“It ain’t no use,” Dayna said.
“Nope,” said Perry.
Things hadn’t gone his way before, plenty of times. Sometimes it took awhile for the girl to warm up to him, trust her emotions. He’d even given up a time or two, walked away empty-handed and disappointed. But he felt like it was too soon to make that kind of a call.
The girls were turning away from him now, still laughing a little. Dayna was shaking her head like he was a lost cause.
“Hey now,” he said. “It ain’t polite to leave the table before you’re excused. I want to talk to you.” He could hear how firm he sounded, how adult, but he hoped it came off as macho.
“What do you want to say?” Perry asked, only half-turned back toward him. “Might as well say it now, ’cause I ain’t going nowhere with you to hear what it is.”
With her body turned that way he could see the beginnings of a roll of flesh at her belt line, just a hint at what was to come if she wasn’t careful. Jamey wanted to warn her of it, warn her that she’d get older and her body would get soft and no matter how hard she tried she’d never be young again, never be as young as even one second ago. He wondered did she get lonely for her past yet, did she? Even if it wasn’t all that great of a past. Even if it was a hell. It was still a bundle of days gone.
“I like you,” he said. Sometimes when it had gone bad he’d had to lay it all out on the table, fan out his cards face up and name them one by one. This felt different. Something about how rusty he was. Something about all those days gone by. Something about Jim, and how much he wanted the man to like him, but also how much he wanted to take a fishing hook to his belly. This time felt more raw. He felt himself get hard, another card.
“And I want to be with you,” he went on. It seemed like such a simple thing. He had this difficulty in his pants, this stiff offering, and she only had to take it. Accept it like a birthday gift, only there wasn’t even no ribbon to have to unbow. He took a step toward her.
“He’s got a fucking boner,” Dayna said. “Look!”
He only wanted to quiet her down, only wanted Perry to listen to him and not her, only wanted to place a hand on her arm so she could feel that he was a human being, not a monster, not a stranger. A friend. “That’s just my pants,” he started to say, his touch firm on Dayna’s forearm, his own dry hand soaking up the cold and wet of her, and okay, he pushed her a little, nudged her really. Move back, move away from here, you’re ruining it, can’t you see you’re ruining it?
But it was like a shock went through her, a jolt, his hand making her seize up, grunt an unwomanly unh, the arm he touched yanked up and away, her other arm going around the back of her and returning with the blackest gun he’d ever seen. With a gun. A gun. He repeated the words to himself, trying to believe his eyes. A gun! A chop of a laugh burst from him, maybe he was hoping it was a joke, maybe he was beyond his own control now. The whole thing felt beyond real. Felt like something he was watching. Next on the reel was Perry’s face, her mouth in an open rictus, so it was a joke! He reached out his arm again. He had the urge to stick his fingertip in the barrel hole, plug it up, show them he was a good sport.
Dayna lunged toward him, and then he was in the air, as weightless as if he was in the water, windmilling his arms like he was attempting the backstroke. He felt the gun fly off his finger. He tried to locate its arc with his eyes, could only take in the blurred wipe of the walls of the quarry, growing taller and taller, the ledge he’d just been standing on getting farther and farther away from him. He was falling. His underwear filled with the warm liquid of his bowels, finally, every part of him beyond his control now. He thought of his momma, the fallen cakes of her breasts. Whose hand on his pants front, which momma? He knew he’d land soon. His brain allowed one final thought, and it broke his heart before the rocks broke his body: Why so much silence? Why weren’t they screaming?
SHE’D PUSHED HIM, hard, letting go of the gun and jamming her hands into his chest, getting ready to charge him if he came back at her, but his boot caught on a root and he tumbled backward. Right off the ledge. He was there and then gone. It wasn’t two seconds before she heard him land, a clattering and then a wet thump. He hadn’t even yelled. The gun had gone over with him, stuck to his finger. The stupid gun! Baby Girl felt like someone had wiped the spiderwebs from her eyes. Everything seemed bright, the wet trees and the rocks as crisp as if someone had painted them there and then outlined them in black. A good news morning is how Charles liked to word it. Only it wasn’t the morning and there wasn’t no good news.
A clattering and then a wet thump. All because she pushed him. All because she’d pulled the gun. All because she’d brought the gun in the first place. All because of her gaping ache. All because of her bald head, her fleshy belly, her ugly self. He hadn’t even yelled. Before she knew it Baby Girl was bent over, upchucking into the dirt. A wiggling pool of bile formed at her feet. She hadn’t eaten anything since the day before.
“Is he dead?” The words stung her mouth. She spat. “You think he’s dead?” Another gurgling mouthful tumbled forth.
“I don’t know,” Perry was saying. “I don’t know. It’s hard to say. He could be alive. He could be.”
When Baby Girl felt sure she wouldn’t heave again, she straightened, looked at Perry. Only then did she notice it was still raining, Perry’s face streaming, her eyes blinking away the water. The rain would wash away the bile. Maybe it could wash away what she’d done. But Perry was right. He could be alive down there. The thought was enough to compel them both to the edge to see for themselves.
He was on his side, his arm flung out like he was reaching for something, his back arched. His legs were together, his feet one on top of the other, as neat as peanut shells, though he’d lost a boot. He’d have looked like he was asleep but for his head, which was facing up, his neck just a rope of jelly now.
There wasn’t any blood that she could see, and Baby Girl knew it was probably like someone took a meat mallet to his insides, everything a mush now, blood running wherever, all dams burst but the dam of his skin. That’s how it was with Charles, his head like a thick balloon swelling with blood.
She didn’t see the gun. “Where did the gun go?” she heard herself ask. She had wanted to say, We need to do something for him, but the thing about the gun had come out instead. Her voice as toneless as a bee’s whine. I didn’t know! she wanted to scream. It’s not my fault! How could I know? I take it back! I take it back! She should push Perry over, too, and then jump in after. Dive headfirst so her brain would go splat.
“Look,” Perry said, pointing into the quarry with all the fingers on both hands, like she was frozen that way, like she was about to dip them into a vat of something, or was showing off her nails. Baby Girl looked. The socked foot was pedaling fast. The fingers on his flung arm were fluttering, like he was typing in his sleep.
“He is,” Perry said. “He’s alive.” She sounded fascinated, lured in, like she was narrating her own dream.
“We have to go down there,” Baby Girl said. “We have to get him.” When Charles had his accident he’d lain by the side of the road for ten minutes before someone finally stopped to help him. People had come forward later to say they’d seen him but figured someone else had called for help already. But no one had, his brain swelling the whole time. When the paramedics finally arrived his head looked like it was near to popping. In the hospital they’d opened up his skull, stuck tubes in, the blood they drained out as black as ink.
There was a winding, rocky path that could get you to the bottom, and Baby Girl started walking toward it. It was Charles down there, Charles with the pulled taffy neck and the flung arm and the eyes that couldn’t look nowhere but up. The thought had her nearly running.
“No,” Perry shouted. “Don’t.”
“You think we should call nine-one-one instead?” Baby Girl asked. She hadn’t thought of that until now. She’d just wanted to be down there, holding his ruined head in her
hands, calming his pedaling leg as best she could. Like he’d wake up just fine if someone came to see him. Calling 911 seemed like something she’d heard of, not something she could actually do.
“No,” Perry said. “I think we should go back to the car and drive home. Get out of this rain. Get out of these clothes.”
“We can save him,” Baby Girl said.
“He’s dead, Dayna.”
Perry hadn’t said her real name in a long time.
“He’s dead, and he was trying to hurt us, and it was self-defense.” Perry’s hair was coming out of its ponytail, tentacles of wet hair clinging to her face. She looked pale, drowned. Ugly.
Baby Girl looked again. The leg had stopped.
“We can’t just leave him down there,” Baby Girl said, but she felt herself weakening. What could they do? Drag him up? Then what? She let herself remember him lunging, remember the fear she felt. Remembered that it was she who’d pushed him. Her fault, self-defense or not.
“We’ll go home and decide what to do from there,” Perry said. She backed up a couple tentative steps, keeping her eyes on Baby Girl. Turned. Walked toward the car.
Baby Girl followed.
THE TRUTH WAS PERRY WAS ELECTRIC with the horror of what had happened. There Jamey went, over the edge, over and over and over, nothing to be done. She hadn’t meant … but that was a useless thought. Of course she hadn’t meant it. Tons of shit she hadn’t meant, but it had all happened anyway.
Another truth: she didn’t want to have this with Baby Girl. They were done with each other, it was clear, would have gone their separate ways right as soon as Baby Girl dropped Perry off back at the trailer. Until now. Now they had this secret to share.
And so already Perry was trying to make it something else. Something tidy. He’d wanted to hurt them. He’d fallen, he was probably dead. He was not who he said he was. It was an accident.
She could even feel herself wanting to shout something like Get over it! at Baby Girl. Could feel herself actually believing it was nothing to get upset about.
But there was no need to yell, Baby Girl was right behind her, both of them nearly at the car now.
“Where are we going?” Baby Girl asked once they were inside.
“Just drop me home,” Perry told her. Her voice came out in a croak.
“I thought we were going to decide what to do.”
“We have decided,” Perry said. She looked out the window, away from Baby Girl.
“You’ve decided,” Baby Girl said. But she started the car, didn’t say nothing more. The wipers clearing the windshield, time already passing.
Perry pulled down the visor to look at herself in the mirror, something she always did when she felt shaken loose, something she had started doing back when she had first had sex, with a man who worked at the same shop her momma did. He was nineteen and Perry a few weeks into being fourteen. She’d watched him whenever she went to visit her momma after school. He had a genuine fang and a tattoo of something sharp peeking below his shirtsleeve. Later she found out it was a quill, quill, a word she didn’t know until he’d said it. She’d wanted to laugh but hadn’t. And he’d watch her, too, black glinty eyes on her while he mopped or stocked the cold case.
It was the first time Perry felt how curiosity could shift, black and churning and alive, into desire.
He’d called in sick one day, which meant Perry’s momma had to go in, and he came by the trailer when Perry was home alone from school. “Hey, show me your bedroom” was all he said. They’d done it quickly on the top of her bedcover, him saying “Ready?” at the exact moment he’d pushed into her, the pain as jagged and bright as a small explosion, though there’d barely been any blood. Then again in the shower, which Perry had pretended to enjoy as much as he did, but really it just felt practical, like some kind of a procedure. Easy. And the way he looked at her during. Bow down, she nearly said, and she knew he would have.
After he left, Perry looked at her face in her momma’s hand mirror. She looked the same as she always had. It was a letdown. Nothing had changed, only everything had.
But when she looked in the mirror now she saw that she was different. Smudge of Myra. Faded and fading. And then she allowed the thought she allowed whenever she felt like she might be disappearing: Least I ain’t Baby Girl. Bloom of relief. She could get through this, past it. No more than a tick on her timeline. Just had to stay strong till the next tick.
Plus, it hadn’t been her who’d pushed him. There was always that: it hadn’t been her.
TONIGHT HE’D APOLOGIZE to Herman. Make it clear that he didn’t take kindly to being asked about his daughter by a man in prison for taking one alive, leaving her naked and mostly dead in a farmer’s hayfield. But Jim knew that if you treated prisoners like animals, they tended to act like exactly that. If you treated them like they were human beings, with real emotions and brains, they’d act the part.
Herman was curled in his cot like always, hands in his armpits, facing the wall. Jim rapped on the cell bars with his nightstick.
“Hey,” Jim said, trying to force some kindness into his voice, but still the word landed like an embroidered turd.
Herman uncurled, lay flat on his back. Jim took it as a good sign. He saw that Herman’s bandage was smaller now, and it didn’t wrap his head. Another good sign.
“Herman, I’d like to apologize for jabbing you in the eye. It wasn’t right. I should have explained to you that you don’t talk to no one about their kin rather than putting the hurt on you.”
The man seemed to be listening, his wild eye moving side to side.
“Okay?” Jim said.
“You didn’t let me finish,” Herman said. There was a whine in his voice, something no grown man should resort to. It turned Jim’s stomach.
“Go on, then,” Jim said. “But mind yourself.”
“I asked after your daughter for a reason,” Herman said. “And it wasn’t ’cause I wanted to scare you, or have something to think about at night. I’m a changed man now that I have a personal relationship with Jesus.”
A personal relationship. The prison chaplain, a lady with short bushy hair, always talking to the men about becoming buddies with God. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes the men tried it on and took it off like a pair of pants. Jim started to feel impatient.
“Go on, then,” he said again.
“One of the men used to be in here knows your daughter. Been talking to her. Working on her. You know what I mean?”
“Perry?” Jim hadn’t meant to say her name out loud. Didn’t want none of the men knowing it. But there it was. Saying it then felt like a conjuring, like he’d whispered her name right into a demon’s ear and then pointed the way.
“I don’t know her name,” Herman said, rubbing his wild eye till it squished. “All’s I know is Jamey been talking to someone he claims is your daughter. Got himself online and found her there.”
“Jamey?” Saying that name aloud pricked his heart with fear.
“You remember Jamey,” Herman said. “Looked like nothing, said nothing, was nothing?” Herman laughed. “He got out some months ago. Been writing to me now and again. Lives with his momma.”
Jim didn’t remember a Jamey but knew he could find out who he was easy enough. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked the man. “What are you trying to get in return?”
“Nothing,” Herman said. “Jesus Christ told me I gotta dump all the trash, clear the land and start over. I know I got a affliction that’s out of my control, so I got to give it to God.”
“Jamey,” Jim said again. A carousel was starting up in his mind, real slow but gaining speed. Music and lights. Perry as a girl, Perry now, Perry on the computer, a black shadow creeping up behind her.
“Yeah,” Herman said. “He was in here ’cause that high school girl stabbed him with his own knife and got away. He told me they found him with his finger in the wound like a stopper, claiming a raccoon got him. And since there wasn’t no penetratio
n on his part, excuse me for saying the word penetration, it’s a trigger word for me that I am to avoid, but anyway since there wasn’t none of that he got a kiddie sentence and left here with most of his life still before him. But you need to know he’s got intentions on your daughter. Perry.”
Now the carousel was deafening, the lights flashing wildly, Jim’s heart like a tennis ball against the side of a house. He knew he should feel afraid for her. But all he felt was rage. Stupid, so fucking stupid. A man should look forward to going home. When he got there he’d make her delete her Facebook, change her phone number. Maybe he and Myra would look into a new school for her as well. And he’d find this Jamey and destroy him.
But first he unlocked the cell door, stood over Herman with his nightstick raised. Even in his blindness the man recurled, protecting himself. “Thank you for telling me,” Jim said. “If I ever hear you saying her name again, you’ll wish for the day I got you in the eye.” Jim hit the side of his bed, over and over, at first to scare the man, and later he felt ridiculous for doing it, it seemed like something a bad actor would do in some TV show Myra might watch, but right then it had just felt so good.
A COUPLE ON THEIR WAY to a dark spot on the far side of the quarry, vibrating with desire like two tines of a tuning fork, the condom in the boy’s pocket like a brand on his leg, didn’t even look down. A stray dog saw but didn’t know what to make of it. Barked once, got spooked by its echo, moved on. A boy who’d just made a slingshot, knew where he could get some real mean rocks, asked his daddy later that night did he know there was a mannequin all twisted up at the bottom of the quarry? “Ain’t that something,” his daddy answered. Cars drove in, parked, couples argued and kissed and swatted at each other. Four airplanes and a helicopter flew over. Then there were days of rain. Days and days. No one went to the quarry, hardly anyone went out long enough to make a difference. When the sun returned so did the boy, something about that mannequin kept occurring to him. (Did mannequins have gray skin sometimes? It niggled at him, a splinter in his brain.) But when he looked down all he saw was a shoe, and he couldn’t even be sure it was the same kind of shoe the mannequin wore. Someone had already got the mannequin, the boy decided, took it home to live in the basement or took it to the dump to be tossed in a pile. He felt sad about that, but only for a moment, because then his eye fell on the perfect rock, round but jagged, just heavy enough to sail through the air but still cause some real damage. His mouth watered, thinking of a broken window, a crack in a windshield, or maybe, if he felt mean enough, a bruise. He forgot about the mannequin, never thought about it in his waking moments ever again.
Ugly Girls Page 15
