Bend

by Nancy Hedin

  I nodded a lie. He took his hand from my mouth. I screamed, but he grabbed me again and covered my mouth. I could smell him—his sweat, cologne, pig shit, and bacon. He was stronger than me. He held one hand over my mouth, wrapped his other arm around my torso, and pulled me into the darkness by the house. I kicked at him, but he just held me tighter.

  Kenny put his lips to my ear. Goose flesh rippled down my neck and arms. He whispered, “You’re my only chance, Lorraine. Please just listen to me, and then you can go into the house. Please.”

  I turned to face him. He took his hand off my mouth. I could have screamed, but I couldn’t break free. Dad’s truck wasn’t in the yard. My screaming might have brought Momma outside, but what good would that have done? If Kenny planned to kill me, he could have killed Momma too.

  “Get the hell out of here. Unless you’ve come to tell us where Becky is, I have nothing to say to you.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” Kenny cried out. He let go of my waist and put his hands to his head.

  “You’re a liar.” I didn’t run.

  “I admit . . .”

  “You admit what?”

  “I admit your dad was right. We’d been fighting.”

  “I already know that, you dumbass.”

  “She talked all crazy about God. Said God talked to her. She kept saying these things God was telling her to do. It scared me and made me mad, but I never hit her.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re a batterer just like your dad.”

  “Did she tell you that? Is that what she said? I never beat Becky.”

  “I don’t believe you, Kenny.” I wanted to tell him I knew Becky had been at a shelter.

  “You know I love her. If you don’t believe me, nobody is going to believe me.” He dropped to his knees.

  Sniff hadn’t done shit to help me when Kenny had wrestled me into the dark, but now the whore presented his hairy belly to Kenny.

  “I thought maybe you would give me a chance.” He stroked the dog’s belly and looked up at me. Sniff and Pants had always liked Kenny. Dogs were good judges of character. It confused me that they liked him if he’d hurt Becky.

  “You know what it’s like to be judged for things you can’t do anything about. Becky told me about you.” He had tears in his eyes. “I love Becky.”

  “You have an odd way of loving.”

  “We got a lot in common, you and me.” He stood up. “I just hoped I could get you to believe me and help me find her, but I guess your mind is made up already.” He turned and walked toward the road.

  I never told Momma or Dad that Kenny had come to talk to me. I waited as an unusually mild February passed into March. The wind dried the puddles, blew the budded trees, and fluffed up the grasses in the pasture. One night after Dad and I had fed and bedded down the secret weapon, Satan, Momma proved once again that she’d never been out of the hunt no matter what ideas Dad and I had. She looked away from the TV and called to me before I went to bed.

  “Is that dog ready yet?”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, is that dog ready yet?” She looked at me over her glasses.

  I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me that Momma knew everything, but it did. There was no use arguing the fact. “Yeah. His paw is healed, and Dad’s made him practice finding Becky’s scent. There were still some of her clothes in the closet, and I found a hair brush she left in her room.”

  “Get me my duffel off the hook in the kitchen.”

  “How will we catch Kenny with gardening supplies?” I grabbed the floral canvas bag Momma kept on a hook behind the back door. I tossed the bag to Momma. She pulled out binoculars.

  “These have regular and night vision like the military. Good range too.” Momma looked at me through the camouflage-colored contraption. “A person could see from the house all the way to the end of the driveway if a person wanted to know if their daughter and her friend had brought lawn ornaments back to the yard, for instance.”

  She’d known. She’d watched, and she had played along just the same.

  “There’s one more thing, Momma. I think I ought to tip Kenny off that Dad suspects him. Kenny will give himself away. He’s a coward. More than anything he doesn’t want to be caught, but we’re going to catch him.”

  “How do mean ‘tip him off’?” Momma asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll just go over there and tell him Dad found his dog and he’s bringing him over to search for Becky.”

  “It’s too dangerous, Lorraine. What if he tries to hurt you? Let me do it. Kenny wouldn’t dare raise a hand to me.”

  That seemed awful risky to me, more for fear that Momma would throttle Kenny before she tipped him off and we’d never know what he did to Becky.

  Momma pointed at the fridge. “I’ve got some cookie dough chilling in the refrigerator: snickerdoodles, Kenny’s favorites. I’ll take him some cookies and then give him an earful about your dad saving that dog for hunting on Kenny’s land. Kenny doesn’t expect a woman to catch on to nothing, and I can play that part with the best of them. Then we’ll watch him from Gerry Narrows’s woods. We’ll watch him all night if we have to, and we can do it with those night goggles.”

  Not to be outdone by my momma when it came to gadgets and surveillance equipment, I went to my room and dug through a box of toys Becky and I had had when we were kids. I found two walkie-talkies. Becky’s was pink with faded Barbie decals. Mine was army green and endorsed by G.I. Joe. I gave the walkie-talkies to Momma. She put them in her bag with the night-vision goggles.

  For once I was grateful for Momma’s notebook. She took it out and wrote out her speech.

  “So, what are you going to say, Momma? Make it convincing.” I made her practice it in front of me.

  “Joseph has gone off the deep end this time, Kenny,” she quoted. “As if I don’t have enough sorrow with Becky leaving town. Now Joseph is talking like a crazy man.”

  I pictured the dumbass Kenny giving Momma rapt attention between dunking his cookies in whole milk and stuffing his face.

  “He’s got your old dog, you know, just the devil one—or a dog that looks like him. I don’t know, but I think it’s your old dog because Joseph is going on about it having the best nose—practically a bloodhound, he says. Anyways, now that dog is ready, and he says he’s bringing him right over here hunting. Like we need any more squirrels in our freezer, and I sure don’t feel like cooking the rodents. What’s that craziness about? As if I don’t have enough to worry about with Lorraine catting around, Becky gone, and now Joseph coming hunting here tomorrow with that dog. It’s enough to drive a Christian woman to drink.”

  That was the finale.

  “What do you think? Will that speech get him shaking if he did something to Becky?”

  “You are a regular thespian, Momma.” I touched her arm.

  Momma named it Operation Bring Becky Home. I refused to acknowledge that the Becky we’d bring home may have been dead and buried for weeks.

  I found Dad in the barn. He was sharpening shovels and spades.

  “Momma knows about the dog and what we planned.”

  He didn’t flinch. He knew more than anyone about Momma’s ways of knowing things. He walked up to the house. The light in the living room went out, and their bedroom light came on.

  A barn cat did figure eights rubbing against my legs while I waited. I gave Momma and Dad time to talk, yell, cry, or whatever they needed to do. Once their light was out, I went into the house and to my room. I had crawled into the upper bunk fully clothed, but still felt chilled. I couldn’t stand the thought of bare skin against white, cold sheets. I got up and crept over the baby fence that kept Little Man penned in the lower bunk. I held the sleeping angel close, kissed his head, and whispered, “I’ll take care of you.”

  The next day I packed baby bottles of formula and jars of smashed food in a sack for Twitch. He had agreed to wrangle Little Man for a couple of hours while Momma went to Kenny’s place, and
then we all watched from the woods. Twitch said he’d have rather had a job like beating Kenny until he confessed, but babysitting was the only job offered to him.

  “Take him with you to the diner. You’ll get plenty of help there from all those waitresses who think you’re charming,” Momma said to Twitch as she handed him the boy and the necessary equipment. “There are diapers in there, and they aren’t just for looks. Make sure you change him.”

  “What, you don’t have this boy doing his business in a toilet yet? What have you been doing with your spare time, Mrs. Tyler?” Twitch took the boy and the bag. He winked at me. “Good luck, I guess.”

  “We’re going to find Becky,” I said.

  The dust hadn’t settled from Twitch leaving the yard before Momma gathered her purse and left to give the performance of her life. I hoped that Momma would stick to the plan. I understood the impulse to beat the truth out of him.

  From Gerry Narrows’s woods, I watched through Momma’s binoculars. She was finished. As Momma stepped out of Kenny’s trailer she took off her sunglasses and looked into the sky. That was the prearranged signal. It meant her speech had gone fine and Kenny had seemed to swallow it all. Momma got in the car and backed into his snowblower. Her front bumper grazed the corner of his garage as she left the yard.

  As soon as Momma left the Hollister place, Kenny shot out of the trailer and hustled to one of the out buildings just past the garage. He wasn’t in the shed very long before he came out with a shovel over his shoulder and pulled on gloves. My breath caught. This was what I had expected him to do, but being right was not satisfying.

  In just a few strides Kenny was across the barnyard. He looped around a smaller pig barn. I lost sight of him. Just then Momma came barreling through the woods behind me. She crashed past bushes, sloshed over the remaining snow, and flattened the early spring grasses.

  “Where’s he at? He make a move yet?”

  “He’s got a shovel and went around the smaller pig barn. I can’t see him anymore.”

  “Why’re we waiting here?”

  I was in motion with Momma following in a camouflage slicker she was wearing over her house dress. The hem swayed above her yellow rubber gardening boots. She used her straw hat like a tennis racket—backhand and forehand strokes cleared her path of brush and bugs. We hid behind a clump of elms.

  “There he is. Get down!” My clothes sucked up the moisture from the ground as I dropped onto my belly and slithered on my elbows and knees. I held Momma’s field glasses to my eyes and whispered a narration of Kenny’s movements. “He’s digging behind the small barn.”

  Momma’s canvas gardening bag had been slung over her head; the strap crossed her front and back from shoulder to right hip. It was pinned beneath her now, but she rolled to the side, released the buckle, and dumped the contents on the ground between us. Momma had six Nut Goodie bars, a nail clipper, a warm can of diet cola, and the Barbie walkie-talkie. She said she’d given the other one to Dad.

  Momma squawked into the pink plastic thing. “Joseph, can you hear me? It’s Peggy.”

  There was some crackling sound, but no word from Dad.

  “Drat. Barbie’s got shit for range,” Momma said.

  “Go get into range to tell Dad that Kenny is digging. He’ll get the sheriff, or I’ll go back there myself so Kenny doesn’t take her before we can catch him.”

  She rumbled off.

  As dirt flew from Kenny’s shovel, I crept catlike out of Gerry Narrows’s woods. Kenny didn’t look up. I stopped at the edge of the tree line. Only thirty yards of shin-high grasses, clumps of snow, and mud separated me from Kenny. I positioned myself behind a scruffy jack pine, then watched and waited.

  Kenny’d thrown down his shovel and pulled something from the ground. It was blue and red, maybe a tarp or sheet, and it appeared to be wrapped around something or somebody. I dropped to my knees with dry heaves. I wanted to pass out into an unknowing coma or run down the hill and beat Kenny’s head in with his own shovel. Instead, I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and stepped a few feet back into the woods.

  When I turned back I couldn’t see Kenny. An engine sputtered and raced. Kenny had started his piece-of-shit diesel pickup. When it didn’t warm up enough to stay started on the first crank, he floored it still in park and filled the air with blue smoke. Kenny drove his truck around the small barn to where he’d been digging.

  Kenny hefted the bundle to the tailgate and leaned it against the truck. The bundle was stiff and upright. He climbed into the bed of the truck and dragged it toward the cab. There he let his end thud against the truck bed floor. He scuttled over the side and closed the tailgate. He’d barely driven around the small barn into the main yard when I saw our blue-paneled wagon barreling into the yard from the blacktop. Momma was at the wheel.

  I peeled Momma’s bag off my shoulder, left the binoculars, and ran full-out.

  The two faced off—Kenny in his truck and Momma in the wagon. There were two possible escape routes from that yard, and Momma was blocking one. To her near right and Kenny’s far left was an overgrown logging road. Kenny’s truck had enough clearance for that rutted track. He accelerated toward it, but Momma was closer and blocked his path, putting her car right on the logging road with no clearance for a bicycle between her and the trees on either side of that old road.

  “Way to go, Momma!”

  Momma’s maneuver was no reason for celebration. By blocking the logging road, she had given up her position in the driveway leading to the main road. Kenny jerked his wheel right and floored his engine. Momma still had distance on her side, but she was pointed the wrong way. There was no time or room to turn around. If she was going to block or slow Kenny from getting down the driveway, she would need to do it in reverse.

  She lurched the wagon forward and then shot backward out of the logging road between trees and fence lines and the propane tank. She raced parallel with Kenny down the drive backward. Mud and slush flew in every direction. At the last possible moment, before she would have hit the ditch embankment by the main road, she accelerated again and backed that wagon right into Kenny’s front fender. Kenny crashed his truck into the painted boulder at the end of the drive. Momma flattened Kenny’s mailbox.

  Steam billowed from the truck’s crushed radiator, and other fluids poured from his engine and pooled on the remaining snow and gravel. Kenny slumped over the steering wheel, squealing and whining.

  Dad and the sheriff drove up. Dad jumped out. The sheriff called for an ambulance on his radio.

  The passenger side of the station wagon was knitted against Kenny’s truck. I ran to the driver’s-side door, worried that backing up had finally killed Momma. Momma couldn’t open her door herself, but she was alive.

  “Momma, are you all right?”

  “Lorraine, Lorraine. I can’t move. Maybe my spine is split. Maybe I’ve been shot. Maybe my innards have ruptured. I have such pain right here.” Momma felt low on her belly, and I halfway expected her to hand me her spleen.

  Then Momma smiled at me. “Oh. I forgot to unhook my seat belt.”

  Once unbuckled, Momma rolled down on the seat and put her arms out to me. I wrenched her out like she was a newborn calf. Momma kicked and pushed with her feet against the floor of the car first and then the inside of the door. She stretched her legs and climbed out of the car. I helped her to her feet and got her dress back down from the hip regions where it had migrated.

  Dad and the sheriff peered over the side of Kenny’s truck bed.

  “He’s got a tent wrapped around something.” Sheriff Scrogrum climbed into the truck bed. He kneeled and looked at Dad. “Now Joseph, you don’t need to see this right yet. We don’t even know what’s in here.”

  “Sheriff, I do need to see it, and right now.” Dad climbed up on the truck bed.

  Momma grabbed me by the shirt, tucked me into her bosom, and laced her arms around me. I rested in Momma’s arms for the first time in a long time. I knew Momma was broader, but
I’d forgotten that she was also taller than me. She sheltered me, and I covered her heart.

  Sheriff Scrogrum knifed through what appeared to be electrical cords and tent straps tied at varying intervals. He pulled at the material, but eventually used the knife to cut the plastic tarp. He shrank back from whatever smell wafted from the opening.

  “Sorry.” Sheriff glanced at Dad.

  Dad reached over and tore at the fabric.

  Kenny whimpered in the truck. “Ain’t someone going to get me a doctor?”

  “You should have worn your seat belt!” Momma yelled and squeezed me tighter.

  “What in the hell?” Dad said, and he and the Sheriff looked at each other.

  I extricated myself from Momma. I had to know. I ran to the side of the truck and hoisted myself up so I could see over the side. Momma followed me and did the same. The smell was sharp and sour. My brain was muddled. I knew I was looking at a person, a dead person for certain, but it wasn’t Becky.

  “It ain’t Becky! It ain’t Becky.” Dad cried, laughed, and scratched his head.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  Sheriff Scrogrum stood up in the back of the truck. He addressed the assembly.

  “I can’t say for certain. I’m no forensic expert, but my guess is that if I were to go up to the main house, old man Hollister isn’t home.”

  Once Momma and I were back on the ground, Dad came over and put his arms around us. “It ain’t Becky. There’s still a chance,” he said.

  “Oh thank God! It’s going to be okay, Joseph. I just know it.” Momma patted his back. “God is good. God forgives.”

  Gush and hugs would have to wait. I confronted Kenny. “Where is Becky? Did you kill your dad?”

  “I didn’t kill nobody.” He held one arm against his ribs and wiped his bloody lip with the back of his hand.

  “You killed one of your dogs, and nearly killed them both.”

  “I didn’t kill my dad, and I didn’t hurt Becky.” Tears filled his eyes.

  Sheriff Scrogrum marched up to the main house to ask Mrs. Hollister some questions. When he got back, he told Momma, Dad, and me that Mrs. Hollister had a hell of a story to tell. The old man had fallen and cracked open his skull. She swore there was no murder, just a quick burial.