Visits from the Drowned Girl

by Steven Sherrill

  “All this heat,” she said.

  “Try not to worry too much about your sister,” Benny said, and then before he could stop himself, “I’m sure she’s okay.”

  “That’s real sweet of you. Goodnight, Benny.”

  Benny levered the van into reverse.

  “Hey,” Rebecca said, tapping on the window. “Next time we’ll take my car.”

  Benny Poteat, exhausted by the effort to bear and conceal his secret, went home and to bed.

  How could he know? There was no hesitation. No surface disturbance. From two hundred feet up, her disappearance seemed almost insignificant. How could he know what she thought? What she felt? Whether her resolve broke down at the last minute, as the river closed in over her head. Whether she thrashed and fought against the current. In his bed, in the sticky humid night, Benny Poteat dreamed the possibilities.

  Jenna Hinkey walks into the water, smiling. Jenna Hinkey presses her bare toes into the muddy riverbed, seeks footing as the water rages around her. And what of the breath? That twin parcel she smuggled down from the surface. Jenna Hinkey holds it tight. Once, maybe twice, a small bubble escapes from her nostril, immediately consumed by the river. Jenna leans against the flow of water. The river supports her. For an instant Jenna, her heart—her physical heart—making its frantic call for fresh air, wants to run. To rise. For an instant Jenna, her heart—that organ of emotion—surging with notions of loss and desire, wants not to be at the bottom of Big Toe River.

  Then comes the itch. A slight tickle somewhere deep inside her neck, where the jawbone ends, the earlobe hangs. An itch, a faint genetic memory that turns to a burn along her jawline. Jenna, submerged, begins to rub, first one side then the other. Jenna scratches, raking at the sore spots on her neck. Jenna’s manic heart is about to jump ship. Jenna’s lungs, two stoked furnaces, flame. Jenna’s eyes roll madly in their sockets. Jenna believes, and why shouldn’t she, that death approaches.

  Then the skin of her neck opens. Two thin slits gape and suck water. Jenna convulses from that first shock to her lungs. Convulses again as the spent air is forced out, and river water is drawn in. After that, praise be, death turns away from Jenna Hinkey. After that her newly formed gills discover their purpose. After that, Jenna gathers her saturated wits and begins to walk along the river bottom. She walks and walks and walks, and soon enough she meets other drowned folks in their waters, their rivers. Together they all walk, all the drowned, toward the ocean, greeting others as they go. Their gills pumping. A roaring in their ears. They walk the river bottoms, the lakebeds, toward the stinging salty water. Toward what? A reunion of the drowned. Toward the storming tide. And toward the waves, deafening waves that pound and pound and pound and pound and pound.

  The roaring. The pounding. The pounding, pounding, pounding on Benny’s door that will not stop. Loud, loud, pounding.

  “Benny!” someone yelled. “Benny Poteat!”

  “Hummh,” he called out into the night.

  “Benny? Are you in there?” More knocking at his door.

  Benny, dazed and still half asleep, thought he recognized the voice. But it came accompanied by other sounds, rendering the voice muted and fuzzy.

  “Who is it?” he asked. What is that sound? he thought.

  Benny staggered to the door.

  “Who is it?” he asked again.

  “Open the door, Benny! It’s me, Doodle.”

  The instant he unlocked the door, Doodle burst in, her own urgency bolstered by a raging wind, and spraying rain.

  “Jesus! Don’t you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Benny asked, working harder than he expected to close the door. He rubbed his face with both hands, wiping away sleep and rain. Doodle went, in the dark, to the kitchen table and sat down.

  “A tornado, I think. I don’t know what else it could’ve been.”

  Doodle shivered, mostly from fear, but she had gotten wet standing in the rain, in her nightgown, waiting for Benny to wake up. Benny shuffled into the bedroom, got a flannel shirt for Doodle.

  “Power must be out,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Scared shitless, but okay. Thanks,” she said, putting the shirt on.

  Benny lay one hand on the table, put his weight against it, and struggled to keep his eyes open. He listened as Doodle told him about the storm.

  “The worst of it’s passed. Sounded like a train coming through the wall,” she said. “I can’t believe you didn’t wake up.”

  “Tired,” he said.

  Doodle talked, in the dark, until she was relaxed. She talked until the wind subsided. After a while the electricity returned, and the duplex began to hum and click. Doodle kept talking. She did that when she was scared. She talked until Benny was nearly asleep, standing there, leaning on his kitchen table. Too tired to sit down. His eyes must’ve closed for a minute, because he certainly didn’t see Doodle reach up with two fingers and give a little tug on the tip of his very flaccid, sleepy penis as it peeked out of his briefs.

  “Early bird gets the worm,” she said. And just as she spoke, just as she tugged, one final thunderclap ruptured the night.

  “Goddamn it, Doodle!”

  “Goddamn it, Benny!”

  “You have to quit doing that!”

  Benny twitched and twisted until he was situated and hidden.

  Doodle rubbed at a spot between her eyes.

  Benny came back wearing pants.

  “You really have to quit that.”

  “Quit what?” Doodle asked, recovered enough to still be playful.

  “All that stuff.”

  “Why, Benny, I have no idea what you mean.”

  “You know damn well what I mean. Flashing your titties. Wiggling your ass. And pinching my dick. Doodle, you can’t just touch my dick like that!”

  Doodle was hurt. And embarrassed. Benny saw it clearly, and any other time he may have retracted his comments. Or at least softened them.

  “It’s not all me, Benny.”

  Benny didn’t respond.

  “It takes two to dance,” she said. “You have to admit that you flirt with me, too. You know that, don’t you, Benny?”

  Benny got them both a beer. They drank in silence. After a while, Doodle spoke.

  “Think we ought to call and make sure everyone is okay?”

  “Prob’ly,” Benny said. So they did. They called mutual friends and people from the fishcamp. Everybody seemed to have weathered the storm, everybody except for Jeeter. Every time they called, they got the same message: “The number you have dialed is not in service at this time…”

  “I hope he’s okay,” Doodle said.

  “I’ll go out there as soon as it’s light.”

  “Want me to come with you?”

  “That’s okay,” Benny said. “He probably just forgot to pay his bill.”

  “Want your shirt back?” Doodle asked, standing to leave.

  “Keep it for now.”

  “I heard a rumor about you, Benny Poteat.” She paused. “I heard you were two-timing me.”

  Benny smiled, both at Doodle’s unstoppable playfulness and at the speed with which news and gossip traveled in his world. He didn’t, however, answer the charge.

  “I’m sorry I touched your dick,” she said.

  “I’m sorry I cussed at you.”

  They hugged. What else could they do? Doodle went back to her side of the duplex. Benny waited for daybreak.

  Chapter 15

  What to do? Three more hours of darkness loomed before Benny could go out and check on Jeeter. It didn’t occur to him to check on Rebecca. And sleep, at that point, wasn’t an option for him. Benny thought of the tapes, of Jenna. Jenna in his dream and Jenna in the various realities she roamed through.

 
Benny stuck the “Prophets” tape into the VCR and rewound it to where Jenna offered up her stenciled belly for the camera. He paused the tape at the exact moment where the two thin swaths of her breast flesh became visible, fully intending to jack off to the scene. As fate would have it, a fate shaped by Benny’s stingy nature and the cheap purchases that nature dictated, the pause function on his VCR left a fat band of static across the screen, right across Jenna’s breasts.

  “Fuck,” Benny said, his penis falling limp in his hand.

  He fast-forwarded just a bit to where PROF. GOOD, written large across her abdominal plane, gave way to dark tufts of pubic hair. The band of static no longer an obstacle, Benny’s penis rallied. Briefly … But each time he reached the moment of truth, the turning point, a precise instant in the masturbatory process before which all thoughts and energies focus, hasten, and build toward—this body part, that movement, this pose, that reaction—and after which there are no thoughts and nothing, save death, could stop the spermatic outcome, each time he got close some dark door opened in his mind and filled it with unwanted images. Becky crying. Doodle embarrassed. Becky naked, with Doodle’s head. Doodle’s body and Becky’s head. Monsters. Disgust and revulsion, projected outward. Disgust and revulsion, directed inward. Who’s more monstrous than this man able to masturbate to the videotapes made by the drowned girl, then in the presence of her sister conceal or deny or transfer those feelings? Once, twice, three times Benny whipped his raw dick toward the finish line, to no avail.

  “Fuck,” Benny said, wincing as he tucked his sore, shriveled organ inside his briefs.

  “Fuck,” Benny said, pulling off Hager’s Creek Road onto Jeeter’s drive. He had to stop thirty feet in because of the haphazard criss-cross of pine trees, toppled by the storm, blocking the gravel road. Benny was anxious about his friend at the end of the road, but he never claimed to be adept at dealing with crisis. As a tactic, delay, sometimes outright avoidance, had worked well for Benny in the past. He took his time crawling over or going around the trees that lay across Jeeter’s drive. It took Benny nearly half an hour to walk the rest of the way to the trailer compound. He made a list on the way, to calm his nerves: cherry bomb, firecracker, bottle rocket, roman candle, pinwheel, whiz-bang, and before Benny could finish the list he heard the chainsaw fire up. Jeeter was, at least, alive.

  “Hey!”

  Benny had to shout over the whine of the chainsaw. Jeeter’s back was turned.

  “Hey! Jeeter!”

  The saw bit deep and stalled in a knot within the trunk of the tree that Jeeter stood over, an oak that lay itself down on top of what used to be Jeeter’s greenhouse. Benny loved those smells: hot sawdust, the oily exhaust from a two-stroke engine.

  “Jeeter!” he called again. Jeeter turned.

  “Hey, Benny.”

  Jeeter had been crying.

  “What a mess,” Benny said.

  “Yeah.”

  Jeeter looked around at the damage.

  “My fish are dead,” he said. “A bunch of them, anyway. And my plants…”

  They cleaned up as best they could. Benny helped Jeeter clear the driveway. They didn’t talk much.

  “‘You can stay with me,” Benny said, “until you get your power back.”

  “I’ll be okay,” Jeeter said. “Thanks anyway. Did you happen to notice whether my mailbox was still standing?” Jeeter asked.

  Benny hadn’t paid attention to the big fish-shaped metal sculpture, but he lied to Jeeter to make him feel better.

  “Yep. It is.”

  Things were a mess all over Buffalo Shoals. By the time Benny pulled up at Claxton Looms, it was afternoon. He was filthy. Sweaty, oil-streaked, and covered with sawdust, but he wore his filth as a badge of honor. Irrefutable proof of his worth in times of duress.

  Benny, somehow emboldened by the grace that seemed to have spared him, twice now, from a tornado, walked into the apartment building without knocking, or even ringing the bell. Walked in as if he brought that very grace with him. Here comes help. Here comes good news. Here comes salvation.

  Becky sobbed. He heard her as soon as the door closed. And his confidence withered.

  “Rebecca?”

  He insinuated himself into the room.

  She sat at her big desk, crying big tears. The telephone and a half-eaten sandwich vying for control in the middle of the desk.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, not knowing what to expect.

  “Oh, Benny…” she said, putting her head down on her foreshortened arms, crossed on the desk. She wept.

  He wanted to reach out. He wanted to touch her, to lay his hand on her head and comfort her. Benny lacked the courage. He sat in the chair in front of her desk. She spoke again, muffled and stuttered.

  “Oh, Benny … Mama called … Mama called this morning. They … they found—“

  Uncontrollable sobs.

  “What, Becky? Found what?”

  Expectation reared its head; Benny feared the answer. He looked at the door. He considered running. He looked at the huge aquarium, felt as trapped as the fish inside it.

  “They found a body.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. The police … somebody. They think it might be…”

  She didn’t need to finish.

  “Oh, Becky, I’m so sorry,” Benny said, truthfully, but for a host of reasons. He wanted to hug Rebecca, to comfort her, but was afraid she’d feel his terrified heart storming against his ribcage. He wanted to speak, to say something helpful, but was afraid of saying too much. Of giving away his secret. He was about to ask where they found the body, but the telephone rang. Benny jumped. Rebecca jumped. She composed herself as best she could between rings. Swiped a hand across her nose. Benny saw the light glint in the thin trail of snot.

  “Claxton Looms,” she said, bravely.

  Benny held his breath. If this call was to identify the body as that of Jenna Hinkey, it could be the beginning of a whole lot of trouble. But why the sudden anxiety? It’s not like he killed the girl. He couldn’t have stopped her from walking into Big Toe River, even if he’d tried. There were no witnesses, was no real evidence implicating Benny. Her stuff in his possession could be problematic, but was there a crime? Benny didn’t do anything. Indeed. He didn’t do anything.

  “How can I help you, Mr. Ray?” Rebecca asked, bravery giving way to professionalism.

  Benny exhaled and learned from one side of a conversation that the storm caused the roof to leak directly over Mr. Ray’s brand-new Barcalounger.

  “I’ll get maintenance right over there,” Rebecca said. “Yes, sir. I’m sure the water stains will come out. Yes. Okay. Have a good day, Mr. Ray.”

  The distraction seemed to have calmed her some, but did little to calm Benny. It meant that another telephone call was still to come, identifying the body the police had found. Benny could just confess, then and there. Could try and explain to Becky what he’d seen, and all that he’d found, and why he hadn’t reported the incident, or told anyone until now, and about all the tapes and how he was watching them in order, and how he’d sort of fallen in love with Jenna through the tapes, but now he’d grown so fond of her, of Becky, through Jenna, not really as a surrogate or anything, and maybe even she, Becky, would like to watch one of the tapes with him. Then Benny realized the absurdity of his thinking. It had been too long; he was in too deep. But if the body was, in fact, Jenna’s…

  “Did you hear about that family out on Berea Road?” she asked Benny.

  “No. What happened?”

  “Tornado picked up their car and dropped it through the roof The father was passed out in the car. The mama and two kids were sleeping in the same bed…”

  “Did it … are they?”

  “Killed all three of them.”

  B
enny whistled. He told her about Jeeter and all that he lost.

  “Daddy called me early this morning to see if I was all right. He told me that that X-rated drive-in was completely destroyed.”

  Benny wondered what would become of the flea market. Of the vendors who needed that income.

  “He said it was a victory for the Lord,” Rebecca said.

  Benny wanted to ask if that dead lady and her dead kids were part of the Lord’s booty, but he held back.

  “Then he asked me to pray.”

  Rebecca prayed often. Benny sensed it even more than he knew it. He grew momentarily fearful that she’d ask him to pray with her, so he changed the subject.

  “Where?” Benny asked. He had to know.

  “Where what?”

  “Where did they find the body?”

  And what of the look that fell across her face. A sort of hunger. A hunger for answers. For anything true. And what is hunger? The heart’s curmudgeonly, inconsolable decent, shuffling from chamber to dark chamber, making its feeble pitch. Benny had no answers. None he was capable of giving. When the phone rang again, they both just stared at it.

  “Claxt—what? Are you sure? Are they sure?”

  Benny watched Rebecca’s face. He knew the news was good. He knew, too, that he’d never tell Rebecca what he’d seen at the river.

  Rebecca hung up the phone. She cried again, but it meant a wholly different thing.

  “That was Mama,” she said. “She just heard from the police. It’s not Esther. I mean … it’s not Jenna.”

  Rebecca got up. Or rather, she climbed down from her seat and came around the desk. She opened her short arms to Benny, sawdust, sweat, and all, and he took her in. They hugged for quite a while, with Becky crying. She seemed not to register his still-frantic heartbeat. Benny picked a tiny chip of wood from her hair. Then they kissed.

  They kissed. Becky on her toes. Benny hunched in his chair. They kissed.

  And when they kissed, that first time—who kissed who, and does it matter—when they kissed, the little black devil that was Benny’s secret did not fly from his mouth into Rebecca’s, its sooty wings tangling in her larynx, seizing her breath. His wicked selfish falsehood didn’t batter its way through her small trusting teeth like a ramrod. His lie did not pour itself down her throat, displacing everything—her organs, her hope, her gullibility, filling her gut to the point of rupture. No, Benny’s secret did not leave his body for hers, to render him empty and culpable, and her decimated.