Stacking in Rivertown (15 page)

When I wake up the next day, my head feels like a jackhammer on concrete. My stomach is shredded. I think somebody rearranged all my organs, squeezing them first so that they ache. I spring for another night.

Theresa Sue Lumley. Terri. I try saying it in different ways like I might have said it before. Then I take out the picture of Mama. I cry. To have a picture of her like this is the best thing in the world.

I flip through the photo albums. Most of the pictures are recent ones of Dave barbecuing, Betty in the kitchen, or the two ofthem on a cruise. They seem to cruise a lot. There’s just a few of me, or the little girl parading as me. The pictures of my supposed sister abound, flowing like a veritable fountain.

I close the album. This trip into midwestern familyhood is making me even sicker. I pick up a framed picture of Dave in his golf clothes with his arms around the shoulders of two buddies.They’re all smiling. I wonder if it’s a special club of childfuckers. They’re all happy about the fact that when they get home, they can throw one of their daughters on the bed and hump themselves even happier.

I pitch the picture at the wall.

I guess I showed him.

After sleeping again, I take out the pictures of me. I find another photo of Mama sitting in a kitchen. I grab that one too, sticking the stuff I don’t want in the gym bag.

When I pick up the picture I threw against the wall, I find that the glass broke, and behind that picture are two small school photos. One is of me. The other is Vin. He must be about ten. I cry again.

Oh Vin, Vin, Vin. Or James, I guess. I stash these two pictures in my pocket.

Two days later, after gallons of Gatorade and a few packs of crackers, I force down two eggs and toast for breakfast, tossing the pictures of Dave and Betty in a Dumpster.

I rev up the Taurus and hit I-70, heading west.

Utopia

As I buzz along the interstate, I’m all wigged up in my Becca outfit, still sick and dismal about Betty and good old Dave. My head all of a sudden slips back to Ben and Violet and what I think of in my mind as “the night.” I ride with Ben in the limo again. I wait in the reception line. I sip champagne.

Ben’s talking very serious with a guy I’ve never seen before. He’s about as big as Ben, but has long hair pulled back into a ponytail. I admire his ass as I stand, bored to death, in the center of a group of lobbyists.

It suddenly comes to me how the man that Ben was talking to wore gym shoes. Tux coat and pants, and black gym shoes.

Driving along the highway, I can’t get Ben out of my head. I never would have thought him to be someone to fall in love. But then I remember his face when he ran out of the van that night on the bridge. I think maybe Violet was right, and that even in someone like Ben, the ache drives you forward, stuffing your lungs and your belly until you’re drowned for sure and you fix yourself up to get stacked in Rivertown.

That’s when I notice that the interstate I’m following is winding through some dark, industrial wasteland. According to the map, I’m heading full-tilt toward Chicago. Thinking back, I decide that I must have gotten turned ass-backward on that screwy junction in some place called Indianapolis. At first I’m a little pissed about the change in my hazy planning procedure, but when I see the Chicago skyline, I get homesick for Manhattan.

Getting downtown is a trick, since road construction is more like a disease in Chicago than a beneficial activity. Once I hit downtown, I find a room and eat at a nice, civilized restaurant. Afterward, I pick up a copy of the
Times
and a notebook. The stories are pushing again. The something behind is chasing.

Strolling into Grant Park, I sit on a bench and open the paper. I get my worst chit yet. The headline says:
SERIAL KILLER IN MANHATTAN
? But it’s not the headline that gets me. It’s the pictures. There are seven photos in all and one drawing. Four guys and four girls. Most of them are strangers to me, but one of them is definitely Matt. The article names him John Weathers from Tennessee. It’s his yearbook picture.

I hear the sound of that pop again, from when Ben broke Matt’s arm, and my head goes a little blank. I never saw Matt after we left him in that room. None of us did.

My dinner starts feeling like it might want to make a second showing. And there’s this feeling that works itself into me. I can smell that play room. I hear Matt’s screams clear as if he were next to me. My skin is electrified.

None of the other photos looks familiar. It’s the drawing that gets me. She’s named Jane Doe, as no positive identification has ever been made. I can see why they might not want to use Detective Bates’ photos. The artist’s rendition of Violet doesn’t capture the moment of her lips brushing mine.

The article says, similar wounds. It says, all runaways and prostitutes. It says, no witnesses or clues. Except. And now the really big chit. Except a woman brought in the same night as the murder of Jane Doe, who had a wound believed to be made by the same knife. The woman’s name is being withheld by the police for reasons of confidentiality.

I curl up on my park bench, feeling like somebody’s sending jolts of current into my head. I get a picture in my mind of that same play room of Ben’s. He liked it a lot. Violet is on the floor, her hands cuffed behind. It looks like she’s sleeping, except for her body is all wrong. It shouldn’t bend quite that way. I see a man leaning over her. He has a ponytail and is wearing a long overcoat. On his feet are black gym shoes.

I can’t get to her. I can’t scream. All I can think is that I must be strapped up some way.

I’m off the bench now and running. I stop myself at some point and walk fast, glancing behind like somebody might be after me.

It’s too neat. Too true. All the chits falling in a row.

And where was Ben? He was usually watching, or else he had one of the big boys do it for him. And what happened to Slim and his friend? Why, instead of being free of Ben, did Violet end up dead?

I think of Detective Bates. He knew all along. God, he’s patient, waiting five years to hit me again for information. And Ben, why didn’t he want them to know I was his girl?

He didn’t want it to hurt business.

Violet dead on the floor, and he’s worried about business.

Nearby, a young couple stroll with a baby carriage. I see Violet’s eyes on every side, pale, glassy. Muddy water passes over, dragging me down.

This is what I get for trying to learn fly-fishing.

I think of my fall from the bridge that night, of my longing to find something I lost a long time ago. I think of my new life, my messy, screwy new life. And Violet pursues.

We are captured not by the living, but by the dead.

Mandy and me knew that a long time ago.

In the winter, the river didn’t change much except that the water got colder. Leaves dropped from the willows and the cotton-woods. In the swamps downstream, the snakes went away for a time. The peepers and the crickets went silent.

Vin and me would sleep near on top of each other to stay warm some nights, with Mama snoring nearby like a dog choked with a bone.

In the spring, though, the river was like suicide. It rose fitful, crawling up near the porch like it wanted in. Then there’d be a sudden surge and you’d wake in the morning with the water surrounding on all sides and below.

The spring was when all sorts of things broke loose in the water, things that froze up north, I guess, and after the melt were being dragged downstream. We found pieces of boats and broken furniture. Big logs and branches swept down. Vin and me and Mandy would climb a willow and sit up over the water, watching to see what might come down.

We saw a bright red tablecloth. We saw barrels and barbed wire. We saw a mattress all muddy and torn. The next day we watched the bed frame slide down. We saw photos of women and men, and once we saw a dead goat, thinking at first it was a man with a big nose. We had a terrible fit at that, and Mandy just about fell in it scared her so bad.

I dream of being over the river and watching it pass. Everything goes by, floating off in a river like suicide, some happiness waiting just beyond the bend, until it makes the eddy near Fowler, where all the trash collects and sinks down in.

I spend the night in the bathroom of my hotel room curled up between the tub and the toilet, clutching a gun in each hand, listening for the gym shoes. As soon as it’s light out, I change into Becker and duck out of the hotel, packing everything back in the Taurus. Then I weave through the streets, searching out a pay phone. I call information. The automated voice barks out a number in NYC. I dial and wait.

The precinct desk guy picks up, and I ask for Detective Bates. I hold, having to jam in quarters.

“Bates here.” It’s his rat’s ass voice all right, like something trying to sneak up on you in the dark.

I can’t speak. I think I might have to hang up.

“Detective Bates,” I manage to say.

“Yes?”

“I have a tip. Some information about the article in the
Times
yesterday.”

“Who is this?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s about Jane Doe. The killer had a ponytail. He was tall. He was at a reception that night for one of New Yor k’s senators.”

“Beth,” he says.

I go silent.

“Betty and Dave were real shook up.”

I chew my lip.

“How the hell did you survive that drop?”

I hang up. Asshole. How did he know?

I rev the Taurus, wishing it were a Porsche, and tear out of there as if Bates might be right around the corner watching me. I don’t slow down until I find myself near someplace called Joliet.

That’s when I begin to get back what little nerve I’ve retained through the past few days. I stop at an old metal diner like the kind you might see in some TV sitcom.

Sitting in a booth with my hands shaking, I open my atlas, thinking I better lie low again. The nearest national forest is Shawnee, down in south Illinois.

Before I leave, I pump my waitress for directions to a sports store. Then I sneak into the women’s john and dress as Becca, leaving off the wig. I’m thinking of trashing that idea. I barrel into downtown Joliet, looking to pick up some gear.

Having a hard time making up my mind, I shop for over an hour. There are so many cool choices, so many color combinations to set off against each other. As I wait at the checkout counter with my pile of stuff, I peruse the message board next to me.

Farmhand wanted, it says. Male or female worker needed to help out on organic farm. Room, board, and stipend. There’s a phone number. It grinds around in my brain as I wait and wait while the lady ahead of me keeps trying to find a charge card that will get accepted. I locate a phone on the wall near the door, so I wheel my stuff over, dialing the number.

“Hello.” A man’s voice.

“Hi. I’m calling about the farmhand needed.”

“You’re hired,” he says.

I’m stumped. “You don’t want to meet me first? I could be a paraplegic. I might be too ugly to look at day after day.”

He doesn’t laugh. Bad sign.

“If we don’t get help soon, we’re going to start losing some of our crops. You’re the first person to call since we put the notice up three weeks ago.”

“Why doesn’t anybody else want it?” I say, nervous.

This time he laughs. “People don’t like the labor or the heat. They like desks with soft chairs. They want air conditioning. They prefer to wear uncomfortable clothing like ties and high heels.”

Now I laugh. “You don’t have air conditioning? And by the way, I’m real attached to my heels.”

“I’ll work on the AC,” he says. “I don’t care what you wear on your feet.”

He gives me directions and I end up at a tall, narrow old farmhouse with a large red barn, some outbuildings, five large oaks hanging over the house, and four very large, very noisy, mangy-looking dogs. I wait in my car. I see that beside the house is an old Volkswagen van that looks like it used to have paisley and flowers painted all over it.

Hippies, I think. Organic farm. Utopia.

A woman steps out of the house looking like the original earth mother. Behind her is a little boy, sticking to her like glue. She calls off the dogs and shakes my hand when I get out of the car.

“Joan,” she says. Her eyes are soft at the edges, and the lines on her face, accentuated by so much sun, look to be from smiling a lot.

“Becca.”

She pulls the little boy in front of her. “Tut.”

I stare down. “Hi Tut.”

He doesn’t say a thing. Tut’s clutching a small boombox, and he looks at me with gorgeous wide brown eyes deep as the river. His skin is milk chocolate and his hair is reddish-brown with a good amount of kink. He looks to be about six or seven.

She shows me a room off the side of the barn. It has a bed, dresser, a small kitchen with a sink, hot plate, and toaster oven. The john is tiny. A tall guy wouldn’t be able to sit on the seat without having to pull his knees up.

“We could use you in the field now,” she says.

Tut is sitting on my bed, fiddling with his boombox. He’s so serious. I watch as he reaches in a pocket of Joan’s skirt, takes out a CD very carefully, and slides it in. It’s one of the younger female singers that are coming on right now.

I drop my duffel bag and face Joan. “I want to be paid in cash. No papers signed. And I like to wear a pistol.”

She doesn’t blink an eye. “It’s a deal.”

That’s the beginning of something fine. John and Joan treat me like family. We get up before dawn and hit the rows as soon as we can see to pick. Then we traipse into the barn and wash it down.

They have regular customers that they pack up boxes for. But they also have several restaurants and health-food stores in Chicago and the suburbs that they supply twice weekly, filling up the back of the Volkswagen van, and hiking it up to the city. Whatever’s left they sell at local fruit and vegetable stands.

I work myself dead every day, sleeping hard at night. By the end of three weeks, even though I still hurt from all the bending over and kneeling, I’m feeling strong again.

John is one of those tall, lanky guys that you’re always worrying how his jeans might just drop right off. His hair is bleached from the sun, and his mustache and beard are part gone to gray. His eyes glitter. Before I worked there, I was already good at choosing vegetables and fruits. But John’s vast knowledge of varieties helps me perfect my talent.

Most of the time, Tut stays with Joan, but the longer I’m there, the more I find him following me as I’m bent over picking beans or cutting broccoli.

It turns out that Tut is a foster child that John and Joan took on when both their kids left for college a couple years ago. This year their son Tom and daughter Susan are taking summer classes, which is why they hired me.

Of course they want to know about me, so I fabricate an abusive husband from whom I’m running, which is why the pistol and the need for secrecy. I guess in some ways I’m not lying all that much.