Flying Shoes

by Lisa Howorth

  By midnight, when the bars let out, the frat boys would be back in the tub again, the music with the n-word and worse broadcast across the neighborhood, punctuated by rebel yells—“WOOooo!”— the broke-dick war cry of the proudly defeated. Mary Byrd didn’t really mind them—Charles and their friend Mann had been Greeks at Emory and Washington and Lee, after all. They added life to the neighborhood and their parents’ dollars to the town. They were sweet and mannerly when you asked them to please get their beer cans picked up. They grew up to be all kinds of successful people —famous writers, doctors, and lawyers, a guy who invented a landmine detector, another founded that Netscape thing, a hotshot music producer, a guitarist in that new group Wilco—so somebody was learning something out there. If they just wouldn’t drive around drunk, killing themselves. Their poor parents couldn’t possibly have a clue about how close to the edge their kids were or they wouldn’t be letting them come up here with practically new driver’s licenses and giant cars that they didn’t need in the small town. A skid away from death every weekend. Their precious boys.

  Mary Byrd inhaled deeply to see if she could catch a scent in the chilly, wet air, and she could: the green vegetal smell of rotting stems and leaves. If this winter storm they were talking about was bad enough, she’d even lose the Jackson vine and Lady Banks, and the brittle azaleas. Maybe the ones that framed the house should be covered. She could scare up Teever, her yard man, and, she thought, friend, to help her, but he hadn’t come around for a week or so; she hoped he wasn’t in jail. Maybe she should go out to the trailers and see if she could find that nice Mexican guy, the one with the silver teeth, to help her. She liked that there were Hispanic guys around now; it made the town seem more in step with the rest of the country. They were work monsters, and giving them work made her feel like she was honoring her immigrant grandparents, or something like that. And maybe soon there’d be a decent taco place with those delicious Mexican Cokes. But it always miffed Teever when she had them do the jobs that he considered his.

  Mary Byrd’s mind went unwillingly back to the phone calls from the detective—what was his odd name?—and the reporter. She hated them both. Fyce—it sounded slightly familiar, but maybe only because it was such an unfortunate name, as her mother-in-law said about anything unappealing. Just because she couldn’t find anything new to write about she starts dredging up people’s private stories, things best forgotten or not spoken of, even if unsolved. It had been too long! It was too over! Wasn’t there a statute of limitations or something? Mary Byrd could understand how the reporter couldn’t resist the story. A suspect to whom nothing would stick. Neighborhood secrets. No one, particularly the Richmond police, had been able to figure it out. There hadn’t been organized searches or milk cartons or Amber alerts or DNA in those days. It had been long before stories of missing and murdered children appeared practically every week in morning papers and on local TV news, and long before the whistle had finally been blown on predatory priests and the cardinals and popes who protected them. Long before the ghoulish fascination with unsolved crime and mysteries and cold case files meant they were featured every night on TV shows. Then, it was unheard of—a front-page story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch with a banner above the regular headline: police hunt knife slayer of 9-year-old boy. Kids didn’t disappear and weren’t killed then. They weren’t sex objects. They didn’t get left to broil in parked cars and day care vans; there wasn’t such a thing as day care. Newborns weren’t found in Dumpsters. Dumpsters didn’t even exist. Maybe then they were still bothering to put them in shallow graves like the Lindbergh baby. Or was it that the world just hadn’t known before CNN or whatever that those things were going on? No, it was a simpler, better time, wasn’t it? So even though the sixties had been a decade of death—the horror of assassinations, freedom riders buried in levees, the masses of men in Vietnam—when had the times turned on children? It had been a very big, very terrible thing that had befallen all of Richmond. And now Mary Byrd and her family would revisit it, especially if the reporter went with it, and who knew how long it would go on and what would come of it. As if even now, when she did have to think about it, was reminded of it, her part in it wasn’t unlike the crick in her shoulder, that small but naggy pain in her left wing-bone—or whatever those bones were that would be where wings would be attached if she were an angel, which she surely wasn’t—that little spot that always seemed to ache. A pinched nerve that stayed pinched.

  And this total stranger would write a book or a TV script about it? Then she and her mother and brothers would be left to patch themselves up again and Fyce would walk off with a wad. She didn’t want her mother or brothers or Eliza or William or even Charles to be touched by any of it. What if Tuttle wasn’t in custody, and he saw Fyce’s story, and came after her or her children, or her brothers? Was that just crazy, or possible? But she knew there wasn’t going to be a choice. She’d go to Richmond and do what she had to do: look at whatever awful things they had to show, and hear whatever awful things they had to tell. But it was one thing to have to talk to police and another to talk to a reporter. She was not required to talk to Fyce. She thought about how good it would feel to punch her in the face, being sure not to tuck her thumb in her fist, the way Ernest had shown her. She was at least glad not to still be living in Virginia in the middle of things. Good could come of it, Mary Byrd’s reasonable self knew, but would it? The case might finally be solved and who? Ned Tuttle? finally put away. She could stop being afraid of Tuttle still being out there somewhere. But she felt sure that like so many things in life, there had been too much time and too much bumbling for this meeting to come to anything.

  Tuttle, the spooky kid down the street. A year older than Mary Byrd, but so gimpy that he mostly hung around the younger kids in the neighborhood. He had taken a lot of teasing at school, she remembered, and something nuts had happened to him—he’d gotten his dick caught in his zipper or something, in the boys’ bathroom, and after that he had gone off to military school. He had a dead mother, and lived with his father and older brother. She’d felt sorry for Tuttle and had been nice to him. At least she thought she had been. They’d all played in the street on summer nights together when they were younger, but by the spring Stevie died, she’d started dating and running around and she couldn’t remember seeing much of him. But the week after Stevie was killed, she’d gotten the weird little note from Tuttle, after he’d gone back to Charlotte Hall. So strange. Just hey, how are you, what’s going on in the neighborhood—as if he’d known nothing about Stevie and hadn’t been questioned by the police. The detectives had had a field day with the note, which Tuttle had backdated to make it seem like he hadn’t been around the weekend of the murder. They’d had her write back; she couldn’t remember a word of what they’d had her say. Then they’d taken her diary! Surely her mom and Pop, her stepfather, had known this but they’d never said a word about it. They had waited every day for Tuttle to be arrested. And then, nothing. Until now.

  Oh, god. Mary Byrd could not think about it. Her chest hurt when she tried to draw a deep breath and she hoped she wouldn’t have a heart attack or something. Should she run take an aspirin? No, she’d keep on thinking about her yard. It steadied her. A few small round morning glory pods still were on the vine and she reached and pinched them, letting the tiny black pyramidal seeds fall into her open hand. They needed scattering in sunnier spots and maybe they’d take, and the little magenta trumpets would volunteer around the yard. An incorrigible seed poacher, she’d stolen the seeds a few years earlier from a friend’s Manhattan fence. Why hadn’t the Heavenly Blues, so startlingly and luminously azure, done well this year? Squirrels had probably gotten onto their hallucinogenic properties and were hoarding seeds and tripping on them. She’d certainly seen them doing some insane things—swinging like monkeys and stunt-fucking on bouncing limbs in the big water oaks that stood solidly at each corner of the rambling Victorian house. Sometimes they would drop like stones onto the tin
roof, scaring the hell out of you if you were watching TV or quietly drinking or reading in the living room. At least they didn’t peep in the upstairs windows at night, like the raccoons and possums, terrorizing William and Eliza. Mary Byrd herself had tried a few Heavenly Blue seeds, crunching them up in her teeth. They’d made her feel like barfing, but nothing else.

  A blue jay who’d been picking at the last few red berries that clung to the old dogwood cawed—or whatever they said—at her. Why did everybody hate them? They were badass—she loved their tiny bandit masks—and bossy to other birds, maybe, but so beautiful and military with their regimental striped tails, white collars, and heroic crests. And they didn’t wuss out and go south in winter; they stayed around and were welcome spots of color in the drab yard. They took no crap off Iggy and Irene, either; she’d never seen any telltale blue feathers strewn tragically around. Well, maybe once or twice. Mary Byrd threw the handful of morning glory seeds at the jay, saying, “Go with the flow, man.” She wished she had some Valium; it wouldn’t make her as dopey as a Xanax but would take the edge off the nasty afternoon. Hoping, she fished with one finger in the coin pocket of her Levi’s, only coming up with a few four o’clock seeds she’d filched somewhere, and she tossed those to the jay, too.

  She wondered when Jack Ernest would come up to town again. She could call him; he’d have something maybe even better than what she had. But she did not need to be thinking about Ernest, the Big Bad Wolf to her Little Red Riding Hood. She was drawn to his manic dementedness and balls-out, absurd—or absurdist—(he knew the difference) bravado. In a way, talking to him might be easier—he was so on another planet. He had nothing to do with anything real in her life. If she was weak enough to call Ernest and tell him what was going on she knew he’d probably offer to go up to Richmond and whack the killer and then the reporter but first fuck Fyce in some humiliating way. Or at the very least he’d say something like, “Baby doll, that truly sucks, what you need is to come over here and let Jack Ernest give you some of his medicines and special TLC.” Either offer would be so ridiculously disingenuous that it would cheer her up. Not that she would follow through on the latter offer. She might be crazy, but she wasn’t that crazy. Yet. Was she? But she really did want to get a few nerve pills to get through this mess in Richmond. She had one or two of something and some crumbs, and she was going to need handfuls. But then she’d be obligated to him, and nobody wanted to be obligated to Ernest. So, no, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, call Ernest. Bad idea. That had to be over. Or actually, that absolutely could not begin.

  On the sidewalk just below the yard she spotted some chalk graffiti. Uh oh. No doubt the work of William and his posse, Other William and Justin. LAUREN HAS BOZOMS. SCHOOL BITS. A crude, rearview perspective of a dog with a bull’s-eye butt hole bore the curious caption: THIS DOG WILL BITE AND DODO ON YOU. WWJD? Damn it. Neighbors and passersby had had since yesterday afternoon to consider the question, and Evagreen would have seen it when she got out of her old maroon Cadillac. She was surprised Charles hadn’t noticed it picking up the morning paper and raised some hell. Those crazy little dudes. Last week they had gotten themselves into trouble when they discovered a horde of Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler that had been thrown in the Dumpster by a student vacating the ramshackle hippie hotel across the street. It had been a windy day and the boys, in a frenzy, had climbed into the Dumpster to get at the treasure. In seconds boobs and beavers were everywhere, slick pages and centerfolds gusting up around the boys’ heads and down the street, beaching up in the hedge around Walnut Hill—or Nut Hill as the kids called it—the geezer apartment complex. They got mildly punished, but you could tell they thought it had all been well worth it. It wasn’t so bad that they had seen, at eight years old, ladies’ private parts, it was just a little disturbing that their first glimpse of them was gigantic silicone breasts and shaved landing strips. Oh, boys. Boys, boys, boys. It wouldn’t be long before these little guys were in a hot-tub scrum too. If nothing happened to them before then.

  Mary Byrd let herself think of Stevie, something she tried never to do, although she kept his tiny School Days photo on her dresser mirror where she saw it every day: his blond, crew-cut head and thin, goofy smile, his brown and orange striped T-shirt against a cheerful sky-blue background. The photo was like a scar on her face: not pleasant, she saw it in the mirror every day, but it did her no good to notice it. But still she kept it.

  A sweet, transparent little guy, practically a baby when her mother married his recently widowed father. He’d been her real-life baby doll and he’d adored her, following her around, trying to hang out in her room, letting her dress him up in ridiculous costumes, listening to her records. He was crazy for her Beach Boys and Coasters 45s—“Surfin’ U.S.A.” (Pop called it “Sufferin’ U.S.A.” and always made her turn it down), “Charlie Brown,” and “Poison Ivy.” She’d tried to teach him to Twist and Swim, but all he really wanted to do was the Monkey and the Monster Mash but he couldn’t get the footwork on the Monster Mash. His dancing was so hilarious. Sometimes she’d get on her knees and slow-dance with him, swaying back and forth to “In My Room,” the big make-out song, pretending she was dancing with Richard or John or Joe, whoever it was that week. He was a big suck-up and loved to hug her legs and be adored in return. When he began to annoy her, she’d scooch him out, and he’d sit outside her door, singing or talking to himself, the pitifulness of which annoyed her even more, and she might let him back in. As he got older, naturally his allegiance switched to her brother Nick, who had all the cool boy stuff—plastic guns and models and sports equipment. She and Nick would mess with him some, but he could give as good as he got. Mary Byrd became a teenager, and Stevie became a boy. She supposed he never even remembered a time when he wasn’t in his new family, he’d been so little when he and Pop moved in.

  Mary Byrd decided she could wait on cutting back the vines and ferns—save it for Teever or the Mexican guy—but she looked forward, sort of, to yard work, its practicality, its be-here-nowness and the pleasure of actually getting something done with visible results. Too little that she did all day lasted: the food she shopped for and cooked got eaten immediately, laundry and floors got dirty again overnight. And there was the simple physical satisfaction of lopping things off with big, sharp shears. Even the wing-bone ache that would be aggravated by the wide scissoring of the shears would be satisfying. Actually, extra satisfying because then she’d have to take a pain pill and the world would be a better place and any unpleasantness would seem far away. And points for yard work might be scored with Charles and Evagreen. But one of the things Mary Byrd did best was putting off. Off-putting too, but she was the Great Procrastinatrix. At any rate the most obvious thing to do right now was hose the walk off before someone complained.

  Her life was a matter of domestic triage. First things first. Or trying to figure out exactly what the first things even were. She began to scuff around on the sidewalk, scumbling the chalk and water to obliterate the goofy messages. She jerked at the hose to get it to the side of the house where the dogs stayed. Why were hoses such dumb colors having nothing to do with nature? Kelly green just showed up a neglected lawn. Why weren’t there brown ones to match crappy winter yards? Or if they were going to be some unreal colors, why not something fun like pink or clear with glitter? Or python print? How fun would that be to see lying around in the grass.

  Mary Byrd turned the hose on the dogs’ water dish, which they never drank from, clearing it of oak leaves and refilling it. Green slime filmed the inside of the bowl; she needed to clean it and maybe the dogs would prefer it to the toilet, which they rushed to the second they came in the house.

  Puppy Sal and the Quarter Pounder dozed in the holes they’d dug, and hearing the splashing in their bowl but not the desired clatter of kibble, they lifted their heads in mild interest. They were the best of dogs, she thought with a surge of affection. Nondescript mutts, not too smart, not too dumb, but with all sorts of endearing quirks. The
y could both lie down and die when you cocked your fingers at them and shouted, “BANG.” They could shake. Puppy Sal had a nervous tic—some kind of neuro-damage from contracting distemper before they had found her—making her jaws snap constantly, like a heartbeat, even in her sleep. She was a reddish golden-brown color, so they told people her breed was Golden Snapper. Puppy Sal had been famous in town, before the leash law came down, for bolting to the Holiday Inn, where she would scrounge in the restaurant garbage area and, after she was completely slicked up with bacon grease and funk, take a little swim in the hotel pool. Then the ladylike manager, Mr. Selff, would call and practically have a nervous breakdown. He claimed she left a dithguthting earl thlick on the pool. Of course she did. The Quarter Pounder, Sal’s son by an awful science experiment of a Corgi-Bassett mix, could also sing. Mary Byrd would croon in a falsetto, “It’s over, it’s over, it’s o-o-o-ver,” stretching out the end on a high note, and the Quarter Pounder would throw back his head and howl.

  “Good dogs,” Mary Byrd said to them. The dogs rose expectantly, plumy tails slightly wagging. “Good puppies.” She wanted to pat them but didn’t want her hand to smell doggy. She loved these guys without really being a dog person. The children and Charles would allow the dogs all over them, even letting them lick their faces, but Mary Byrd could never get past all the butt-sniffing, shit-eating, and carcass-rolling that dogs did. She constantly caught them guiltily slinking around with kitty litter sprinkles on their noses after snacking. And when Eliza and William were little and threw up or when the cats horked up hairballs, one of the dogs would be on it like a hornet. Rancid deer legs and dead armadillos, which Mary Byrd had heard could have leprosy, had been hauled up into the yard by Puppy Sal and her accomplice son. Dog germs were a huge reality—one of the major cootie groups—right up there, in her estimation, with those in salad bars, airplanes, New York subways, and on William’s hands. For some reason it didn’t bother her at all that cats licked themselves all over. She’d bury her face in a cat’s fur any time. You’d never, ever see a cat chew dirty socks or underwear crotches or bloody bandages or roll happily in roadkill.