Visits from the Drowned Girl

by Steven Sherrill

  “Duplex.” Later that night, Benny remembered the title of the next tape, by chronology, as “Duplex.” He’d be watching it now, except that he lost it. Or, better yet, the river took it. When he pulled the milk crate from beneath the bed, Benny noticed for the first time the warning stenciled on two of its four sides:

  Unauthorized use of milk crates ILLEGAL.

  Fine of $300 or up to 90 days imprisonment.

  State Law, Act 37

  He wondered how much of what he’d done constituted unauthorized use.

  Benny folded back the NASCAR towel and plucked the tape entitled, simply, “March 3, 2000,” from the basket. With each successive tape he watched, the nearly ritualized act of getting ready then pushing Play lost something, as did the attendant anxiety. He unceremoniously jammed the next tape into the slot and poked it home with his forefinger.

  Immediately, Benny wished he’d taken more time. Prepared himself somehow. But time, no matter how much, wouldn’t have been preparation for what he watched. Jenna, hospitalized. A series of artless scenes, devoid of style. Choppy, cold reportage. Jenna, hospitalized. Jenna talking to doctors. There had been an infection behind the implants. Behind the implants, the infection went undetected. Too long. Too late. Jenna needed emergency surgery. Too long, too late. More hospital rooms. More surgery. The infection, dogged in its mission, spread. Where were her emotions in all this? Jenna, like a trooper, kept up her poker face. Who recorded this horrible sequence of events? How in God’s name was the camera allowed to watch? Amputations. Jenna lost two fingers on her right hand. Jenna lost her left leg just below the knee.

  That’s when Benny vomited. There, on the floor, beside his rocking chair. He stopped the tape, got some paper towels and spray cleaner, and just as he knelt to begin wiping up the mess, the phone rang.

  “Hey, Benny.”

  “Hi, Becky.”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  She wanted to come over.

  Benny said okay.

  • • • • •

  The next morning, Becky asked to borrow a T-shirt.

  “Top drawer,” Benny said from where he sat drinking coffee at the kitchen table, then he left for work. Later that night, after half a day up in the air, Benny stood behind the heat lamp at Nub & Honey’s, plating up a Captain’s Platter—fried perch, clam strips, deviled crab, shrimp, and scallops. When Becky walked through the back door, into the kitchen, he couldn’t begin to guess why. But she looked upset.

  Scotty, Jonette, and the others in the kitchen all tried to look as busy and uninterested as possible without leaving.

  “Where’d you get this?” she asked, reaching high to drop the thing from her clenched fist onto the stainless-steel shelf beneath the heat lamp. It rattled, then became still before Benny looked.

  Becky had been crying. Cried still, just a little.

  HUNG LIKE A HORSE. The button pin Benny found with the drowned girl’s stuff, with Jenna’s stuff, by the river that day so long ago. He’d kept it under the shirts and underwear in his drawer.

  “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

  “It’s yours, Benny. You tell me what it is.”

  Benny picked up the pin. Eyed it as if for the first time.

  “Oh,” he said. “I got this a long time ago. At the flea market. Why?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Becky, what the hell are you talking about?”

  Everyone had stopped what they were doing to watch the exchange.

  “Get the hell out of here!” Benny said to Scotty, but implied it to the rest.

  He came around the counter to Becky, hands out, palms up. A sign of innocence.

  “What’s with the pin? I told you I got it at the flea market.”

  “Jenna … Jenna had a pin like this,” Becky said, then fell against Benny and wept.

  “Gosh,” Benny said.

  “Do you think? …” Benny started, never intending to finish the question.

  “I don’t know.”

  Becky calmed down. Benny got her a glass of sweet tea and a little bowl of hush puppies, and she sat on a low stepstool and gathered her wits while Benny filled the orders.

  Benny thought everything was fine, crisis averted, until Becky got ready to leave.

  “Benny?”

  “Yep?”

  “Tomorrow, will you take me to the flea market? Show me where you found this?”

  So he did. He just picked a table near the entrance, told her he found it there. Of course, the seller had no idea what she was talking about. Didn’t remember Benny. Didn’t remember the pin. Didn’t even remember being in that spot by the entrance so long ago. Finally, Benny pulled Becky away. They stopped at the library to see the dryer-lint Jesus.

  And so it went for months, the summer’s heat collapsing in upon itself; thick and sticky air made movement, even breathing, an effort. Friendships, relationships, work, and play, everything slipped into a sort of automatic mode wherein the less done the better. Things slowed, grew static, then stopped. Things stagnated. Benny’s secret lay dormant, beneath his bed and in his heart. Whatever emotion, triggered by the secret, that drew Benny Poteat and Rebecca Hinkey together and propelled them forward waned.

  Stunned by the magnitude of what happened to Jenna Hinkey, by what he witnessed in the videotape he’d watched last, Benny couldn’t bring himself to view the final one. He’d watched her movies, movies that chronicled years of her life. Watched her say and do and outrage with her saying and doing. Watched, finally, her loss. Her breasts. Her fingers. Her leg. Even Benny knew, blind and selfish as he was, that he couldn’t begin to fathom the emotional and psychological toll those losses incurred. Had she any other recourse but to walk into the Toe River? Had Benny known what he took now as her motivation, would he have withheld the secret? Would he have entrenched himself so deeply into the dead girl’s family?

  Perhaps. Perhaps not. The questions were irrelevant.

  Twice more, Benny accompanied Becky to Egg Rock Pentecostal Church, sans Squat. Each time there, and each of the few other times he’d seen Deacon and Mrs. Hinkey, she in particular looked worse and worse. The uncertainty, the not knowing, wreaked havoc. Benny possessed the answers, possessed the power to change that. And, to his credit, he toyed with the idea of coming clean.

  “Let’s bow our heads together now,” Deacon Hinkey said from the pulpit. “And pray for the Lord’s mercy … Lord God, we come to you, sinners all…”

  And he went on for some time. Benny drifted in and out of attentiveness—he made a list of guns and calibers: bolt-action, pump shotgun, Colt .45, .44 Magnum, .38 Special, .30-06, muzzle-loader, derringer, M-16, Glock 9-millimeter, breech loader, .22—coming round fully as the deacon closed his prayer.

  “We pray this day for Esther Hinkey, a lamb of God strayed from the flock. We pray for her safe delivery back into the church, your family, Heavenly Father, and if that is not your will, we pray that she be delivered into the loving arms of Jesus Christ our Savior.”

  As far as Benny could tell, Jenna wasn’t delivered anywhere. And things went as things tend to go when denied or left unattended: quietly to hell.

  “Let’s go pick out costumes,” Becky said.

  August had mutated into September, which in turn kicked and spat its way right on into October. Halloween was upon them in a week’s time, and the requisite party at Gnogg’s.

  “Do you know what you want to be?” Benny asked, several answers occurring that he kept to himself.

  “No,” she said. “Not quite. Do you?”

  “Yep.”

  Benny let it hang, teasing.

  “So?”

  “Duct Tape Man.”

  Becky laughed.

  “You’re
kidding me, right?”

  “Nope,” he said, then went into his bedroom and came back with three fat silver rolls of the tape.

  “You’re a certifiable nut,” she said.

  “Can’t we just make something for you?” Benny said, the idea of going into a costume store with Becky striking him as freakish.

  “Come on, Benny,” she said, “Don’t be such a pooper.”

  He conceded, but Becky had to drive. However, by the time she—in back-and-forth and back-and-forth fashion—parallel-parked three blocks away from Cloak & Dagger, one block east of Independence Boulevard, near the old Coliseum, Benny wished he’d done the driving. Becky, had she realized that she’d parked directly in front of Buffalo Shoals Artificial Limb & Appliance Company, would’ve continued driving. In fact, she restarted the car and put it in drive before Benny stopped her.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “The store’s right down the street.”

  “Can’t we just park somewhere else?”

  “For fuck’s sake, why?”

  “You don’t have to curse, Benny.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “But what’s wrong with this space?”

  Becky turned, with exaggerated drama, and looked at the prosthesis store.

  Benny got it. But he couldn’t let her know.

  “You have a bad experience with a wooden leg?” he said, trying to make a joke.

  When Becky took a deep breath and held back a sob, Benny knew it was a bad joke.

  “What’s the matter, Becky?”

  “My sister,” she started. “Jenna … last year, Jenna got really sick.”

  Then Becky told him the whole story about the staph infection that had settled into Jenna’s bloodstream after her breast implants, and had gone undetected until too much damage was done. She lost both breasts right away.

  “They kept hoping … they kept trying to get it under control…”

  Becky told Benny everything. Benny told Becky nothing.

  “You guys still have no idea where she went?”

  Becky didn’t answer. Shook her head, no.

  “I bet she packed up and headed to California or something.”

  “Do you have a quarter?” Becky asked, climbing out of the car.

  Benny fished in the pockets of his jeans until he found some coins; by the time he fed the meter, Becky stood half a block away, staring into the window of an abandoned storefront. Wing-Wong’s Chinese Market.

  “Look!” she said, as Benny approached.

  “Fuck.”

  Flies. Hundreds, maybe thousands of flies, some living, many dead, clotted the wide sill and littered the smudged glass, fat black jewels basking in the sunlight.

  “That’s so disgusting,” Becky said, but watched and watched.

  Beyond the window, empty shelves receded into darkness at the back of die store.

  “Let’s go if we’re going,” Benny said, finally having to pull Becky away.

  Mercifully, the costume shopping was painless and easy. Rebecca would go as Ronald Reagan. Nothing too ambitious. She bought only the mask; she had a business suit at home.

  “I’ll make something for Squat,” she said. “If you want to take him.”

  “I’ll drive,” Benny said, to which Becky agreed.

  Independence Boulevard was infamous for its high traffic and frequent, often fatal, accidents. So far in town, though, the bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go nature of the traffic flow made the trip more annoying than dangerous. Not two blocks from Cloak & Dagger, they pulled up at a stoplight behind a pickup truck. Powder-blue, with Confederate flag decals at either end of a bumper that seemed much too chrome and much too big. A big tattooed man was behind the wheel. His passenger, a blond woman, sat as far away from him as possible in the cab of the truck. Benny couldn’t know that Becky didn’t trust blond women. She couldn’t know that he didn’t trust big men.

  As the traffic crept from one light to the next, it became apparent that the man and woman in the truck were arguing. He’d speak, or she, and in their faces, the words so full of anger they were almost tangible. In very short order, things escalated. She moved closer to the driver, began emphasizing her words by jabbing a pointed finger into his shoulder. He pushed her hard against the passenger door just as they pulled up to another stoplight.

  “What do you think they’re fighting about?” Benny asked.

  “He pushed her,” Becky said.

  They were both surprised when the woman got out of the truck, stood leaning into the open door screaming at the man.

  “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

  She slammed the door, turned, and walked down the sidewalk. A worn denim purse hung low and bumped against her hip with each angry step.

  “Good for her,” Becky said.

  But then the man got out of the truck, too.

  “You’ve got to help her, Benny.”

  “What?”

  The street was busy, and the line of cars grew behind them. By that time the light had turned green and people started in with their horns. They watched it happen, sort of like a bad movie, one you’re compelled to watch simply because you can’t believe someone would make a movie so bad. At that point things took on a surreal patina for Benny. The sky suddenly got clearer, more watery. The grass, deadened by the approach of winter, seemed to go green, to stand up a little straighter. The cars all got shinier, more round and more edgy at the same time. Every sound was isolated, its own moment in time. In that instant Benny knew that whatever happened between that man and woman would have ramifications, size unknown, in his life. Becky would see to it.

  The man caught his companion easily; she wasn’t running. He grabbed her wrist and began pulling her toward the truck. Benny couldn’t tell if he was talking or not, but she definitely was.

  “No! No! Goddammit, let me go, Derek! I’m tired of this shit!”

  “Do something, Benny!” Becky yelled. Then, at the man, “Stop that! You let her go!”

  She tried to put down the window, but Benny activated the childproof lock.

  “Benny!”

  “It’s not our business, Becky.”

  Then he hit her. Derek hit the woman. Benny couldn’t believe it. He’d been in lots of fights in his life, even smacked a woman once because she was drunk and swinging wildly at him, but he’d never seen, in real life, a man hit a woman so hard. Close-fisted and square on the mouth. The woman collapsed immediately into a frighteningly small pile at his feet. Benny thought of Saturday-morning cartoons, the character shattering into hundreds of irregular pieces. His stomach lurched.

  “You son of a bitch! You asshole! You son of a bitch!” Becky tried to get out of the car. She reached across Benny to pound on the horn. The man picked the woman up in his arms, lay her with ridiculous care and tenderness in the bed of the truck.

  “You chickenshit! You can’t do that!”

  Benny had never seen her so angry; didn’t know she was capable of it.

  After putting his unconscious companion in the truck bed, the man, much to Benny’s horror, walked toward their car. Toward Benny in the driver’s seat.

  “This is not our business,” he said to himself, to Becky.

  Benny put the car into reverse, backed at a sharp angle out of the line of traffic, into the opposite lane. He turned up over the sidewalk, through the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, and away.

  They drove in silence, until Benny tried to gauge the damage.

  “That was fucking intense,” he said.

  “Take me home.”

  “What? Is something wrong?”

  “Just take me home, Benny.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Nothing, Benny. That’s just it. You didn’t do anything.”

  Benny took Bec
ky home, as requested, where she, presumably, seethed over Benny’s inadequacies. Benny, too, acutely, spent the next few days bumping into, tripping over, and slogging through his shortcomings. But, in the end, Becky called, Halloween morning.

  “I made it,” she said.

  “What?” Benny asked.

  “Squat’s costume.”

  Benny had all but convinced himself that their date was off, that he’d go to the Halloween party alone, or maybe with Squat, going as Squat.

  “What is it?” he asked, skeptically, not sure that he or Squat could bear the humiliation.

  “Keep an open mind.”

  “What is it?”

  “Are you keeping an open mind?”

  “What is it, Becky?”

  Turns out, it wasn’t so embarrassing after all. She’d made the old dog a horse costume: a little saddle, a mane, and a tail.

  “Will you come over and help me with mine?” he asked.

  “You mean you can’t transform yourself into Duct Tape Man alone?”

  Things seemed okay for the moment. They were playful. Excited about the party. The lurking dread was kept at bay, for the moment.

  Becky came over after lunch. She showed Benny the horse costume, and Squat, apathetic as usual, allowed himself to be festooned.

  “Oh,” Benny said. “He looks pitiful.”

  “No, he looks cute.”

  Then, together, they wrapped Benny in the duct tape, a long-sleeved denim shirt and jeans providing the foundation for the superhero costume.

  “Not too tight,” he said. “It’ll cut off my circulation.”

  “Are you going to do anything with your face?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I could wear a ski cap. But that’ll be hot.”

  “How about face paint?”

  They both decided that would work best. Benny spent a little time trying to convince her to go as Reagan post-Alzheimers, but Becky thought that was too crude.

  Benny called Jeeter to find out what time he planned on showing up at the party. He was a little surprised to get the answering machine.