by Chris Fabry
“What do you think happened, Sheriff?” the diver said.
He let the knife fall in the bag, tied it tight, and tossed it in the open trunk. He got out another trash bag and placed the smelly car seat inside as well as the blanket and what was left of the stuffed animal and tied the top. “Something went royally wrong here, and it might have cost a little girl her life. To tell you the truth, I don’t know. But I’m going to keep asking questions until I do.”
Preston closed the trunk and drove away, deep in thought. He’d been there when the mother told her story the first time. Dana appeared to be in deep distress, as any mother who has just lost her child to a kidnapping would be. She had met a stranger at the Dew Drop Inn, she had said. Nobody in the bar remembered him. He had her drive into the country and pulled a knife on her. Then forced her to get out. She admitted it was a mistake bringing her daughter to a place like that and letting her sleep in the backseat while she was inside. That, to Preston, had lent credence to her story. She wasn’t afraid of the unvarnished truth. She really did seem broken up about losing the baby.
The guy had tied her to a tree with some rope he had in his backpack and left her there, telling her if she tried to escape, he’d kill the little girl. She had burn marks on her wrists where she tried to get free, and later she had taken them to the tree where she’d been tied and showed them the missing bark on the other side. Everything about her story checked out, except the car and the girl had simply vanished.
Something kept gnawing at him about the car seat, however. Something about it wasn’t right. He passed a car wash on a hill and doubled back and pulled up to the middle bay. There was an old boy washing a vintage Mustang in the first bay. Deck shoes with no socks, cutoffs, and a tank top. A semi driver was washing his cab in the third one. The mud flaps had Yosemite Sam holding two six-shooters.
Preston popped the trunk and pulled out the plastic bag with the car seat. He grabbed a few coins from his pocket and let them fall into the slot in the wall, clinking their way into the cash holder. The hose filled with water and gave a hiss through the nozzle, and a thin stream added to the puddle already growing on the concrete.
The pressure on the line felt like a snake trying to squirm free when he pressed the trigger, and just like that the car seat became visible. The material was corduroy, maybe a denim color, and it began to come apart with the force of the water. He had second thoughts about it as soon as he hit the back of the seat and it tipped over. He adjusted the nozzle so the stream widened to a spray and the mud and slime oozed from the material and the plastic.
The old boy with the Mustang was drying his car and sneaking peeks at him. Preston wondered what would happen if he ran the plates on the Mustang.
He let go of the trigger and the line tensed again. Tossing it aside, he knelt and held the front buckle in his hand. The seat was the old type that had a strap coming down over the child’s head and torso. He knew enough about car seats to judge that this was probably a secondhand buy. These days half the people who bought fancy car seats had no idea how to secure them. He’d stopped cars and found he could tip kids forward as much as a foot with the slightest pressure.
The lock on the front of the car seat was still engaged. Above it was the strap, jagged and torn and hanging limp. Preston washed off the back and found the other end of the strap that had worked its way through the holes.
He sat on his haunches a few minutes, holding the pieces, working it out in his head. A strap like that wouldn’t disintegrate in one place and stay intact everywhere else. There had to be a logical explanation for this, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure it out.
“Hey, Sheriff.” It was the Mustang owner wiping off his hands and arms with a chamois. “Somebody throw their kid in the Ohio?” He said it half laughing.
Preston just turned and stared.
The old boy shrugged and hopped in the car and fired it up. The engine still sounded tight, like some mechanical work of art that ought to be in a museum. The muffler needed work, but then guys like this probably wanted it loud so people would hear them coming.
Another car pulled into the first bay, a rusted minivan with several bumper stickers on the back door. One read, My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma.
Preston knelt there, hanging on to the buckle. Had it been cut? Whoever did it would have to be strong to get a knife through it.
A buzzer told him he had only thirty seconds left on the hose. He stood to return it but sprayed inside the plastic bag before the time was up. When the hose went limp, he dumped the blanket onto the concrete with a splat. The colors had faded but he could recognize the pattern. Noah’s ark. He lifted the blanket and found a one-eyed bear with a ribbon still tied around its neck.
He put everything back in the trunk and closed it. The guy in the minivan was scrubbing the front grille, his ponytail swirling behind him. A tattoo on his shoulder of a hemp plant. To Preston all the scrubbing seemed an exercise in futility, a losing battle, sort of like his work, a picture of the culture right there in front of him. People rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic for a better view; only they didn’t realize there was an iceberg dead ahead. The man never looked at him, but Preston could have sworn the guy flipped him the bird as he turned and got in the cruiser.
Preston’s mind jumbled over the discovery. All those years wondering. In the days after the disappearance, he’d had a sense that the story he was hearing wasn’t the truth. But in a tight-knit community that wanted answers and a quick arrest, he was cautious, tracking as many leads as he could until bringing Mae’s daughter in for an all-nighter. The young woman never budged from her story, but something didn’t add up then or now.
Every day for seven years he woke up with the nagging suspicion that there was a little girl’s body decomposing in some shallow grave in the woods. He kept waiting for the phone call from some hunter, but the call hadn’t come. Until last night.
He could almost piece it together—the timeline, the words of the young lady, the description of the perpetrator—but not quite. What happened that night? What was the truth?
There was no way around it. He had to talk to Mae and Leason’s daughter again.
* * *
On Saturday Sheila and I went over to Mr. Taylor’s barn. The building looked ramshackle from the outside with weathered boards sticking out, and the whole thing leaned toward Pikes Peak. But it was a lot different inside. It didn’t feel like it would fall down. Sitting on a hay bale and smelling all the smells of a barn was just about the best feeling on earth.
The horses came right over to us, and Giselle and Goliath ate some cornmeal out of my hand. Their hairy lips felt funny and I dropped half the food, but Sheila said she did the same thing her first time, and that made me feel better. Sheila wore these big rubber boots that came up to her knees—I guess because of what she was about to step in—and coverall jeans.
Mr. Taylor was a mean-looking old man with spidery eyes and skin that looked like the leather on his pointed boots. He was bent over at the shoulders and I thought he was going to pick something up, but then I realized that was just the way he stood all the time, like a tree that was weighted down with fruit. Only he didn’t straighten once the fruit fell. Even though it was hot he wore a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. The horses walked toward him like he was their best friend.
“So we got us a helper, huh?” he said, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye and smiling. He had big white teeth just like the horses, and I wondered if those teeth were really his or if somebody had put them in for him.
Sheila introduced me as the daughter of a friend, and the old man didn’t ask questions. “Well, it doesn’t matter who you are in my book, as long as you’re willing to work.”
“That’s me,” I said.
He told me the troughs hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, so I set to work chipping away and scrubbing at the wooden thing that looked like it was older than the barn itself. Sheila and Mr. Taylor went inside the sta
lls and moved the manure around so it wouldn’t get too deep in there. That probably sounds disgusting, but to me it seemed like a lot of fun to get down in there. I wanted to help but Sheila said I should wait until I got some farm clothes and boots and I agreed with her because I just had one pair of shoes and they had tears in a couple of places.
A mouse hopped from underneath a bale of hay and bounced along. That thing could jump about a foot off the ground. I let out a scream and the old man laughed. He said it was a kind of jumping mouse that lived in the fields and that the Walmart almost didn’t get built because of it. I thought it was funny that a little mouse could slow down a thing as big as Walmart.
Dad came running into the barn and the horses moved back from him and Giselle nearly stepped on my foot. Mr. Taylor coaxed her over to a stall, and Sheila made the introductions.
“You’ve got quite a little worker there on your hands,” Mr. Taylor said.
“She’s a keeper, isn’t she?” Dad said. He turned to Sheila. “The part’s in. Do you think I could run over to the place in your car? I’ll bring it right back.”
Sheila looked like someone had dropped an anvil on her head. “Oh, sure. No problem. Let me get the keys.”
“I know where they are,” Dad said. “I’ll be back in a jiffy. How about a cookout tonight to celebrate? I’ll pick up some stuff for the grill.” He looked at Mr. Taylor. “Enough for the four of us.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t,” the old man said.
“Sure you could,” Sheila said. “It’ll be nice to have some company.”
“I’ll go on strike if you don’t come over,” I said.
That made him laugh. “We’ll see.”
“See you soon,” Dad said and he was off.
Mr. Taylor bent over and raked some dung out of the corner of the stall. “Your daddy know how to cook up a good burger?”
“He makes the best. He stuffs the inside with cheese and mushrooms and whatever you like. We haven’t cooked out in a long time—ever since the grill we had broke.”
“How long ago was that?” Sheila said.
“Maybe a year or two? All I know is I can smell that charcoal and my mouth starts watering.”
By the time we finished at the barn and went to the house, Dad was back and had climbed underneath the RV, his legs sticking out, working on the part. There were white bags filled with buns and vegetables from a different grocery store.
Sheila had me take my shoes off outside and told me to come upstairs. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I couldn’t imagine what it was, and my heart jumped like one of those mice when I followed Sheila to her bathroom. She had a big bathtub that almost looked like a swimming pool.
“The only luxury I’ve allowed myself here is this Jacuzzi,” she said, turning on the water and running her hand underneath. She took a plastic bottle from the shelf and poured in some thick liquid, and the bubbles starting foaming. Then she turned on the jets, and the whole bath rumbled and shook the floor. I thought the bubbles were going to lap over the top of the tub. When the water was high enough, she stopped it and said for me to get undressed and get in while she got me some clothes.
I closed the door and put my clothes in the corner and stepped in. The jets felt funny against my skin, but the water was warm and the bubbles smelled like the field of lilacs we had walked through when we’d stopped at a rest area in the Midwest. It smelled like summer to me, and now I was drenched in it.
Sheila came back in and hung a pretty cotton dress with red flowers all over it on the towel rack. I’d seen that exact dress while looking for headbands at Walmart, and though I am not a dress-wearing person, I liked the way it looked. She got out a fresh towel that was bigger than I was and soft and thick and smelled almost as good as the lilac scent of the water.
“Wash your hair, and when you get done, try this on,” Sheila said. “I’ve got some white sandals I want you to try on too. And we’re going to do your nails and trim your hair.”
I sat back in the water, my arms behind my head, and relaxed. Surely this is what a queen feels like. People handing you things and putting out clothes and changing the sheets on your bed. I could get used to this in a minute.
I dried off and put the dress on, my hair shedding little drops of water.
Sheila walked in, put her hands on her hips, and shook her head. “If you don’t look just like a picture, I don’t know what does.”
She stood me in front of the mirror and began brushing my hair, which is not an easy thing to do because my hair has always been the knottiest. It’s like trying to straighten out an animal’s nest. I usually give up on it and let it go wherever it wants. Sheila draped a dry towel around me and got out the scissors. What was supposed to be just a trim around the edges became a major cut because of all the tangles and knots, but I loved the way it looked and couldn’t wait for Dad to see it.
“Let’s do one more thing,” Sheila said.
She sat me on the bed and put my feet on a folding chair and clipped my nails. Then she got out the prettiest pink nail polish I’d ever seen and went to work on my toenails. She put cotton balls in between my toes until the polish dried. She did my fingernails too, then put a little blush on my cheeks. To top it off, she’d bought a necklace that had a red flower in the middle just like the ones on the dress.
I was in front of the mirror looking at myself with her putting on the necklace when the engine of the RV cranked once or twice and then fired to life. Dad let out a whoop that we heard from the open window, and Sheila’s face scrunched up like she’d just heard a car crash.
She fluffed out my new hairdo and smiled. “Let’s go start dinner.”
Dad changed clothes and looked as happy as I’d seen him in months. Men must feel like they accomplish something when they get a machine working. He took one look at me and his mouth dropped.
“Do you like it?” I said, twirling around and then holding out my fingernails and showing him my sandals.
“Where’d you get all that?” he said.
“Just a few things I picked out at work yesterday,” Sheila said. “Every girl needs a new outfit and shoes.”
He reached out to touch my hair. I think he’d become so used to seeing all the tangles that he couldn’t believe it was so soft and silky. “You sure do clean up good, don’t you?”
Sheila handed him a plate of ground beef, and he went to work. He’d bought onions and peppers and mushrooms and a couple kinds of cheese. He looked almost as happy making the burgers as he did fixing the RV but not quite.
An old truck rumbled up and Mr. Taylor climbed out. Walter ran over to him, wagging his tail and sniffing at his coveralls. Dad says a dog’s nose is so sensitive it can smell things we can only dream about smelling, and it looked to me that Walter was in dog heaven. Mr. Taylor’s clothes were like a full buffet at the Golden Corral. He walked behind the house where the smoke was coming from the grill and talked with Dad awhile. Mostly about what was wrong with the RV and how he fixed the burgers.
When Mr. Taylor saw me standing inside the screen door, he cocked his head like he was meeting a stranger and took off his John Deere hat. “Don’t know that I’ve had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, ma’am.”
I had to laugh at him as I opened the door. “Silly, it’s just me.”
He handed Sheila a jar full of something. “I’ve been waiting for a special occasion to open this. Some chowchow my wife made before she passed. Ought to be good with those burgers—don’t you think?”
Sheila made a fuss about it, but I’d never heard of chowchow before, so I asked what it was. Sheila unscrewed the Ball jar and smelled the contents. “It’s relish, sweet and good.”
The pot on the stove was boiling, and it looked like there were enough ears of corn in there to feed a small village. Sheila had tossed a salad in a big green bowl and put croutons in, which I always called wood chips because that’s what they look like to me. There were fresh cucumbers and tomatoes
and just about everything you could think of in the salad, and I thought that staying with Sheila was a pretty good idea because I’d learn a lot about cooking. She’d also made potato and macaroni salad.
She asked me to pour the lemonade, and Mr. Taylor helped me get out the ice and put it in the big glasses. It was almost like having a real family with everybody pitching in and helping.
“So, is June Bug your real name?” Mr. Taylor said as we carried the food to the dining room table.
I shrugged, thinking about the picture I’d seen and wondering what it would feel like for people to call me Natalie. “It’s what I’ve always answered to.”
“Doesn’t seem like a name fitting a pretty girl like you.”
Dad brought a plate of burgers in and there was cheese running down the sides of some of them and juice still bubbling around the edges. “Her real name’s June, but I added the Bug.”
“You pick out the name or did your wife?” Mr. Taylor said.
Dad wiped his hands on a napkin and surveyed the table. “Guess it was a mutual decision.” He looked at Sheila. “You didn’t put out the caviar?”
Sheila laughed. “We’re all out.”
“Well, you have everything else. This looks fantastic.”
We sat down and started passing food. There was something missing, and at first I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then it came to me. I’d seen it in a lot of movies, especially ones around a big meal like at Thanksgiving or Christmas, which is what this felt like, even though it was summer and the flies were trying to get to the food before we did.
“We should pray,” I said.
Mr. Taylor was cutting the corn off the cob onto his plate, and he stopped midway through the row he was on. Dad raised his eyebrows at me.
Sheila was the only one who nodded and bowed her head. “Why don’t you do the honors?”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Sure you can,” she said. “Just thank God for the food and anything else you want to thank him for.”
All of a sudden my face felt hot. I couldn’t tell if Dad was mad at me for bringing up the subject, or maybe he was worried that Mr. Taylor would be offended for some reason.
