Visits from the Drowned Girl

by Steven Sherrill

“Hi.”

  “How’s the patient?” Benny asked.

  Rebecca, distracted by something, didn’t understand.

  “Oh,” she said. “The fish. It’s okay, I think. Still swimming, anyway.”

  While Benny changed the water in the hospital tank and remedicated the tang, Rebecca sat at the big desk, doing paperwork. She didn’t have much to say to Benny, nor to the few callers that phoned in the time Benny was there.

  “I got something for you,” Benny said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He brought the little tree in behind his back, and had he known Rebecca any better would’ve asked her to close her eyes.

  “For your desk,” he said, bringing it into view.

  Reading her initial reaction with any accuracy was beyond Benny. It definitely contained surprise. It may have held embarrassment. Too, there may have been an instant of perverse recognition. A cross-species bonding of sorts. Whatever it was came and went quickly. A flash. Rebecca, apparently, had mastered the art of the masking smile. And probably, correctly, understood that Benny gave the gift without malice.

  Benny sat the juniper on the edge of Rebecca’s desk.

  She eyed it from a distance at first. Then stroked the base of its trunk where the wire wrapping rose from the shallow soil. Finally, she spoke.

  “That’s sweet,” she said.

  “You probably ought to water that thing at least once a day.”

  Benny put away the fish-doctoring supplies.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Rebecca,” he said.

  “You know,” she said as Benny opened the door to leave, “you can call me Becky.”

  “Fuck!”

  Benny said it aloud once, then again.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  He pulled up to his house and was looking for some change that had fallen between the van’s seats earlier, at the Dairy Queen drive-thru, when his fingers raked the plastic spine of the videotape he’d rented—how many days ago?—along with the VCR. He’d simply forgotten about it. This led to another, more critical realization.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  Benny remembered the tape left in the VCR when he returned it. A flood of what-ifs swept over him. What if … the video clerk watches the tape? What if … something on that tape implicates him in some way? What if … what if … what if, compounded and magnified through the irrational lens of fear. Fear boiled up, boiled over. Benny grew certain that the young woman at Buffalo Video, through the first of what would become a career of divinations, had already solved the great mystery of the drowned girl and Benny’s connection to her, and had already called the police who, at any minute, would bust down Benny’s door and haul him away.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” became Benny’s mantra all the way back to Buffalo Video.

  He pushed the old van to its limited capacity, nearly squealing to a stop in front of the store. Thank God the back in 5 minutes sign was gone. Benny wondered if the same clerk was still on duty. He opened the door with more force than he’d intended. All of the half-dozen customers in the store turned to look at him.

  “Sorry,” Benny said to anyone who could hear him, holding out the late video as an explanation.

  She was still there, talking to the guy with the, very visible, quarter in his ear. Both of them looked at Benny. Both of them smiled.

  “Ou looking for thith?” the girl asked, holding up the videotape labeled “Prophets.”

  “Oh,” Benny said, quick on his feet. “No, I was returning this.”

  He held out the rented tape, hoping, praying that the exchange would be quick and easy.

  “Thith wath in the vee-thee-ar ou wreturnthd.”

  “Was it?” Benny said, with as much incredulity as he could muster. He reached for the tape, extended the one he held for the guy to take.

  “What?” the guy said, although it was unclear to whom. “I hated this movie,” he said, scowling at the box.

  Benny took some deep breaths. While the two video clerks clearly were engaged in some unspoken dialogue, much to Benny’s relief, it didn’t look like the police would be involved. He got through the exchange of the videotapes, struggling alongside as the girl wrestled with each word, and, with minimal reluctance, repeating things when necessary, for the guy, to get them through his aural toll gate. “Fuck,” Benny whispered to himself as he left the store, this time over the amount of the late fee.

  “You can call me Becky,” she had said.

  And so he did. The next time he went to Claxton Looms, and the next, and the next. Benny went, after working on the towers, every day that week. Benny involved himself in Becky’s life so much so that he almost forgot about the tapes under his bed. Almost. Each day he passed the abandoned apartment building, demolition had progressed. One day, most of the exterior front wall was gone. A day later, the demolition crew started in on the interior walls.

  Benny and Becky talked a lot, but not about the fact that their relationship had gone beyond the fish-care pretense. Got comfortable with each other. She moved the bonsai tree to the front edge of her desk. He asked her about Roger, and more about the Andy Griffith class. Becky admitted to having a crush on Roger, no surprise to Benny. He’d seen them interact a couple more times, and watched as Becky’s face flushed and her pupils dilated. Benny began to tease her about it. Becky, playfully, accepted. In the same way that she accepted Benny’s growing attention.

  When he felt Becky was ready, he asked about the photographs on her desk.

  “That’s my mom,” she said. “That’s my dad. Me. And that’s my sister, E—Jenna. We can’t seem to find her.”

  “She’s…” Benny paused.

  “Normal?”

  “I was going to say pretty.”

  “Like I said, normal.” Becky picked up the frame and traced its edge with her finger. “Where are you?” she asked softly.

  “I didn’t mean that you’re not pretty, Becky,” Benny said. “You are. To me. I mean, you just are.”

  Becky smiled at Benny. A sad, appreciative smile.

  “What do you mean, you can’t find her?” he asked.

  “She changed her name,” Becky said. “Esther. Her name was Esther, like in the Bible. Like Rebecca. Then she went to college and got all arty.”

  “You can’t find her because she changed her name?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “Because she’s arty? I don’t know what that means.” But he did.

  “That’s not it, either. Well, I guess that’s part of it. Both. But Jenna was different long before she changed her name.”

  “So she ran away?” Benny asked, pushing the issue.

  “I don’t … we don’t know. I mean, she’s been gone before, and she is an adult, but … we usually, after a while, find out somehow where she’s at. It’s been too long this time.”

  Becky placed her sister’s picture back on the desk.

  “My folks are really worried,” Becky said. “I’ve got to go potty,” she said, and the confession, its tone, content, and attendant implications, given how determined she usually seemed to convey herself as adult, took Benny by surprise. Becky disappeared behind a door Benny hadn’t seen used. He heard the water tap turned on and, without hesitation, opened Becky’s top desk drawer. There, among the pencils, pens, scissors, and paperclips, an old child’s block caught Benny’s eye. Not too far from square, the hand-carved block bore out-of-sequence letters on three of its sides: E, R, and G. The other three sides were vaguely recognizable bas-reliefs of Jesus, the cross, and (presumably) a dove. Benny plucked it from its rest, stuck it in his pocket. He was sitting on the couch flipping through a Cosmopolitan magazine when Becky came out of the bathroom.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “I was just building my perfect man,
” Benny said, splaying the magazine open.

  “Give me that,” Becky said, and snatched it playfully from his hands. She regained her composure.

  On the way home from Claxton Looms, Benny saw that the interior walls on the second floor of the old building he passed earlier had been removed. All that remained were the back and side walls. Stopped by a traffic light, Benny studied the structure. Something was disconcerting about the standing wall. No. Not disconcerting. But Benny couldn’t find the precise word to describe the effect of what he saw. The remaining wall had obviously been the kitchen walls of all the apartments. Five equally sized rooms, with small windows in their centers, demarcated by the only surviving evidence of their past occupants’ humanity: wallpaper and paint. Alternating, as if by grand design. In one corner a dingy beige paint job confessed years of unhappiness. Beside it, a stern striped wallpaper peeled away from where there was once a ceiling. Another, brighter paint. Benny convinced himself that he could almost make out some childish crayon scribblings near floor level. The next room, no doubt the happiest in the house, was the most audacious. Two wallpaper patterns: a bold black-and-white check from the chair rail down, and a floral print spiraled and snaked toward the absent ceiling. The room on the end, stark and white. Benny thought about the lives that had passed through those kitchens. He sat imagining the dinners, imagining families playing or fighting, laughing or weeping, year after year. He sat imagining folks cooking and eating, some alone, others blessed or cursed by companionship. Benny sat, imagining right through the change of the traffic light, and jumped when the horn of the car behind him sounded.

  When he passed again the next day, after eight hours of painting a water tower in the next town over, his hair, arms, and clothes spattered battleship-gray, Benny saw that the building was completely demolished. Even the pile of rubble had been bulldozed away. The lot was vacant. Impermanence. Sometimes the fact hit Benny with enough force to take his breath away. Nothing lasts. Benny realized, too, that the yellow tang’s lateral line disease had been successfully reversed. The fish was gaining back some of its striking beauty. And Benny had no further, official, reason to go visit Becky every day.

  Becky helped him transfer the fish from the hospital tank back into the large aquarium.

  “So it looks like this guy is going to be okay,” he said, trying to sound leading.

  “I guess so,” she said. “Thanks a lot for all your help.”

  She sat on the edge of the low couch and watched him pack up the supplies. Her feet just touched the floor.

  “No problem,” he said. “It was not only my pleasure, but my penance for all those lies I told you.”

  “Oh, you paid for those a long time ago,” she said. “I feel like I owe you something now.”

  This was the moment. The door had opened. Could Benny actually bring himself to ask the midget for a date? He wanted to, for more reasons than he could articulate.

  “Well,” he said. “You could come and eat some fish with me. At Nub & Honey’s. I mean, I’m not a professor of Andy Griffith or anything but…”

  Becky smiled. She nodded, slowly.

  “Let me think about it,” she said.

  Benny gave her his phone number and left.

  “Best salt-and-pepper catfish in town,” he said on the way out.

  Chapter 13

  Two days later, Rebecca Hinkey called Benny Poteat. As fate would have it, the phone rang the second Benny knelt beside his bed to look at the tapes, trying to figure out how he could afford to buy a new VCR.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, Benny.”

  “Hey, Becky,” he said, sliding the milk crate out of sight.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked.

  “Vacuuming,” he said.

  “Ha!” Becky said, laughing. “I’ll bet you don’t even own a vacuum cleaner. You’re probably watching wrestling or something on TV”

  “Okay. You caught me. I confess,” Benny said, pleasantly surprised at her playfulness. “How are you?”

  “Good,” she said. “But I’ll be even better after a fine fish dinner.”

  Benny had picked up the stolen toy block from where it sat on his dresser. He ran its polished surface over his upper lip, smelled the faint scents of pine and varnish. He wanted to ask about Jenna. Had they found her? Had they given up?

  “You’ll go?” he asked.

  “Yep, unless you’ve changed your mind.”

  They decided on the day after next. A Monday.

  “I’ll pick you up,” he said.

  Affordable or not, Benny realized he had to have a VCR because he lacked the willpower to go another day without watching at least another part of the “Prophets” tape. He counted his cash. He called Jeeter, but Jeeter was busy. He called Dink, and they went to the flea market.

  Some days, the flea market felt good. Like you’re part of a big and vibrant cycle of living: buy, sell, give, get. A transferring of energies. Some days, you found exactly what you came looking for. Or, better still, that perfect bargain you didn’t even realize you needed.

  Other days, nothing is more destitute, more empty and pathetic, than the endless tables of detritus, worthless junk dredged from the black and hopeless bowels of people’s lives. The day Benny and Dink went fell somewhere in between. The biggest problem was the heat and humidity. One of those days that insisted on your misery. Just inside the gate sat a pickup truck with a sign propped in its bed. Lots of folks gathered around it. Dink read the sign aloud, slowly.

  “Cock-a-docks and peek-a-poos.”

  “They’re dogs,” Benny said. “Mixed breeds. Cocker spaniels mixed with dachshunds, and Pekingese mixed with poodles.”

  “Lets go pet ‘em,” Dink said.

  Benny pulled him away after about ten minutes.

  “It’s hot, Dink. Come on.”

  “We used to call them mutts,” Dink said. “Dogs mixed up like that. My mama had a dog one time, funniest-looking dog I ever seen. It was a thing called a shih tzu mixed with a beagle. Them dogs in that truck was two hundred dollars each. If we’d a called that dog of my mama’s a shit-eagle, we could’ve made some good money off it!”

  Benny laughed.

  Dink laughed harder.

  After they found a VCR for the right price, still in the box, so most likely stolen, Benny treated them both to corn dogs, which they ate on the way home.

  ““You gonna watch titty movies on that thing?”

  “Probably not, Dink.”

  “Shoot, I would. Ever day. I like them kind where the ladies look regular.”

  Despite his better judgment, Benny asked, “What do you mean, regular?”

  “Just regular ladies. You know. Where they ain’t got them big plastic titties and no hair on their cooters. I just like regular titties, big or small, and hairy pussies.”

  “Oh,” Benny said, wishing he’d just intuited the answer.

  “Regular,” Dink said.

  Benny handed Dink a napkin, told him to wipe the mustard off his chin.

  “I seen one, one time…” Dink said, and Benny tuned him out when he heard the word “emena.” Benny wasn’t about to correct him. After a while Dink just stopped talking, but as they pulled into the laundromat parking lot, he had one final question.

  “I wonder what that feels like?”

  “What?” Benny asked, truly having forgotten the earlier conversation. Dink spoke as he climbed out of the van.

  “To have all that old water squirted up your butt?”

  “Good-bye, Dink,” Benny said, putting the van in reverse.

  “Then it’s got to come back out.”

  “Bye, Dink.”

  “I might like it, pendin’ on who did the squirting.”

  He was still talking when Benny dro
ve off.

  Doodle didn’t come home after the shift at the fishcamp. Which was okay with Benny. She probably stayed with Jean, one of the other waitresses, who had an air conditioner in her trailer. That’d be Benny’s guess. Or hope. He pulled the box fan out of the bedroom window and angled it in the doorway so the air, warm but moving at least, flowed over him. Squat shuffled over and lay in the path of the breeze.

  “Good dog,” Benny said, and pressed Play.

  The tape had been rewound.

  July 9, 1998 • • • Rec

  7:00 a.m.

  “Prophets.”

  The title board. The clumsy stylization: light coming up slowly to reveal each letter of the title, then cut to black.

  P r o p h e t s

  The scene bleached of color. Hot bright daylight. The park. The picnic table in the distance. The camera, handheld, approaches, each rhythmic jolting step recorded. A man sits at the table, with his head down. He jerks up at the sound of the camera-bearer. The man’s hand goes out to grasp the push-bar of a grocery cart parked against the table. The cart is, more or less, half full, and the camera perspective pivots for a better view.

  “Hnnnnh.” The man speaks.

  Shoes. The shopping cart contains shoes. The camera pivots again. Gets closer. Shoes. Old shoes. Mismatched. Worn-out. Loafers, athletic shoes, pumps, a black-and-white wingtip. Others. The focus widens to contain the man’s hand, knuckles white, gripping the bar. There is movement. Sudden movement. The camera swings, off-balance, and blurs. Quickly refocuses on the man running away, pushing the cart of shoes, one misaligned front wheel whipping madly back and forth. And the dissolving squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, sque—sq—

  The camera watches until the man is out of sight, then turns downward. A wedge, the camera bearer’s legs foreshortened, seeming to rise out of the field of vision, a fringe of denim shorts, and the legs stub out in a pair of black canvas sneakers. One foot lifts, its toe rakes the heel of the other. Strips it of the shoe. The naked toes, with more grace, repeat the action on the remaining shoe. With her feet, the camera-bearer arranges the pair of shoes neatly, side by side on a patch of dirt by the picnic table. Long, still shot. Fade to black.