Damn Straight

by Elizabeth Sims

  "Skip was kind enough to agree to talk with me about what it's like to—"

  "I gotta go." The door slammed.

  "He's a trip," said Skip. "Where were we? Oh. Yeah! I guess you guys have all kinds of resources."

  "Yeah, pretty much. So—"

  "Are you on staff at Sports Illustrated, or, like, doing a freelance thing for them?" He wore a small wooden cross on a cord around his neck, and a school ring set with a blue stone on his hand.

  "Well, quite honestly, Skip, my angle here is, when a sports figure makes it big and leaves town, how do the home folks feel about them? Like, how do you, as a local reporter, cover Genie Maychild? The people here know her, remember her. Her roots are here, and yet she's moved on. That coach she had in high school—"

  "Marian Handistock."

  "Yeah, her: How does she feel about Genie now? I'll be talking with her today, too. Her friends, you know—"

  "Genie wasn't terribly popular around here."

  "Oh, yeah?" That surprised me.

  "I didn't know her myself. I mean, I knew who she was, but she was like three years ahead of me in school, so, you know. But it just seems like nobody around here cares very much about her. I tried to interview her parents one time, and they wouldn't even answer the door. Kids from school—I mean, kids who were kids with her—it's funny, but they don't know her very well. They're not comfortable talking about her."

  "Yeah?"

  "I think Genie Maychild was one of those little nobody-type people, mousy people—maybe one who got picked on, you know. Then something happens to them. For her, it was discovering golf. And they bloom, and like overnight nothing's ever the same for them. It's like they become a different person nobody knows anymore."

  "Uh-huh." I couldn't imagine Genie being mousy.

  "You can only milk 'Local Girl Makes Good' so far."

  "Yeah."

  "Are you doing any other celebrities, or just Genie?"

  "Oh, you know. Yeah. I'm not sure, though. The editors are dithering. You know. I decided to go ahead and get a little legwork done anyway."

  "Oh. They do dither, don't they?"

  "You gotta love 'em. Say, have you heard the one about the writer and the editor who get lost in the desert? They're walking and walking, trying to find water. Then they're crawling. Finally they come to an oasis, and the writer plunges his head in and drinks. He looks up to see the editor peeing into the water. 'Hey, what are you doing?' he says. The editor says, 'I'm improving it.'"

  Skip really liked that one. "You got that right! Boy, have you got that right! Sometimes I—"

  "So," I said, "did you ever know any, like, boyfriends or girlfriends of Genie?"

  He was too eager to help me to get insulted because I kept interrupting him. "No," he said, "like I say, I never really—"

  "Ever look her up in the old yearbooks?"

  "No, I never thought of that." He looked crestfallen.

  "Maybe I'll swing by the library later. There is one here, isn't there?"

  "Yeah, not that they have any kind of collection." He raised an eyebrow, a college man through and through.

  "I hear ya." We sipped our coffee. "Skip, tell me, do you want to keep on in journalism? I'm just curious. Do you—do you see it as a long-term career for you?"

  He smiled into the distance. "Once," he said, "I left here and moved to Chicago, to take a job at the Tribune. I offered to work for free, just do anything, you know, so they'd see I was a hard worker, and maybe then one day I could work into a foreign correspondent position. I was studying Arabic and Russian."

  "Wow."

  "And I worked like a dog there," he went on. "I did everything they asked. Gosh, I did everything up to and including mopping the men's room. They wouldn't give me any real assignments, but I wrote features, ones that I'd think up myself at night. I did some investigative stuff on the road commission and public health. But they didn't like my work."

  "Really?"

  "It's kind of hard for me to say this, but I feel you'll understand." His eyes were clear and noble. "They said I didn't have the killer instinct."

  "Oh, Skip."

  "Yeah. What could I do? So I came home. And now my goal is to buy the Bugle someday and run it myself."

  "Well, Pearl Center's a nice town."

  "It is. I was born here."

  For some reason I had to keep from crying. After a minute I said, "Well, heck, journalism's a crazy life."

  "You said it."

  "Hey, you know that rally last year for that teacher of Genie's that retired, Coach Handistock?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Somebody came up in some kind of costume? What was that about?"

  "Oh, yeah, that was really bizarre. This person just sort of appears, right in front of the podium, you know, and Genie freaked."

  "What exactly did this person look like?"

  "Well, like I think I said in the article, he or she was wearing a mask—"

  "What kind of mask?"

  "A rubber mask, like for Halloween. It looked like a pig."

  "A pig?"

  "You know, a fat pink pig face. And then this sheet that was supposed to look bloody, I guess."

  "Did you get any pictures of this person?"

  "I don't think so." He rubbed the point of his chin with his thumb. "I can look back over the proof sheets just in case. We didn't have the digital camera then. I'm the whole news bureau around here, you know."

  "I do know. Would you do that?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  "And how did Genie react when this Halloween person showed up?"

  "She just—it's like she just froze for a minute. I was standing practically next to her and she looked—well, like she'd seen a ghost. Her face went totally white, and she just stared for about—I don't know, half a minute."

  "Did the person say anything?"

  "No."

  "Did Genie say anything?"

  "I almost caught something under her breath."

  "What was it?" I pressed. "Did you hear a word?"

  "I don't know. No. Then she, like, shook it off, like I could see her getting ahold of herself, and then it was like the person didn't exist. She just went right back to talking. I went back to writing notes, and then when I looked up, whoever it was was gone."

  "Did people say, 'Who was that masked man?' or anything?"

  "Not that I heard." He looked sheepish. "I guess people around here aren't too curious."

  We both sat and thought on that for a moment.

  "No," he suddenly said, "it's not that."

  I smiled.

  "You know what I think?" he said, "It's that people here could feel that Genie wanted that—whatever it was—goblin to be invisible, so just naturally it became invisible to them, too."

  "Out of politeness, then."

  "In a way, I guess."

  We looked at each other and laughed. That's the Midwest for you: land of the pathologically polite. It was good for Genie that Skip Doots was just as polite as his brethren.

  Just to see how polite he could be, however, I said, "Seems Genie and Coach Handy were pretty close."

  "Yeah, I guess so."

  I waited. Then, to push him to his utmost limit of politeness, I said, "Well, did people talk about that?"

  "Oh! Uh. Gosh, I don't know. You know, Theresa, it isn't that people don't gossip around here. I mean, it's a small town."

  "Yes, that speaks for itself."

  "I try to stay out of it," Skip said. "I hear things. But my philosophy is, this town needs somebody to look after it. Somebody to help people feel happy and proud. Somebody who doesn't just criticize and find fault, but somebody who can tell the truth and who cares. Somebody who cares that a lady with no vocal cords comes once a week to the senior center and helps them make baskets, somebody who cares if the garbage truck guy has to keep rigging the clutch in the dead of winter with a piece of wire because it never gets fixed right, somebody who cares that even though the clock on City Hall doesn
't keep the right time, the finches are going to come back any day now and nest in it!"

  For a minute I wanted to move to Pearl Center and marry Skip Doots. But I just said, "You have a fine career ahead of you."

  "You think?"

  "Yes, my friend. Yes."

  Chapter 19

  The Pearl Center Public Library could've fit into a cigar box, but it appeared that the staff tried hard to keep their chins up, given what must have been a zero-sum budget game with the city council. On the bulletin board, there were notices for two different fund-raisers, a bake sale and a karaoke festival. Tonight was to be Karaoke Night, with soft drinks provided. Suggested donation was two dollars per song. I wondered if I'd be able to stop in for it.

  The librarian was up on a chair pinning gold crepe paper and inspirational pictures of singing stars to the ends of bookcases and walls. She'd gotten up Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Jim Nabors, and June Carter. In her on-deck pile I saw Garth Brooks and Dolly Parton. The librarian rubbed her neck as if it hurt.

  The only patron, a great-grandpa in a Ford jacket, was reading a newspaper at a table. He made a continuous, deep throat-clearing sound.

  The librarian climbed down and showed me the shelf of yearbooks from Pearl Center Consolidated High School and went doggedly back to her decorations.

  I found Genie Maychild's senior picture and her junior picture. She looked about as I expected her to look: strong neck and jaw, shy smile, yet the suggestion of immaturity, especially physical immaturity. As most teenagers do, she looked as though she hadn't grown all the way into her face yet. Even so, I saw a quiet determination in her eyes. Almost a somberness.

  And there she was also, among the sports photos, bundled in pants and a jacket, swinging a club against a dreary backdrop of muddy ground and bare trees. And there she was again, leaning on her driver, Coach Handy at her side.

  Coach Handy appeared in most of the team photos, a solid presence with a challenging look, as if she might jump out of the photograph and recruit you on the spot for half-court basketball, or maybe cross-country.

  I flipped through the pages of candid shots, too, looking for Genie with other students, looking for references to her. In her sophomore year her picture wasn't among those of her classmates, nor was it there in her freshman year. I looked for the golf team; there was none. Coach Handy was there in the sports pages, but no Genie Maychild.

  Puzzled, I looked through the candids for those years. "God, I'm glad I'm not a kid anymore," I muttered, the pictures taking me back to those awkward days of yearning and frustration. One picture drew my attention, of two students caught necking in a stairwell. A high window caused the shot to be backlit, with a silhouette-like result. You couldn't see the faces of the couple; I suppose that was how it got past the censors. They were a couple of slobs, it appeared to me, lumpy and straggly, but the body angles of the girl made me look more closely. I'd seen that body. The boy, in profile, had an obvious hard-on. The caption said: "Sitting in a tree: G.W. and D.D?"

  This was Genie's sophomore year. I searched through the head shots in the W's. Christ Almighty, was that her? Could that be right? "GENIE WICKERS," it said under the picture, of a surly, chubby, dull-eyed girl. Yes, it was her—there she was, my beloved beautiful athlete, my Tarzana, staring into the camera like a stupid pumpkin. What the hell? What happened to Genie Maychild?

  I went to the D's, and found the only boy with "D" for a first initial: Dominic Dengel. He looked even more stupid than Genie, but somehow more optimistic. In spite of his incredibly mangy haircut, there was an eagerness about his face. I looked at the picture for a few minutes.

  Well, no wonder I hadn't been able to find anyone in Genie's family by phone. She'd changed her last name and had somehow drastically changed her appearance, her self, between her sophomore year in high school and the rest of her life. The woman I knew was Genie Maychild. So the question became, what happened to this Genie Wickers?

  I consulted the directory in the library and found two Wickerses, both on the same road, and one Dengel. I noted the addresses and left.

  .

  To hell and gone was where Gristmill Road was, a long lonesome rut west of town. I drove past the first of the two Wickers addresses, number 11; half a mile down the road was the other one, number 15. Both homes were the kind of places you'd go and photograph for a bleeding-heart feature on the rural poor.

  I turned around and went back to number 11, the bigger of the two lots, and pulled over. Someone had thrown down a single-wide prefab about forty years ago, it looked like, then attempted to graft a board-and-tarpaper shanty onto the side of it. A variety of adhesives had been used over the years, I noticed, to keep the pieces together and seal out the weather: expanding foam, red epoxy, duct tape. I expected to see Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans bump heads between the junked cars any second.

  My Weejuns slipped on the mud, which still harbored ice crystals between the clumps. There was no name on the mailbox.

  Standing at the front door wearing my pea coat and my hopeful-kid-at-Christmas expression, I listened. Inside somebody had a television blaring. I knocked on the kick panel of the storm door: bam-bam-bam! Glancing up, I saw a huge satellite dish pointed skyward, attached directly into the shingles of the shack with tenpenny nails.

  After a few minutes I knocked again. The inner door creaked open to reveal the most repugnant hag I have ever seen, which, I feel, is saying a lot.

  The woman wasn't terribly old, but she had that weathered, skaggy look that retired prostitutes have, whether they've tried to take care of themselves or not. And this one had really let herself go.

  Before she opened her mouth to talk, I could tell she'd be minus all but about four teeth. Her vaguely beige hair was wispy and wild. Pouchy in the face, she stooped miserably, as if a large dead dog were strapped to her back. She pushed open the storm door a crack and looked at me with bee-stung eyes.

  I smiled warmly. "Mrs. Wickers?"

  She stared.

  "How do you do?" I went on, "My name is Theresa Sanchez and I'm doing an article about Genie for Sports Illustrated. I wonder if—"

  She let the storm door fall shut, but I quickly pulled the pint of Ballantine's from my coat pocket. She stopped, I kept smiling, and she let out half a cackle.

  "Come in!" she said. "Hah!" I was right about the teeth.

  The smell of the place triggered my gag reflex, but I controlled it. I forced myself to breathe through my nose, to filter the germs and cat dander, and wondered how I could get a dab of my mentholated lip balm into my nostrils without appearing rude.

  Well, we're talking cats, we're talking cigarette butts in hubcap-sized ashtrays, we're talking mildew, we're talking dirty underwear. There. I'm sorry, but that's how it was.

  The television was on absolutely full blast, tuned to a soap opera.

  "But didn't Asher tell you? He's going to marry ME!"

  "That's what you think, Bethany. You know, if you weren't PREGNANT, I'd shut that poisonous little trap of yours for good!"

  "Who told you that, Valda?!"

  "Let's just say a little BIRDIE, dear."

  Daytime TV. Whoever said television was a wasteland?

  Mrs. Wickers dropped into the couch facing the TV and indicated that I should take a seat with her there, but I stepped into the kitchen and brought out a straight chair. It was wooden and very greasy, but at least I didn't think it'd give me VD or crabs, as I was certain the couch would.

  "Sorry to interrupt your story," I began.

  "Oh! Hah! I know how they all come out!"

  Sloshing the bottle, I coughed and murmured, "Maybe a glass or two."

  "Oh! Hah!" She heaved herself up and all but scurried to a cabinet. "Of course!" A scrofulous yellow cat darted from behind the cabinet and made as if to climb up the back of my chair. I made a sudden movement and it changed direction to the kitchen. I saw at least five other cats around, all old-looking. I thought that was strange; in a houseful there's usual
ly a few kittens in the bunch. I supposed kittens aged fast in that place.

  I poured a couple of fingers into the cloudy glasses she set before me on a trash-encrusted coffee table, then said, "Mrs. Wickers, I'm wondering—"

  "Hah! Cheers!"

  "Cheers."

  She smacked her lips. "Ah, that's the good stuff! Good stuff!" She had on a pink sweatshirt appliquéd with seahorses, and those stretch pants nobody over age twelve should ever wear. She kicked off a pair of filthy scuffs and eased back in the couch. Her feet looked like poached footballs.

  I poured again, for her.

  She said, "Genie was a—a disappointment, you know."

  "Yeah?"

  "She never gave a damn about me."

  "Oh, I'm sorry."

  "She's rich, you know."

  "I guess she is. What I'm wondering about are Genie's formative years, you know, her school days—"

  "Hah! That Bethany's gonna drink poison, y'know!"

  The audio track of the soap opera pounded along—

  "Dempsey, I know you never meant to hurt me."

  "That's right, Bethany. Up until an hour ago, you're the only one I ever loved. But I guess you always knew that. Now that it's too late—"

  "But Dempsey—"

  "No, Bethany. Not now. Not here. Asher's waiting."

  "If only I hadn't—"

  I grabbed the remote from the coffee table, hitting the power button. "Goddamn it. Let Bethany drink poison, then. I want to talk to you."

  Mrs. Wickers, her lips wet with Ballantine's, peered at me. "You a cop?"

  "No. Listen. Did Genie have a boyfriend in high school?"

  "Unh." She began cursing softly, slurringly, something like, "Godzhdamn. Damn. Godsham-damn."

  "What was his name?"

  Mrs. Wickers cursed again, and I realized she was saying the name I'd already seen. "Dom. Goddamn Dom."

  "Dom? Yes? Dominic, uh"—I flipped open my notes—"Dengel? Dominic Dengel?"

  "Dang. Goddamn. Sumbitch."

  I felt like backhanding her into coherence like in the movies, but it never works in real life.

  Sharply I said, "Did she have any other boyfriends? Mrs. Wickers! Hey! Work with me here! How about her father? Did her father have sex with her?"