Where the Broken Lie

by Derek Rempfer

  “It’s just that her mom can’t find her. I thought maybe you might know where she was.”

  Charlie smirked and said, “Nope. Sorry, dude. I don’t know where your little girlfriend ran off to.”

  The hyenas laughed. Son and Edie went inside, and Charlie followed.

  I wish that the visual imprint of Charlie that lasted in memory is of him and his dad bike riding past my house the first day I met him. Or of his giggling face shining above a flashlight inside a tent during one of our backyard sleepovers. But the image that goes with my Charlie memories is the one of him that day on Moose’s steps. His menacing face all full of smile and spit.

  And nothing at all innocent about him.

  … he often thought back on that unfortunate day. He hadn’t known who would find Katie or when she would be found, but he had known where. He didn’t feed their hopes with comments like, Oh, I’m sure she’s fine or Of course we’ll find her, and this brought him some solace. He just quietly went about searching with everyone else in town that night. He felt as much shame in looking for Katie as anything else he did that day, and realizing this confounded him. Is it better to be a killer with a conscience or without one? Which is more evil?

  The lights atop Sheriff Buck’s black-and-white flashed as he trolled the streets of Willow Grove, a robotic and repetitive message coming from a loudspeaker atop the car.

  “Citizens of Willow Grove, Katie Cooper is missing. She’s wearing blue jeans and a yellow t-shirt. If you have seen her please contact the Coopers or the Sheriff’s Office immediately.”

  Mom made me stay home while she joined the rest of the town in the search. She said that Katie might come looking for me, and that I should be here if she did. She didn’t say it, but I also knew that she was afraid to let me go out again into the night. Into this new kind of dark night for Willow Grove.

  Grandma Gaines came over to stay with us while Grandpa joined the searching crowd. As he walked out the door, I thought about that day when Grandpa had chased Slim Jim off of our porch and how strong he had seemed to me then. Tall and imposing enough to scare off the likes of Slim Jim.

  “Grandpa,” I called. He turned around and wondered a look at me. Furrowed brow, mouth turned down sharply, eyes somewhere else altogether. His nose twitched like some hard-sniffing animal preparing to attack. It was a wolf that I saw in him.

  “Grandpa, they’re going to find her, right? I mean, you’ll find her?”

  Everything about the man sank and he suddenly seemed old. Too old for this kind of world. He opened his mouth to say something, but didn’t. He tapped the bottom of his flashlight a couple times, flicked it on, and walked out the door. I ran to the window and watched him march out toward the street where he pulled something from his back pocket. He lifted it to his mouth and threw his head back. I knew what it was. I had seen him do this many times before. He put it back in his pocket, pulled down the bill of his cap and headed to the street.

  Minutes rolled up into an hour, one hour became two, two became three. And still the streets and sidewalks twinkled like stars in the night sky with flashlights and lanterns. The chorus of calls for Katie echoed from every corner.

  When one child dies a little bit of all youth dies with them. And a little bit of innocence. And a little bit of hope. And a little bit of faith in mankind. All things pure and good become a little tainted and a little tarnished. There are things inside me once that are gone forever now, replaced by something harder. It started the day Katie Cooper disappeared. That was the day I started to die.

  When Mom told me how they had found Katie’s body by the railroad tracks, I couldn’t stop thinking about that first afternoon in the Garden of Eden and how it seemed as far away as Genesis itself.

  I pictured Katie’s sparkling green eyes and imagined them opened wide and frozen. Empty eyes staring into emptiness. Her soft body contorted across jagged rock.

  That was the moment I learned of the depths of sadness. That sadness can make you scream.

  “The police are looking for that hobo Jim,” Mom told me. “Somebody saw him walking down the railroad tracks with Katie.”

  I never really considered that bad things could happen to me or anyone I loved. In a strange way, I believed it even less after those bad things did happen.

  As a child, I had difficulty dealing with the fact that Katie Cooper once did exist and then did not, and often found myself imagining otherwise. There was comfort to be found in pretending that Katie had never existed at all, that all those wonderful memories never were. With Ethan, the pain came from imagining all the memories we would never have.

  They were exactly opposite pains in that way, Katie and Ethan.

  Would if I could

  Paint you a rainbow.

  Would if I could

  Hand you a star.

  Will if I can

  Make it all better.

  Will if I can

  Whenever we are.

  Would if I could

  Write you a lifetime.

  Would if I could

  Hold you right here.

  Will if I can

  Lift your soul higher

  Will if I can

  With a prayer and a tear.

  We heard stories of Slim Jim in the days that followed his arrest. How he had left his home in Northern Iowa when he was seventeen. How he drifted from town to town through the Midwest—sometimes riding the rails, sometimes hitchhiking. How he took odd jobs, slept under bridges, ate what he could when he could, and never stayed in one place for more than a couple weeks. Sometimes leaving by his volition. Sometimes not. Probably with all his belongings tied up in a red bandana that hung off the end of a long wooden stick, I had imagined.

  The theory went that Slim Jim lured Katie into walking with him down the tracks toward Glidden, the next town over. That never sat right with me, though. Katie was too smart to have gone off with Slim Jim like that. I always figured he must have forced her to go with him.

  Slim Jim never confessed to the crime, but he couldn’t provide an account of his whereabouts either. Before his case ever got to trial, Slim Jim Johnson was found guilty by an informal jury of his incarcerated peers. The sentence was death and it was carried out immediately. Prison justice has zero-tolerance policy for pedophiles.

  … it always bothered him, how people could judge others without really knowing them or understanding them. Never understanding how a person got to be the way they were. People learn one or two things about you and they think they know you. They put you in a box that you can never get out of. He often thought about the box people would put him in if they knew everything he’d done …

  Rather than sit around and tally up all the unanswered questions I had been collecting, I decided to write a letter back to Mr. Innocent, which was how I had come to think of the man who had authored that letter by Slim Jim’s grave. There are a million things I want to ask him. Which questions do I uncork and pour onto the paper?

  Who are you? Why did you write this? Why did you wait so long? If Slim Jim didn’t kill Katie Cooper, who did? Can we meet in person?

  In the end, though, I ended up replying to his one-word letter with a one-word letter of my own—a command and a plea:

  Explain

  I sign the letter and fold it slowly and perfectly, giving myself a few extra seconds to think about what I am doing. I slide it into a yellow envelope and put it under the rock by Slim Jim’s headstone. I consider waiting in hiding to see who picks it up, but in the end decide to wait and see if Mr. Innocent will come forward on his own.

  Over time, people change and then again they don’t. Just like with Charlie, I recognize Edie Dales the instant I walk through the doors at Mustang’s. A striped Polo and khakis, his dress is the same as it had been back then. Literally the same it seemed. Both the pants and the shirt were faded and speckled with small holes. When he recognizes me, he smiles that missing-tooth smile that over the years has become a missing-teeth smile.

>   “Hey there, Thathafrath,” he says and I can’t help but laugh at the ridiculous lisp.

  “Hey, Andrew,” I say. And then, remembering how much I hate him, “Maybe you should consider a new pet name for me. Try ‘Pecker’, it’s easier to pronounce and it’s stood the test of time—right, Son?”

  “Sure has, Pecker,” Son says, sliding a beer in front of me.

  “Now, thee … thee, I alwayth knew you wath a thmart mouth. Alwayth knew you badmouthed me behind my back. I wath right, wathn’t I, Thathafrath?”

  “Yeah, I thuppothe I wath,” I said.

  “That’th funny, Thathafrath. Yeth, thir. Very funny.”

  I don’t respond.

  “Never would have talked to me like that back in the day, though—eh, Thathafrath?”

  I ignore the question and sip my beer.

  “Bigger and braver now, though. Eh, Thathafrath? All grown up, are ya? Not afraid of getting your ath kicked, huh?”

  I attempt to redirect the conversation. “So what are you doing these days, Andrew?”

  He slams a full glass of beer, burps loudly and says, “Dentitht.” slapping his knee. “No, no, wait, no, I’m a Thpeech Therapist,” he says and again howls at his own joke.

  It’s the kind of laugh you aren’t supposed to laugh along with.

  “Hey, what’th the matter, Thathafrath? You don’t think I’m funny? Hey, you gotta laugh, right?”

  I think about that day on the basketball court, me fisted up and wanting to punch Edie in the nose and him not the least bit afraid. Seeing the fear in me and knowing that I wasn’t going to hit him. Of everything that happened on the basketball court that day—the elbows, the shoves, the taunting, his filthy mouth on Katie—the thing that bothered me the most was his utter confidence that I wouldn’t dare hit him. Even after all that he had said and done. How he had hissed, “Who are you kidding, Sassafras? We both know you ain’t gonna hit me.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Gotta laugh,” I say. And then after a second, “Hey, you know what I always thought was funny? That nickname we had for you back in the day—Edie. You remember that? Edie? Like the girls name.”

  Edie nods vigorously and gulps down another beer.

  “Yeah, that wath funny, alright. Only did hear it the one time mythelf, though. Remember that, Thathafrath? Remember what I did to Timmy Carmichael when he called me that?”

  Two black eyes and one broken nose. Yes, I remembered.

  “Man, I could be a real hard ath back then, couldn’t I? Mak’th me feel a little guilty when I thee Timmy thee’th days, walking around town with hith kids. He’th got two little girlth, you know that? Yeah, probably better off with girlth, guy like that. Know what I mean? Got two boyth my own thelf, but thome men aren’t meant to have thons, now are they? You gotta boy, Thathafrath?”

  For the first time since we’d started talking, Son interjects.

  “Hey Andrew, didn’t you tell me to cut you off at 11,” Son says, pointing at the clock on the wall behind him. “Maybe you’d better get going.”

  Edie ignores Son and repeats his question to me. “Well? You gotta boy, Thathafrath?”

  Edie slaps his knee and shouts, “You don’t, do you? Thee? I knew it! No offenth, Thathafrath, but you’re like Timmy in that way. Better off with girlth?”

  “Andrew,” says Son from behind the bar.

  “It’th kinda like … what do they call that? Thurvival of the fittetht—thomethin’ like that? You know what I’m talkin’ about? That thing where the thtrong live and the weak die.”

  A fury bubbles in my chest and I say, “Careful, Edie.”

  “What?” he asks, raising his arms in innocence. “What did I thay? I’m just thaying that the weak die. Hell, that ain’t nothin’ new. That’th Darwin. The weak die, Thathafrath. The weak die.”

  I jump from my bar stool and throw my beer mug against the wall. “Edie, if you don’t shut the hell up I’m going to knock out that last jagged tooth you got hanging from that shithole mouth of yours.”

  Edie slowly rises from his bar stool and smiles that missing-teeth smile.

  “You gotta blow off thome thteam, Thathafrath? Bring it on, I’d be happy to help.”

  “That’s enough,” says Son. “Sit down, both of ya.”

  But it’s too late. I lunge toward Edie and hold my fist up in the same way I had that day on the basketball court. And like that day on the court, Edie stands unflinching and fearless.

  “Who are you kidding, Thathafrath? We both know you ain’t gonna hit me.”

  Except that this time I do hit him. And just like I promised, I knock out the last tooth in his smile.

  Well, sorta.

  In the million or so times I had fantasized about hitting Edie, he always falls to the floor hard, shakes his head a couple times, and then slides his jaw back and forth with one hand. He stands up slowly and walks away with a newfound respect for me. Perhaps even fear.

  In reality, when I punch Edie’s mouth I knock his head hard to the right and mess up his hair a little, but that’s about it. He doesn’t fall and he doesn’t check for a broken jaw. Instead, he turns his head back toward me slowly, smiles a bloody smile and then yanks out the tooth I had managed to loosen. He examines it, shruggs, stuffs it in the front pocket of my shirt.

  “Thouvenir.”

  Then he hits me with a quick one-two that drops me to the floor.

  As Son walks him out the door, I can hear Edie laughing and spewing out a string of lispy insults.

  Later that night as I lie in bed drunk and defeated, I whisper, “Mithter Innothent,” and laugh at the unfunny thought, at the real possibility. Edie was the filthiest soul I had ever known. And though I couldn’t be sure he had killed Katie Cooper, I was more than sure of one thing.

  He had it in him.

  Panda Bears

  Our three tables form a perfect triangle, he and she and I. Her reading, unaware of any world outside of her book. Him watching, unaware of any world outside of her. Me watching them both like two panda bears in captivity.

  I can see how she is making him love her. It is in the way she sits with one foot on the floor and one crossed over her lap. The way she is slouched over the table with her head propped on hand and elbow. And it is in the way her long sun-touched, brown hair hangs carelessly down the right side of her tilted head, her left hand periodically sweeping it back and then adjusting horn-rimmed glasses. She is captivating, this young woman.

  He practices the conversation in his head and his lips move involuntarily with each thought. He repeats the same phrase under his breath, changing his tone and the height and angle of his eyebrows with every new effort.

  He opens a spiral notebook and begins to write. It is the furious scribble of a man angry with himself and I can only guess that he is cursing his own lack of courage. His head wiggles as he writes—side to side, front to back—the way I imagine Mozart must have looked when possessed by the succubus of new music, only the ink and quill missing.

  He does not see her approach.

  “Excuse me,” she says.

  Startled, he literally jumps out of his chair.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says with a giggle and a slight touch of his arm. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just, I wanted to see if you had a pen I could borrow.”

  “A what? A pen?”

  Then looking at his hand like it has something stuck to it that he does not quite recognize, he says, “A pen. Sure, take this. This is a pen.”

  They are sweet and it seems to me that something big is happening that neither of them can fully understand. They do not know what lies ahead of them, these two panda bears. They are about to find love in each other. And in the way an alarm clock reminds you not to sleep, they have reminded me of my own slumbering love. I head back to Grandpa and Grandma’s to call my wife.

  “Tam, I talked to Grandpa and Grandma and they’re fine with it.”

  “Fine with what?”

  I switch the phone
receiver to my other ear. A sharp pain shoots up my side and it feels like Edie’s knuckles are still grinding against my ribs.

  “Fine with you and Tory coming here to stay, too. With them. With me.”

  I inhale deeply and silently exhale all the pain from Edie and everything else. I pull up my shirt to check for bruising, or perhaps a splintered bone sticking out of my skin.

  “I feel different here, Tam. In my old home, my old town.”

  “Away, you mean. You feel better being away.”

  “Yes, away. But not from you and not from Tory.”

  A few seconds tick away before she finally responds.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? You’ll come? You’ll stay?”

  “For a while. I don’t know, a week or two maybe. We’ll come tomorrow.”

  “I love you, Tam.”

  In the maples in front of Grandpa and Grandma Gaines’ house a brown bushy-tailed squirrel scampers across the telephone wires. I can hear the sound of kids playing baseball off in some distance—or at least what passed for distance in Willow Grove. In some further distance than that, a dog barks.

  I rock on the porch swing and wait for Tammy and Tory to arrive. My eyes keep watch of the railroad tracks that my two ladies will soon be rumbling over. Three trains come and go. Each of them blare their horns faintly, then loudly, then faintly again.

  Swinging back and forth, I think back to the day we brought baby Tory home from the hospital. We were living in a two-bedroom mobile home that I refused to call a trailer. We were young and happier than I realized—recognizing when I’m happy is something I’ve never been good at. Then all of a sudden, into our lives comes this tiny little something that I instantly realize has my entire world stashed inside of it. I remember thinking that very thought the day we brought her home from the hospital. We walked inside and I set Tory atop the breakfast bar in her car seat. I looked at her and I thought to myself, Everything—the whole damn world—right there.