Jane Was Here

by Sarah Kernochan

  An idiot to her dying day.

  She probably knew all along, deep down, that Pearl’s father was the fat man who stocked convenience machines along the Interstate, Marly’s once-a-month customer until he moved to Michigan.

  She stares at the official envelope. Her last hope can’t be dead on arrival. There has to be another last hope.

  HOYT FLINGS OPEN the bedroom door. He already knows Jane won’t be there. There were too many signs when he got home: the kitchen door hanging open, her battery lantern gone. He picks up her purple anorak lying on the rug where she dropped it in her haste to leave.

  He shouldn’t have left her alone.

  Tossing the flier on his bed, he quickly changes into his hiking boots. He knows just where she’s gone. How much of a jump has she got on him: 30 minutes? 40?

  He wonders what the words mean on the flier: “a mental development disorder.” Is she retarded? Crazy? Or just eccentric? It’s plenty bizarre to live alone in the woods and move stones for fun. No matter: she asked for his help, and he refused, and now she needs rescuing.

  As he grabs a water bottle from the fridge, he hears a car careening to a stop outside.

  Seconds later, someone knocks.

  Marly stands there holding out his Magnum. “I’m returning this,” she mumbles, one side of her mouth constrained by the large bandage taped to her cheek.

  “Thanks, I’d appreciate your not pointing it at me.” He takes the revolver, checks the safety, then chucks it on the sofa. When he turns back, she has stepped inside, blocking his exit.

  “Marly, I’m on my way out.” He tries to get around her.

  “I brought your gun back ‘cause I’m scared, Hoyt.” She looks up at him with the abject expression that always makes him want to clock her. Except it looks like some surgeon got there first. “I’m afraid I’ll use it on myself.”

  “Look, can this wait? My niece is in trouble. It’s urgent.”

  Her hand flashes out, gripping his wrist. “This is urgent. I’ve got skin cancer. In a month I’m gonna be dead.”

  “Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry.” He fights off a wave of disgust. He has always been heartless when it comes to Marly; she pisses him off even more when she’s dying. He grits his teeth, faking sympathy, “God, that’s so tough. But why come to me?”

  “I just want to talk.”

  “Go talk to someone who gives a shit!” He shakes his arm from her grip. “You’ve got a daughter.”

  She narrows her eyes. “So do you.”

  “Not that again.”

  “I have the proof! I got the test results.”

  Her eyes skate away from his face; she’s lying. “Show me.”

  “I left it at home.” More eye wobbling.

  “Too bad, when you went to all the trouble to type it up. Probably lying about the cancer, too. Christ, now she’s going to cry. You’re such an asshole, Marly.”

  She flings herself on his sofa, weeping. “You have to take care of Pearl when I’m gone! There’s nobody else! Can’t you care about anyone but yourself?”

  “Least of all myself.” Hoyt snatches the bottle of gin off the bookshelf and sets it on the coffee table in front of her. “Boo hoo, have a drink. I’ll be back in an hour. Make sure you’re not here.”

  THE TRAIL BEGINS behind your house. At the end of it, continue straight uphill until a stonewall appears…

  The trail Jane mentioned begins behind his dump. Fear driving him, Hoyt climbs Rowell Hill by leaps and bounds. He has already forgotten Marly; there is only Jane, struggling up the hill somewhere above him, weakened by a wound that he made.

  Spotting the old rock wall, he stops to catch his breath, chest heaving.

  He hears a crackle in the underbrush, then silence. “Jane!” he calls.

  A flutter of wings answers, as a thrush bursts from cover, rocketing to a high branch up the hill. As if Jane is beckoning: I’m up here. Come find me.

  Hurrying alongside the wall, he realizes the miracle that is taking place. He cares about someone.

  That he hurt Jane has awakened the Catholic in him, his mother’s legacy, and now he is in the heady thrall of atonement. A lifetime of buried tenderness gushes up like the Holy Virgin’s spring at Lourdes, rushing from his pores, a sacred river carrying him to Jane…

  He arrives at the clearing. In his overexcited state, the shack seems to shine like the Grail. Except, as he creeps closer, it emits a powerfully noxious chemical smell.

  Hoyt puts his ear to the door. There are movements inside: faint metallic clanks, glass dings, a cough.

  He knocks lightly.

  The sounds abruptly cease.

  He pushes on the door, which opens a crack, then stops, latched from the inside. “Excuse me,” he calls through the crack, “I’m looking for a girl named Jane. Is she here?”

  Whoever is inside remains silent, pretending there’s no one home.

  Hoyt tries again. “Have you seen a girl in a white tank top and jeans?”

  “Yeah,” comes a gruff, impatient voice. “She went by.”

  Hoyt glances across the clearing, then sees where the wall picks up again, snaking through the trees. “Sorry to bother you.”

  He moves on. Behind him the voice says, “Don’t come back.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Jane’s energy is flagging fast. With every step the battery lantern in her grip weighs heavier. Without a hat or anorak, she is at the mercy of the sun; it has made a feast of her bare arms and face, inflaming her open wound under the dressing. As her head swims, her resolve wavers; she fears she will never get to the pine grove.

  She had planned to rest in the shack after her climb. But when she arrived, the open flip board told her a hunter, or a fellow fugitive, had claimed her shelter.

  Not wanting to alert him to her presence, she crept along the shack’s wall, ducking below the opening. Before she could reach the tree where her pink duffel was wedged, she heard a scuffling movement inside; footsteps approached the lookout. Panicking, she broke from cover and fled the clearing, aware that the stranger’s eyes watched her.

  She did not stop running until she reached the pond. Gasping for breath, she knelt to splash water on her face and arms. Her shoulder hurt terribly. Peeling away one side of the bandage, she cupped water in her hand to clean the wound.

  Now the bandage will not stick to her moistened skin. It flaps open as Jane walks on, her livid wound bared to the sun. The brooch fastened to her T-shirt seems to glow with heat, as if the twin roses are on fire.

  At length she reaches the place where the firs grow closer together; she leaves the wall to avail herself of their shadows, only to retreat when their sharp needles brush her exposed shoulder.

  She will have no place to sleep tonight.

  Another sanctuary lies ahead, she tells herself: the glade of white pines. Eden. She pleads with her body to soldier on, take another step, another. One more…

  The lantern is the first to fall. Then she is on her knees, collapsing to the grass, her strength entirely drained. A veil moves over her mind, as her blood pounds in her ears, faster, louder…

  JANE’S HEART BEATS faster as she redoubles her pace, gathering her pelerine tight about her shoulders. A low-hanging holly branch knocks her bonnet askew; straw and ribbons snag on the thorny leaves. She picks up her white skirt to hasten her stride. Her blood drums in her ears, the sound growing louder…

  No, not her blood drumming. A horse’s hoof beats.

  Peering through the branches, she can see Farmer Quirk’s grazing field beyond the stonewall, where the sheep are fleeing before a galloping horse. Its rider, coatless, shirt cuffs pushed above his elbows, hunches low over the big bay’s neck.

  Ellis.

  Someone has betrayed her.

  “Rebecca,” she breathes. Her jealous sister must have returned from the Founders’ picnic to find Jane gone, then rushed to tell Ellis.

  Desperate, Jane casts about for a place to hide. Behind her she hears the ho
rse’s sinister rhythm, the brief caesura and landing thump when it leaps the stonewall. She darts to where the trees are most dense, hoping the branches will be too enmeshed for a horse to follow. Instead they yield, thrashing as the rider forces his animal through. Jane dares not look back as she flees, the bay’s moist panting growing closer until she has no choice but to whirl around and face her pursuer.

  Ellis pulls his horse up short; it rears, bulging eyes showing white. Vaulting off the saddle, he advances, jaw set tight, teeth clenched. His dark curls swarm over his brow; his cheek is hatched red where pine needles and twigs have lashed it.

  Jane has never seen any human face so distorted with rage: as though eyes could pour fire.

  “Ellis, go back.” She tries to keep the fear from her voice, dropping her leather satchel as she steps back. “I have made my choice.”

  His hand shoots forward. With a blow of shocking force, he hurls her to the grass.

  Dropping to his knees, he straddles her waist. His fist closes around his mother’s brooch at her neck; he wrenches it away, ripping open her collar.

  Her mind flies up into the trees, hovering in bewilderment while, down on the grass, hands tug and tear at her clothes. She hears the sound of her own whimpering; feels the air startle her breasts as her chemise shreds away. Her white skirt rises, then descends over her face like a strange benediction.

  Awaking from her daze, she kicks out, blindly striking him with her fists.

  Ellis pins down her limbs with the length of his body and seizes a nearby rock, holding it over her face. “Do you want to live to see him again? If you fight, I will crush your head to powder.”

  She shuts her eyes and makes herself inert, a thing. She tries to hold a picture of Lysander in her mind—his gentle eyes, his arms held out to her in tender compassion, haloed like the Lamb of God—while Ellis pulls her legs apart. Making a blade of his fingers, he thrusts his hand inside her.

  SURELY IT IS OVER and Ellis has finished what he came to do. Her eyes are still closed, but his hot curses no longer spew in her ear; she can hear the inane chatter of birds; the horse grazing contentedly nearby, snatching grass with its teeth. She feels the wet flow of what she has lost on her thighs.

  She opens her eyes to the sight of Ellis sitting back on his heels, his expression one of triumph mixed with disgust. The length of his member is smeared with her blood; his hands and forearms are crimson with it.

  She starts to roll on her side, gathering her shame.

  But he is not done with her. Flinging Jane on her back, he takes her a second time—plunging still deeper, as if to mine a brighter blood.

  She remembers Lysander saying that God is on high, and beyond mortal reach. She would tell him now: there is God, too, in that low place deep within her, where God is without defense, where God is wounded, and weeps, and no comfort is possible.

  After he finishes, Ellis wipes his bloody hands on her skirt. “Now go to him. See if the pious hypocrite will have you now.”

  Jane stares at the sky. She hears Ellis’ boot clank in the stirrup, the creak of leather as he hoists himself onto the saddle. Then the horse wheels and rackets through the trees, carrying away her destroyer.

  She burns inside, a column of fire rising to her abdomen. Yet she must get up. Move forward, walk to safety before nightfall. Lysander is waiting in their secret spot.

  In Eden.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  It doesn’t take long for the gin to topple Marly. Within ten minutes she’s out cold on Hoyt’s couch, welcoming unconsciousness: the day has been almost too much to bear, with its steady march of humiliations.

  Then she is on top of a hill, astride a horse, her boots clamped to its flanks, and her trousers taut over her thighs. She touches her hand to her face where there is pain, encountering a hole gouged in her cheek, and whiskers, surprised to find that she is a man.

  She is a man gazing down at a valley below, where a cluster of shanty houses bursts into flames. She is a man listening, unmoved, as people scream, the fire spreading too fast for them to flee. A solitary figure appears, emerging unharmed from the conflagration: a beautiful young woman with auburn hair, climbing toward Marly. She wears a long, old-fashioned, white dress from another age. A spot of blood appears on the skirt, bright red on white, expanding rapidly. The woman’s eyes pierce her, the woman’s voice sounds in her mind: You did this to me.

  In defiance Marly replies silently, Only what you deserved.

  Ellis. The woman stares straight into her soul. I am taking you to die.

  I’m not going anywhere with you! Stay away.

  It’s time. You agreed to this.

  Never.

  Spurring her horse, Marly gallops down the slope to trample the woman. The horse turns into a car; Marly presses the pedal, bearing down.

  The woman stands her ground, impassive.

  Marly is almost upon her when she recognizes the face: the same one she saw that night on the road, when her headlights swept over a pale girl in an anorak coming toward her.

  Shrieking, Marly swerves the wheel.

  And crashes awake.

  Shaking from her nightmare, Marly raises herself from the depths of the couch. Her head wobbling on its axis, she doesn’t recognize where she is. There’s something hard she’s sitting on. Groping under her buttocks, her hand finds the contours of a gun, stuck between the sofa cushions where Hoyt tossed it.

  Hoyt said he’d be back by now. She was supposed to go home. She doesn’t want to go there. Doesn’t want to be here either—or anywhere. Even sleep is a minefield. Nowhere, that’s where she’d like to go.

  The anesthetic has worn off; her cheek throbs with pain. Another slug of Hoyt’s liquor should take the edge off it.

  But the gin seeps like venom into her tissues. Scorching vomit rises in her throat.

  She dashes to his bathroom and drops to her knees before his toilet, hurling into the water. A bitter taste of bile in her mouth, she rises unsteadily.

  She glimpses herself in the sink mirror: not as bad as she feared. Except for the gauze bandage: the adhesive tape tugs her eye down, making her look deformed. But the other side of her face is okay, if greenish in the dim bathroom light.

  There’s crusted sleep dribble at the corner of her mouth. She wets a corner of Hoyt’s towel and wipes the uncovered half of her face. Her hand moves irresistibly to the bandage, lifting up the corner to peek at the surgeon’s work.

  Where her cheek used to be is a crater, nothing left but glistening pus and blackened blood. Her mouth forms a second crater as she screams.

  I’m a monster!

  Another dash to the toilet, only dry heaves this time. Leaving the bathroom, she sits on Hoyt’s bed, trembling with horror.

  God, why do You hate me? What did I do to deserve all this?

  Tell me!

  She pats the bandage back in place, hiding the terrible hole in her face. But the image remains in her mind.

  She remembers the day she was cleaning the Ellis Suite at the Graynier B & B, and she glanced into a mirror, when a face appeared in place of her own: an old man with mutton-chop whiskers, a hole in one cheek gouged out. He glared accusingly at her, until—

  Monster! Marly’s mouth opens and she can’t stop screaming.

  When she has no voice left, her shaking subsides. A strange torpor sets in. Her body is an insignificant mass denting the bed, of no importance to anyone. Her mind hovers over the bed, dispassionately appraising her circumstances. Her eyes range over the room, Hoyt’s wall, Hoyt’s room, Hoyt’s bed. Discarded sneakers on the floor, a purple windbreaker tossed on the blue sheets…

  A crumpled flier lies beside her on the mattress. A familiar face stares up at her, beneath the headline “HAVE YOU SEEN HER?” She picks the flier up, looks closer: it’s the girl.

  The girl from the nightmare, the girl from the accident. The purple windbreaker flung onto the bed is the anorak she wore that night.

  Pain explodes in Marly�
�s head: the same agony she suffered after the crash, only much worse. Intolerable: she drops the flier, gasping, her hands clutching her skull.

  Something wet trickles down her temples from under her palms. She brings her hands away.

  They are drenched in blood. The red flows from under her fingernails, climbs up her wrists, toward her elbows.

  She can bear no more.

  There is only one last hope left.

  Marly retrieves the gun from the sofa. No hesitation: she drops her jaw, lodges the muzzle on the roof of her mouth, her finger curled tightly on the trigger. Deliver me from evil.

  She squeezes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “Jane.”

  The girl’s shallow breathing barely stirs the tendrils of hair trailing over her sunburned face. Hoyt kneels over her huddled form in the grass, brushing the strands from her forehead. Her skin is cool and damp to the touch: feverish. Her suppurating wound is laid bare on her shoulder, the bandage fallen away.

  He jostles her gently. “Jane.”

  Her eyes fly open, wide with fear; she recoils, one arm flailing to ward him off: “Don’t touch me!”

  “Easy, easy. I won’t hurt you.”

  Dizzy and disoriented, she blinks rapidly, as if unable to bring him into focus.

  “It’s Hoyt.”

  She struggles to her feet. Facing uphill, she goes back to stumbling along the rock wall. Hoyt overtakes her. “Where are you going?” “Eden…I…to Eden…” Her words are jumbled. He grasps her good arm. “This is insane. You’re delirious.”

  “I have to go!” She writhes in his grip. Her strength surprises him.

  “Jane! Listen to me. You need help.”

  The fight leaves her. Hoyt sits her on the wall, then rummages in his knapsack for the water bottle and antibiotics. “If that thing gets infected, you’ll wind up back in the hospital, and getting sunstroke’s not going to help matters. I’m amazed you got this far before collapsing. You’re made of some stern stuff, I’ll give you that.”