezed it tight then rested back.

  She walked outta the room and came back with an envelope and handed it to him.

  “What is it?”

  “I found photos of Della.”

  He had more than he’d ever need.

  “She has her hair different . . . it ain’t . . . there’s some photos and she looks different. Maybe you need them. Maybe you could show them round.”

  This was how it was. She rode him to keep him looking for her daughter. He rode her ’cause sometimes he forgot there was feeling beyond nothing.

  “You can crash here.”

  He shook his head like he could drive.

  “You can sleep with me. Just sleep, in the bed, Black.”

  He nodded, let her help him to his feet and felt her arm tight around him as she guided him to her bedroom. It was different, not where she took the men. There was something soft about it. He saw an ashtray, a pipe she’d used to chase night into day. She said she was getting clean. She had a long record.

  She undressed him slow. She ran a hand over the long scar on his stomach then pushed him back onto the bed.

  He feigned sleep till she was breathing heavy beside him. He reached into the drawer and took out what he needed and did what he did, and when he was ready he parted his toes and stuck the needle between, and he swam to the place where hands held him high above.

  He listened to the lopsided sounds outside her house. He saw a Bible on the floor, the wind blowing in and fluttering the pages. He wondered if he was dreaming and what kinda dream it was, but knew in his heart it wouldn’t end good.

  He stared at Peach, at the curve of her spine and the flare of her hips, and he thought about the cruelty and randomness of life.

  “I love you,” she said, and he wondered how she could.

  He closed his eyes like he hadn’t heard it.

  9

  Summer

  Briar girl number two was Bonnie Hinds. She lived in a trailer park off Highway 225, which runs straight as an arrow and crosses three rivers till it meets Heathville and the strip malls. Bonnie and her daddy were members of Christ the Saviour Lutheran Church, which ain’t nearly as grand as it sounds. Bonnie’s daddy went where the work was, though the newspapers didn’t say exactly what kinda work, maybe ’cause it weren’t nothin’ legal. He’d be gone weeks at a time so Bonnie mostly took care of herself. She didn’t show for church one Sunday morning so the pastor, Bryson Dailey, stopped by their trailer. He liked to check on Bonnie ’cause he knew her situation and had conducted her momma’s funeral a year earlier. He knocked at the door, came back in the evenin’ and knocked it again, then called the cops ’cause he was worried. She didn’t lead much of a life outside of school and the church but the cops still chalked her up as a runaway. It took them a day to locate her daddy. He told them he was comin’ straight back but didn’t arrive in Haskell till three days after that. He said he didn’t know if Bonnie had a boyfriend or who her friends were or nothin’ at all they could use. They didn’t link her to Della Palmer.

  *

  “You ever feel sad?” I said.

  “Everyone feels sad, Summer,” Bobby said.

  “For no reason? Just so sad you could shut the world out and cry and cry till all that’s left of you is a pile of clothes on the floor.”

  “Sad enough to cry yourself outta this life.”

  I watched them, Bobby and Savannah. I was at their place four nights a week while Savannah taught me. I’d say I had to go to the bathroom but I’d just walk through their house and look at their things. There was a kid’s bedroom. It had a race-car bed and toys and a small closet in it.

  “Savannah said you’re the most talented student she’s ever worked with. And that she gets the feelin’ you’re not even tryin’.”

  “She tell you about the school? The fancy one in Maidenville?”

  “Yes,” Bobby said.

  “We couldn’t never afford a school like that.”

  “Y
ou’ll get a scholarship. Savannah wants you to sit for the entrance exam and write the paper.”

  “I ain’t leaving my sister.”

  “Just write it, see what happens. It’s good to have options, Summer.”

  There was silence awhile.

  “I thought I’d write about the Briar girls,” I said. “I been lookin’ into them.”

  I’d put on my best dress and ride the Transit to Maidenville, then walk the bright streets and pass the shiny stores with the shiny ladies inside. Sometimes they’d smile and I’d feel so new I reckoned maybe I could see the kingdom for what it could be. I’d sit in the grand library among the towering masters and I’d trawl the archives.

  “I think Savannah was hopin’ you’d write about literature, or maybe art seeing as you have an interest.”

  I looked down. “How about Thackeray then? Maybe I could be Becky; fix hard enough on the endgame so the rest don’t even matter no more.”

  He smiled. “Keepin’ an open mind isn’t sellin’ out, Summer.”

  “So then I’ll write about the Briar girls, ’cause that’s what’s real to me and to my sister. That fear and that kinda wonder.”

  We sat on a bench in the cemetery, the sun was high and strong but a willow shaded us. I had a book beside me. Bobby wore the kinda light cologne you could only smell if you were real close to him. I’d borrowed some of Raine’s sickly shit that stung my neck and I was wearin’ a dress and didn’t tug it down when it rode.

  I thought I saw Bobby glance at my thigh.

  “Your level of faith is somethin’ special, Bobby. I was thinkin’ about it last night. I couldn’t sleep; it’s gettin’ too hot. I keep my window open even though the crickets are so loud they make their way into my dreams.”

  I was talking up a blue streak, which happened a lot when I was around Bobby. It’s funny, I didn’t really know what I was doin’ at first, always stoppin’ by the church hopin’ he’d give me the light. I sat there reading and fixin’ my hair and stealin’ looks when his head was turned.

  “Faith is confidence in what we hope for,” he said quiet.

  “And assurance about what we do not see.”

  He stared at me like he hadn’t never seen me, and I wondered about Francesca and Paolo and that eternal whirlwind. I closed my eyes to the sun but felt the second circle so hot and so close.