The Savage Kind

by John Copenhaver

  “How did your meeting with Principal Green go?” he said.

  Bonnie recounted it, and Dad took it in.

  “That’s just a slap on the wrist,” he said.

  “I’ll catch up on all my homework,” I said, shooting for a positive spin.

  He frowned. “I wonder about Judy.”

  “What about her?”

  “Is she the best influence? Sophie doesn’t think so.”

  “Now Carl,” Bonnie said, always the peacemaker. “Philippa behaved well today and accepted responsibility for what she did.”

  “I don’t want you to see or talk to Judy for a week,” he said.

  “What?” I said, my heart leaping up. I began bargaining: “What about just for the two days of suspension?”

  He studied me, an eyebrow raised. “Okay,” he said and after a long pause: “You’ve never done anything like that, so spend time reflecting on it.”

  “I promise.”

  He unpacked his lunch, unwrapping the foil around his sandwich. “Do you remember how you’d save your gum wrappers for the metal drives during the war?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was ridiculous.” I collected wrappers during junior high and pressed them together until they created a four-inch-wide foil ball. It took months, and I was so proud of it. I was sure that I’d singlehandedly win the war by mashing foil together. If we just saved enough aluminum, we’d blow the Axis out of the skies! Sure, Philippa.

  He handed me the foil. “Here,” he said. “Just because the war is over doesn’t mean we should be wasteful.”

  I took it, slipped it into the pocket on my coat, and smiled, but what I wanted to do was scream: “Are you blind? I’m not your little girl anymore! I don’t skip rope or play jacks or collect foil.”

  He doesn’t really care about the Whitlow incident. I see that now. He just doesn’t like me growing up, thinking for myself, and taking action. Most of all, he doesn’t like me wanting things: like college and a career, like my friendship with Judy. I wonder if my mother ever felt hemmed in by him—or did she just accept her fate like Bonnie?

  JUDY, OCTOBER 28, 1948

  Miss M and I talked about everything: Literature, politics, art, movies, music. Everything. Just a month ago, she was urging me to give Charlie Parker a chance: “Yes, he meanders, but that’s the point. He’s so restless and alive. Listen and go with it.” When I told her that I didn’t want to keep the Peabody name when I turned eighteen, she didn’t argue with me or attempt to persuade me to reconsider, to give B and E a chance. She just said, “Well, what about a literary name? Something poetic? A flower or an herb? Perhaps Judy Oleander or Judy Rose, or wait, what about Judy Parsley?”

  I smirked. Although our conversations often had a heightened feel, as if they were happening in a dream, smudged at the edges and surrounded by a haze of lilac perfume, occasionally, she’d drop below the ether and crack a joke or wiggle her nose. More than all the poetry tutorials and music recommendations, those moments have clung to me; I wonder if we’ll ever have them again.

  “Okay, okay,” she said, “if that doesn’t suit you, what about a bird? Cardinal? Robin? Judy Robin.”

  It was absurd, but I played along: “Judy Pelican or Judy Woodpecker. Mademoiselle Albatross.”

  She broke into a wild laugh. “Judy Finch?” she said, recovering. “That’s better, right?”

  I cringed.

  “Or wait, I have it!” Her eyes sparkled. “Nightingale, like the poem.”

  And that was it. The perfect name. Judy Nightingale. I’d even researched the bird and wrote about it in a paper. It was an important poetic symbol from Homer to Keats to T. S. Eliot. Most of all, it suited me. After all, I want to transform—to metamorphose—like the characters do at the end of Greek myths. I want to be a Nightingale and leave my mortal Peabody behind.

  Today, after a predictable brawl with Edith about being suspended from school, I stormed out of the house, nearly knocking her down. I went to Miss M’s old apartment. Philippa is temporarily off-limits, so I couldn’t go to her place. I’m not entirely sure what I was doing. Miss M had moved by now, but maybe she’d be lingering, or there would be traces of her, something that would give me hope of seeing her again.

  As I stood in front of it, the city bore down on me. Cars honked, businessmen flagged cabs, and girlfriends squealed into each other’s arms. Down the block, little girls were fighting over a game of hopscotch. The thin vertical faces of the row houses loomed, the ripe odor of sewage hung in the air, and roots from the old oaks seemed to shift and break through the sidewalk bricks, gradually unburying themselves under my feet. No sign of Miss M, none of her lightness, her serenity. Just the goddamn pressure: where was she? What had happened between her and Cleve? What had Philippa actually witnessed?

  Police cars barreled by, and I glanced across the street. On the other side, a tall man was staring back at me. He was well dressed in a charcoal suit and gray fedora and gave off the impression of being good-looking, although from that distance, I couldn’t make out his face. I didn’t think anything of it. He was just another businessman or government Joe headed home. But when I started down East Capitol toward Lincoln Park, he was still behind me, thirty yards back. Okay, but that’s not unusual. Be calm. We could’ve been going the same direction, or maybe—although this wasn’t particularly reassuring—he was trying to pick me up. When I crossed to the park, he crossed too. Shit. When I walked faster, he walked faster. What does he want? My heart was racing. I cut through the trees for a more direct route to Tennessee Avenue.

  Once home, I slammed the door and locked it behind me. I went to the parlor, peered between the window sheers, and scanned the street: evergreen hedge, iron fence, brick sidewalk, blue Buick, black Packard, rusty delivery truck, towering yellow oak, snooty woman walking her schnauzer. My heart was still pounding, but he wasn’t there, vanished like a ghost. A gray ghost. Briefly, I wondered if I’d made him up, but as I withdrew, I saw his silhouette through the gauzy fabric, and I jumped like I’d just spotted a spider in the middle of the floor. He stepped out from between the truck and the Packard and glanced around, pausing to take in the house. Then the shadow of a passing car swallowed him, and he was gone.

  PHILIPPA, OCTOBER 30, 1948

  Today our suspension was over. Thank God. As soon as I stepped through Eastern High’s front door, an arm slipped through mine and tugged me forward. “Come on,” Judy said. “I have news.” Her touch was reassuring. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her.

  We found a table in the library, and in a heated whisper, Judy told me all about the man who followed her home. It was thrilling news, but neither of us knew who he was or what it meant. “He was probably a government spook,” she said with a chuckle. “He looked the part—gray suit, gray fedora. A gray ghost. J. Edgar is following everyone else in town, why not me?”

  Sure. J. Edgar Hoover. Why not?

  “He’s everywhere,” she added. “The puppet master.”

  Judy has strong opinions. She reads the newspapers and listens to the radio collecting tidbits of information so she can shape them into grand theories. I’m never quite sure what to make of her ideas—from her conviction that Alger Hiss is a spy (“Whittaker Chambers would know a spy when he saw one, right?”) to her certainty that the spread of communism in Europe will end in war (“Trust me, it’s not like the Soviets are content with their shitty slice of Europe.”) to her casual prophesy about the deadly smog in Donora, Pennsylvania (“It won’t be the last time an American company poisons its own. But hey, it’s better than communism!”). She knows about these things, and she relishes making up her mind about them. Dad and Bonnie would prefer that I live with my head in the sand, as if glancing at a headline or newsreel would shatter my nerves. Girls with minds of their own don’t fall to pieces when faced with ugly truths. Judy’s right: we should look at the world squarely, take it all in.

  “I’m meeting Quincy at Horsfield’s after school,” I said. “Wan
na come along? He phoned last night trying to reach Dad.”

  “Are you pumping him for information?”

  “For malts—and information.”

  “I’m in.”

  * * *

  Quincy wore pedestrian clothes on his day off—a brown leather jacket, a plaid flannel shirt, and jeans. His cheeks were puffy, his face unshaven, and his hair uncombed like he’d just rolled out of bed. Stress seemed to be percolating behind his cheerfulness. I wanted to ask if he was okay, but I didn’t want to embarrass him.

  In contrast, Judy had spruced up in the bathroom at school. Her eye makeup was fresh and feline, and her lips were lined, something she rarely did. Despite the brisk weather, she removed her black sweater, which was thrown jauntily over her shoulders, exposing her arms. Grouped in threes and fours, her scars ran from her wrists to her elbows, marring her olive skin at various angles. Some were as long as two inches and others as short as a half inch. Some were pink and bulbous, others only faint red lines. She seemed to be offering up a comparison: the makeup versus the scars. Beauty versus the beast. I wondered if she wasn’t doing it to invite mystery, to spark Quincy’s curiosity—or at the very least, throw him off balance.

  Horsfield’s was packed. We found a booth against the back wall which was shielded from the chatter by a partition. Overwhelmed by the after-school rush, Iris briskly took our orders, giving us a distracted smile and Judy a quick wink. Quincy ordered a chocolate malt and a cheeseburger, and we had vanilla malts. Judy requested extra whipped cream.

  “How’s school?” Quincy said, after Iris had left us.

  “We wouldn’t know,” Judy said.

  “Why?” Quincy said.

  Judy leaned in, smiling coyly. “We played a practical joke on the school secretary, Mrs. Whitlow, and they suspended us.” I didn’t understand why she was acting this way. Where was flirting with Quincy going to get us?

  He shrugged, baffled.

  “We did it for a good reason,” I added, not wanting him to think we were crazy—or spiteful.

  “Like I said, it was a practical joke.” Judy smirked. “Practical because we needed Whitlow out of the way, so we could find Cleve’s address. We wanted to pay our respects to Cleve’s parents.”

  Quincy looked at me. “Why not just ask?”

  Judy leaned farther forward, stretching her scar-emblazoned arms across the table. “They wanted us to write condolence letters, not drop by. We wanted to meet his mother and father and see where he lived.” I wanted to drape my napkin over her arms, not because they were ugly, but because they were so intimate. It felt like a striptease.

  “You shouldn’t be doing that.” His eyes flicked to her arms.

  “Cleve was my friend,” I blurted. “I wanted to talk to his parents and tell them I knew him, that I was sorry.” It was a lie, but it felt necessary. Something to focus Quincy back on me.

  “You could’ve accomplished that with a letter,” he said.

  “We want to figure out who killed him,” Judy said, sitting back in the booth and retracting her arms. “In child murder cases, you’re supposed to start with the parents, right? I read that in True Crime.”

  Quincy glanced around as if he was worried about being overheard. She had touched on something. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s usually where we begin, but not in this case.”

  Judy lit up. “So, where then?”

  “Well, I’m not beginning anywhere. I’m just learning, doing grunt work, paying my dues. The lead detectives call the shots.”

  Judy sized him up. “But you know the direction of the case.” She smiled, her lined lips prominent and sensuous. “They’ve been relying on you, haven’t they?” She smiled, giving her nose a little seductive scrunch. I could only guess that she thought flirting with him would make him more pliable and willing to divulge information. He was just another boy to her, and his red cheeks told me that he wasn’t proving her wrong.

  “I can’t talk about it,” he said. “I’d lose my job.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We don’t want to get you in trouble. We want to help.”

  “Well, can you tell me something?” he asked.

  I looked at Judy. “Sure.”

  “What were his parents like?”

  “We only met the mother and the grandmother,” I said. “Cleve’s mother was devastated, on the verge of crumbling. But his grandmother, she was—”

  “A queen bitch,” Judy said, her eyes narrowing. “Definitely running the show.”

  “Did they say anything unusual? Something that surprised you?” Quincy asked.

  “It’s hard to tell,” I said, scanning my memory. “The last time his mother saw him was when she sent him out to pick up dinner on Thursday evening.”

  “I told them we bumped into him on East Capitol, but that’s not true,” Judy said, surprising me with her honesty. What was she up to?

  “Why lie?” he said.

  “I didn’t trust them, and I wanted to see if they could tell if I was lying, if my story conflicted with what they knew, if they were confused.”

  “Smart,” he said, lifting his eyebrows. “Did it?”

  “Well, the queen bitch didn’t like it.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  Judy’s eyes met mine, requesting permission to tell him… what? Everything? Was this her new tactic: I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?

  Instead of signaling to her, I took over: “We went to our English teacher’s—Miss Martins’s—room after school hours. We wanted to ask her about an assignment.” Although part of me wanted to tell him more, to just blurt it all out, I knew I couldn’t. I didn’t want him knowing that we’d broken into her apartment, that we were already up to our necks in this. He’d feel duty bound to protect us and that would lead him to inform Dad. Judy and I would be ordered to stay away from each other. We had to walk a fine line. “Cleve and Miss Martins were having a heated argument,” I added. “We interrupted them, and Cleve ran away.”

  “Oh, interesting,” Quincy said, but before he could ask another question, Iris arrived with the malts.

  Judy’s peak of whipped cream was already dissolving; the cherry had begun to sink into the white froth. She plucked it out, flashing her arms again, sucked off the cream, and ate it with a murmur of pleasure. She was really enjoying herself, and Quincy’s eyes sparkled as he watched her. I wasn’t sure if I was more annoyed at Judy for working Quincy or at Quincy for allowing her to.

  “What happened to your arms?” he said to her. There it was. He was hooked.

  Her gaze lingered on him, a touch sultry. “It happened when I was young. I don’t remember.” She waved it away.

  “Oh,” he said. “It looks like it hurt.”

  “Hmm,” she said, plunging a straw into her malt.

  He stared at his drink, embarrassed, it seemed. His hamburger arrived, the bun slick with melted butter and the beef patty oozing grease. “Thank you,” he said to Iris, who smiled and was gone, and to us: “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  I considered telling him about the cabinet full of sleeping pills or even about the gray ghost that had followed Judy home, but that would set off too many alarm bells.

  But before I could speak, Judy nudged me under the table and said, “Nothing more to report, but may I ask you something?” And I understood: this was a quid pro quo. We’d given him something, and now it’s his turn.

  “I’m not sure I’ll be able to answer.” He picked up his burger and took a sloppy bite.

  “If they don’t suspect family members, who do they suspect?”

  He shook his head and swallowed. “Can’t say.”

  “Come on.”

  “Sorry.” He wiped ketchup from his cheek.

  “Is it Adrian Bogdan?”

  Quincy’s face drained of blood. It was Bogdan. He looked away. Was he worried about being so easily read?

  “I thought so,” Judy said. “My parents would like it to be.” />
  “That so?” he said.

  “They think he killed their daughter, Jackie, my illustrious predecessor. Bart and Edith are still obsessed with seeing Bogdan prosecuted.”

  Quincy’s eyebrows were parked high on his forehead. “How did they make the connection?”

  “The writing on Cleve’s arm,” she said. “It was reported in the newspaper. Jackie had writing on her body, too. Did you know that?”

  “I did.” He took another bite.

  Why hadn’t she mentioned the writing on Jackie to me? We’re supposed to be in this together, confidants. Was I being manipulated too? I shot her a look, but she ignored it.

  “That detail shouldn’t have made it into the newspaper,” Quincy said. “It’s not helpful, but at least they didn’t report what it said.”

  “So, what did it say?” Judy said, cocking her head.

  Quincy’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not information I’m privy to.”

  “But it’s possible the murderer is the same person,” I said, sitting back. I wanted distance from them: They were doing a dance with each other that I felt excluded from. Judy leading, Quincy following clumsily.

  He blinked.

  “Of course, it is,” Judy said. “But it doesn’t feel right, somehow.” She sipped her malt. “But I bet the police think it is.”

  “Can’t say,” he said, but the quick shift of his eyes betrayed him.

  “Both were kids,” she said, leaning in and lowering her voice. Her eyes were wide and flashing. “Both were found in the Anacostia River, both were written on, and both were molested.”

  “Okay,” Quincy said, holding his hand up. “I didn’t come here to have you ruin my career. I’ve already given you too much. Let’s talk about something else.”