Citrus County

by John Brandon

  Shelby let the curtain drop. She explored the house, looking for something to break. She was going to crumble if she didn’t attack; those were her choices. She stomped over the mattress, which was lying on the living room floor, then stopped short in front of the TV. It would make a resounding crunch, the TV against the wall, but she’d regret it. It was good to have in the nighttime. She made a pass through the bedrooms—nothing large enough, delicate enough, nothing calling out to be smashed. She had an urge to trash Kaley’s room, to toss the toys everywhere and fling the clothes out of the dresser and flip the little bed over. She couldn’t do that.

  Shelby rushed back to the window. She brushed the hair from her eyes and went out the front door. Nobody noticed her until she was to the road, then in a blink everyone was staring. She felt like she was on stage, the audience starved. She stepped underneath Sandra Denton’s team’s camera, which was propped on a tripod, and hoisted it onto her shoulder. It had plenty of weight to it. The tripod didn’t fully detach, but hung ungainly, pressing on Shelby’s back. The faces surrounding her beamed. Shelby flexed her knees, flung the camera upward with all she had, and shuffled to the side. There was the crunch. The camera, though it remained in one piece, was smashed on the front end. It made garbled noises.

  Shelby went back inside and the phone was ringing. Shelby listened to the ringing and then she listened to the machine pick up and then to the crisp, disgruntled voice of the pixie-cut FBI agent. The woman told Shelby she was sorry if she hadn’t been professional when she’d interviewed Shelby. She said she usually did not behave like that. Her partner maybe, but not her. They saw cases like Kaley’s all the time, and it was hell on the nerves. The agent told Shelby she was a civil servant. She had good days and bad. She coped, like everyone. It sounded to Shelby like the agent was calling from a cafeteria, lots of clinking in the background. She stopped talking just as the machine was about to cut her off.

  Mr. Hibma sat through detention, looking over his basketball binders for the sixth or seventh time. That was the thing about detention—when you gave it to a student, you gave it to yourself too. The offender was someone other than Toby this time. Shelby, her second day back, had told her latest trivia partner that he was one of the planet’s useless people, that his brain ought to be donated for research. She had done this, it seemed, because the boy was being so polite to her. His parents had likely told him to be extra nice to Shelby Register, and this turned out to be bad advice. Though Mr. Hibma agreed with the assertion that this particular boy’s brain wasn’t doing him a lot of good, and though the boy hadn’t seemed too offended, Mr. Hibma couldn’t let Shelby get away with calling someone stupid in front of the class. And he thought she might appreciate being treated like a regular student, might appreciate not being tiptoed around, might like to receive a detention just like anybody else.

  Mr. Hibma knew he ought to talk to Shelby about her sister. He was likely the teacher she thought the most of, an adult whom, if she didn’t respect, she at least didn’t hold in contempt. He knew it was his moral duty to lend her his ear, his shoulder to cry on, but Mr. Hibma could not do these sorts of things. He was deficient. It was one of the many reasons he was not a real teacher. He saw the others do it, saw them take kids under their wings, saw them prod kids into spilling their guts. Some teachers did it for the drama and some because they genuinely cared, but the point was they did it. To Mr. Hibma it was unseemly, insinuating yourself into another person’s personal life. That’s what guidance counselors and therapists were for. Even the few kids Mr. Hibma enjoyed a rapport with he thought of as work acquaintances. Shelby was one of his favorites, and if he wasn’t going to help her now then he never would. He could feel that he wouldn’t. It went against his every fiber.

  He turned toward the chalkboard and began erasing the vocabulary words. In the interest of burning time, Mr. Hibma gave ten vocab words a week. He had each class’s top kiss-ass write the words and the definitions on the board while the rest of the kids copied them. This took up fifteen minutes on Mondays. On Wednesdays, he allowed fifteen minutes of study time. On Fridays, fifteen minutes for the quiz. Blight. Wizened. Ransack.

  Shelby had drawn a circle on the back of her hand and was darkening it in with a marker.

  “That sort of thing is beneath you,” Mr. Hibma told her.

  Shelby stopped filling in the circle but did not look at him.

  “I’ve got books you can read, some good Jewish authors. Bellow, maybe.”

  Shelby seemed intimidated by the idea. She glanced, not alertly, at a Dufy print—a bunch of horses at a racetrack.

  Mr. Hibma felt like having a strong drink. If he stayed at this job much longer, he’d become one of those teachers who kept a flask in his bottom drawer. He went to the bookshelf and gathered the Bellow novels and put them on Shelby’s desk.

  “We never know what’s going to screw us up,” he said. “We think it has to be glaring tragedies, but that’s not always the case.” Mr. Hibma wasn’t sure where he was going with this. He was, to his own surprise, taking a stab at being profound and helpful.

  “Sometimes the tragedies strengthen us in the end. They make us more ourselves, you know—concentrate us.”

  “Guess I’m pretty concentrated,” Shelby said. “I’m like that frozen orange juice.”

  “Most of your classmates will live their whole lives without anything really good or really bad happening to them. They’ll see some funny movies and wait in some lines and maybe get their phones cut off or develop diabetes.”

  Shelby nodded. Mr. Hibma might have been frightening her.

  “I went to one of the fanciest high schools in the country my junior year. That’s the root of most of my problems. That and receiving an inheritance.”

  “Was it a whole school of gifted kids?” Shelby said.

  “Gifted.” Mr. Hibma shuddered. “Gifted is for chimps. They’ll probably ask you to be in that program soon and I hope you’ll turn them down. It’s a mark of mediocrity, gifted. You’ll have a hard enough time without those weirdos.”

  “Why’d you only go to that school for a year?” Shelby asked.

  “Why I got kicked out isn’t the important part,” Mr. Hibma said. “For seven months I enjoyed an environment of reflection, courtesy, fertilization of any intellectual whim. We had fireplaces to read near. They played Handel during the passing period.”

  Shelby handled the Bellow novels, reading the spines. The breeze blew something against the window.

  “Sometimes good things mess a person up,” Mr. Hibma said. He wondered if anything that happened was really good. He still hadn’t decided, after all these years, what he thought of the fact that he’d been a stolen baby. It had to mean something. It had to have shaped Mr. Hibma. “I’m not making sense,” he told Shelby. “I’m lousy at this.”

  “You’re doing fine,” she said. “It’s not you. I don’t want to be comforted. I’m not receptive to wisdom or perspective.”

  “But I’m supposed to be able to break down your walls.”

  “A fool’s errand,” Shelby said. “You break down my walls, you’re not going to find anything you want to find.”

  Mr. Hibma was stumped. He wanted to let Shelby know that she was special, that she couldn’t let herself be lost to the world because the world needed her. His voice had gone dumb. He’d given Shelby detention in part to test himself, to see if he could get her to confide in him, and he’d failed. Failed to try, really. He stood at the front of the room, lining the erasers up tight and orderly in the tray. He was angry at the world, that it gave the worthwhile people such a hard time. It was difficult for him to even look at Shelby. He dismissed her with a nod, letting himself off the hook.

  He sat for a time, part and parcel of the imperfect quiet of the world, and then, when he could, he began drawing up a class rules sheet. He wrote numbers, 1 to 10, and next to each scribbled see surrounding classrooms. He taped the sheet to the wall.

  Earlier that day, jus
t after school had let out, Mrs. Conner had confronted him in the hall and informed him that it was her duty, as wing chairperson, to enforce the guidelines the liberal arts department had agreed upon. It was mandatory that each teacher post class rules.

  “But every teacher has the same ones,” Mr. Hibma had said. “And those rules are identical to the school rules.”

  “Exactly,” said Mrs. Conner. “A unified front.”

  “I hate unified fronts.”

  Mr. Hibma had never been to Mrs. Conner’s home, but he could see it. He saw a screened porch atop a wooden deck. He saw a shed, trimmed hedges. He knew now that he would not kill the husband. He would learn the couple’s routine and go visit Mrs. Conner when her husband was off playing golf or shooting woodland creatures or whatever activity he used as an excuse to get the hell away from his wife. Mr. Hibma had already scratched knives or guns, and had considered and thought better of poison. Poisoners always got caught. Mr. Hibma watched the TV shows. Whenever someone bought poison it turned out they’d been videotaped or had left the receipt in their floorboard or the clerk or another customer remembered them. Then the cops went and looked at your computer or library records and saw that you’d researched some topic that was vaguely related to poison. Then everyone said they should’ve known because you were always a little strange; you’d seemed harmless, though. As careful as you were, there was always something when you used poison. No, what Mr. Hibma saw himself doing was parking in the lot of the nearest strip mall and, in the middle of the night, sneaking onto the Conner property and hiding himself away behind the shed or under the deck, waiting for the husband to leave in the morning, then knocking on the front door and allowing a confused Mrs. Conner to present herself, barging in and throwing her down and smothering her under all his weight with one of her own couch pillows. There would be no blood, no loud noises, no purchases Mr. Hibma would have to make. Most of all, Mrs. Conner would get no last words.

  “I’m not asking you,” Mrs. Conner said. She raked her rust-colored hair. “And I know about the vocab quizzes. Don’t try and legitimize your class by stealing from the English curriculum.”

  “Which kiss-ass is spying for you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Let me tell you something,” Mr. Hibma said. “Your shoes are way too small. Your toes flop out onto the floor. Can’t you feel it?”

  Mrs. Conner had looked down her nose at Mr. Hibma, using the lower part of her bifocals, keeping her composure.

  The tryout. Twenty-one girls. Mr. Hibma started them out with stretching, putting them in a circle and having each choose one body part. He backed off and watched the unsteady things roll their necks, bend at the waist, perform jumping jacks. He was more an impostor in the gym than in the classroom. He didn’t even know where the locker rooms or the weight room or the coaches’ offices were. He’d never, as far as he knew, blown a whistle. He’d never yelled at anyone for that person’s own good.

  Mr. Hibma closed his eyes and controlled his breathing. He would fake his way through this. If he possessed a talent for anything, it was faking his way through things. This was his gym. He was a natural component of this environment. He had boundless energy. Weeks would pass; they had no choice but to pass. The games would come and go and no one would notice that Mr. Hibma wasn’t really a coach. As far as these stretching girls were concerned, he was the supreme sultan of basketball.

  He held their athletic futures in his hands. Mr. Hibma strode over and stared at the girls and they quit giggling and whispering. They eyed one another.

  Mr. Hibma guided himself through a lecture about boxing out. He set up a drill in which he launched errant shots and made the girls slam into each other trying to claim the rebounds. He tried his whistle and rapidly grew fond of it. Mr. Hibma could’ve picked the team already. It was obvious which girls were afraid of the ball and which weren’t. He would keep fifteen; he could keep the three cute girls and never have to play them in a real game. They’d be third-string, morale-boosters, something for the fans to look at.

  It occurred to Mr. Hibma to sit all the girls down and speak about the importance of their appearances. In middle school, he reminded them, ugly girls were intimidated by pretty girls. Hell, it was that way with adult women. A team could gain an advantage by keeping tan and having their nails done.

  “Do you know what active-length nails are?” he asked. “Spend your allowances on a good haircut, down in Pinellas County. Stop at Macy’s and learn a little about makeup.”

  Eventually Mr. Hibma had to let the girls scrimmage. The short twins with the big teeth could shoot three-pointers. A girl with muscular legs and no eyebrows beat everyone down court each time but was too jittery to complete a layup. One girl, extremely skinny with a bowl cut, could handle the ball. She dribbled between her legs and behind her back and whipped passes here and there. Scoring was at a premium, but the scrimmage had the look of a basketball game.

  Afterward, the girls huddled again. The twins looked at each other. “Coach?” one said.

  “Don’t call me coach. Call me Mr. Hibma.”

  “Mr. Himba?”

  “Not Him-ba. Hibma.”

  “Do we really have to get our hair and nails done?”

  “If you want to start.”

  There was a murmur and then it died down.

  “Now,” said Mr. Hibma. “Important business.”

  He explained that it was all of the girls’ personal responsibilities to get the two huge girls who threw the shot and the discus to try out for the team. Rosa, the Mexican one, and Sherrie, the other one, had to try out. This was vital.

  “Befriend them,” ordered Mr. Hibma. “Pressure them. Bribe them. Just get them the hell out here.”

  Walking onto the school grounds, right up the main drag near the sign that said CITRUS MIDDLE SCHOOL in concrete letters, Toby was called over by two women in a shiny blue car. They were the FBI agents. Their car looked like it had been washed about five minutes ago. The hood was dazzling in the morning sun. They didn’t bother to get out. The one talking to Toby was in the driver’s seat. She had very short hair.

  She said, “Don’t worry, sport, we won’t make you late. We won’t make you tardy.”

  Toby felt hot. He didn’t know if it was because of the agents or because the sun had found him. Toby did not feel worried, in general, about the cops or these agents, but maybe he was just telling himself that. He stood there and partook of quiet deep breaths while the woman asked him questions, mostly about Shelby. Toby answered them honestly. He told them Shelby had come to see him during PE class a couple times before she officially returned to school. He told her they had geography class together. The other agent, the one in the passenger seat, didn’t even look over. She squinted out her window.

  “Want a bagel?” the agent in the driver’s seat said. “Apparently my partner’s lost her appetite.”

  Toby shook his head. He didn’t fidget. This FBI agent had no accusation in her eyes. She wasn’t trying to make Toby nervous. She was underestimating him, like everyone did. She was questioning him only because she didn’t have any good leads, only because he was a friend of Shelby’s and she was casting a wide net.

  She adjusted her mirror and put on some lip balm. “Is it fair to say you’re in tight with all the troublemakers around here?”

  “No,” said Toby.

  “Don’t you all run together?”

  “I don’t run with anyone.”

  “A lone wolf, huh?” said the agent. “Here’s the thing. A lot of these cases crack because people can’t keep secrets. There’s certain secrets that get heavy and people can’t take it anymore and they tell someone. Then that person tells someone.”

  The agent stopped talking. She didn’t start again until Toby nodded.

  “I want you to be my ears. If any of your buddies say anything I’d be interested in, you let me know.”

  Toby told her he would and she gave him a staged smile.

  “What do
you kids do for fun around here?” she asked.

  “Fun?” Toby said.

  “You’ve heard of it, right?”

  Toby took a broad look around the parking lot, at all the kids getting dropped off by their parents, bags being jerked out of trunks. “I don’t know what they do,” Toby said. “I walk around. I get the lay of the land.”

  Toby’s eyes had adjusted to the gleaming of the car’s paint job. He could see into the back seat. There weren’t any guns or high-tech equipment. There was a case of bottled water.

  “Is she your girlfriend?” The agent leaned out the window. Now there was something in her eyes. “Is Shelby your girlfriend?”

  “No,” said Toby.

  “How about this: Are you her boyfriend?”

  Toby took a step back.

  “I can see it, the whole goody-goody with the bad boy thing. It’s a time-honored tradition.”

  “Shelby’s not a goody-goody,” Toby said.

  “It’s okay to be a goody-goody. I’m a goody-goody and I do all right.”

  The agent grinned like she’d made a joke, but no one was going to laugh. Especially not her partner. She handed Toby a business card.

  “Okay, sport,” she said. “I’m going to roll up the window now.”

  The afternoon hours were the flattest. They were like Citrus County itself, fit only for ambush. Shelby wanted to get higher or lower. There were no basements, no second stories. Her house had no attic. Shelby didn’t want to keep walking on the same ground. She was on a dumb plank of land where nothing would roll away. Everything stayed right where it was and festered. Shelby had been reduced to silly fantasies—visions of her and her dad moving off and working a farm somewhere, visions of going to stay with her Aunt Dale in Iceland, of having Aunt Dale show her how to be a rigid, invulnerable woman. Shelby wanted something more dramatic, more honest. She wanted a crashing ocean instead of the wash of the Gulf. She wanted weather that could kill you. She wanted respect from someone who actually knew how to judge.