Visits from the Drowned Girl

by Steven Sherrill

  Hot. Hot. Very hot. Benny stopped the tape to get a beer. Resumed watching.

  July 11, 1998 • • • Rec

  12:00 p.m.

  “My name is Jen—No, do it again.”

  Jenna Hinkey stands before the camera, holding a microphone. Her lean body outfitted for contrast: red bandana tied as a skullcap, an undersized strapped T-shirt with WIFE BEATER stenciled across the meager slopes of her breasts, Lycra shorts, and thick-soled boots with a criss-cross maze of laces.

  “This is Jenna Hinkey. Nope. Again.”

  She stands on a busy street corner, a corner ripe with the sounds of traffic, of passersby.

  Jump-cut to the same street corner. The same day. Same hour. The same Jenna Hinkey, sans microphone. Her arms are crossed.

  Jenna looks directly at the camera. Elbows tucked, she opens her right arm, hingelike. Displays her palm. Written on it, in black marker, PROPHETS. Folds back her right arm. Opens the left. PART II. Jenna crosses her arms again, tucks her fingers under the hem of the T-shirt, lifts it slowly. On the flat plane of her stomach, just above the Lycra shorts, in red marker: FILM AS CONCEPT. A little higher, the momentary (intentional?) peek at two thin sickles of flesh, the undersides of her breasts: ASSIGNMENT 4. She lowers her shirt. Pauses. Hooks her thumbs behind the waistband of her shorts at the apex of her hipbones. Eases the fabric down. There, on the sweetest part of her belly, the words PROF. GOOD, borne up by a mere trace of her pubis.

  Benny paused the tape. He rewound it and watched that moment again. Then again. Then again. He paused the tape, first at the fleeting instance of her breasts, then at the (unfulfilled) promise of her sex. He spent half an hour, maybe more, watching and rewatching Jenna’s introduction of the tape. During that time, Benny Poteat got a hard-on. During that time, Benny Poteat—he’d swear it—fell in love.

  Jenna Hinkey steps out of the camera’s line of sight. A hot-dog stand fills the view, the vendor animated, in constant motion. And although you can’t hear what he says, the man is talking nonstop. The camera begins to move in…

  Benny Poteat resisted the urge to fast-forward as long as possible, resisted in part out of embarrassment. All he really wanted was to see more of Jenna Hinkey’s naked flesh. But Benny would never be known for his great willpower. He ran the tape ahead, through the hot-dog vendor, through a segment about a lady who worked at Jiffy Lube. Watched, with growing disinterest, as the players trotted herky-jerky back and forth across the screen, their very existence made comic by the technology. When the tape transitioned into the next “Prophet” segment, the opening shot a four-burner Bunn coffeemaker, one pot in the process of filling, two others warming, Benny Poteat actually got up to go pee and left the tape running on fast forward. When he settled back in his chair, things had changed.

  “Ballsy stuff,” the man says. He is tall, lean. His face cut from some ancient stone, then polished. He talks directly to the camera. “You’ve got potential. But…”

  And it’s Jenna Hinkey’s voice—cocky, excited, sexy—that responds.

  “But? But? But what?”

  Benny rewound the tape. Stopped it where the camera panned left, from the coffeemaker to a restaurant counter, and the half-dozen booths beyond it. Two waitresses hustled, resignedly, to attend to the customers, a motley assortment of what had to be students. In the far booth Benny could see the tall lean man in profile, talking, his long, long hair, gathered in a tight ponytail, sweeping the back of the booth each time his head turned. Benny watched the man stand and say something to his friends. They laughed, and watched him approach the camera, carefully folding a napkin in half as he came.

  “I know you,” he says.

  The man is beautiful. Anyone can see that.

  “Oh, yeah, how’s that?”

  Jenna must be nervous. She fidgets and jostles the camera.

  “Your name is Jenna. I’ve seen your work around campus.” The man’s face and torso, his black T-shirt, fill the screen. Raptorlike eyes scan the room then lock in just right of the camera’s focus. On Jenna. Prey. The man brings something dangerous to the moment. Anyone can see that. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Ye—” she starts, then hesitates. “Should I?”

  He smiles.

  “Ballsy stuff. You’ve got potential,” he says. “But…”

  “But? But? But what?” Jenna asks. “Anyway, you graduated last year.”

  “Got to keep my finger in the pie,” he says, and winks.

  “So…” she says. “Potential, but?…”

  There is the clink of cheap silverware against glass. He smiles. Nods.

  “But you’re still holding back. You’re afraid of something.”

  Jenna sucks her teeth. There is no other explanation for the sound.

  “You’ve got to cut the fucking heart out of every piece you do,” he says. “Cut it out and eat it.”

  Jenna does not respond. This man’s presence overpowers her. Consumes her. He holds the napkin out in his open palm, as if it is a heart to be eaten. Jenna reaches for it.

  “Come see my studio,” he says. “I’ll show you what it means to be fearless.”

  “Maybe I will,” she says. As he walks out she unfolds the napkin. Whispers, “Yessss!”

  Jenna opens the napkin for the camera. The automatic focus struggles with the sudden change in depth of field. Eventually, out of the blur, a sketch arises. It is Jenna. Clearly. With a few simple lines, the man captured the essence of her face: the cut of her cheekbones, the slope of lips, the counterintuitive fall of her hair. Beyond the face, his imagination played freely. In the sketch Jenna is naked. In the sketch Jenna’s eyes express rapture. In the sketch Jenna kneels, as if in prayer, her hands lifted palms up, receiving. In her hands, the exquisitely detailed shaft and scrotum of a fat long penis. In the bottom corner, an address, and a name in cryptic, cuneiform fashion: MAX.

  “Fucker!” Benny said, too loudly. “What an asshole.”

  The word “pretentious” wouldn’t come naturally to Benny, but its meaning he intuited.

  “Twisted fucking prick,” Benny said.

  Squat scratched on the door, needing to go out. Benny stopped the tape. Turned off the television. He sat for a minute, staring at two of the three framed things in his house that he thought might pass for art. The first, an idealized landscape in greens and browns, hung on the living-room wall exactly where it was hanging when Benny moved in. The warp in its frame hurried along no doubt by the accumulation of dust. The second piece of art Benny bought at a yard sale. A lady on a couch, so horribly done that it still made Benny laugh. He proudly displayed it over his kitchen table. The third probably didn’t count as real art, but his primordial lust for Farrah Fawcett kept him from getting rid of the poster in his bedroom.

  “Bastard,” Benny said.

  He let Squat out, then went to bed. The oppressive heat infected his sleep.

  Chapter 14

  Rebecca Hinkey climbed up into Benny’s van with noticeable effort. She had hesitated when Benny offered to pick her up, then agreed. She was standing by the door to Claxton Looms when he arrived, and opened the door to get in before Benny had a chance to turn the ignition off Benny took note of her sexy little legs, the way her knee-length skirt translated their shape, the way her calf grew taut, swelled, when she made the high step into the truck.

  “You hungry?” Benny asked.

  “A little.”

  Rebecca offered a forced smile. Benny was having second thoughts about his date with Becky, for several reasons. He’d really rather be watching the tapes of her sister, Jenna. And he hoped against all hope that Jenna’s obvious interest in Max the artist had fizzled. Benny had the gnawing suspicion that the next tape would include more of that sorry excuse for a man.

  Too, Benny doubted his own logic at suggesting Nub & Hone
y’s for the dinner date with Rebecca. Everybody would be watching them. Everybody would talk. Benny couldn’t remember the last time he’d brought a date to the restaurant.

  “How about we go to Red Lobster,” Benny said, already turning off the road to the fishcamp. “This is shrimp night, and I got a hankering.”

  “Awww,” Becky said. “Wasn’t it you who bragged so much about Nub & Honey’s?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but the choices are so limited there.”

  “What do you mean?” Becky asked.

  “Fried? Fried? Or fried?”

  “Oh. I see. Well, okay.”

  Benny cringed at the notion that Rebecca had sensed his embarrass­ment.

  “We can go to Nub & Honey’s if…” He let the offer dissolve.

  “No,” she said. “Red Lobster sounds great to me.”

  They rode in silence for a while. Becky finally broke it.

  “It’s hot in here,” she said.

  “My heater’s busted,” he said.

  More silence.

  Despite the open windows, Benny felt sure the oppressive heat heightened whatever trace was left of the few dabs of cologne—from a green bottle left in the medicine cabinet of the duplex by some previous renter—he’d put on earlier then immediately washed off He wished now that he’d changed out of the crisp new denim shirt.

  On the short trip, Benny became acutely aware of how little of the passenger seat Rebecca filled, and how, despite being of just average size, he felt bulky and cumbersome. After they pulled to a stop in the parking lot, Benny ran his hand over his hair several times, although he kept it cut so short that it never really had many options as to how it lay.

  Fortunately for them, Red Lobster was a popular spot; even on a Monday night, the place was bustling, and the busyness made that awkward transition out of unfamiliarity less painful.

  “I love these cheese biscuits,” Becky said; once ensconced at a two-top, beneath a shellacked marlin, Benny didn’t doubt the wisdom of not going to Nub & Honey’s. At Red Lobster everyone clearly took note of Benny and Becky’s entrance, and throughout the meal Benny caught several furtive glances in process. Even though Doodle had Mondays off, dinner at the fishcamp would’ve been worse. When the Red Lobster waitress placed their food on the table, Rebecca bowed her head and prayed silently. Benny looked to see if anyone was watching.

  “Sorry,” she said, catching Benny’s embarrassment. “It’s something I grew up doing.”

  “You know what they say about the preacher’s daughter,” Benny joked.

  They talked for a while, skimming various surfaces, seeking common ground. During a lull, Becky took a chance.

  “I feel like I’ve been sort of a dud all night,” she said, then continued before Benny had a chance to disagree. “It’s my sister.”

  “Did you find her?” Benny asked, putting the tea glass to his mouth to hide his eagerness.

  “No,” she said. “No. Nothing. There’s absolutely no trace of where she went.”

  “How about New York?” Benny said. “Lots of artsy types go to New York. Don’t they?”

  An assumption on Benny’s part. Most of the very little he knew about the art scene, he gleaned from occasionally skimming through the weekly Creative Loafing newspaper.

  Becky looked at him. He knew she was trying to remember when, or if, she’d told Benny about her sister’s interest in the arts. Again, Benny thought about opportunity. Here, in the moment, an opportunity opened up for Benny to let go of trouble. He thought of telling Becky the truth. While Benny had always considered truth a relative thing, open to compromise, and quite possibly empty at its core, this current degree of dishonesty was new territory for him. Suppose he told Rebecca the truth about her sister. That she didn’t go to New York, or California, or even to the grocery store. That instead she walked, big as day, into Big Toe River and drowned herself And was so proud of the act that she documented the whole thing on film. What would happen? Outrage, most certainly. Fear, yes. Confusion, yes. The police, maybe. And what did Benny gain by keeping the secret? A most delicious power. So succulent that it hurt. Barring the discovery of Jenna’s body, Benny had a secret that no one else in the entire world knew. How long could he hold it?

  “She didn’t go to New York,” Becky said. “Esther was afraid of big cities.”

  “Esther?” Benny said, to see what would happen.

  “Yeah. Remember I told you she changed her name. She thought Esther was a hick name. She thought Jenna sounded more cosmopolitan.”

  “She changed it on paper? Through the courts and everything?”

  “Not at first. At first she just stopped answering to Esther. She did, finally, go through all the legal stuff.”

  “What did your folks say?”

  “Daddy got real mad. Mama, she just tried to keep the peace.”

  “I still think she went to New York,” Benny said.

  “No … they finally called the police.”

  “Who? Your folks?”

  “Yeah. Mama’s been crying for a week.”

  At that, Rebecca herself began to cry. Not loudly, not even very obviously. Tears welled up in her eyes, but only fell from the left. One, two, three, and that was all. Benny understood in that moment that Rebecca Hinkey had wept many many times in her life, and expected to weep many more. She caught the tears with her napkin as they traced the sweep of her cheek. When she put her hands on the table, opposite Benny’s crossed hands, he wished he could reach out and offer some kind of comforting touch. He couldn’t. His callused, banged-up knuckles, hands aged from sun and work, lay still and in stark contrast to Becky’s doll-like hands. The light glinted in the gloss of her manicure.

  “Sorry,” she said. “So … you weren’t a churchgoer?”

  “Not too much. Nub didn’t like to go, but sometimes Honey made me go with her. Mostly revivals and vacation Bible school.”

  “Why’d you go with Honey?”

  It was then that Benny remembered the lie he’d told Becky about his mother and grandfather. Benny dredged a shrimp through a pool of cocktail sauce on his plate. The horseradish stung his eyes.

  “My grandpa…” he said, stalling. “He got mad at something the preacher said, and wouldn’t let me or my mama go.”

  “Think it was my daddy he got mad at?”

  “No. They stopped going to the mill church a long time before then.”

  Becky looked across the dining room without focusing on any one thing or person. With her finger at its tip, she navigated the plastic straw emerging from the iced tea around and around the rim of the glass. Mindlessly, she puffed her cheeks full of air, once, twice, and again. Benny had seen her do that before while listening on the telephone. Distress veiled Rebecca Hinkey’s face, and Benny knew it had little or nothing to do with him.

  They sat, again, with silence. Benny, without knowing exactly why, decided to tell her a little bit of truth.

  “You know, I got saved one time, when I was about ten, maybe eleven. At a tent revival.”

  Rebecca’s dark eyebrows revealed interest.

  “I guess I got saved,” Benny continued. “I went home and told everybody I was ‘borned again’ and they thought the way I said it was funny as hell. So I kept saying it that way. Borned again.”

  “How long did it last?” Rebecca asked, seeming to know from experience that salvation was short-lived.

  “I don’t know exactly. But after that, I got it in my head that I wanted to be a preacher. So, I’d go out to … we used to have this old toolshed in the backyard. Just a tin building with a dirt floor and no windows. I’d take the Bible I got for Christmas when I was nine out in the toolshed and pretend to preach.”

  Benny paused while the waitress put the dessert down on the table, then filled their tea glass
es. Rebecca paid attention.

  “Did you actually write sermons?”

  “Hell, no. I just talked off the top of my head. And I always closed the door so nobody could see me, or hear me. It was almost pitch-black in there. And hot. Really hot. I’d stay shut up in that shed, with the jugs of gasoline and motor oil until I’d be so dizzy from the heat and the fumes when I came out that I couldn’t walk a straight line. For years I thought it was the spirit of the Lord that made me feel that way.”

  “Oh, my. Did you ever get caught?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sort of,” Benny said. “One afternoon I got all worked up, stomping around and praying, laying my hands on everything I could, healing the blind and the lame. Everything was going okay until I knocked a mattock over into a wasp nest that I didn’t know hung in the corner. A huge nest.”

  “Oh, my god, Benny. What happened?” Becky dabbed at her lips, pursed in concern, with a napkin.

  “Well, I don’t really remember much about it. I got stung. And stung. And stung. All over my face and my arms. My neck. Through my shirt. And I couldn’t see them. One minute I was preaching and the next minute I felt like I was in a lake of fire.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t die. How’d you find your way out?”

  “I didn’t. I mean, I must’ve been screaming really loud, ‘cause Uncle Nub came out and opened the door. I’d passed out by the time he found me. And my eyes were swollen shut. My whole body swelled. I didn’t wake up for three days, and I didn’t feel completely right for months.”

  “Oh Benny … poor thing.”

  Benny took Rebecca Hinkey home. He would have opened the passenger door of the van for her, but she jumped out, literally, before he had the chance. Benny heard a barely audible grunt when her feet hit the ground.

  “Looks like we might get a storm,” he said.