by J. D. Barker
The woman shook her head and Stella frowned, slipping off the bench, one hand smoothing her skirt. She started across the grass toward the woman.
“Bye,” I said, raising a hand.
She stopped then and turned back to me. “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, John Edward Jack Thatch.”
With that, she started up the hill toward the awaiting SUV. The woman fell in behind her. As the older woman turned, as she spun around, the wind caught the edge of her coat and I saw something beneath it, an image that is still clear as day in my mind; the barrel of a shotgun resting against her leg.
I watched Stella climb into the back. The woman closed the door on her, then she was gone, lost behind dark tinted windows growing smaller as they drove away.
2
“I left ten dollars on the counter for the pizza man. I already ordered. When he gets here, give him the full ten—eight for the pizza, two for a tip, got it?”
“Got it,” I replied. My eyes were glued to the television. Auntie Jo scored an Atari 2600 at a yard sale last year, and the game system had come with a box of game cartridges. Pac-Man was my current game of choice, and I was pretty good. I was even better at Ms. Pac-Man, but I had to go to the arcade to play that one. Pitfall was fun, too.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Pizza, money, tip, got it,” I muttered.
“Okay, and what don’t you do while I’m gone?”
“Open the door.”
“Except for the pizza guy.”
“Except for the pizza guy.”
Auntie Jo bent down and kissed the top of my head. Her uniform smelled like pancakes and burnt toast. “I’m closing tonight, but I should be home by midnight. Maybe a little earlier, if I’m lucky.”
“What if the pizza guy is an axe wielding murderer and he wants to chop me up into little pieces?”
“Well, then don’t tip him. I’ve got to go.” She was out the door a moment later, fresh cigarette smoke trailing behind her.
Blinky the ghost caught me in the corner and I lost my third life, game over. “Dang.”
When I was younger, Auntie Jo employed a series of babysitters when she went to work, that stopped last year when I turned seven. She couldn’t afford it. She said it would be cheaper if she skipped work than going in and hiring someone to watch me. I didn’t need a sitter, anyway. Most of them sat around and talked to their boyfriends on the phone (a few in person), and they all completely ignored me.
We came to an arrangement. No more sitter, and she would give me one dollar to stay out of trouble and the dinner of my choosing. I always picked pizza. There was nothing better than pizza. I used some of my newfound wealth to purchase comic books. The rest went into a mason jar hidden under my bed. At last count, I had thirty-two dollars saved.
Standing, I stretched and went to the window.
Auntie Jo was about a block down the road, across the street. I waited for her to duck through the door of Krendal’s Diner, where she worked, counted to ten, then put on my shoes and slipped out of the apartment.
I crossed the hall and knocked on the door to apartment 304. When nobody answered, I knocked again, louder this time. I was about to knock a third time, when the door opened about three inches, held in place by the metal security chain.
A pair of beady eyes came around the side of the door. Those eyes were behind a thick pair of glasses taped at the center on a wrinkled old face topped with an unruly mop of gray hair. Ms. Leech. “What?”
“You’ve got books, right?”
“You’ve got books? Is that really a proper greeting for one of your elders?”
I knew Ms. Leech had books because she used to watch me for the brief period that fell between the babysitters and Auntie Jo letting me stay home alone last year. She had shelves of books, newspapers, too. Auntie Jo said she was a hoarder.
“I need to find a copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickers.”
“Charles Dickens?”
“Yeah, him. Do you have it?”
Ms. Leech looked past me to the open door of my apartment. “Where is your aunt?”
“Working.”
“You’re not supposed to leave your apartment when she’s working.”
“I didn’t leave it. It’s right there,” I gestured toward the open door. “If you let me borrow the book, you can have some of my pizza.”
Her eyes brightened at this. “You have pizza?”
“Not yet, but he’ll be here soon.”
Ms. Leech had a weak spot for pizza, particularly pepperoni. Sometimes she even put pineapple on her pizza. Auntie Jo said she might be going senile; I think I agreed. Pineapple had no business on pizza.
She closed the door, removed the chain, and ushered me inside. “Yes, I have books. I have lots of books. I think I have that one somewhere.”
When she went to close the door, I reminded her we’d have to listen for the pizza guy. She left it open about an inch. She didn’t want to. I caught her looking back at it twice. Ms. Leech had been robbed once, about ten years ago, from what Auntie Jo told me. They busted right through her door, came into the apartment, and did bad things. Nobody told me exactly what those bad things might have been, but she didn’t go out much. She said they followed her home, and as long as she didn’t go out anymore, nobody could follow her back again. Auntie Jo bought her groceries when she got ours. I don’t think I ever saw Ms. Leech outside the building.
“I’ll watch the door,” I told her. “You go find the book.”
This seemed to calm her.
She nodded and began her trek through the living room, careful not to knock any of the newspaper stacks over. “It’s nice to see you take an interest in the classics, but don’t you think you should start out with something like Hucleberry Finn? Mark Twain is so much better than that Brit ever was. Dickens gets all flowery and wordy. I sometimes think he checked the cover to remind himself what book he was writing, he gets so wrapped up in his own words. Twain is nice and direct, to the point, much more concise.”
“This is for school,” I lied.
“Has school started already?” her voice was muffled. I couldn’t see her anymore, somewhere on the other side of the room.
“Not for two more weeks, but Mrs. Thomas told us to read it over the summer.”
“Seems like advanced reading for third grade.”
“I’m going into the fourth grade.”
“Oh, well then…”
I had no idea what grade would normally read this book, if at all.
“Got it!” she said. This was followed by a crash.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Yes. Just my encyclopedias. They really should be on a shelf, but they take up so much room.”
She came back into view, her hair even more disheveled than when she left, a paperback in her hand. “I do have rather fond memories of this book. I may have to read that one again when you’re done. You will return it, won’t you?”
I nodded and reached for the book.
“I suppose your aunt is raising you ‘by the hand,’ as it were,” she thought about this for a second. “Many similarities between you and young Pip, I suppose.”
“What does, ‘by the hand’ mean?”
She smiled. “I don’t want to ruin the story for you. You’ll see soon enough.”
The cover had a picture of a young boy and girl, both dressed in strange clothes. The boy was smiling, the girl was not.
We waited for the pizza guy to arrive. He did not have an axe.
3
On August 17, our air conditioner broke.
We didn’t have anything fancy, just a window unit in the living room, a big beige box of a thing that made gurgling noises when it ran and dripped water on the floor, but it kept the apartment cool on those few days out of the year when the sun reared its head in Pittsburgh.
August 17 was just such a day—93 degrees by noon and creeping up with each passing minute.
“
I’m holding the rent back if Mr. Triano doesn’t get his butt up here in the next hour,” Auntie Jo said. She had pulled the tattered leather recliner across the room to the second window, the one without the broken air conditioner stuffed into the frame, and laid down with a wet cloth on her head. At some point in the past twenty minutes, she had removed her blouse and sat there in a pale bra and blue shorts, her bare feet dangling over the side of the footrest.
“That stupid thing always shits the bed when we need it,” she said.
I considered telling her that the air conditioner was far less likely to break during the dead of winter, then thought better of it. “Do you want a glass of lemonade?”
“That would be lovely.”
In the kitchen, I tugged a glass from the dirty dishes piled in the sink, washed it out, and poured lemonade from the pitcher I made earlier. When I handed it to her, she gave it a tentative sip, then gulped it down. “Maybe a little more sugar next time, but I think you’re getting the hang of it.”
I had yet to make the perfect pitcher of lemonade.
She closed her eyes and rolled the empty glass over her cheeks. “Why don’t you go play outside? A kid your age shouldn’t be cooped up all summer. You should be outside with your friends.”
“I don’t have any friends. There isn’t a single kid my age in our building.”
She waved a hand limply through the air. “Maybe we should move to a palace in the suburbs, then, get a giant castle with a swimming pool—maybe a sprawling estate where all the neighborhood kids can line up and fill out applications to be your friend. Then you can select the best of the best and send the others packing. That seems much easier than just going outside and taking a chance on maybe running into someone your own age, making a friend or two the old-fashioned way.” Auntie Jo turned her head and squinted against the sun, painting a bright line across her face. “I love you, kiddo, but you really shouldn’t spend the last two weeks of your school vacation in here with the likes of me. I can be a miserable bitch sometimes, and now is one of those times. I’m ordering you to go outside and have fun.”
“But—”
“Now,” she said. “And I don’t want to see your face back here until six.”
I knew better than to argue. I grabbed my comic book off the kitchen table and bolted out the door.
I found myself in the cemetery.
I hadn’t made a conscious decision to go to the cemetery, but considering it was the only open space anywhere near our building and it was quiet, that’s where I ended up. I stopped at my parents’ graves just long enough to place the dandelions I had picked along Greenlee Road in their vases and wipe the dirt and grime from Daddy’s gravestone away with my shirt. If Auntie Jo asked how I got so dirty, I would just tell her playing was a messy business.
When satisfied with my work, I made my way over the hill and past the mausoleums, careful to hold my breath as I ran the length of them.
I expected the girl to be sitting on the bench, but she wasn’t.The bench was empty, save for a few red maple leaves caught in the metalwork. Clearing off a spot, I took a seat and opened my comic to the center, to the bulky paperback I hid within the pages, the book with the smiling boy and unsmiling girl on the cover. I turned to the first page and began to read.
Two days later, I returned to the cemetery. The day after that, too. The bench was always empty. I went back every day for the rest of that summer and long into the school year, but I wouldn’t see the girl again for nearly another year.
I never noticed the man watching me from the trees, sometimes there, sometimes not.
August 8, 1985
Nine Years Old
Log 08/08/1985—
Subject “D” within expected parameters.
Audio/video recording.
“Is everything recorded?”
“Not everything. Almost, though. Pay attention. I’m only going to explain this once.”
“Sorry.”
“Fresh tapes are in those boxes under the desk. If someone is in there, you always record. If he’s talking, even if he’s alone in there, you most definitely record. That stuff is gold, that’s what they really want. Be careful what you say here in the booth. The microphones pick that up, too, and it will be part of the record. If things get crazy, keep your mouth shut. Doesn’t matter how crazy. Keep your mouth shut and do your job.”
“Load fresh tapes.”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“As long as it’s not a stupid question.”
“I was told not to listen to him. Not to let him talk to me.”
“They solved that problem a few years ago. Pretty simple, really. Everything is on a delay. What you see and hear on these monitors actually happened thirty seconds earlier. It’s safe that way.”
“If that’s the case, why’s he wearing a mask?”
—Charter Observation Team – 309
1
“Help me clear this off,” Auntie Jo said, peeling away a vine that somehow managed to snake up out of the ground and wrap around Momma’s headstone in the two days since I had been out here.
I tugged at the base, and a clump of dirt came out with the plant.
I caught her studying Daddy’s stone—the lack of dirt, no moss growing in the carved letters.
“How you can possibly have feelings for the man who killed your mother is beyond me.”
I knew better than to say anything. Correcting her would only lead to an argument, and I wanted to check the bench.
Aside from a couple of days during the winter, I had walked out to the bench nearly every day, and every day I found it empty. I even took to trying different times of the day on the off chance I was just missing her, but still, she was never there.
I didn’t see her in school, either. She said she was the same age as me, and all the kids in this neighborhood went to Lincoln Elementary. That meant she lived somewhere else, but if that was the case, then why was she in the cemetery that day? Who was she visiting? I couldn’t help but think of the woman with her. Why the gun? Maybe the woman kidnapped her, brought her to the cemetery to—to what? That didn’t make sense, either. Nothing about the encounter made sense, and I guess that’s why I couldn’t get her out of my head.
Auntie Jo spread the blanket over the graves and handed me a sandwich—ham and American cheese on white. About a week ago, I noticed she stopped buying Wonder Bread and instead brought home the store brand. Our peanut butter was no longer Jiffy, either. The jar just said Peanut Butter across the front on a plain label. When I asked, she said the diner wasn’t doing as well as it used to and her hours got cut. If things didn’t change soon, she might have to pick up a second job. I offered her my savings, now at one hundred twenty-three dollars, but she wouldn’t take the money.
“Read,” she said, nodding at Momma’s gravestone.
“Seriously? Again?”
“Read.”
“Kaitlyn Gargery Thatch. February 16, 1958 to August 8, 1980. Loving wife, mother, and sister.” I didn’t have to look at the stone. I had memorized the text of both long ago.
“Five years,” Auntie Jo said softly. The smoke trailed up into the heavens from the cigarette pinched between her fingers. I couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t smoke, but lately she seemed to be smoking more. Sometimes she lit one cigarette from the stubby remains of the last one. She puffed, blew the smoke back out. Her teeth were yellow.
Ten minutes later, sandwich eaten, transistor radio and comic book in hand, I found myself heading up the hill toward the mausoleums.
The weather had turned cool early this year, and the wind kicked up, twisting and turning through the spaces surrounding the stone buildings.
The bench was empty.
She wasn’t there.
Sighing, I took a seat and set my comic book down beside me—I slipped the corner under my leg so the wind wouldn’t take it, and switched on the radio.
Static. A bit of Phil Col
lins. More static.
I tugged the antenna out to full length and slowly pointed it in various directions.
The wind kicked.
Static.
Then Phil Collins again, loud and clear, Suss, suss, sudio.
“You’re on my bench.”
I hadn’t heard her walk up, yet there she was, standing about five feet in front of me in a long, black peacoat.
“Move.”
I started to get up. My heart pounded so heavily in my chest, I couldn’t think. My face flushed. Instead, I sat up straight and pursed my lips in the most defiant pose I could muster. “No.”
She shrugged and sat at the opposite end, smoothing her skirt beneath her thick coat.
The SUV was parked at the far end of the access road, further away than last time. The woman in the long white coat with even whiter hair stood beside the vehicle. Another woman, also in a long white coat, stood beside her. Both were watching us, watching me.
“How have you been, John Edward Jack Thatch?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“You’re not sure whether or not you’re okay? Seems to me your current state should be as easy to determine as the weather.”
“I’m fine.”
“And your parents? Both still dead, I presume?”
“I read it.”
“Read what?”
I pulled my comic book out from under my leg and slid it across the bench to her.
She ran a gloved hand over the cover and frowned. “You read some rubbish called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I’m supposed to be impressed? Issue number one, no less. To think there might be more.”
When I reached over to open the comic, the girl pulled her hand away with such a quickness, the movement was a blur to me. I noticed a hint of embarrassment in her face, but it was gone in an instant. I opened the comic book to the center, revealing my copy of Great Expectations. The one I had yet to return to Ms. Leech.
Her eyes lit up at this.
The two women in white coats had edged closer and were moving closer still. They both stopped when I looked up at them. My eyes drifted to the edge of their coats, searching for a gun barrel like the one I had spotted the last time, but I saw nothing. Even as the wind kicked up and took hold, I saw nothing. Maybe I had imagined the gun.