All the Wicked Girls

by Chris Whitaker

  “Go on and get what you need from the house. I’ll take a seat out here.”

  Black wondered if he could get Samson to the station without a soul catching sight of them. Maybe he’d dip the lights, roll the cruiser into the lot out back, and hustle him in under cloud cover. He thought of Pastor Lumen, of Joe Ryan, and the storm that was circling above them.

  He glanced into the house and saw the television on, Pat Robertson preaching and begging like salvation was his alone to peddle.

  “Have I got time to brush my teeth, Black?” he called from inside.

  “Sure, Samson.”

  Black liked him, didn’t have reason not to. He reckoned he’d had it rough, growing up in a house so close to God’s less redemptive side. Drown the children ’cause there ain’t no one truly innocent. Black had seen Pastor Lumen berate the boy in front of a church crowd. Looked at him like he saw nothing but the frailty of mankind in the kid’s pink eyes. Before she passed, Mary doted on him like she really believed her boy was an angel. She’d called in once, something bad had happened with Samson and the pastor but when Black got to the house they wouldn’t say shit.

  When he was done Black led him to the cruiser. Samson put his belt on and glanced up at the cloud again. “I reckon today will be the day when the storm comes.”

  Black nodded, though didn’t know which kinda storm Samson was talking about.

  *

  They rode in silence. Black was expecting the radio to go off any second; he was surprised it hadn’t already. He’d sent Milk over to watch the Ryan house as soon as Raine left. There weren’t no way Joe was gonna sit on information like that. More likely they were planning something.

  Black drove on, rolled down the window, and listened hard as they headed for the square. He saw lights on in Mae’s.

  Then he saw the pickups. Three of them, outside the station, beneath streetlights that burned all the hours now.

  He cursed, slammed on the brakes, then crunched the transmission into reverse. Another truck pulled up close behind.

  He stopped the cruiser, dipped the lights, then reached for the radio. “Four trucks here, Milk.”

  “Shit. I been watching, ain’t nobody left the place, the lights are still out.”

  There was another way outta the Ryan place, along the north field and down onto West Pine. It was rough ground but could be driven slow.

  “Get back here,” Black said.

  There were a couple guys in the station. Black radioed in and told them not to come out just yet but to ready themselves.

  He could make out Joe Ryan in the truck behind.

  Black let the engine idle, waited a three count, then told Samson to stay put as he got out. Samson didn’t say nothing, just looked around all wild-eyed.

  Black kept a hand on his gun as he looked across the square and saw Mae at the window, watching with her big glasses and her mouth set tight, eyes flipping from Joe to the station.

  Joe walked toward him slow and easy. Black glanced over his shoulder and saw John Brunel, one of the junior officers, standing on the front porch outside the station.

  “I just want to talk to him,” Joe said, palms out like he couldn’t make a fist with them.

  Joe was carrying though, Black knew that. So were all his boys. It’d be over quick if that’s the way Joe decided to play it.

  “Well, that ain’t your job, Joe. You know I can’t let you take him.”

  “Does he know where my girl is?”

  “Tell your boys to stand down and I’ll find out.”

  “He’ll talk quick if I’m askin’ the questions.”

  Black eyed the road behind, waiting on Milk.

  “I could take him, you know that, Black.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Tommy wants to.”

  Black glanced back and saw Samson looking on.

  “You gotta let me do my job, Joe.”

  “You don’t want to do it, Black. Everyone sees it. Over a week now. Might be different it was another girl gone missin’, didn’t have my name.”

  “Ain’t the way I work.”

  “You’re lost, Black. Out too deep now.”

  Joe stared at him and Black could see him running options. He’d calmed, Joe, years back they wouldn’t have been having this conversation. Joe had worked for the Kitcheners, a known family in Birmingham. They were into everything and Joe was a rising star before he got picked up. Mitch Wild, Noah’s father, had led it, took him down for a host of charges after some guy that owned a distillery up in Brayton had rolled. Black was the one that cuffed him, the one that made the front pages. Joe pleaded guilty, mouth shut as was custom. Joe was known and Joe was liked.

  “She’s fifteen. And she ain’t like her sister . . . and you got the Briar girls. Ain’t nobody done shit about ’em lately. Not even made the newspapers. They’re ghosts already.”

  Black watched him careful.

  “You lost your taste for this, Black, ain’t no fight in you. Way I heard it you let him ride once before. It was bad, all that happened with Mitch back then. You ain’t sharp no more, just runnin’ the clock. I ain’t blaming you for wanting to hide out. But you need to step aside, don’t want no more blood on your hands.”

  Black swallowed and he felt the sweat on his collar as the truth stung at him. “I got people out there, askin’ questions. I got Ernie Redell, he’s got her photo now so he’ll get up with Mayersville and before long we’ll circle far.”

  Black heard a truck door opening behind him, and then he glanced back and saw Tommy Ryan, and Tommy was looking up at John and running numbers in his head and thinking how easy it’d be to take Samson. Black’s falling hope was that Joe wouldn’t give word.

  “You take Samson and then we got a whole lot of different problems to work through, and that ain’t gonna help us find Summer. You need to give me time to talk to Samson, find out what he knows. Could be nothin’.”

  “A grown man walking my fifteen-year-old daughter home from school ain’t nothin’, Black. I know people reckon he’s slow or somethin’, but that don’t mean shit. Call him an angel but what’s in words and names? Don’t matter who his parents are, divine rights and select few and bullshit.”

  “Hey.”

  Black spun and saw John had drawn on Tommy but now had three guns pointing back at him.

  “Call ’em off, Joe. Now. Please.”

  Joe glanced over at his brother, then up at John, then back to the cruiser with Samson inside.

  “Please, Joe. Give me some time.”

  Black saw Milk’s cruiser turn into the square then come to a quick stop. Milk opened the door, pulled his gun, and knelt behind.

  “You give me your word you’ll go hard on Samson, make him tell you what he needs to and then you come tell me. No more waitin’ on this.”

  Black nodded. “I’ll get into it. I’ll find your daughter.”

  “Your word, Black. You’ll straighten up and search for her.”

  “I give you my word.”

  “All we got is our word, Black. Ain’t nothin’ else but that.”

  *

  Raine hadn’t slept the whole night. She’d told her momma what had happened and they’d sat together in silence, watching out the window for her daddy to come back from the search. He’d made her go over it slow, then he’d called Tommy, but that was all she got ’cause her momma told her to get some sleep. She’d laid on Summer’s bed and buried her face in her sister’s pillow so hard she couldn’t find her breath no more.

  She walked past the square and stopped under a streetlight for a while. It didn’t scare her, that cloud that people kept talking about. She didn’t believe the shit she heard about the Bird summoning it, the sin and the great transgressions, the punishment or the fury. Her momma was praying more. Watching the sky and praying.

  Raine walked up Jackson, found herself in the cemetery on the grounds of the old church that Summer loved so much. She saw gravestones, leaning and scored with ol
d names and old dates. Some were newer, people passed. One shone, even in the dark it shone ’cause it was tended so often. Mandy Deamer, the pregnant girl who took so many lives when she tied that rope and wobbled that stool.

  Raine walked into the church. She liked the smell, candles and books, and she liked the light that flickered warm. She looked up at the high ceiling, at the carved beams and the history.

  She saw Bobby and he was stood still and staring at the big cross like his mind was far.

  “I ain’t even sure what I’m doin’ here,” she said as he turned.

  He looked like he hadn’t slept much neither. He wore it well, that pain in his eyes suited him, made it like he knew what suffering was.

  “Do you want me to leave you?”

  She stared at the cross like she was seeing it for the first time. “I had to get outta the house. You know what happened to Samson? I heard Momma on the telephone, reckons Black’s taken him in.”

  “Black called me early.”

  “It might be him,” she said.

  “I don’t –”

  “You ain’t gotta say, Pastor Bobby, that ain’t why I’m here. I’ll keep lookin’, case I’m wrong.”

  She walked over to the cushioned bench and sat at the far end, reached into her bag and pulled out a book she’d taken from Summer’s bedroom.

  She didn’t know Bobby all that well but she liked him ’cause Summer did.

  “You reckon the cloud is anything to do with God?” she said, her voice carving up the silence.

  He took a step nearer, his hands deep in his pockets. “I don’t. I think there’ll be a storm and it’ll go.”

  “That ain’t what some folk are sayin’. Not just the crazies.”

  “I reckon some people have too much time on their hands.”

  She nodded, holding her book in her lap and flipping the pages.

  “This is Summer’s book.”

  “Which is it?”

  “I picked it up ’cause it’s called The Color Purple.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I ain’t sure purple is my favorite color no more.”

  He smiled.

  “You reckon God reads those letters from Celie?” She swallowed. “I’m being careful not to bend the pages,” she spoke quiet. “ ’Cause she’ll be pissed if I do.” She rubbed her eye with the back of her fist. She weren’t a girl who cried, not in front of people, but that first tear cut her resolve so deep she dropped the book to the floor. The sound was close and harsh and a light dust rose in the air around it.

  She didn’t kick or struggle when she felt his arm on her shoulder, and she didn’t feel the shame of leaning into him.

  She cried for a long time.

  Bobby took his arm from her when she calmed. She wiped tears with the palms of her hands.

  “Fuck,” she said, real quiet.

  “It’s okay, Raine. To come here, to read your book, or break down in tears. All of it. It’s all okay.”

  She wiped her hands on her cutoffs, her tears streaking the blue dark. She looked up toward the ceiling again, wondered how many had knelt and cried before her. Church was a place where tears fell, happy and sad. It was also a place of hope and despair. A first call and a last resort. She wondered how Bobby lived through the extremes. It must’ve been something to do with faith. She struggled with her understanding of faith, what drove it, what caused it to desert you. And she wondered how some could cling to it so hard they’d base a life on it.

  “I need Summer to come back now, it’s been too long. And we got this fuckin’ cloud so Grace is dark now.” She bent to pick up the book and saw Summer’s library card had fallen from the pages. “But it ain’t all that different, ’cause it’s always been dark to me.”

  *

  Purv listened to the heavy thump on the front door. His momma locked the bolt when his father went out drinking. She’d soon slide it in case he splintered the wood, then she’d have to paint another line of Elmer’s down it come winter, when ice stole through the gap and goosed her skin.

  The neighbor’s dog was yapping loud.

  Purv stared at a map of New Orleans up close. There was a lot of water: lakes and the Gulf. Purv liked the idea of living by the water. He still enjoyed walking the line of the Red, watching the river flow and spit as it headed out far across the state. He wondered what the Mississippi would look like, if the water would be any clearer or flow any faster.

  The storm cloud darkened the window. There’d once been drapes but they got ripped down when the Tide missed a kick and lost his father fifty bucks.

  He heard the front door open and he folded the map away quick.

  There was yelling, then he heard the creak of the stairs.

  He stood just in time to see his father at the door, a bottle of Lawson’s in his hand.

  “You do your schoolwork?”

  “Yes, sir,” Purv said, wondering if his father knew it was summer break.

  Purv switched between meeting his father’s eye and staring at the ground, either of the two could piss the old man off depending on which way the wind was blowing.

  Ray stood there a long while.

  “You keepin’ outta trouble?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Purv kept the hunting knife on top of his closet, behind a football his father had bought for him when he was six. There’d been vague promises to teach him how to throw it, but they died when Purv didn’t grow big and strong.

  “Your momma saw you with the Ryan girl the other day, in the square.”

  “Her sister’s gone missin’.”

  “You ain’t spendin’ time with that girl. I don’t care what she looks like. Ryan business ain’t ours.”

  Ray had fallen out with Tommy Ryan a long time back. Purv didn’t know why. Maybe it was over gambling or business.

  Purv stayed silent, sometimes that was the right move and sometimes it weren’t.

  He swallowed down a big lump of fear when his father stepped into the room and slammed the door closed behind him.

  “I’m sorry,” Purv said.

  It was a reach. Weakness got him beat just as much as strength.

  Ray stared at him with soulless eyes then walked at him.

  Purv flinched but Ray pushed past and stared out the window.

  “Fuckin’ dog,” Ray said, and he hammered the window so hard Purv thought it might break. And then Ray barrelled from the room and took the stairs fast.

  Purv stood at the window and heard the back door open. And then he saw his father step into the dark with a kitchen knife in hand. Purv watched him hop the fence but then turned his back when the yapping stopped, and the night fell death silent.

  17

  Summer

  I saw them shinin’ in their broken life. I breathed dawn air when I stepped into their house like it was the place new days were born.

  There’s a willow at the end of Bobby’s yard growin’ tight to the picket fence so its limbs hang over the land behind. It was late in the night and I snuck out, sat beneath it and parted the tendrils.

  They had nice things; I imagined they collected them from places I only read about in books. I saw their photographs on the side table by the front door: them on white beaches pullin’ faces; their wedding day. Some small chapel and hardly any guests ’cause Bobby didn’t have no family and wouldn’t want a show. I stare at that one like it ain’t real; a sepia dream of a life so pretty it could’ve been staged. Maybe that’s what God saw and maybe that’s why he stepped in, in case they forgot who was pullin’ strings. I wondered if complacency was a sin.

  Bobby was watchin’ television in the den while Savannah sat in their library and read. Their lives side by side yet separate.

  Bobby slept in Michael’s bedroom. I saw him by the window, lookin’ out but he couldn’t have seen me ’cause my eyes ain’t bright like Savannah’s.

  I lay down in the grass and let the leaves fall back and I caught snatched glimpses of starlight through t
he cover.

  When I woke it was cold. I heard a noise and got scared so I climbed to my feet. I saw her straight off. Savannah. She was wearin’ runnin’ pants but she didn’t run, just walked slow down Jackson Ranch Road.

  I followed from a long way back, down the pretty streets where folks left porch lights burnin’ all night like they’d welcome callin’ strangers.

  We weren’t supposed to be out after dark, none of the kids, that’s what our parents said.

  When she got to the edge of town, and she crossed the last street and walked the last field I almost called out to her ’cause I reckoned she must’ve been lost. ’Cause with all the shit goin’ on, all that fear and that panic, why else would she walk into Hell’s Gate in the terror of night.

  *

  “You stay together. Your momma will come get you from school for the next couple weeks,” Daddy said.

  We were watchin’ the television. Coralee Simmons had just gone missin’. Briar girl number four. Sheriff Ernie Redell was on the news again. He gave a quick statement where he said enough, but nothin’ we hadn’t heard before.

  They cut to the reporter and his name was Chuck Cash and he wore a necktie and cowboy hat.

  Chuck was standin’ in front of the Green Acres Baptist Church out on Route 84. There was a crowd behind and they had flashlights and Chuck said they was getting ready to head out, but he didn’t say where they was headed.

  They flashed up a photograph of Coralee and she looked real young with braces on her teeth.

  “Shit,” Daddy said, shakin’ his head.

  “You goin’?” Momma said.

  Daddy nodded. “I’ll call Tommy and we’ll head up there, see if we can help out. They need numbers, lot of nothin’ over by Gin Creek.”

  The newspapers ran the Briar girls on the front page the next day. And then that sighting leaked, the boys playin’ soldier in Hell’s Gate who saw the monster with the girl draped over his shoulder. In a breath the whole area was hot with talk of the Bird. The kids at school drew cartoon birds and made jokes to cover the fact that they was sleepin’ with one eye open from then on. We didn’t go nowhere near Hell’s Gate, not even to the best sun spots along the Red ’cause that was close to the trees and we were worried about some monster coming out and draggin’ us away. Raine stayed home each night, lay in my bed with me, and we looked out the window and saw the tops of the oaks and we wondered what was goin’ on in those woods.