by John Brandon
Mr. Hibma placed his lawn chair near the back wall and stayed quiet, the only noise the air conditioner, which was humping to keep the place at 78 degrees. He wondered what secrets were hidden in this place. What darkness had West Citrus U-Stor witnessed before Mr. Hibma happened along? What damning evidence was tucked away in these shadowy alcoves? None, maybe. Maybe it was all disassembled futons and china sets.
Mr. Hibma knew what the place smelled like. It smelled like his childhood attic—not a unique odor, just cardboard and mothballs. He wished he could remember more about his childhood, the period before adolescence, before his harrowing navigation of puberty. Those years when Mr. Hibma was a simple little fellow, wanting only to play and be fed and kept warm, looking up at the world without suspicion, were blurry. He recalled them in unsatisfying flashes.
He looked at the ceiling. He felt like he could hear his organs working, the muffled swishing of his heart. He felt the weight of his body pressing down on the chair. Mr. Hibma wondered what would have happened to him had he not been rescued from that nurse as an infant. She must’ve wanted a child badly, to give up her profession and commit a felony. Maybe she didn’t want just any child; maybe she’d fallen head-over-heels for Mr. Hibma, she who’d seen thousands of newborns. It was plausible that the love the nurse had for Mr. Hibma was the strongest anyone would ever have for him. On the other hand, maybe Mr. Hibma would’ve died had his parents not reclaimed him. On the other other hand, maybe he was supposed to have died. Maybe he was only supposed to have been in the world for several days, not several decades.
Mr. Hibma put his pen down. He opened his can of iced tea and drank from it. He’d figured out what to do about his lost grade book. He would institute an unfathomable system of extra credit. The system would be applied retroactively, muddying the waters of quiz averages and presentation scores to the point where even the most fastidious kiss-ass could not question her grade. Mr. Hibma’s new grade book would be a tornado of asterisks, checks, plus signs, plus signs within circles, smiley faces, and all in different colors, all blown about the columns at random. Under this system, the rich would get richer and the poor would also get some help.
Mr. Hibma heard a woman in clackety shoes enter the building. She walked past his unit and stopped a ways down the hall. There was the sound of a sliding door, what sounded like a huge deck of playing cards getting shuffled, and then the door sliding shut. The click of a lock. When the woman walked back by, her steps made a cushiony sound. She was wearing sneakers now. When the woman had exited and the door had closed behind her, Mr. Hibma took up his pad and pen. He had waited a few days so he wouldn’t seem anxious. So he wouldn’t say more than he wanted to say.
D,
My victim is tiny-minded and big-footed. There are several million like her but she is the one who matters to me. It is meant to be my plight to be tortured by her and women like her my entire life, and to never do anything about it except grow bitter, but I will shape the story of my life the way I want it shaped. I am no one’s sad sack character.
Mr. H
Toby walked onto the school grounds and went into the common area and sat on some carpeted steps until the warning bell sounded, then he rose and trudged toward the library to return his pole-vaulting manual and pay his fine. He sat through math and biology, skipped Mr. Hibma’s class, then, during lunch, went outside near the portables. He’d avoided Shelby all day. He didn’t want to be at school at all, but he didn’t want to be at home either. The pole vault season was ending that evening and if he hadn’t shown up at school then he wouldn’t be allowed to participate. For some reason, he cared about finishing the season. He wanted to do something the way it was meant to be done. One thing. Toby had been the first alternate for this final county meet and the kid ahead of him had come down with bronchitis. Toby was going to face the Asian kid.
That afternoon, at the meet, Toby felt an odd lack of pressure. Shelby, sitting in the stands with her knees together and her lips pursed, did not make him nervous. Coach Scolle did not make him uneasy with his disdainful looks. Toby knew that it was all busywork. You were supposed to be cheerful about the busywork and worry about the busywork, but Toby could do neither at the moment. All he could do was succumb to it. This track meet was busywork. Dreaming was busywork. Coin flips were busywork. The Asian kid called tails. The coin broke the peak of its arch and began zipping toward the ground and Toby shot his hand out and caught it.
Another Sunday. Toby rose and put on shorts and shoes. He went to the kitchen for a handful of cereal, slugged it down with a sip of sports drink. Uncle Neal was in the living room, a room that went mostly unused, sitting on a folding chair. The last time Uncle Neal had been sitting in that spot was the day he’d hit Toby. Uncle Neal was crying or something. A book was open in his hands. When he saw Toby he pulled himself together with one great sob. His face was red, his eyebrows disarranged.
“What about the shed?” Toby asked him. “No hemlock today?”
“Done already,” said Uncle Neal. He guided the book closed, looking up at Toby.
The book had small smudgy paintings on its cover.
“I found this,” Uncle Neal said, trying to boast. “I rescued it from the trash.”
“What trash?”
“At that big gas station by the county buildings.”
The book was a collection of poetry. Uncle Neal combed his fingers over the front of it, like he was petting a cat. He snorted. “I’m getting bored with listening to the cops,” he told Toby. “I haven’t read a book since I was your age, and I want to read one more before it’s too late. It was on the very top of the garbage, on top of a newspaper.”
“Is it any good?”
“‘Forgive, Satan, virtue’s pedants.’” Uncle Neal raised an eyebrow. His throat was full. “‘All such as have broken our habits, or had none, the keepers of promises, prizewinners, meek as leaves in the wind’s circus.’”
Toby squinted. He was thinking about the poem or he was pretending to. He couldn’t tell.
“Who needs a mother?” Uncle Neal said. “Mothers aren’t everything. I had one, and look how I turned out.”
Uncle Neal’s smugness was still intact. His eyes were glassy, but he was smug as ever. Toby wanted to snatch his book from him and smack him with it.
“All mothers do is make sure you’re presentable,” Uncle Neal said. “You look presentable to me. I guess presentable for what is always the question.”
“Do me a favor,” Toby said. “Don’t ever talk about my mother.” Toby had caught Uncle Neal’s bloodshot eyes and he didn’t let go. He looked right through his uncle. “Do me a favor and don’t mention mothers to me for any reason, ever again.” He said this levelly, just the way he wanted to.
The old smirk came to life on Uncle Neal’s lips. “Okay,” he told Toby. “But now you’re going to owe me a favor.”
Shelby was getting to know the woods. She had a good idea where even the minor trails led. She knew where the turtle holes were, knew how to avoid the darkly shaded territories where snakes were likely to loiter. There were direct routes and routes that someone generous or ignorant might call scenic, half-a-dozen ways to reach the library. The substation looked dormant. There was an unfathomable current running through it, but it looked dead. The high school boys that hung out in the parking lot, crouching on their skateboards and sharing cigarettes, now recognized Shelby. As she passed, one of them doffed his cap and the rest of them laughed.
Inside, she signed up to use a computer. There was a line. She stepped over to a podium which upheld a monumental atlas. Bulgaria. The capital city was Sofia. Shelby had never heard of Sofia. It was the capital city of a major nation and she had never even heard of it. Mr. Hibma’s geography class was fairly useless when it came to geography. There were thousands of countries, and Shelby had only been in one. In over thirteen years, she’d managed to experience one nation.
Shelby shut the atlas and found a chair off by herself, near the
old card catalog. She breathed the library air, which smelled like all library air. She wanted it to be a cozy smell, like blankets from an old farmhouse or something, but really it smelled like book glue and old people. Shelby was worried about Toby. She wasn’t intrigued by his darkness anymore, didn’t burn to plumb the depths of it. She cared for Toby. She knew Uncle Neal was doing something to Toby, not just the marks on his head and neck that time, but more damaging things. Something had worn the Toby out of Toby. She wanted to know exactly what went on out at that remote property. She didn’t want to go gallivanting off to a distant country without being sure Toby would be okay. She couldn’t leave him to the wolves, and that’s what Uncle Neal was. Toby was Shelby’s affair and she had to get him in order before she left.
It was her turn on a computer. She scrubbed her eyes with her palms then logged on and went to her e-mail. Inbox—one new message.
Niece of mine,
Not much new over here. Interesting things occur less frequently than they used to—generally, in the world. I quit coffee. That’s something, I guess. And I did this thing where you jump in freezing cold water for charity. It’s like you have to do one or the other in the morning—drink coffee or jump in ice water. Well, sorry to cut this short but I’m late for a flight and I can’t find anything.
Aunt Dale
Still no allusion, as of yet, to Shelby visiting. Coffee or ice water. Shelby’s aunt was a very busy individual with an ever-changing schedule. She was probably wary of inviting Shelby and then having to cancel, or having to work the whole time Shelby was visiting. Late for a flight. Shelby wished she were late for a flight. Aunt Dale was casual about these things, that was all. She wasn’t a person who had to plot everything out way in advance. That’s why she hadn’t married that guy she’d been seeing forever; she didn’t like to be hemmed in.
But Shelby didn’t like that Aunt Dale seemed to struggle to find something to write. None of her previous e-mails had felt that way. Maybe Shelby ought to e-mail less often; maybe she was burning Aunt Dale out. It just wasn’t Shelby’s way to play hard to get. Her way was to hint, and if that didn’t work, to come right out and take what she wanted.
She jostled the mouse and clicked on Reply.
I’ve been wishing I could ride a train through the countryside, not one of our musty Amtraks, but a train where they serve soft cheese and pressed coffee and there’s a lounge car full of fascinating people with red lips who all speak different languages and you sleep in a pitch dark bunk and in the morning there are snowy mountains out the window that make you feel small and safe.
One morning when Mr. Hibma had arrived at school early in order to map out his next few basketball practices, Mrs. Conner appeared in the doorway of his classroom. He had a notepad in his hands full of Xs and Os, new drills that would help his guards defend against backdoor cuts. He put the notepad down and looked up at Mrs. Conner and she invited him to come over and look at her books, to see if there were any he wanted. The lot of them were destined for a shelter her church supported, but she wanted to give Mr. Hibma a chance to pick them over first. She was making a gesture. Mr. Hibma had made his gestures and now she was making one.
He followed her into her classroom and it smelled like soap and coffee. It was a big corner room, windows on two sides. She pulled back the doors of a towering cabinet and a thousand spines spied out at Mr. Hibma. As he scanned the shelves, she told him she was honored that he’d chosen to entrust his possessions to her and her husband, that West Citrus U-Stor was the best facility in their region of Florida. She thanked Mr. Hibma for the calendar he’d bought her, one of those where you peel a sheet off for each day. The theme was little-known grammar rules. Mrs. Conner had it on her desk at home.
Most of the books in the cabinet weren’t really books. They were books about books, manuals that instructed one how to teach certain books. There were collections of writing exercises, guides for building a curriculum. Mr. Hibma’s eye was caught by a thick poetry anthology. He worked it out a couple inches and then pulled it off the shelf. Another anthology, essays about Florida cuisine. There was a Complete Works of Shakespeare. It was a fancy edition—probably a hundred bucks in a bookstore.
“I’ve never been able to understand Shakespeare,” Mrs. Conner said. She whispered, but not like she was hiding anything. “I can follow the plots because it’s right there in the teacher’s edition, but I can’t follow it line to line.”
Mr. Hibma set the Shakespeare on top of the stack he had going near his feet. Mrs. Conner’s face was deeply reflective.
“And those are the first ones you go for,” she said. “The Shakespeare and the poetry. I kind of gloss over that unit every year. I show the movies.”
Mr. Hibma looked at Mrs. Conner and he could imagine her dead without much effort. He didn’t hate her. He didn’t feel anything as strong as hate. That was good; he didn’t want to murder someone because he hated them. He didn’t want to commit a crime of passion. She would be quiet after Mr. Hibma killed her, and she would be a bluish color. Mr. Hibma had even less regard for her, seeing how easily he’d gained her confidence. She had no loyalty, not even to her own grudges. Mr. Hibma was a pet of hers, another of her successes.
“I’m not like you,” Mrs. Conner said. She tapped Mr. Hibma on the forearm. “I’m not smart like you are.” She tipped her face to his and then left the room, trusting Mr. Hibma, giving him time to look her books over in private.
A biography of the author of The Yearling. A biography of Dickens. Mr. Hibma couldn’t concentrate on the titles. He didn’t want any more of these books. He felt he had to take some, though. He felt like a child, alone in Mrs. Conner’s classroom. He felt like a child who was being given too much slack.
Toby was not wandering the wilderness. He was taking a stroll like any reasonable person. He had made up his mind. At the end of the week, on Friday night, the same night of the week he’d taken her, he was going to bind Kaley’s wrists and ankles, tape her mouth, stuff her in his rucksack, and return her to her home. Toby would be a failure, but he would be free. He’d be doing the right thing. Toby remembered when Shelby’s father had spoken to the cameras. He remembered forgetting his thermos, the smell of the Register house. He hadn’t been back inside it. He was afraid of that house. The last thing he wanted to do was bully Kaley again, be forced to physically move her. And this time he’d do it with open eyes, he’d do it without the strange trance he’d fallen into when he’d taken her. This had been the only answer all along, he saw. There was no more room for cowardice. He had to undo what he’d done. He had to cover the same tracks in the opposite direction, lugging Kaley, lighter on his back though older. Whatever he’d done to Kaley would be over. He could end this and she could begin recovering. And then Toby could be with Shelby. He’d been Shelby’s greatest enemy and now he’d be her greatest ally, and she’d never know about any of it. They could start over. They could be themselves. They could find out what their selves were.
Toby wouldn’t have to go in the house; he could leave Kaley on the porch or even the edge of the yard. He would leave her at the edge of the Register yard, and in case she didn’t work her way free of the bag, he would leave an alarm clock resting nearby on the grass. He would get one of those extra-loud alarm clocks meant for old people—steal it from the drugstore, he supposed. He would never have to wear the mask again. He would burn the mask, burn it to get rid of it but also burn it because he hated it. He’d worn it to hide his identity and now he wore it out of shame. Toby kept strolling. Things were coming clear. He felt a little like his old self, resourceful and lean, nothing to worry about but getting caught. He felt simple again; he had an operation to execute and he would either be caught red-handed and take what was coming to him or he would get away with it. But Toby knew no one would catch him. He knew the woods. He knew the night.
Earlier that day, after school, he had carried his mother’s mirror out to the delivery bay. He’d knocked it against a steel corne
r of one of the dumpsters hard enough to run cracks through the glass, reached his arm into the dumpster, held the mirror as far down as he could, and released it. The mirror couldn’t help him and he didn’t want help. His mother couldn’t help him. Mr. Hibma couldn’t help him. Nothing could. Toby was a shade of gray, like the rest. And maybe now he could be happy like the rest. He could be an idiot punk with just enough poison in his heart to make a fool of himself. He could be another punk with a girlfriend who was too good for him. Toby wasn’t evil and he wasn’t meant to get Bs and pole vault. His real self was the petty vandal who broke bird eggs and made prank phone calls. His real self wanted to flirt with the world like everyone else, flirt with trouble and flirt with Shelby and flirt with whatever else came along. He wasn’t meant for damage, only damage control. Someone else should’ve found the bunker.
Toby halted. It was the spider web with the big beetle in it. The beetle was dried up and dead, its armor still shiny. It wasn’t wrapped. The spider was nowhere to be found, the web in disrepair. The spider had given up and abandoned its web. A breeze that Toby couldn’t feel was swaying the loose filaments about. Toby reached with a stick and destroyed what was left, the beetle carcass dropping to the floor of the woods and getting lost.
Shelby was lying out in the sun. She was on her back patio where she’d spread a few towels and brought out a throw pillow for her head, the telephone, an apple. Very soon, tomorrow maybe, she was going to start eating correctly—healthy foods in decent quantities. Very soon she was going to start reading again, real reading. Not today, but soon. She was going to go on an overseas trip to a strange, cold country. She was going to get a tan first. She would be exotic with her tropical glow. She’d be cupping hot beverages and eating eel and meeting musicians and buying boots that were at once rugged and soft. She’d mingle with faceted Icelandic teenagers, rather than with skateboarders and Baptists. When she returned, she’d gaze upon the burnt yards of Citrus County with forbearance, with neutrality. She’d tell Toby every single thing about her trip, every solitary detail.
