by Leah Stewart
“Why did you leave him in the yard?” I say. “Didn’t you know he’d run off?”
“I thought he’d be okay.” David shrugs, nudging the dog with his foot. “Goddamn dog,” he says, grinning. “You goddamn dog.”
We are silent. I’m waiting to see if he’s going to ask me what I did today. David doesn’t like it that I’m on the police beat. He was happier when I still wrote stories about senior citizen swimming meets and small town arguments over zoning.
“Stupid dog,” he says, tugging on Lou’s ear. Watching him, I find myself wrestling with an urge to provoke him.
“David,” I say slowly. “You remember me asking if you knew Allison Avery?”
He nods.
“I was asking because I stood over her dead body yesterday morning. I was this close,” I say. I slide a couple feet away from him and reach my arm out to touch his knee. “This close. Somebody picked her up, raped her, ran her over with her car, and left the body.” He winces, lifting his cigarette to his mouth. “The rest of the day I spent talking to the people she knew, her friends, her family, and watching them cry. Some of them didn’t even know before I told them what had happened to her. Last night I watched a cop stop a man from shooting his wife.” I tap his knee with my finger, trying to decide how much to tell him about that man, the gun he pointed at me through the window.
He drops his cigarette and rubs it out with his foot. Then he reaches his arm around my shoulders and slides me back up against him. “I don’t like to think about you around guns,” he says quietly. “It scares me.”
I say, “What did you do today? You dealt with the pretty girl singer from Guys and Dolls. You probably went out to lunch and talked about what you think of their guitar sound.”
David stiffens, dropping his arm. “Well, maybe tomorrow I can arrange for some corpses at the office,” he says. “Maybe then my job will be as important as yours.” He picks up the pack and grabs another cigarette.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Oh?” He lights the cigarette. “What are you saying?”
“Forget it,” I say. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
Lou raises his head and looks at us, his eyebrows dancing up and down with worry. “It’s okay, boy,” David says, his voice low, soothing. I think about a postcard David sent me one summer, when he was on vacation with his friends. Every sentence ended with an exclamation point. The beach is gorgeous! We went swimming! I miss you! Only the “Love, David” went without one.
“I had a bad day,” I say. “Let’s not fight.”
David nods, bringing his cigarette to his lips. I put my hand on his thigh and play imaginary piano keys. “Für Elise,” the right-hand part, which is all I remember from five years of lessons. The redheaded woman walks by with her dog again, on her way home.
A radio is playing in the house across the street. By the look on David’s face I can tell he’s trying to hear what the song is. “Okay,” he says absently. Then he smiles. He recognizes the song. He starts to play the drum part on my leg. I close my eyes and let my irritation go. The warm air wraps around me like a blanket and David’s fingers dance up and down my thigh. I try to imagine us, like this forever, but I can’t make it seem real.
The dog’s chest rises and falls with his heavy breathing. David sings a melody without words. A breeze slips across my face. Then I say I’m going to bed.
“Okay,” David says, “I’ll be there in a second.” I kiss him on the cheek, stand up, and go inside, where it’s cool, and everything David owns is neat in its proper place.
6
There is nothing more important in this city than crime. It’s always there, running its current through your body, like the high electric hum of computers and fluorescent lights.
There can’t be anyone in this city who doesn’t know that Allison Avery is dead, who doesn’t know the way she died. It led the morning news on every channel again today. They picked up on my hundredth-victim line, showed the spot where flowers and candles and scribbled prayers now cover up the bloodstains on the ground. You all know, this is the modern world and its dangers, and you touch your own skulls, thinking how fragile they must be, no matter how solid they might feel beneath your hands.
I’m sitting at a round table with seven men in jackets and ties, poking powdered eggs with a fork. I’m listening to them trade stories—who was shot in what neighborhood, which stores have been robbed. This is the Concerned Citizens for a Better Memphis breakfast, where the mayor comes to address the problems that concern them, which is to say he comes to talk about crime. Waiters quietly refill our water glasses as the mayor takes his napkin from his lap and stands to approach the podium. A hush falls over the room. I reach for my notebook.
The mayor is a good-looking man, tall and strong-featured, his skin a deep, rich brown, and as he steps up to the podium I note how nicely his silver-gray suit hangs on his shoulders. When he begins to speak his voice rolls out over the room like a flag unfurling. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming here today.” He takes his time, scanning the room, and for a moment his eyes rest on my face. He smiles as though he knows me, and automatically I smile back. “Let me begin by saying that I know you all love this city as much as I do, and that, loving it, you are in pain every day over the dangers that threaten it.”
Dangers, I write down idly. He goes on to push his plans for revitalizing the downtown, for annexing parts of Shelby County, and then he comes to the budget, and from the budget to increasing the police force, which brings us back around to crime.
He says, leaning in close, “There is no more fundamental concern than our safety and the safety of our children. I won’t stand up here and say that it won’t cost money. But I want you to know that money won’t be wasted. We’re going to make Memphis a safer city. We are going to look the criminals in the eye, and say to them with a unified voice, ‘We will fight back.’ ” He pauses for applause, which bursts forth as though everyone here has simply been waiting for the chance.
“You all read in the paper the terrible story about a young lady brutally killed in one of our public parks, already the hundredth murder victim in our city this year. A promising young person, daughter of an esteemed physician, working in medical care. Who knows how many lives she might herself have saved if she had been allowed to live? We’ve all seen too many of these stories, about people from all walks of life, young and old, black and white. We must refuse to let those deaths be in vain. We will let the tragedy of that young woman’s murder drive us to strike back at those who took her life, who have taken so many of our city’s young lives.”
He looks at me again as he says this. I can feel his eyes on me as I copy down his words in my notebook, and I wonder if he knows that Allison Avery is mine.
• • •
Afterward I wait patiently while the mayor shakes hands, and smiles, and thanks people. I page through my notes, wanting to ask for details, how many new officers, and where.
“Mayor,” I say when it’s my turn, “I’m Olivia Dale, from the newspaper.”
“Yes, Miss Dale,” he says, taking my hand. “I’ve been seeing your byline. You’ve done a fine job with that poor young woman’s death. A terrible, tragic story.”
“Thank you,” I say, feeling a flush rise in my cheeks.
Another man approaches, and the mayor turns toward him, still holding my hand. “Charles Franklin,” he greets him. “I want you to meet Olivia Dale, the young woman who has had the sorrowful task of writing about Miss Avery’s death.” He passes my hand to Charles Franklin, who squeezes it and says, “A tragedy. A young, innocent life cut down like that.”
As the mayor turns away, Charles Franklin goes on to tell me about a story he thinks I should write, an inner-city program run by a reformed drug dealer now looking to give kids a place to go after school. I make a note of it, thinking I’ll pass it on to Neighbors, and then I look around for the mayor. He’s in the center of a cluster of people, w
ith more waiting outside the circle. I give up. I’ll call his office for the details.
Heading for the door, I see a man walking purposefully toward me, his hand extended. He looks at me as though he knows me, but I can’t place him. I keep a smile fixed on my face, searching my mind for his name. “Miss Dale,” he says when he reaches me, taking my hand. His voice is deep, his grip firm.
“Hello,” I say, trying to keep the uncertainty out of my voice. “How are you?”
“I’m well, thank you,” he says. He pauses, letting go of my hand. “I’m the Reverend James Freeland. You and I met last year, at the ground breaking for my new church.”
“I remember,” I say, relieved. I drove around in a panic for half an hour before I found the place and climbed out of my car. The rain was coming down so hard the ink ran down the pages of my notebook when I tried to take notes. All the congregation in their Sunday clothes stood huddled together under umbrellas singing “To God Be the Glory” while the women’s heels sank into the mud. “Is the church finished?”
“Not yet, not yet,” he says. He rocks back on his heels, as though to physically change the course of our conversation. “You know I am the president of Concerned Citizens for a Better Memphis.”
“Yes,” I say, though I didn’t.
“As the mayor says, one of the biggest concerns for the people of this city is crime, as you yourself are well aware. I appreciated very much the article you wrote about our church, and I believe you would be interested in a meeting we’re having tomorrow night.”
“Reverend, I’m not sure . . .,” I start.
“Miss Dale,” he says gently, looking into my eyes. “Are you or are you not concerned about crime in this city?”
“I am,” I say.
“Because I believe it is just as important to write about what the people are doing to fight back as it is to write about the times when we lose.”
“All right,” I say. “I’ll be there. But, Reverend,” I call after him as he turns to go, “if a crime does occur, I’m afraid I’ll have to miss the meeting.”
“Then we will hope one does not,” he says.
At the police station, the first news I hear is that a dog carried a woman’s head onto a playground in a poor black neighborhood and dropped it at the feet of two children. “If it rains, it pours,” Peggy says with a sigh when I call to tell her I’m going to the crime scene.
Driving down Vance, I pass old hotels turned into low-income housing and enormous, abandoned houses with their paint faded or flaked off, shards of glass where there should be windows. All these old Memphis houses, coming down slow, crumbling into dust. Two black women in sundresses sit on one of the porches, too hot even to fan themselves, watching their children splash in a wading pool in the yard. If I traveled the other way down Vance, I would come to the part of Midtown near the Annesdale Historic District, where rich white people sip iced tea on their wraparound porches, sitting on swings beneath the green profusion of hanging plants.
Turning into the housing projects, I hear on the scanner that the police have found the woman’s body in a nearby Dumpster. This time, I know I won’t get close enough to see anything, and I’m not sorry.
Each building here is like an outsized brick with doors and windows, and the whole place is just brick after dull red brick, kids sitting on the tiny porches, riding old bikes over patches of dead grass and dirt, down streets lined with beat-up and ancient cars. Getting out of the car, I see that the area around the small playground is crowded with the cops and the curious. The nearby fertilizer refinery fills the air with the smell of chemicals and manure.
I spot a cluster of people and head over to see a circle surrounding two children, a young woman standing behind them with a protective arm around each. “I’m from the paper, ma’am,” I say to the woman. “Are these the children?” She nods. I ask if she’s the mother—yes—and if she minds my asking them a few questions. It would be so helpful, I say, and would only take a minute of their time. She nods.
I squat in front of them. The little boy is wearing a bright yellow windbreaker and clutching a toy car close to his chest. The girl twists the bottom of her striped shirt round and round in her hands. “Can you tell me what happened?” I ask.
The smaller child is shaking and can’t even look at me. He looks guilty and frightened, his eyes screwed shut as if he’s flinching from punishment. His sister says, “It was bleeding,” in an awed voice. “The Tuckers’ dog had it in his mouth.”
“What did you think when you saw it?” I ask her. She looks at me, chewing on her lip. “I know what it’s like,” I tell her as an image comes to me of a head rolling over blacktop, dark hair flying. “I’ve seen things, too.”
She nods, and her face clears a little. We understand each other. “I thought it was a joke,” she says. “But it was a real head.” She shakes her own head. “Poor lady. Now she’s dead.”
“Did you know the lady?” I ask.
She nods. Her mother says, “She’s from this neighborhood. Her name’s Bernadette Smith.” She points to a woman standing silent and expressionless inside the moving crowd. “That’s her sister Janice.”
The little boy suddenly bursts out, “I touched it.” His voice trembles on the edge of hysteria. “I touched her face.” He wails, and his mother bends to scoop him up. I can imagine it, the way his little voice shook when he said he wasn’t scared to touch it, the way his nervous laughter erupted into screams when he pushed his fingertips against that skin and felt it give.
“He didn’t know,” the little girl says. “We didn’t think it was real.” She wraps a protective hand around her brother’s ankle. “It’s okay,” she says, turning her face up to his. “You didn’t know.” He shudders against his mother’s shoulder.
The mother says, “We have got to get out of this neighborhood.” I don’t know if she’s talking to me, her children, or herself. She hugs her little boy close. How frightening it must be to have these horrors thrust upon you. At least I choose to see the things I see.
The little girl looks at me calmly, waiting for me to say something.
“Is there anything else you can tell me?” I ask her.
She thinks for a minute. She says, “I’ve seen a lot of bad things. That was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
Bernadette Smith’s sister Janice stands with her hands in the pockets of her jeans, staring so hard at something that I involuntarily turn to follow her gaze. There’s nothing to see but the street, the playground, the crowd kept back by the yellow police tape. “Ma’am,” I say. “I’m terribly sorry about your loss. Would you mind if I asked a question or two about your sister?”
“Go ahead,” she says.
“Do you have any idea who could have done this?”
Slowly she moves her eyes to my face, then looks away again. She shrugs. “My sister was a prostitute,” she says. “She was a junkie and a prostitute, and she’d been on the streets about ten years now. I’m the one raising her kid and holding down a job. I don’t know who killed her, somebody she fucked, somebody she owed money. The way she lived, something bad was bound to happen. Just a matter of when.”
I write that down: just a matter of when. Watching the woman’s face, I wonder at what point her life diverged from her sister’s, so that her sister is dead, and she is alive. I ask, “What made her become a prostitute?”
Inside her pockets, Janice Smith’s hands ball into fists. “Bernadette made a lot of bad choices,” she says. “Ever since we were kids. I feel sorry for those two.” She gestures toward the two children with her head. “Having to see that. Probably see it in their dreams.”
“Did Bernadette work for someone?” I ask. “A pimp? A boyfriend? Anyone she would’ve been fighting with?”
“Bernadette had a lot of boyfriends,” she says, putting a sneer into the word. “There’s nothing I can tell you.” She moves her eyes back to my face. “It was just a matter of when,” she says again. “Just a matter o
f when.”
As I walk away I turn my head to take another look. The area just inside the crime tape is thick with cops, two of them laughing together, one slapping the other on the shoulder. Passersby stop and turn their path toward the crowd, their mouths slowly coming open, shaping the words “what happened, what’s going on.” Felicia Fitzgerald from Channel 2 is speaking into a microphone, her brow carefully furrowed with concern as she glances down at some notes in her hand, out of view of the camera. In the midst of the crowd, unmoving, stand the mother, holding her children close, and Janice Smith, her body drawn up tight and her face hard, absorbing yet another blow.
Back in the newsroom I read my notes over and over, trying to find a quote I can use. Finally I settle on the things the little girl said, on the mother saying she had to get out of that neighborhood, on Janice Smith saying she felt sorry for the children. I add in the statement from the cops. Then I sit typing in “just a matter of when” and deleting it, once, twice, three times. Finally I leave it in and send the story to Peggy.
Later Peggy comes to my desk to ask me to edit the story to a one-inch news brief. I cut it bare. Body found. Known prostitute. Police investigating. One short paragraph is all this death is worth.
In the afternoon I write an obituary and spend some time on the phone with the highway patrol, checking fatalities. Two teenagers died last night in a drunk-driving accident. I hate to write 18 or 19 after a dead person’s name. When I look at the obits, I scan them for ages. On good days everyone who died was over sixty. If the dead person is under fifty, I’ll skim the obit, and if she’s my age, I’ll slow down and read it word for word, looking for cause of death, relieved if it says “after a long illness.” Those deaths are expected and couldn’t have been prevented by one less drink at the dinner table, one turn of the steering wheel.
Allison Avery’s picture is propped up against my computer. The boy kisses her cheek, the beer bottle tilts in her hand. I watch her as though she’s going to kiss that boy, to finish that beer, to wink at me, shape her lips around my name. Somewhere there must be a picture of me from college, looking just like this, half-drunk and flushed with giddy joy. I page through my notes and make a list. Pretty. Hard worker. Singer. Thief. Slut. Sweet. Young. Churchgoer. Pothead. Drunk. Tease. I wonder what pulls these things together to make a person, if it’s only skin and bone.
