THIRTY-NINE
Cory and his family went to church on Sunday mornings and Jason and I had been out in front of our house, watching from across the street, waiting for the Dayborne’s to return. Their sedan pulled up in the driveway at just past nine. His father, Guy, wore a nice, cheap suit, his dark, thick hair, slicked over his crown. His mother and sister wore identical blue dresses that stopped just bellow the knees. Cory sported a short-sleeved button-up with a clip-on tie, tan slacks.
“Morning, boys,” Guy hollered.
“Good morning, Mr. Dayborne,” Jason said with a wave.
Cory’s old man put his hands on his hips and with a huff, said, “What did I tell you about that Mr. Dayborne stuff?”
Jason smiled at him and said, “Sorry. Good morning…Guy.”
We were a little uncomfortable calling him by his first name. It wasn’t because he was an adult and we thought he should be addressed as Mister, it was because he had such an unusual name to begin with.
Guy. It was a generic name. Maybe his parents where just that unoriginal, maybe it was either going to be that or Male.
Guy gave my brother a wink and headed up to his front door, his family in tow.
“Get changed, Cory, and come back out,” Jason called after them. “We need to go next door to Steve’s.”
He turned around to face us, walking backward. “I know, to help him clean up his backyard.”
“For Frisbee,” I reminded them.
Cory nodded and as he went to turn back around he walked right into his sister, Christy.
“Watch it, jerk-o,” she squealed and punched him in the arm. Just as Guy opened the front door, Cory pulled her hair and shot past her into the house. Christy, hot on his heels, chased him down the hallway.
Although the Dayborne’s went to church every Sunday it seemed as though they never took the Sabbath all that serious, like they worked just hard enough at being good, not to go to Hell, nothing more. This was, after all, the day of rest, but Cory and Christy were allowed to go off and play as they pleased while Guy and Janeal sat around drinking martinis or mimosas or margaritas, whatever struck their fancy.
In less than five minutes, Cory had changed from his Sunday best into a pair of corduroy shorts and a shirt with a picture of King Kong hanging from the Empire State Building swatting at small planes.
As we trekked next door, Cory said, “What do you think Steve was pissed off about yesterday?”
Jason shrugged. “I don’t know. None of us said anything to make him mad. Maybe Mark said something to him.”
“I like Mark,” Cory told him. “He seems alright.”
“Yeah,” I cut in. “He’s cool.”
We cut up Steve’s lawn and headed toward his front door when we heard him shouting from his backyard, so, instead, we went around to the side and let ourselves in through the gate.
As we walked carefully around the condensation puddle by Jackie’s window, Jason yelled out, “Steve. You back here?”
At the sound of his voice, Frisbee trotted over, looked down the side yard, barked once and ran back.
“Yeah,” Steve called. “Come on back.”
When we got around back we found him holding a tennis ball in his right hand, Frisbee sitting at his feet, staring up.
“Check this out, guys. He might not like catching Frisbees but he sure loves tennis balls.” He cocked his arm back and tossed the ball high into the air. Frisbee kept his eyes on it the whole time it was airborne, letting it come down and bounce once in the dead grass before leaping out to snag it.
“Alright. Good catch, Frisbee,” I hollered. The dog dropped the ball and came to me, letting me pet him from head to tail.
“Hey, pretty cool,” Jason said. “How long you been doing that with him for?”
“About a half hour,” Steve answered.
If it was us that he was mad at yesterday, he must have gotten over by now for he was good old Steve once again.
“You talk to your mom about keeping him?” Cory asked.
Steve nodded and said, “Yup. She was pretty cool about it too. She said as long as I take care of him and clean up his poop he can stay.” He pointed over by the sliding glass-door to where a sack of dried dog food sat. “She even took me out last night to buy food for him.”
“Bitchin,” Cory said.
“Yeah,” Steve continued. “And Jackie really loves him too. We stayed out here until about nine o’clock last night playing with him. I thought it was going to break her heart when we had to go back inside.”
“Where is she?” I asked. I liked being around her and if she was home I kind of wanted her outside with us.
“Mom took her out to get her hair cut and to buy new shoes. They won’t be back for a few hours.”
Jason asked, “What about Jacob? What does he think about Frisbee?”
Steve looked down at his feet and shook his head. He answered in almost a whisper, as if scared that his older brother might be listening in on our conversation. “I don’t know. He hasn’t seen him yet. He was out all weekend. He didn’t get home until early this morning, like four or something. He’s still sleeping. Fucking dick.” Then Steve looked at each of us, a little fire in his eyes. “But I swear if he even thinks about touching Frisbee, I’ll kill him.”
The dog hadn’t even been in our lives for twenty-four hours yet but somehow Steve knew he was special. He loved him already. We all did.
“But anyway,” he said, a bit calmer, “you guys ready to work?”
“I guess,” Jason told him as Cory and I groaned. It was summer. We weren’t supposed to be doing this much work. We were supposed to be out playing. But it seemed that we had been cleaning up one place or another for the last week. First the hill at our house, then the Tree and now this. But at the same time, we knew we were cleaning up Steve’s backyard for Frisbee so he could have a halfway decent place to live. Knowing that made it seem a little less like work.
Steve was the boss-man. It was his yard so it was only right he decide what everyone’s job would be. “Okay, I’m going to grab the lawnmower and get as much of this dead grass up as I can. Sinfields’, you guys pull out the weeds around the fence area. I’ll get as close to it as I can with the mower so there won’t be so much. Dayborne, grab a rake and start making piles of everything; trash, weeds, grass, whatever. We’ll bag it up when we’re done.” He looked at each of us and gave a nod. “Shouldn’t take us more than about an hour.”
It actually took closer to two hours, but the work went fast. Frisbee stayed out of our way, lying on the concrete in the shade of the house where it was cooler. When we started at nine-thirty the temperature was already kicking ninety-five in the ass. White billowy clouds had started drifting in from the Pacific like slow camels in a blue desert.
Steve had gotten about two thirds of the way done when the lawnmower quite on him. He figured out quickly that it was just out of gas and of course his gas can was empty so he sent Cory to his house to get the one they kept in their garage. And in normal Cory fashion he turned a two minute trip into a fifteen minute trip. When he came back and dropped the one gallon metal can by the mower we all noticed a new mustard stain on his shirt and he also had what appeared to be a grape juice mustache.
We all stopped what we were doing at the moment to stare at him.
“What?” he said, sheepishly and jogged over to the rake to continue his task.
After Steve added more fuel, he finished cutting the last of the grass and put the lawnmower back in its spot on the side yard. Cory had made twelve good sized piles around the lawn.
It was while we were bagging everything up that Jason finally asked Steve about the previous day.
“Steve?”
“Yeah?”
Jason dropped a handful of grass into the bag that I was holding open for him. “What happened?”
Steve, tying off one bag and starting with another, said, “What do you mean?” although he had a look about him that said he knew exactly what
Jason meant.
Jason stopped what he was doing all together and stood up. “You know, yesterday. When we were across the street with Mark. What happened? What set you off?”
And at the sound of Mark’s name Steve froze, a wad of newspaper and a rusty beer can in one hand. It took a moment but he finally dropped them into the bag and stood up. He looked at Jason not with anger or fear but more of concern or maybe even sorrow.
Jason prodded a little more. “Come on, man. You went into that little house of his and you were fine. But when you came out it was like you hated him all of a sudden. I mean-”
“I do,” Steve admitted. “Hate him.” He looked back at Cory who was walking over. We all gathered closer together.
“What happened, Steve?” Cory asked. “Did he say something to you? Did he do something? Cause if he did, man-”
“Yesterday,” Steve interrupted, “when he offered me that beer, I thought that was pretty cool. I mean I’ve had a beer before. Snuck one or two of Jacob’s. No big deal, you know. But when Mark was gonna let me have one, it seemed special or something, like I had just made a new friend, like he thought I was cool. I mean a million things started going through my head. I kind of felt like he liked me more than everyone else. That’s kind of selfish though isn’t it? You guys are my buds and all and I’d never do anything to hurt you. But it was just so cool that he had chosen me. I know I shot that beer can and all but…” He trailed off for a moment, staring, as if trying to remember. “I sort of thought for a second, too, that you know, if shit ever gets bad here at home with Jacob, I would be able to go over there, maybe hang out with him until things cooled off, maybe have a beer or two with him.” Steve shook his head as if clearing those ideas from his mind for good and he continued. “Anyway, he takes me inside and closes the door behind us. He tells me to have a seat. There’s only one chair in the room, by the window, so I sit. There’s a little fridge over at one end that he grabbed beers out of. He took a glass out of the cupboard and poured one into it, says he doesn’t have any mugs so that would have to do.
“After that he brings me the beer and he sits down on his bed. He’s got a beer of his own so he cheers’ me and we drink and he starts asking me questions. Things like how long I’ve lived across the street. If my parents are still married. Do I have any brothers or sisters and how many.
“He asks me if I play little league baseball or soccer. What grade I’m in. Which school I go to. Just ordinary things. Like he wants to get to know me better. Like he wants to be my friend.
“Anyway I start asking him some questions too. You know, like where he grew up. I ask about his family and stuff too. He tells me that he’s twenty-eight years old. His parents died in a car accident when he was nineteen. Said they sort of had a lot of money-he didn’t say how much-but he got a bunch after they died. He joined the Army and got discharged after two years for something he didn’t want to talk about. After that he said he just started traveling from state to state, staying in places for a couple months at a time, living off the money his parents left him. I guess the Maherrin’s put an ad in the paper and when he read it he called them up and moved in. That’s how he ended up here.”
Steve looked around at us and then over his shoulder. Frisbee was still in the shade but he watched Steve as if he were just as engrossed in the story as we were.
Steve shut his eyes tight as if digging deep for a memory or, quite possibly, shutting one out and went on. “I’m just about finished with my beer by this time. I guess we’d been chatting for about ten minutes or so. Then all of the sudden, out of nowhere, he says to me, he says, ‘Hey, Steve. You got a girlfriend?’ I guess I was a little embarrassed. You guys know I don’t. Hell, Jason’s doing better than all of us. He’s got one.”
“No I don’t,” Jason said shyly. We knew Jason liked Amber Nelson but they were still young. They normally only saw each other at school. Meeting up at the pharmacy had been a total fluke.
Steve continued. “But I told him that I kind of did. I mean I don’t, but I told him I did. I didn’t want to look like a pussy in front of him, you know?
“So he tells me, ‘Oh, yeah. What’s her name?’ And I say the first thing that comes to mind. There’s this girl that was in my class that’s really pretty. Her name’s Megan Summer. So I said her name. I told him Megan. He just smiled at me at first and took another sip of his beer. Then he say, ‘Is she cute?’ and I said ‘of course.’ He takes another drink. He asks me how old she is and I say twelve. Then he gets all quiet and raises his eyebrows and asks me, ‘You ever see her tits?’ I mean, I didn’t know what to say. I thought he was just joking around with me. But I laughed and told him no. He looks at me real serious for a few seconds then say, ‘Have you ever seen twelve year-old tittie?’
“Now I’m just not feeling real comfortable there with him. But I told him no, I haven’t. He stares for a few more seconds then downs the last of his beer. He sets the can on a little table and gets down on the ground. He reaches underneath his bed and pulls out a cardboard box. When he opens it I see a stack of magazines. I don’t know what to think anymore.
“He took one magazine out and flipped it open to the middle, handed it to me and said, ‘Check it out.’
“On the page is a girl probably eleven or twelve years old and she’s naked. He grabs it from me and flips a couple of pages then gives it back. Now there’s a girl probably Jackie’s age and she’s lying down and she has her legs open.
“I wanted to get up and leave right then, but somewhere in my head I was thinking that it was still just a joke. That he was going to say, ‘Just kidding’ or something. Anyway he puts the magazine back and takes out another one. There are little girls in this one too, but they’re tied up. They have ropes around their legs and hands and balls taped into their mouths. All the girls look scared. Some of them are crying. He tells me, ‘Pretty sweet, huh?’ But I don’t answer him. He just kept taking out more magazines with these girls in them and handing them to me. The girls in some of the pictures are our age. Some of them are younger. I mean like four or five years old.
“After a few minutes I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I know we looked at those dirty magazines over in Dead Grove but those are women. Those are ladies. In the ones he had they were just kids. I’m sure they didn’t even know that they’d end up in a magazine like that.
“I know I heard somewhere that you needed to be at least eighteen to be naked in movies and magazines and stuff so these magazines that Mark had must have been illegal. Plus he’s a grown up. It’s just not right, you know?
“But then, what really grossed me out was he asked me, ‘Hey, Steve. You ever jack-off?’”
Steve paused for a moment, his cheeks red from either the sun or embarrassment and then said, to us, defensively, “I don’t. And that’s what I told him. I just said ‘no.’ He just sat there looking at me for a bit, like he’s checking me out or something, then he says, ‘You want me to show you how?’
“That’s when I got up from the chair. I took my glass over to his counter and set it down. Then as I’m walking to the door he says, ‘Hey, Steve, don’t say anything about this, okay.’ And then just as I put my hand on the doorknob to leave, he grabbed me by my hair, hard and pulled my head back. He got real close to my ear and whispered, ‘I mean it, Steve. You tell anyone and I’ll cut your fucking throat.’ Then he says, ‘And I’ll kill your mom and your brother and sister. And then I’ll kill your little faggot friends outside.’”
Again, Steve stopped. His hands seemed to be shaking some and although he wasn’t crying, his eyes had glossed over. “Then he let me go and I went out. That’s when I told you guys we needed to leave. You see? I wasn’t mad at you guys for anything. I just wanted to get the hell away from that pervert. I mean he’s a grown man looking at those pictures. He likes to see little girls tortured and hurt. And then as we’re walking down the side yard to leave, something flashed in my head, something that scared the shit out of me.”
He looked around at all of us again and whispered words that chilled us.
“What if he’s the one that killed those girls?”
Frisbee Page 47