Jenna Hinkey speaks.
“I’d like to introduce myself,” she says, and after a pause, “my family.”
There is less cockiness in the voice now. But an edge of determination prevails.
“My name is J—Jenna Hinkey. This is my sister, Rebecca Hinkey. I call her Beck.”
Rebecca Hinkey smiles; it takes effort. She is plainly uncomfortable in front of the camera.
What could Benny determine about the house? Much. Even from the limited view offered by the solipsistic eye of Jenna’s camera, Benny recognized mill-hill architecture.
“That’s my mom beside her. Our mom. Her name is Hazel.”
Hazel Hinkey demures. A woman so defined by self-doubt, masked as modesty, that it has shaped her physical presence.
“And that,” Jenna starts, but isn’t allowed to finish.
“Why’d you bring that thing in my house?” the man asks. “To my table?”
“It’s an assignment, Daddy,” Rebecca says. “Jenna told us all about the assignment.”
Jenna Hinkey chews on her bottom lip, then speaks.
“It’s a family history, Daddy,” she says. “I’m supposed to document my family.”
Benny, having spent much of his life in and out of Mill Hill houses, could tell you the lay of the three tiny bedrooms of the Hinkey home. Could probably tell you which wall the single beds were pushed against. He knew, without doubt, which corner of the kitchen the washing machine occupied. Benny intuited, with quick accuracy, not only the layout of the small house, its weedy yard, but the architecture of the family relationships as well.
When her father doesn’t respond, she continues.
“You know, for film class … In college, you know … where you insisted I go, then decided you weren’t gonna help with tuition. I—”
“You know damn well I didn’t have any of that foolishness in mind when I told you I’d pay for your education!”
“Fooli—I … I finally find something I actually like to do, something I’d really like to learn about, and you decide it’s foolishness!”
“And what have they taught you so far, Esther? Arrogance? Disrespect? I’ll tell you this much, you can waste your time, but you’re, by God, not wasting my money!”
“Esther, honey—” her mother starts.
“No!” Jenna shouts, reaches into her back pocket, pulls out her driver’s license. Reaches her thin arm across the table. “Look, Mama. What does this say? It says ‘Jenna’! That’s what it says. Jenna.”
“I’m … I’m sorry. Jenna, I mean. Jenna, honey … you … you were Esther when I nursed you. You were Esther at all the church services and all the birthday parties, and every Christmas. You’ve been Esther to me and your daddy, to all of us for more than twenty years. We can’t just change overnight. This isn’t going to be easy for any of us.”
“It’ll damn well be easy for me,” the man says, his fist to the table one solid time. “If and when I speak, I’ll speak to Esther.”
“That,” Jenna turns to the camera, “is my father. The Deacon Hinkey.”
May 5, 1998 • • • Stop
6:25 P.M.
End of tape. End of family history.
Chapter 11
Deacon Hinkey. Of course! That’s why the business card seemed so familiar. Benny had known the Hinkey name for most of his life. The drowned girl must be Jenna Hinkey, though he couldn’t be sure until he watched the final tape. Benny dreamed about it all night. Dreamed, too, of Jeeter’s big plaster-cast fish, with the drowned girl on its back. Closer and closer it came, swimming through the night sky. But, every time, just as her face was about to come into clear focus, the big fish turned, its rigid tail nearly sweeping the earth.
From high above, on the tower, weeks ago, Benny could discern little about the girl’s true features or stature. He recalled something odd about her gait as she walked out of the distance down the long dirt road; and, something unusual about one of her legs after she stripped. Weeks later, time had conspired with distance to alter his perspective even more radically. Foreshortened? Elongated? Warped, for sure.
Two realizations struck Benny Poteat that night.
First, that he was watching Rebecca and Jenna Hinkey as they were three years ago. Before what? Before Rebecca’s job at Claxton Looms, maybe. Before everything that was filmed in the remaining videotapes. Before, long before, Jenna Hinkey had decided to walk into Toe River.
Second, Benny was sure that he would have to go see Rebecca Hinkey again. That he would have to do so the coming day. That the once-insurmountable issue of his ridiculous lies could be, must be, overcome. How? Through the strength of his knowledge. Benny’s secret. If, in fact, the drowned girl and Jenna Hinkey were one and the same, Benny held, in a tenuously figurative grasp, a powerful tidbit of truth. Its potential for destruction didn’t go unrecognized.
• • • • •
All Benny had scheduled for Monday morning was a re-lamping job on a two-hundred-foot cable-TV tower standing in the fringe of pine trees at the back of the Triple-X Drive-in. The trees served as a, mostly theoretical, visual block for the folks driving on the bypass who might not want to see a thirteen-foot vagina, and as a deterrent along with a shoddy two-strand barbed-wire fence, again mostly theoretical, to the residents of the trailer park sharing the property line on the north side who might actually want to see a thirteen-foot vagina but weren’t willing to pay for the privilege. Benny remembered the tower from when he was in high school, and already doing tower work on weekends. For a small fee, he’d take his friends up on the tower, after dark, after the concessions-vendor-cum-projectionist had flipped the switch and that wicked wedge of light sliced open the night sky, swallowing up moths, fireflies, and spastic bats, before colliding with the painted plywood screen and filling it with somebody’s idea of pleasure. Benny clipped the carabiners in place, snugged the harnesses, and they watched from above. How much he charged depended on several things: how long they wanted to stay up, the quality of the film, and whether or not they intended to jack off. It goes without saying that most of his clients were boys. But not all.
In fact, what brought Benny’s fairly successful business venture to a sudden halt was the time he convinced Gwen Sloop to go up the tower with him. No charge, of course. Benny had nurtured a crush on Gwen all through junior high. Gwen was a “good” girl; not prone to lapses in moral judgment, nor readily swayed by the general stupidity of boys. But for reasons still unclear (Benny relegated it to the category of miracle) she agreed, one Friday night, to climb that two-hundred-foot tower with Benny for a private screening of Insatiable. Benny had to promise beforehand that he wouldn’t “try anything.” But he hoped the bottle of Wild Irish Rose he’d stolen from the 7-Eleven would open things up for negotiation. The ease with which Gwen agreed to take a few sips of the fortified wine urged Benny on. So eager was he to get to the negotiation phase that he didn’t pace the sips of wine. The bottle was empty before the star of the film was good and naked. Benny and Gwen were drunk. The next morning the police, two hundred feet below, shouting and banging the tower with nightsticks, woke them up. They’d dangled there, cinched in place, all night. Benny, as well as he remembered, never even got a kiss.
Despite the lack of any tangible success with Gwen that night long ago, Benny smiled every time he pulled up to the tower. Smiled, this day years later, all the way to the top of the tower, the fresh bulb, its three hundred watts mere promise, tucked away in a pouch at his side. Clipped to the other side of the harness were his binoculars, luckily so because as soon as Benny had climbed above the tops of the trees he saw a commotion at the entrance to the drive-in.
While the north side of these nocturnally carnal grounds bordered the trailer park—whose inhabitants, their lost souls, were most likely too far gone for salvation anyway—on the south side,
as providence would have it, one being the very necessary reagent for the other, the properties of the Triple-X Drive-in and Egg Rock Pentecostal Church abutted. The sagging strands of Honeycutt’s barbed-wire fence was shored up by an eight-foot tall privacy fence.
Benny pulled the binoculars from their pouch, but even before he put the rubber-cushioned lenses to his eyes, he knew it was Deacon Hinkey, and the congregants of Egg Rock Pentecostal, protesting the presence of sin and iniquity in their town. Their frequent protests used to make the local papers, sometimes a three-minute spot on the six o’clock news. Now, though, except for the occasional wave of piety sweeping the county churning up righteous indignation, the deacon and his flock are all but ignored. Given the location of the drive-in, off the bypass, on a much less traveled road, much of their time was idle. But when the occasional car passed, the whole motley crowd of ten or so whipped themselves into a momentary righteous frenzy.
Benny watched for a few minutes, watched Deacon Hinkey mostly, looking for signs of grief, or at least worry. None found. Odd, Benny thought, and disconcerting, this recent proliferation of the Hinkey name in his life. It was like learning a new word, then hearing it everywhere. Or like buying a car then it seeming as if every other driver on the road has the same model. For the briefest moment, Benny considered climbing down the tower, going over to the pious man, and telling him the whole story of the drowned girl and what he witnessed out by the rivers. Considered, even, giving him the tapes. Reality, of course, proved different. Benny did no such thing. Instead, he slipped the binoculars back into their pouch, and unscrewed the lightbulb at the very top of the tower.
From that far up, Benny could make out some of the geological history of Buffalo Shoals. The remnants of a volcano, millions of years past, littered the town and surrounding county with granite boulders. Some, massive, the size of barns or Cadillacs. Others, smaller, more forgiving, cropped up in yards and roadsides. Once, on Benny’s first and only helicopter ride, at a Fourth of July picnic hosted by Bard’s Communications, from high above, he saw a vague outline of the volcano’s circular rim and its inward slopes; you could see a ragged pattern of stones and boulders, spat from the hot belly of the past. Benny had learned the details in school, but had played all his life on the rock shaped like a whale in Nub’s backyard. Too, he’d known about Egg Rock his whole life, picnicked nearby as a kid. Less than a quarter of a mile into the woods from where the drive-in and the church stood side by side, at the crest of a series of hills, were some of the area’s largest granite boulders. Some standing, some lying. Others stacked with frightening imprecision, one serving as fulcrum for another. Some were all but buried, generations of trees and plant life having grown and died in and among them. Each rock formation striking in its poise, or lack of By far the most dramatic balancing act was Egg Rock. True to its name, the ovoid piece of granite stood nearly three stories high, stood on its smaller end, stood balanced atop a flat stone plateau, free and clear of any visible support.
Benny could see Egg Rock easily from where he was.
Benny could see the members of Egg Rock Pentecostal Church with their cardboard signs and posters. The church had been built decades ago, and the Egg Rock congregation—with Deacon Hinkey at the helm—quickly earned themselves a well-deserved reputation as politically conservative bulldogs in Buffalo Shoals. Over the years, Benny himself had seen them protesting movies, abortion clinics, and, once, the school when one of the teachers dared suggest an idea that countered their own beliefs. Benny had seen it all before. Never cared, though. Not until he had a personal connection to the good deacon. Most folks in town knew things about the Egg Rock Pentecostal Church and its beliefs. Knew for instance, that the congregation as a whole seemed to believe that, come Judgment Day, Egg Rock, the granite stone, would fall. And somehow, in the wake of its fall, the lives of many sinners would be lost. Benny didn’t spend much time considering the questionable logistics; Judgment Day as an idea, as a thing to be feared, hung like an out-of-focus backdrop in the recesses of his day-to-day existence. Like the loss of his parents. Nagging things. Things to be avoided. It hung in the place he hoped to finally deposit all the memories of the drowned girl. Benny just hoped nothing happened, in the way of divine judgment, until he found out who the drowned girl really was and why she walked into the Toe.
Benny changed the bulb and climbed down the tower, taking care not to get too dirty. On the way to Claxton Looms, he stopped at a gas station to wash his hands. As he pulled out of the parking lot, Benny noticed, across the street, a wrecking crew gathered at an old apartment building. A two-story rectangle of dark-red brick, the building had obviously been worn out from use. Already three of the men had taken the panes and sashes from several of the windows on the upper floor, and were pushing and tugging with a long pry-bar on another when Benny drove past. He heard the hollow ring of a piece of brick falling into the metal Dumpster.
Benny didn’t know what to expect from Rebecca Hinkey. The chances of her just not remembering him were nil. But he didn’t know if she would react out of anger, or what. He had at the ready his gambit, the chemicals and apparatus necessary to cure the yellow tangs of hole-in-the-head disease, all carried in a five-gallon aquarium that would serve as the hospital tank. Wisely, Benny pushed the doorbell before walking in. Rebecca didn’t come to the door. No one came to answer the bell. Instead, Benny got a buzzer in reply. He opened the door and went inside.
“Hi Ro—” she began, stopping as soon as Benny rounded the corner. The moment Rebecca Hinkey saw him, the mistake of not checking the door registered on her face. Fear. Fear no doubt hinged on Benny’s blatant lies on the application earlier, his willingness to reappear, and what dangers might lay behind such behavior.
“I am calling the police,” she said, trying to sound confident. “Right now!”
Benny watched her hand reach for and take the phone. Wished he could rewind the scene.
“Please,” he said. “Please, wait.”
And she did. Less convinced by his plea than by the strange assortment of things he held out to her.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, but didn’t give him a chance to answer. “No! I don’t care why you’re here. You need to leave.”
“Can I just explain…” Benny said, nodding his head toward the huge aquarium, hoping the act would be a sufficient answer. Rebecca Hinkey seemed to pause; the initial surge of anger, of fear, receded a little. Benny sat the supplies down on the coffee table, by the stack of Cosmopolitan magazines.
“Who the hell are you?” Rebecca asked.
“Benny,” he said. “My name’s Benny Poteat.”
“Yeah, right,” she said.
“No, it is,” Benny said, holding up both hands, palms out, as if displaying a stigmata or some other verification of genuineness. “Everything else was bullshit, but that’s really my name. Benny. Benny Poteat.”
Rebecca Hinkey looked at him from behind her desk. Benny looked at her, searching her face for similarities with the drowned girl.
“I could show you my driver’s license,” he said.
“Okay.”
He didn’t expect her to actually want to see it, but he couldn’t refuse. Rebecca scrutinized the license, looking up from it several times to compare the facts of the man before her to the proclamations made on the laminated card. Then Rebecca eyed the things Benny put on the table, but said nothing about them. She asked the more pressing question.
“Why did you lie to me?”
Benny sat down on the same couch he sat on and lied the first time. Took a breath. But before he jumped into deceit again with both feet, somebody came through the front door. Rebecca looked up, then at Benny, and back at the door. She clearly expected someone. And when the tall, lean man in workout attire appeared—the Spandex-shorts-and-sleeveless-T-shirt version—the look that crossed Rebecca’s face wasn’t the fearful one sh
e’d given Benny. No. Not fear. Benny knew this look. Knew not only that it rose out of the murky cesspool of desire, but that the look, and everything bearing it up for all to see, was whetted by the fact that her desire was, and would always be, unrequited.
Midget tits.
Benny couldn’t stop the thought, even though it embarrassed him. Rebecca sat up, tall as she ever could be in the big chair, and stuck her chest out. Benny imagined her feet dangling.
“Hey, Roger,” she said. “Going to the gym?”
“Hi, Becky,” the man answered, looking at Benny. “Listen,” he added, turning to face the aquarium, and with his middle finger scratching his groin. “We need some towels in the locker room.”
“Oh,” Rebecca said, jotting the information down with a painful degree of enthusiasm. “I’ll see if housekeeping has some clean. I’ll get on it ASAP.”
“Thanks, babe,” Roger said, finally looking at her. He winked, but either Rebecca or Benny could’ve been the target. “You gonna come spot me later?”
Rebecca laughed. A lot.
“I’m thinking about the stationary bike,” she said. “Maybe I’ll do half an hou—”
“See you,” Roger said, leaving.
Benny closed his eyes, hoping it would black out the image of Rebecca Hinkey and her stubby legs pumping away madly at the exercise bike, sweating, drooling all the while as that arrogant bastard did rep after obscene rep of squats, or leg curls, or flies…
“That’s Roger,” she said, her voice verily oozing.
“So I heard,” Benny said.
Rebecca called housekeeping; chided whoever answered the phone for their inattention to the towels in the locker room.
“He teaches out at Piedmont College.”
Visits from the Drowned Girl Page 11
