The Remington James Box Set

by Michael Lister

  —Guess there’s no harm in doing it, is there? Keith says.

  —Just the embarrassment of overreacting. And it might violate her constitutional rights.

  —Did that when we jimmied the door.

  —Did, didn’t we? Will says.

  —So you think I should?

  —I’m sayin’ I would. Hell, you can say I did it. Rather overreact than under.

  Keith nods.

  —I agree, we should, but it’s on me. I’ll take the heat if there is any.

  —Can I ask you something? Will says.

  —Shoot, Keith says.

  —I appreciate you always gettin’ my input.

  —Yeah?

  —But it surprises me. Not sure it’d be the same if the situation was reversed.

  Will recalls the things he said behind Keith’s back when they were both running for homecoming king or lobbying for quarterback or competing for the rural electrification Washington, DC trip.

  —That your question?

  Will laughs.

  —I’m asking why.

  —Only reason you’re not in this position is a few votes.

  Will smiles and shakes his head. It’s like homecoming all over again.

  —It was more than a few.

  11

  —Would he take her?

  With that question, Marc is reminded again of how little he knows about Taylor, her family, her past. After their first date, when she had drunkenly told him so much, she has since remained reticent, often remote.

  Though the cell phone is to her ear, she’s yet to reach her ex-husband, but she still doesn’t respond to his question.

  I didn’t even know he had a camp here, he thinks.

  What else don’t you know?

  At certain moments, he’s seen into her soul, visited the secret garden of her heart, and she feels like his twin, like he knows her as well as he knows himself. At others, she’s the stranger lying next to him, as opaque, as inaccessible, as unavailable as a member of the same species can be.

  He finds himself immensely curious about Steve. What’s he like? What’s his side of the story? Would he tell me to run? Did he? Or did Taylor banish him? Is he unstable? Troubled? Deranged?

  Are you saying you have to be in order to be with Taylor?

  Am I?

  Taylor had asked him during one of their many discussions about her trust and abandonment issues what it said about him that he was with her.

  What does it?

  Am I fucked up? Or just fucked because I found my twin, my soul mate, and she’s so damaged?

  When she is off the phone, he waits a moment, but she doesn’t say anything.

  —Would he take her? he asks again, dragging it out, emphasizing each word impatiently.

  —He’s never shown any interest in her. Barely remembers her birthday.

  —Would he help her if she were running away?

  —Running away? She’s not—I told you, someone took her. Oh my God, my baby.

  Her phone rings.

  —It’s him, she says, and takes the call.

  When she’s off the phone, she shakes her head and looks over at Shelby’s car again, and begins to move toward it, as Keith and Will walk back up.

  —You get him? Keith asks.

  She doesn’t respond, just stares at the car.

  —Ms. Sean, Keith says with more force, did you reach your ex-husband?

  She nods, but she’s still distracted.

  —He’s at work. He doesn’t have her. Doesn’t know where she is.

  Attention affixed to the car, Taylor continues to edge toward it, and it appears she’s about to climb inside.

  —Please don’t touch the car, Will says. We honestly believe your daughter is fine, gone somewhere on her own, but we’re going to go ahead and have the vehicle processed to see if it turns up anything.

  Eyes glistening, she blinks several times as she steps back.

  —Why don’t y’all go on home—in case she shows up there. We’ll call you the moment we find out anything.

  Marc gently places his arm around Taylor and begins to lead her away, then stops, withdraws a folded piece of paper from his pocket, and turns toward Will.

  —Here’s a list of people who’ve been at the lodge the last few weeks.

  —We’ll follow up on everyone, Keith says. We’re gonna find her. I swear it.

  12

  Clear.

  Calm.

  Equanimity.

  The serene day is so sunny, so Florida picture-postcard perfect, that the approaching storm seems something from an alternate reality, a darker dimension incompatible with this one.

  Having rolled off Cuba’s coast, Christine steadily strengthens, her northmost fringes felt in the Keys and Miami. Sustained winds at 60 miles per hour, gusts 105.

  Downed power lines.

  Flash flooding.

  Uprooted trees.

  Overturned trailers.

  Southeastern Gulf of Mexico. Warm waters. Incubator of intensity.

  Reconnaissance reports: barometric pressure plummeting—1 millibar per hour.

  Tracking toward Tupelo.

  Stalking.

  Slow, steady approach.

  Relentless.

  Inevitable.

  13

  Canis lupus.

  The wolf is as relentless as the storm. And as beautiful. More so.

  The wolf is as destructive as the storm. More so. More devastating. More demanding. More deadly.

  Powerful and slender, slope-backed and long-limbed, he is a precise predator intent on his prey.

  Many wolves hunt in packs, but single wolves and mated pairs actually have the highest success rates—a statistic this solitary hunter no doubt contributes to. He hunts alone. He never returns to his den empty-handed.

  The wolf hunt has five stages.

  Locating the prey, stalking the prey, confronting the prey, rushing the prey, chasing the prey.

  Typically, wolves search for prey through scent, chance encounter, and tracking. This hunt, this gathering and reaping, is unquestionably the last.

  Nothing left to chance.

  He’s never been more intentional about anything in his entire lupine life.

  Tracking her.

  Stalking her.

  The stalk—wolves attempt to conceal their approach, but as the gap closes, they quicken their pace, getting as close to their quarry as possible without making it flee.

  He is close. Very close. And she still has no idea.

  There is nothing he won’t do. No price he won’t pay. He will have his prey. He will work his will. He is the wolf.

  The great wolf god created order out of chaos, but on occasion the chaos shows through. The storm is that chaos. So is the wolf.

  The storm is a rip in the fabric of the cosmos, a tear where the chaos on the other side shows through the façade of order on this one.

  The wolf is a storm unleashed on the unsuspecting. A reminder. A reckoning. The wolf says you think you’re safe, but you’re not. You think the little existence you’ve constructed makes you immune from injury and pain and death, from the wolf, but it does not.

  Chaos lupus.

  14

  —Will you talk to me? Marc asks.

  They are winding around the serpentine river road, heading home from the landing, a thick verdant forest extending out from each shoulder, its infinite variety of species far more indigenous than the rows of pines planted for pulpwood found on most highways around here.

  —What’s there to say?

  —How you’re feeling. What you’re thinking. What I can do.

  She doesn’t respond, just continues to sit still, rigid, staring straight ahead.

  When she’s like this, he’s filled with an intense longing, as if his twin, the person he’s one with, is dead, the connection severed, and it makes him desperate, the desire to close the distance, to reestablish their rare union nearly overwhelming.

  Feeling shut
out like this, he wonders again how he wound up with one of the most talented artists and infamous twins in the country.

  She’s so closed, so guarded and defensive.

  How had he gotten through? No one else ever had—though countless reporters had tried. And he didn’t just get through. He got in. Didn’t just get past her outer armor, but down into her deep soul, what she calls her hot lava core.

  It still surprises him—and when she retreats into her carefully constructed fortress, he’s reminded of just what an unlikely miracle it actually is.

  Though returning to the area on assignment with the express purpose of trying to secure an interview with her, he had approached her not as a writer, but as a fan—which he genuinely was and continues to be.

  He had been hired by Oxford America to attend the event and attempt, most likely futilely, an interview.

  He had driven up from Tampa, where he was living at the time, with no real hope or expectation—except seeing the show, the chance to meet her, and the opportunity to drop by Carrabelle, where he had grown up, on his return home.

  He had attended an opening of her new show at the Visual Arts Center in downtown Panama City, one at which she made a rare appearance. Breast cancer fundraiser. Favor for a friend.

  He was far more moved by the show than he ever imagined he could be.

  Everything he said to her was genuine. He ceased being anything but an admirer. Later she would tell him it was his authenticity and openness that had opened her to him.

  —I keep trying to think of a way to express what your work means, he had said. What it makes me feel, but everything I come up with sounds so trite. And really lame.

  She had nodded and not said anything.

  This was when most people in attendance moved on, but not him.

  —It’s like the most painful experience you can have, and one you wouldn’t change for anything.

  She had nodded again and given him a hint of what might have been an encouraging smile, were it allowed to continue to grow into what it might have been.

  —It mixes loss and longing with a type of cold comfort, he went on, like the perverse pleasure of clawing at an open wound.

  At that there was something—a glint in her guarded eyes, and he knew he’d just glimpsed her saturnine soul—not just with the art or the artist, the story or the mystery, but with the woman and the wounded little girl hidden inside her, the lost little twin buried beneath.

  Unlike the rest of the world, she had never been an oddity, a carny curiosity to him, but in that moment even his interest in her story faded, as he had seen in her something he’d been aching for.

  He glances over at her now, sitting next to him in the car.

  —Is there any way for you not to get so distraught until we know more? he asks.

  Nothing.

  —Would you at least not shut me out? Let us deal with it together?

  He understands how she feels, doesn’t blame her for the need to turn in, to close out, but she does it way too often, and too often it’s over nonexistent issues, trifles magnified by her moods.

  This is something real, a valid concern with the potential to be devastating, yet it feels like all her other inexplicable withdrawals.

  —Why go through this alone? Why not let me help you? I can.

  —Nothing you can do, she says, her voice flat, futile, resigned. Nothing anyone can.

  He shakes his head and sighs.

  His frustration flares and he wants to confront her, provoke her, do or say something to force a reaction, but he reminds himself how counterproductive that would be, how vulnerable she is at the moment. And he realizes he’s not angry about how she’s acting now. It’s all the shit that has come before. Don’t bring anything else into this. Now’s not the time. For now, everything’s got to be put on hold.

  —Can you tell me about Steve? he says.

  —Just a mistake I made as a kid. I was acting out. He was an available bad boy. We fucked. I got pregnant. We tried to be a couple, then a family. We failed miserably at both. Since then, he’s continued to fail at being a father.

  —Is he in Shelby’s life at all?

  —When Savannah was taken, he came around and . . . I don’t know. Tried, a little, I guess. Didn’t last long. She probably talks to him about once a month. She usually visits him when he’s at his camp.

  —Don’t you think that’s what’s happening now? They’re together. Maybe they rode into town to eat or something.

  She shakes her head and lets out a harsh, humorless laugh.

  —Goddamn it, Marc. She’s not somewhere getting a fuckin’ hamburger. She’s in real trouble. You know how we’re connected?

  —Me and you?

  —Yeah. You know how intimate and intense it is, how you call me your twin, how spooky alike we are?

  —Yeah?

  He’s so happy for her to refer to their connection in this way, to acknowledge him as a twin, that he can’t help but grin.

  At first, during their early heady days of constant companionship and continuous discovery, when they were fronted with commonality after commonality, thing after thing they had experienced the same way, believed the same about, he had floated the idea that he felt like her long-lost twin finally being reunited with his match. Since she was literally a lost twin, the sole survivor of the infamous Taylor and Trevor twin case, he wasn’t sure how she’d feel about the concept, but it seemed to really resonate with her, and she responded in kind.

  All that seems so far away now—nearly a lifetime ago—as lately it seems nearly all they do is deal with depression, hormones, and issues of trust and abandonment.

  It’s been so long since she’s even mentioned the idea of them being twins, he thought she had abandoned the notion, abandoned, in a way, him, her twin, allowing temporal conditions, chemicals, and trauma from the past to eclipse that which is eternal and inexplicable.

  —Multiply that by . . . a lot, she says. That’s what I have with my girls.

  He chastises himself for being bothered that her connection with Shelby is a multiple of theirs. She’s her daughter for fuck sake. Her own flesh and blood. From her body.

  Yeah, but she said what we have is unlike anything she’s ever had with anybody.

  —Don’t look like that, she says.

  —What?

  —Like I hurt your feelings. It’s not better or more, it’s just different. I can feel if they’re happy or in danger or—I’m sure I can with you too. It’s just I’ve been doing it a lot longer with them.

  —I understand, he says. I really didn’t mean to look any way.

  —Just don’t. I can’t deal with us right now.

  —I’m not asking you to.

  —Good. Tell me we’re fine. You love me, aren’t going anywhere, and will do whatever it takes to get Shelby back.

  —We are. I do. I’m not. I will.

  15

  Creaking wood floors.

  Canvases.

  Easels.

  Pungent odor of paint.

  Dust particles drifting in shafts of perfect light.

  When they arrive back at the lodge, she walks directly to her studio.

  Located on the second story and taking up the back half of the floor, Taylor’s studio is the best room in the lodge. The large, open space is filled with the soft, warm diffused light of late afternoon. Enormous windows on the three exterior walls along with the glass skylights overhead ensure the naturally lit loft provides the artist with the best possible illumination for the longest possible time.

  Though there’s a vast openness to the room, there’s clutter too. Every corner is filled with tables, tubes, pallets, and brushes of every size, every wall supports large, leaning canvases of her recent work—even the center is an obstacle course of paint-speckled easels, chairs, drop cloths, and wooden crates.

  All her works are self-portraits of a type, but recently has she embarked on a series of actual, literal paintings of her own figure.


  For weeks now, she has spent hours standing in the small forty-five-degree angle at the intersection of mirror and canvas, fully nude, fully engaged with her body once again.

  Her body is a work of art, her flesh the medium for expression over the years. Building on the brutal zipper-like scar running nearly the full length of her torso, she has burned and carved a stunning, disquieting mixed-media masterpiece into her own exquisite body.

  He recalls his utter amazement when she disrobed before him the first time.

  The intricate and infinitely fascinating sculpture and painting the canvas of her flesh holds is unlike anything he’s ever seen. Peerless. Matchless. Secreted away from the world until now.

  Both artist and art object, Taylor transformed her scar-torn and traumatized body, through scarification and tattooing, into something ancient and sacred.

  The body modification involved in scarification is so severe, requires so much time, involves so much pain, it’s virtually unheard of that someone would do it to themselves—especially when the work is as ambitious and abstruse as that adorning Taylor’s torso.

  On each side of the puffy pink protuberant line down the center of her and reaching unseen to her core, the cut that forever marks the before and after of togetherness and separateness, oneness and aloneness, life and death, are twin girls—Trevor and Taylor—arms extended, reaching for one another, nearly but not quite able to cross the seemingly narrow but actually infinite gulf of scar dividing them.

  The little girl on the left, who he assumes is Trevor but has never asked, is being yanked away by vines wrapped around her feet and extending over to and up Taylor’s left side where they become a series of twin-like concentric objects and symbols being ripped apart, pried away from one another. Bending. Breaking. Bursting.

  He realizes he’s seeing an artist’s self-portrait of a self-portrait she already painted and carved into her own skin.

  She is brilliant and disturbed, gifted and gorgeous, shy and traumatized, vulnerable and volatile.