Stacking in Rivertown (12 page)

The next few days I found that vying for food in New York was a mean business. The last time I ate was out of a Dumpster at the truck stop where I hooked up with the casket courier.

That’s when Ben spotted me. I hadn’t washed for two weeks at least. I’d certainly never been bulky, and the trip to New York had taken a toll. I don’t know what he saw in me as he cruised the streets.

He parked his car and walked to where I was sitting, getting weaker, wondering if I should try to find a shelter.

“Hey, kid,” he said to me.

I pretended he wasn’t talking to me.

“Hey,” he said, his voice kind. “You look new.” He took my chin gently and turned my face to him. Ben coaxed me into going to a pizza joint with him. I knew he was going to want something for it, but at that point, I didn’t have many choices.

He bought me pizza and milk, I remember. And he gave me his card.

“Look,” he said. “My wife and I live just down the street. We try to help out runaways and either get you back home or set up with a job here. It’s better than living out on the streets.”

When I was done, I waited for him to tell me what he wanted in return. He had them put the rest of the pizza in a bag for me. I hid it in my clothes.

“If you get tired of being out like this,” he said. “Come over to our place.” He got in his car then and drove off. The whole thing was different than what I expected.

God, he was smart. I wonder if any of the kids he primes never show up at his “apartment.” I wonder if they know that they got away.

A cold wind set up that night, driving the rain down the streets. It kept up the next day. I tried a shelter, but it was full. As night came on again and looking to get even colder, a group of three boys, drunk on their asses, chased me near half a mile until I lost them.

That’s when I thought of Ben and walked to his place. I pushed the buzzer and waited. A woman’s voice answered.

“Ben gave me a card,” I said. “He said I could crash here for awhile.”

She buzzed me in.

I liked Kat as soon as I saw her.

“Need a drink? Some Coke?” She took a blanket off the couch and draped it over my shoulders. I felt warmth for the first time in days. She brought me a tall glass of Coke, which I sucked up fast. She smiled and took the glass from me, going back to the kitchen. I heard her make a phone call.

When she came back, she handed me a glass of orange juice. Then she showed me around the place, talking on and on about stuff I didn’t care about.

Kat led me to the back bedroom. It had several mattresses on the floor with blankets folded on each.

“This is where you sleep while you’re here,” she said, watching me close.

I looked the room over, feeling funny.

“Sit down,” she said and helped me to a mattress. I leaned against the wall. “You haven’t been eating enough. You’re light-headed from the Coke.”

The door to the apartment opened and shut. Ben came in. The room was getting fuzzy and spinning. My body felt heavy.

“She’s young,” Kat said.

Ben stooped and looked in my eyes. I started sliding sideways down the wall. He lay his large palm along my cheek.

“I think she might end up being good.”

“When she’s cleaned up, she’ll be beautiful.”

The last thing I remember is Ben asking, “How much did she drink?”

Kat was stroking my head, looking down at me. “All of it.”

When my buddy Jack and I hit Cumberland, I have him drop me off. I become Rebecca again. Then I find a Ford dealership, picking up another Taurus, this time the station wagon.

After that, I buy a newspaper. Clarisse is nowhere to be found.

I think about Jeremy in the hospital for another stay. I wonder if his synchronicity problem will recur. Maybe some woman who’s a lover of dogs will find him all bruised and battered. She’ll tell him to sit. Stay. Roll over.

I spread out my guns in the car like before and study the atlas. I want to lie low someplace and let this thing blow over. Let Detective Bates decide that I’m scooting the bottom of the East River.

I head for Monongahela National Forest. It looks so green on the map. Anything that color must be good. I’ve never camped a day in my life, but I figure it can’t be any harder than sleeping under bridges and eating out of Dumpsters.

On my way downstate, I stop and buy a case of Coke, lots of canned food, and a can opener. I also buy a spoon.

At the ABC I pick up two big bottles of Southern Comfort, thinking of Joplin. It’s the push behind that’s starting to rise again like it was only sleeping for a couple of days.

I find myself crying as I drive, not remembering when I started or why. And pictures are coming to me, quick slices of action stripped of color and backdrop. I think of Mama and Mandy, just bones in the ground. I think of Kat’s touch. And Violet. She’s in a pauper’s grave, a pine box. Another Jane Doe forgotten.

I cry myself into the mountains, finding that they are, indeed, a beautiful color of green. I pick a camping spot under pines that wave and sigh, opening my first bottle of whiskey and starting my long slide into forgetfulness.

I don’t remember much about the next week except for puking. That begins to wane as I stop eating and just drink the whole day.

I have the campground all to myself except for a sweet retired couple that show up midweek. They’re driving a piece of aluminum so big and long, they have to back up and go forward about ten times just to get it around a bend in the road. I’ve never seen such a thing, and I think maybe the whiskey has something to do with it.

In my drunken stupor, I amuse myself by changing back and forth throughout the day from Becker, my male identity, to Becca, as I refer to Rebecca now.

As Becker, I help Joe and Mildred set up a nifty screened tent thing around their picnic table. Later on, I visit as Becca.

“Your boyfriend is so nice,” they say. “The two of you should come over for dinner. Do you like to play cards?”

I decline, telling them, as I stumble over nothing and sag against a tree, that we just got married and all we can do is screw.

Their faces go white, but not as white as those people in Scranton.

After a week in this state, I notice while reading the campground rules for the hundredth time, since it’s the only thing to do, that each site may be occupied for seven days max. This information slowly worms its way into my alcohol-soaked brain.

So I move to the next campground, finding that it’s bigger and that more people are camped there. A wide, rocky stream flows enthusiastically along one side. That’s where everybody is camping. I choose a spot the farthest away.

Still dressed as Becca but without the wig, I settle in for the night. I unfold the short lawn chair I picked up at the camp store while en route to my new home. Then I plop my bottle down beside it.

As I happily scan the day’s newspaper, the type of which appears to be getting more blurry, I notice a suspicious headline:

TWO TEENS DIE IN COPYCAT SUICIDE
.

I read on.

Two female teens jumped in tandem from the Brooklyn Bridge last night, copying the recent suicide of author Clarisse Broder.

Since her suicide jump from the same bridge on June 21 Mrs. Broder is fast becoming an icon among teens and college students. Flowers are often found placed in the area from which she jumped, possibly fleeing an unknown male assailant. Sales of her novel have skyrocketed, selling out in many locations across the country.

It goes on to quote a police spokesman and give the same old endline. “Police are still investigating Mrs. Broder’s suicide.”

My God. What’s the matter with those girls? Are they crazy? Are they out of their minds?

It’s soon too dark to read. That’s what I tell myself, since the writing is blurred. I’m not in the mood for the paper now anyway. I try to stand up, but can’t. I can hardly get myself out of the screwy chair. Eventually, I fall to the side and crawl to the bushes to pee. As I’m doing my business, I hear a train crying and wailing in the distance. It reminds me of nights sleeping in the two-room.

After I’m done, I haul myself up like an imbecile, struggling with my pants. I give up and leave them down around my ankles, and I stagger to the car. Once there, I slump into the backseat like I do every night, with a blanket thrown over me, and on my chest beneath it, resting happy as you please, my Uzi.

Down in Fowler, the trains flew by at night. I used to lie awake listening to their sad weep. Daddy snored through it all like a sick dog. But I’d take his snoring any day. He could butcher a melody better than Grady cleaned his meat. It was all the drink, I guess, made his ears go slack and his voice slip around. But he used it to frighten people off.

There was a woman came to the house sometimes when I was little. She always acted friendly, handing out hugs and candy to me and Vin and saying things like, “How’s my babies doing?”

She’d talk to Mama so nice at first, calling her Mama just like me and Vin did. It all just got me mixed up. Mama called her Betty and I recognized her from a picture that Mama kept in the bedroom. Mama and Betty were both in the picture, younger, and standing with some man I didn’t know.

Every time Betty came, it was in a different car with a different man. They always dressed fancy like they just came from church.

“We don’t like them,” Vin would say to me.

“But she gave me redhots.” I was easily bribed in those days.

“We hate their stupid fat cars. We hate how clean they are. We hate the white shoes on their feet.” I always got the feeling he knew something about them that I didn’t, but I couldn’t pry a thing out of him.

And he was right of course, not just about the hate, but about the white shoes. To me, it seemed a waste.

How you going to dig the crawdads? What happens in the mudflats where the gnats swarm over you like sleep? You’d have to be cleaning those white shoes all the time. You’d have to stay way back from the river.

I tried not to think about that.

So Vin and me would work the sinkholes good with our feet and zoom in close, aiming for their shoes. That made the woman and her different men not so sweet.

And that’s when Daddy would start to sing. He’d belt out like a bullfrog all sick from eating bees. Me and Vin would cover our ears.

I think that was one of the reasons Mama put up with Daddy and his drink. Because Betty and her man would pack up and leave. Then Daddy and Mama would sit in the swing.

Chewing grass, me and Vin lay around nearby, thinking about the damage we did to their feet. Mama would smile and swing, happy about something I never did get.

If I asked Mama who they were, she’d shrug and say, “Don’t you worry yourself over Betty and her men. Listen to the river. Listen to the wind in the trees. You can’t do any better than that.”

I wake, hearing the sound of voices nearby. Startled, I lose balance and fall onto the floor between the seats. My head screams. I need a drink, pronto. So I sneak a peek out my window.

Shit! Two children are stooped down near my chair. Then I notice that my whiskey bottle is on its side. This makes me sad. It was near to full when I left it to its own devices last night.

I open the car door and fall out. The two children—one a girl, about eight I’d say, and a boy, ten or eleven—stand up, staring at me. The trees spin as I try to decide if I should attempt to stand.

“You’ve got ants,” the girl says.

“Lots of ants and in a long line,” the boy adds.

I let that settle in around the whiskey in my brain. “I do?”

They wave me over. I stagger up and weave to the chair, seeing that yes indeed, I do have ants, rather the ants have the whiskey.

“Do you think ants get drunk?” I ask, trying to keep my flammable breath away from the two of them.

They both giggle at my comment. Then they begin telling me all sorts of things about ants, most of which goes right by me.

“Ben. Sarah. Don’t bother this lady, man, lady.” She finally makes up her mind when she sees my breasts beneath my T-shirt. I turn too fast, which sets my head into another spin, and I see a woman about my own age dressed in hiking boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt.

I notice I’m dressed half as Becker and half as Becca.

She takes one look at me, and I expect her to pull a face and chase her kids away. Instead she surprises me, which is nice, and she smiles, holding out her hand.

“I’m Jill.”

I feel suddenly shy, but shake her hand. “Becca.”

“I’m sorry about my kids,” she says. “They’re into this ant thing lately.”

“It’s okay. No problem.”

I see her eyes fix on the whiskey bottle lying on its side. I feel my face go red. She smiles at me again before she shoos her kids off to the outhouse.

Later, I notice that they’re in the campsite closest to me. Jill’s husband is decked out in gear. He has on rubber boots up to the crotch, and he wears this cool vest with lots of pockets. Wading out into the stream, he waves a fancy fishing rod back and forth over his head.