by S. A. Hunt
Most of them were white, he noticed as he and Pete came shuffling in twenty minutes before the bell. He’d sort of expected that. There were almost no races other than white at all, not a single Asian, and other than Amanda, the handful of Black kids he saw were all several years older, a band of gangly boys clustered together in a tight group in the corner, slumped against the wall and fighting sleep like a roost full of pigeons.
To his surprise and relief, the morning went smoothly. When he had to stand up in front of homeroom class and introduce himself to everybody, something he’d been dreading since the drive down, everyone chanted, “Hi Wayne,” and except for a few half-hearted Batman and cowboy jokes, that was it.
The classwork was easy compared to what he’d been doing back home—almost a year backward in terms of academic progress. Gave him the feeling of having accidentally been enrolled in remedial classes, or he’d somehow stepped into a time warp that forced him to re-live the previous year over again.
Oh well, Wayne thought, just puts me a year ahead of the other fifth-graders. I can coast through and blast all the tests.
Another thing he didn’t expect was the claustrophobic closeness of the smaller school population—none of the classes exceeded twenty-five children, and a few of them had under fifteen.
Each period had a strangely informal, floaty atmosphere, as if a bunch of people had decided to congregate in one place for an hour and listen to somebody talk. Instead of sulking menacingly at the head of an unruly class, the teachers turned out to be friendly, engaging, and upbeat. Huge picture windows down the side of each classroom were full of bright sunlight, and instead of being enclosed in the darkness of Chicago’s monolithic buildings he could see swishing treetops, but the desks framed him in broad polo-shirted backs and the faint baby-formula body odor of the congenitally rural Caucasian.
Several of the boys showed up in honest-to-God bib overalls and smelled like rotting compost. Wayne felt like he’d moved into an Amish village. Some part of him kept expecting to spot a butter churn in the corner, or for a chicken to wander into a classroom in the middle of a lesson.
To be honest, it was a little creepy compared to Chicago. Idyllic, muted, almost cult-like.
No one would really talk to him except for Pete and Pete’s friend Johnny Juan. The white kids were cordial but standoffish, as if Wayne were a ghost that was only physically solid and present when someone was forced to interact with him. The rest of the time he was invisible.
“So what do your mom and dad do, Wayne?” asked Johnny at lunch, spooning chili into his mouth one bean at a time.
“Johnny” Juan Ferrera was a skinny Cuban kid who, according to Pete, had moved up from Florida the previous year. Juan and his extended family lived in one of the more urban neighborhoods on the southeast end of town, where several of his relatives worked at the Mount Weynon textile factory and the Mexican restaurant on the south end of town near the college.
Pete had gone to Johnny’s place once for a birthday sleepover. According to what Wayne was told, Johnny Juan had the newest Xbox and possessed more Legos than Pete had ever seen in one place in his life, but Johnny and his brother slept on the floor in sleeping bags because his grandparents slept in his bed.
“My dad teaches literature. He’s working at Blackfield High School.” Wayne took out the ring hanging in his shirt and stuck his finger through it, rubbing the rough engraving around the inside. “My mom … she died a few years ago.”
Johnny paused for a brief moment to watch Wayne stare into his chili, then scratched his head and went back to eating. A tray clattered onto the table and a girl plopped into a seat between them.
“Howdy, kids,” said Amanda Johnson.
Pete looked up from his shredded cinnamon roll. “How’s it hangin’, dude.”
She leveled a glare at him and picked at her food with a spoon, demurely folding and folding her chili as if it were expensive lobster bisque. Up close, Wayne could see the shotgun-spatter of acne in the middle of her forehead she’d covered with makeup.
“What’re you looking at?” she asked with mild venom.
Wayne shrugged and went back to eating. His cell phone hummed inside his jacket. A text message from his father. YOU WANNA RIDE BUS HOME OR ME PICK U UP?
“So have you kids heard the rumors?” Amanda asked them with the panache of a campfire story. “Apparently there’s a killer in town.”
Johnny Juan sniffed his milk. “Where’d you hear that?”
Tap, tap tap, Wayne sent his father a text in reply: I GUESS PICK ME UP
“Day before yesterday, Jeff Beesler’s dog brought home a bone that looked like it came from a human.” Amanda’s eyes flashed conspiratorially as she leaned in close. “You know who Jeff Beesler is, don’t you? He’s that kid in eighth grade, plays football. I’ve known him all this year. He likes—”
Johnny Juan broke in. “No way.”
“Bullshit,” said Pete. “What kind of bone was it?”
The girl winced in annoyance at being interrupted. “How should I know, do I look like a bone scientist to you? They said it was a piece of a spine. Jeff gave it to the police and they sent it to the GBI Crime Lab in Summerville.”
“Man, bullshit,” reiterated Pete. “Nobody’s gonna kill you. It’s probably a bone from like a dead deer, or, or something.” He gestured with the ice cream sandwich he was eating. “I ain’t afraid of no killer. I know how to get home quick and super-ninja, man. Ain’t no killer can catch us where I go.”
Wayne looked up from his phone. “For real?”
“Yeah. Takes a little bit longer than the bus, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who knows about it. Or, at least, the only person who uses it. I know this town like the back of this hand.” Pete splayed his thick paw out on the table and played at stabbing between his fingers with his fork. Thunk … thunk … thunk. “We should go my way when we go home from school today. You gonna go with me, or are ya chicken?”
“Man, that crap don’t work on me,” said Wayne.
Tap, tap tap. CAN I WALK HOME WITH PETE?
Pete tucked his stubby hands into his armpits and made slow wing-beating gestures with his elbows. His grim face made the Funky Chicken all the more imperative. “Is that so? Buckok. Buckok.”
ARE U CRAZY? THATS TOO FAR.
“If you’re scared, I’ll even go with you two.” Amanda leaned close. Her spackled-over acne looked like stucco at this range. “As a chaperone, of course. Are you scared? It’s okay if you are.”
“Cause you’re just a wittle guy,” said Pete. “Hey, nerd, get off your phone. We’re tryin’ to peer-pressure you.”
PETE KNOWS SHORTCUTS. WELL BE HOME IN NO TIME.
Johnny leaned into the conversation. “Hey, I’ll go with you. I’m not scared.”
NO.
“You don’t even live out there,” said Amanda. “How you gonna get home?”
“My uncle can come get me. He works first shift, he gets off at like five.” Johnny tossed a shoulder dismissively. “Besides, it’s not like they’re gonna miss me. They don’t even know I’m there half the time. And it’s Friday anyway. I don’t have anywhere to be until church Sunday morning.”
YOU SAID TO MAKE FRENDS DAD. THIS ME MAKIN FRIENDS.
No answer from the elder Parkin. The lunchroom monitor started to corral all the children, and Wayne shuffled into line with the other kids to leave. He was in the middle of an argument with Pete over the comparative tensile strength of Batman’s skyhook and Spider-Man’s webbing when the cell phone in his pocket vibrated.
ALRIGHT. BUT U GO STRAIGHT HOME. LOCK AL DOORS. GOTA WORK L8 ANYWAY. B HOME SOON.
“Your dad spells like crap for a literature teacher,” said Pete, peering over his shoulder. “Looks like we’re walking home.”
8
She stood in the restroom behind the pizzeria, staring at the toilet stalls, eyes wide, her guts churning with a horror that seemed to lie inside her bones like a cold, bitter marr
ow of river-water. A toothbrush stuck out of her mouth, forgotten, her mouth full of Colgate foam. The lights weren’t flashing this time, but several of them refused to illuminate, and most of the light came through the restroom door, which had been wedged open with a rock.
“Oh my god,” Robin said under her breath.
Turning, she opened the tap and cupped a double handful of water into her face, rubbing her eyes hard enough to see cigarette-burn mirages and occult-looking phosphenes behind her eyelids. She bent and sipped some of the water, swished it in her mouth and spat it out, sipped some more water, spat it out.
When she stood straight again, there it remained, visible in the mirror behind her, large as life. “Ah, Jesus. Jesus Christ,” she said, wiping her face with her T-shirt. Hallucinations don’t do that.
Four jagged scratches across two of the steel stall doors, including the one covering the toilet she had relieved herself in the night before. Six feet long and several inches apart, deep, white paint chipping off around them and speckling the floor at her feet. Must have been the source of that ear-splitting knives-on-metal shriek that had driven her out yesterday.
She ran wet hands over her bare scalp and fled the bathroom.
* * *
Miguel’s Pizza teemed with the lunch-time crowd, out-of-towners and locals both trying to get in their climbs before the weather turned. Robin was forced to take her stuff out back to the patio, a large conglomeration of trestle tables under an aluminum awning. It was airy and clammy, but she sat at the end of the enclosure where warm sun fell on her and it could have been August again.
She was halfway through a chicken salad when Kenway Griffin appeared and sat across from her with a meatball sandwich and a bottle of breakfast stout. In light of last night’s revelation, she was impressed by the ease with which he moved on his false leg—if he hadn’t told her, she wouldn’t have even guessed.
“Good morning,” he said.
Low-key glad to see him, Robin shaded her eyes and peered at the clock on her Macbook. The sun felt good, but made it a little hard to see fine details on her screen. “It’s noon.”
“Well, morning for me. I don’t sleep well and I tend to get up late.” He crammed the end of the sub in his mouth and bit through the crusty bread with a crunch, talking with his mouth full. “Haven’t eaten actual breakfast in years. Unless you count lunch as breakfast.”
“I’m sure there’s a word in German for that.”
“Brunch?”
“That’s not German. Besides, ‘brunch’ is what comes between breakfast and lunch. You’re having lunch for breakfast.”
“Sprechen ze brunch?”
She shook her head, smirking. She gestured to the beer by his hand. “So you a BYOB bruncher?”
“I like to get an early start on my self-medicating. Early bird gets the tequila worm, so they say.”
“What are you doing out here, anyway? Don’t you have pictures to paint?”
“Today’s my day off.”
“Oh yeah?”
He washed the sandwich down with a sip of beer. “Yup.”
“You’re off every Friday?”
“I’m off when I say I’m off. Nice thing about being a freelance artist.”
“Artiste.”
“No, just an artist. I haven’t reached artiste-level proficiency yet, I don’t think.”
“Sounds like a fancy way to say ‘retired’ to me.”
A floppy pickle-spear wagged in his hand. He took a bite out of it and pointed with the stump. “Are you saying I look old enough to retire?”
“If you were a silver fox, I wouldn’t protest.”
“So what are you up to?”
“Editing yesterday’s footage.” Robin paused, leaning back to brush imaginary crumbs off of her jeans, stalling for time. She took a deep breath. Finally she said, “If I show you what actually happens in these videos, do you promise not to laugh or think I’m crazy?”
For a second she thought he was going to say, I already think you’re crazy, but all he said was, “I promise.”
“I hunt witches,” she said, saving the footage progress and opening a browser window. “And I videotape it for the Internet.” She clicked the bookmark for her channel and hunted through the video thumbnails as if she were rifling through a filing cabinet. “I monetize the videos with ads and sell T-shirts and hats and things like that.” She pulled up a video she’d done and turned the computer around so he could watch it. “Neva Chandler. My first solo witch.”
According to the upload date on the page, the Robin in the video was a couple years younger, sitting in the cab of her Conlin Plumbing van. “I’ve been tracking her for weeks,” said the girl’s tinny voice.
Kenway picked up his sandwich and went back to eating it, but his eyes were locked on the Macbook’s screen as he chewed. Taking a pull off his beer bottle, he said, “Intense. You say you do this for a living?”
“Yep.” Robin leaned over, resting her chin on her folded hands, looking up at him. “For a few years now. I have around four million subscribers, give or take a few thousand.”
His eyebrows jumped. “Wow. Hell of an audience.” He sipped from the beer again and set it next to her elbow. “It’s probably rude to ask, but I’m dyin’ to know.” He burped into his fist. “What kind of money do you make doing this? YouTube videos, I mean. It can’t be enough to pay bills, much less car insurance. It’s why you’re living in the van, right? You know, other than the fact that you travel around to shoot this stuff.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
Robin sighed and mumbled, “A little under three hundred … a day.”
“Three? What—” Kenway’s brain seemed to slip gears, and he leaned forward, gripping the table with both hands as he groped for words. “Three hundred dollars a day?”
She nodded, blushing.
“Are you kidding me? I didn’t even see that kind of money in Iraq. I don’t think any enlisted soldier ever has in the history of modern warfare.” He did the math in his head, staring up at the ceiling as if God could help him. “Uhh … that’s about a hundred grand a year.”
Robin looked away and coughed, then dug into her salad and pushed a forkful of it into her mouth as if she could chew the math up and swallow it. She felt about three inches tall. Wished she was so she could climb into her salad bowl and hide under the lettuce. Her breakfast turned to bitter grass in her mouth, the ranch saline and sour.
Kenway’s forehead wrinkled and his eyes searched the table. He glanced up at her and paused the video. “You make six figures pretending to kill witches on the Internet?”
Luckily they were alone on the patio. A brisk wind leapt the fence and ran under the trestle tables, chilling her through her thin sweater.
“Yes,” she said, chewing, thoroughly embarrassed.
“Holy goddamn.” Today he was wearing a blue-plaid sort of Western shirt, with curlicues across the chest. Kenway rolled up his sleeves to reveal the tattoos running up his arms. In the sunlight she could finally make them out: robed Japanese samurai battling each other in a froth of hibiscus flowers and green leaves, katanas raised, screaming silently forever. Graceful red foxes darted in and out of the scenes on his arms. “I mean, god, damn.” He pressed his palms against the edge of the table as if he were going to push away. “Sitting on a secret like that, you didn’t have anything to worry about, you know, with the shrink thing. I don’t think you’ve…”
She ate her salad quietly, not knowing what else to say.
Kenway seemed to deflate. “I’m sorry, it’s just a lot to take in, you know?”
“I understand.”
“Well, hey, at least you know I’m not interested in you for your money,” he lilted. “I liked you even before I knew.”
Robin nodded, staring down into her food.
“What I meant was, what I was saying, with that kind of a nest egg, it’s not like you’ve really got to worry ab
out what anybody thinks of you.” Kenway rubbed his face and picked up his sandwich. “I don’t know, I mean, you’re sort of ‘above the fray,’ you know what I’m saying? Above reproach.” He took a big bite of the sandwich and stared at the wall, chewing, and said, a little quietly, “Hell, out of my league, maybe.”
A cold shock ran down the middle of Robin’s chest.
“No, not at all,” she told him, not meeting his eyes. “Money doesn’t make me better than anybody. Doesn’t make anybody better than anybody else. Besides … I’ve only just now gotten to that point recently, viewer-wise. It’s taken a lot of scrimping and saving to get to this level. I haven’t technically made that kind of money yet. And I won’t unless I keep swimming.” She pointed at the Macbook with her fork. “The videos are passive income, but only so many people can watch them so many times, and if you don’t keep producing content you’ll start losing subscribers. So it’s kinda like being a shark: you have to keep swimming if you want to survive. Lot like being an author, I think.”
Kenway regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, not saying anything, and then pressed the Play button on the video with his pinky finger.
As the sounds of her first expedition started back up, the real Robin sitting behind the Macbook thought about how Chandler’s house stank. She remembered the fog of funk like it was yesterday, a thick stench that had seemed as solid as Cheez Whiz. “The phone,” wheezed the old woman in the video, “is over in there, in the hallway, on the little hutch. Do you see it?”
The monologue about the witches came in over the scene. They starve, said the voice-over. They die from the inside out. One shoulder came up as a chill of disgust grated through Robin’s guts, made her back tense up. The deadness slowly makes its way to the outside. After a while they’re just a rotten corpse in a living-human costume. Death masquerading as life.
“Jesus,” said Kenway. As the battle between past-Robin and the King of Alabama began in earnest, he put down his sandwich and wiped the marinara off his fingers with a napkin. “What the hell.” His mouth hung open.