Pickard County Atlas

by Chris Harding Thornton

  She’d almost packed a bag. She could’ve done it this time, since Rick was off working in Arnold. She’d flipped through the hangers in the closet, through the folded layers in each of the drawers. There was nothing she wanted. There was nothing she had that she couldn’t find a better version of in a church basement thrift store for a quarter.

  The Winnie-the-Pooh night-light glowed from Anna’s room. Pam nudged the door to see if Anna was sleeping. She was. She slept beneath the button-eyed watch of a denim-covered wad of fiberfill named Mr. Turtle and a brown teddy bear that played some plinking lullaby if you turned the crank in its butt.

  Anna would sleep till morning. She slept as hard as Rick but for longer stretches. And if worse came to worst, if that bolt of lightning struck and Pam’s car rolled and landed upside down in a field and crushed the last breath out of her before she could call Babe and tell her where to find Anna, a stuffed turtle was probably every bit as good a maternal option.

  Anna’s hair was wet from sweat and spiraled like it’d been set with rollers. That hair. It was Rick’s, but when Pam first saw it, then just a spray of black that jutted above her dark, potato-looking face, Pam thought the baby was black or Indian. Something. Something not Pam. “That’s not my baby,” she told them, and she meant it.

  It still didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem right somebody could carry a baby around in her belly for nine miserable months, baby living off the same blood she did, eating all the food she ate, then pop out and be somebody she couldn’t have picked out of a lineup. Pam knew then. She knew if she’d taken a minute or two to think about what the hell it would all mean, making a person—if she hadn’t let herself go to the novelty of the whole thing and treated it like that time she smoked hash and threw a big hunk of concrete at the Nova just because she realized she could—if she’d thought Why? instead of Why not?—if she’d taken just a goddamn minute or two to really think about it instead of being full of wonder at the absurdity of it all like a jackass, then no. She would not have done it.

  Beneath her soft steps down the hall and through the living room, Pam felt the hollow, the give.

  She pulled the door open and walked onto the metal mesh of the porch.

  Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for any of this. Maybe it was like how some people were naturally good at math and others were good at spelling; maybe other people were naturals at playing house and forgetting that they were going to die and that all the people they knew were going to die. Maybe other people could live with how keeping people around only reminded you of how fast you were all going and they were okay with lapsing into the dream of it, the dream of constant faces and places every day, and maybe it didn’t scare the ever-living shit out of them when they woke up every once in a while, just long enough to realize their whole life was gone in a haze of vacuuming and figuring out bills and patching crotches of jeans. Maybe that was just it. She pulled the door shut behind her.

  Turning the key so the engine roared, she knew that was it. That that had to be right. Because if she had some natural maternal or wifely instinct she was choosing to override, then that would make her a terrible person, now, wouldn’t it? And Pam didn’t feel like a terrible person. But if she were to place odds on what would make her round that corner? Maybe not make her a terrible person but make her do something a terrible person would do? She’d say the chances were a hell of a lot higher if she was doing something that didn’t feel right. Something that didn’t come natural.

  She shifted into reverse, pulled out, and put the Nova in drive.

  Anna was better off with a stuffed turtle, because mothers who killed their babies and wives who killed their husbands likely weren’t the types who had a good deal of maternal and wifely instincts. They were probably people like Pam, who knew they weren’t cut out for this shit to begin with but who swallowed it up—swallowed it whole every day of their lives and then went around trying to pretend they were something they weren’t, against their own instincts, till it drove them crazy and they backed over their husbands’ necks with tractors or laced their kids’ mashed carrots with rat poison.

  She made the turn onto the trailer court’s main road and saw the back of the Fall Meadows Estates sign. Estates. Her manor in Fall Meadows Estates. Absurd. East or west. She made a right onto the highway. East it was.

  At the blind intersection of the county road, she braked. She hadn’t last night. She hadn’t slowed. Maybe because yesterday it wouldn’t have mattered if somebody had T-boned her and swept her clean out of this world.

  Of course, she’d also been in a hurry to pass the Jensen place. Now she crept by. Now she let herself look straight back into the darkness.

  There, an orange light pulsed like a wrong-colored lightning bug. Like a signal.

  Though the air was hot, her knee shivered when she sank the gas. She sped across the plain, past the high stalks and tassels and over the steel-girder bridge whose narrow I-beams were graffitied with generations of initials. His face from last night, Harley Jensen’s, surfaced in her head again, like it rose from that same murky water.

  She didn’t know it was him she’d just seen. It could have been anybody down there, creeping around that place. And there was no good reason to stop if it was.

  There was no good reason for her to pull in the Lucas drive, park, and slide into her sandals. But after she did, she headed around to the trunk and propped herself on its slope. She leaned back and dared herself to close her eyes, to listen for the Wakonda, low but bubbling. With her eyes shut, the world was louder, sharper, but her skin sealed her in. Her own steady pump of blood, the chatter inside her head, the twitches of her nerves made her feel trapped in a space suit, cut off from everything by her own body, not feeling or breathing the air around her.

  Then she heard it. The low rumble of the engine, the roll of radials on the highway. She opened her eyes and perched ready to bolt if it wasn’t him. But it was.

  The cruiser made the same broad, looping turn across the highway and pulled off the road to park. When the engine cut, the only sound was crickets. The door opened with one pop, closed with another. The lighter lid clanked. The barrel rasped, and his steps brushed the grass.

  “Evening,” she said. Though it was dark, she shielded her eyes with a flat hand, like a visor. Like she was sunbathing. She forced the hand down to her side.

  “Morning.” He didn’t walk to her. He walked to the open space of the drive behind the Nova, blue smoke rising like a loosening braid. He looked out across the distance, to the dark windbreak on the other side. “Needed some air?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wear your shoes?”

  She stuck out a foot for him to see and thought hard for something to say. All she heard was the pumping of blood, its murmur in her head.

  “Want a smoke?”

  She said she did, and he walked to her, minding his steps in the grass. She took the cigarette from him, and he lit it. She puffed and looked up as the lighter lid shut. He edged away, looking across the valley. He was silent for a while. His silence was louder than the crickets.

  She took a drag and caught a glint of starlight off her finger. Her wedding band. If he saw it, he might ask, and if he asked, she didn’t know what she’d tell him. That thought alone, of saying she’d mixed herself up with that family, washed over her with a heaviness. She used her pinkie and thumb to nudge the ring loose over her knuckle.

  “It’s probably been a while if you did,” he said, “but you ever root around any of these empty houses?”

  She had, of course. Everybody who grew up out here had. But she didn’t know why he was asking. And he was still a cop, and she was still technically a Reddick. “Hung out here a few times.” She tucked the ring in the pocket of her cutoffs. “House was already gone. Mom always said there were rats and rabid squirrels in those places.”

  He gave a low breath of a laugh. “Babe can leave an impression.”

  Pam took another deep drag. She felt tipsy.
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br />   “Never the Jensen place, though?”

  She shook her head. “Nobody did. Not that I knew of.”

  He looked at her like he had last night, like he was watching for something. Getting a read. Then he let his head drop with a short nod. “Well, I hate to cut this short.” He looked toward the house. “Odd question—” he said, then, “No.” He waved to say he was leaving.

  “What?”

  He’d taken a pair of steps toward his car. He stopped and stood, quiet and considering. “Don’t suppose you’d want to follow me down there.”

  She didn’t know this man. He had a gun. And he was asking her to go to an empty, dilapidated house where his mother blew her head off.

  Pam tried to hear the crickets over her pumping blood. She couldn’t. “All right,” she said.

  “Not inside, of course. It’s just—” he said. “You know, the roof caves in, might be good to have somebody know about it. Go get help.”

  She said she would.

  He told her to follow, to pull in next to where he parked the cruiser at the side of the house.

  Parked in the high grass, Pam saw the beat of her heart through the thin white cotton of her T-shirt. Unless somebody came up the drive and pulled in right behind the cars, they couldn’t be seen. Nobody had any idea at all she was here. She pictured Anna, still sleeping. She thought of the turtle keeping watch.

  She felt the handle of the car door and pulled it. Then she walked to the corner of his rear bumper.

  He was already at the base of the steps, back turned. One hand held a flashlight and the other rested on his belt so she could see just his thumb, like that thumb was holding him down, his body in place. She pictured that thumb on the divot in front of her hip bone. Holding her down and in place. He mounted the steps and crossed the porch. When he walked through the doorway, he left it open behind him. She watched his flashlight travel the walls.

  In the brush, a few yards past the hood of her car, something rustled. A crack rang out like somebody had stepped on a branch.

  Pam shot toward the porch. Before she knew where she was, she stood in the doorway.

  A screech sounded, like nails on glass. She gripped his arm with her fingertips. He gave a tiny tremor.

  “Branch,” he whispered sharply, without looking. The flashlight beam stopped at the edge where this room gave way to another, like it’d hit some kind of barrier. “Get back outside,” he whispered.

  “I heard a noise.”

  He didn’t answer. He shook his head, reached a hand back, and held her wrist. He turned off the flashlight. He was listening. She didn’t know how he could hear anything. All she could hear was the rush of blood in her ears.

  “Probably a possum,” he said.

  Blue light filtered through the other room’s windows. When the leaves outside flittered with a shift of air, the light rippled like water reflecting. He angled his body away from it, toward her, but he looked above and past. Brows knit, he worked over some problem she got the feeling had nothing to do with her, even as his palm found her hip. She felt the heat of it through her T-shirt. She willed that thumb toward the divot, toward the space where her cutoffs rested low. But the thumb didn’t move. And it wasn’t that kind of touch. The touch felt more like he was using her hip to keep his balance.

  She moved toward him anyway, feeling the pad of the thumb that wasn’t there, feeling it like he’d pivoted her with the press of a button. Her sandal scuffed the floor like sandpaper and jarred him from his far-off stare. She couldn’t see his eyes then. They were shadowed. All the same, she felt the shock of that downed wire. She waited. She looked at the line of his mouth, then back up at the dark space where his eyes were. She wondered if he could see her focus.

  He took a short step toward her. His boot struck hard beneath the nail of her big toe. Her eyes watered, but she didn’t blink. His chest was near enough to feel its warmth. His belt buckle brushed cold and hard against her belly. But he made no move to bend toward her, even as she stared at his mouth.

  His hold left her hip and reached toward his pocket for a cigarette. He fiddled with the foil. “We should head out,” he said, low. He guided her onto the porch and down the steps.

  She felt warm and numb, and she needed to sit. She did, kicking off her shoes and pushing herself onto the trunk of the Nova. She left space between her bare knees and leaned back on the heels of her hands while he walked to his car. He dropped the flashlight through the open passenger window. Then he stood in front of her, with some distance, and lit a cigarette.

  “Your dad build this house?” she asked. The words came out to fill space, to move the still air, but they thickened it instead.

  “Shit, I’m not that old. Loren Braasch’s grandpa Ole built it. Seems right they got it back, even if nobody wants to live in it.”

  She’d been holding her breath. “I’m sorry.”

  Another noise. This time somewhere across the yard, in front of the barn. He put up a palm, signaling her to stay put. She waited, frozen, till the hand finally lowered. She didn’t speak, hardly breathed, till he took another drag. He was probably right. It was probably some animal in the grass.

  The crickets chirped. He pulled the cigarette pack from his breast pocket and reached across the distance to offer one.

  She tensed her legs to balance as she leaned forward. “Place seems pretty solid.”

  “It is,” he said. He took a short drag and let it go through his nose as he took in another. He held it, only letting go as he spoke. “That was less than honest. About worrying it’d cave in.”

  Her heart skipped a beat she felt in her stomach. “Why’d you ask me down here, then?”

  “In case I got in, saw the place trashed,” he said. “Looking like that bridge over there.” He took another deep drag. The bridge over the Wakonda, he meant. Spray-painted with initials, graduation years. “Didn’t know how I’d feel about it.”

  “You thought me being here would make a difference?”

  “Nope.” He exhaled. “Keep me from reacting, though.” He stroked his lower lip with the tip of his thumb, like he was thinking.

  “Can I get a light?”

  He stepped to her then, to reach her, to shield the flame from the breeze that wasn’t there. He stood at an angle, body turned halfway toward the house, and she felt the cool leather of his belt. The coarse fabric of his pants brushed between her knees. She clamped them together, to hold his waist. He was still for a breath. Two breaths. He dropped the lighter back in his pocket, then turned to face her, pushing her legs wider, and stepped in. He pulled the lit cigarette from her lips with the same hand that held his own. He dropped both to the dirt and grass below and ground out the embers. One of his palms found the small of her back and pressed, pulling her down the slope of the trunk. He smelled like warm Old Spice. She felt him, held herself to him, and his mouth found hers. His fingers threaded up through her hair and cupped the back of her head.

  His other rough palm and thumb found their way down the side of her neck, made a trail below her ear to her collarbone, and stopped.

  There was another sound. This one was the hum of an engine. It grew louder.

  His body moved away and took its heat with it. She felt the kind of chill that came with waking from a nap. The kind of chill that came for no good reason, no matter how hot the day. But her head was filled with warm water, and the skin around her lips was already raw from his stubble. She watched him. It was like she wasn’t there at all, the way he focused on the hill and waited for the engine.

  The world beyond him lit up in the headlights. Then they passed, disappearing behind the corn and rising against the far hill.

  The dark hump speeding on the highway looked like a van. Her heart did another out-of-beat pump. Rick’s work van, was what it looked like. Except it couldn’t have been. He was in Arnold for the night. And even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have been headed toward Madson at three-something in the morning.

  Harley pu
lled out another two cigarettes. He lit them and gave her one.

  Unless Rick was looking for her. Unless he’d stopped by the trailer, didn’t find her there, and now was headed toward town or her parents’ place.

  Or unless there was somebody Rick could be headed to Madson to see. She took a long drag and felt the warm water in her head ebb away. Billie from bowling? She’d always had a thing for Rick. Pam pictured them, on what she imagined Billie’s bed must look like. Red satin sheets and a shiny black comforter. Pam didn’t know why, but she suspected there was a nearby shelf filled with small crystal animals. A black lacquer shelf with gilt edges. She pictured Rick taking Billie from behind, holding one of her probably varicose-veined thighs, Billie staring at the TV from behind those dewdrop glasses and smoking the whole time. Pam let the image sit there. She pictured it as clear as she could and waited for a feeling like a punch to the chest. It didn’t come. Maybe because it wasn’t real, no matter how real she tried to make it. Because he was off in Arnold, holed up in some cheap motel with his brother.

  She took another drag, felt the tip barely wet from Harley’s lips.

  She pictured Rick in Arnold instead. She pictured him and his brother and a pair of slutty waitresses with little dolls’ faces and perfect thighs who came to the motel room saying they needed rewiring done on their trailers.

  Nope. Still nothing.

  In the distance, on the ledge of world past the Lucas drive, a pair of headlights shone again. When they pointed down the incline, she saw what she knew was the same black hump of a van. It sank and disappeared into the rows. As it neared, she listened closer. This time she heard it. The rattle of sheet metal. The particular chug of the work van, the engine that always sounded like it was gummed up with old oil. He hadn’t been in Madson long enough to screw Billie, but he sure as hell wasn’t in Arnold.

  As the van passed the end of the long drive, she swore it slowed. But then time itself had slowed. Her heart beat. Her feet went cold.

  The van passed.