You Only Get Letters from Jail

by Jodi Angel

  Yesterday I had put the binoculars up to my eyes while Hurley read Swank, and Ed and the guys were all crowded around the table in Ed’s garage and they had some crazy shit in there. The Stones told me that I need money so much I need money so bad and I turned to Hurley Gatz, who was reading out loud from an article on Gail Palmer doing porn, and I told Hurley what I saw. There were beakers and flasks and tubing and burners throwing small flames. “One-Legged Ed is making a fucking bomb,” I said.

  I had thought about it all night, what One-Legged Ed might want to blow up, but as we both stood looking down at the girl—Hurley from the shore and me from the water, I forgot about everything that I had seen in that garage. The girl was facedown and we couldn’t recognize her from the back. I thought about flipping her over, and maybe Hurley thought about wading in and doing it, too, but neither of us said it out loud or reached to do it. In fact, neither of us touched her, and on the one occasion when I was close enough to her outstretched left hand that a small wave sent her fingertips to lap against my knee, it was all that I could do to keep from making the heavy slow-motion run from the water to the ground, and maybe not stopping until I came up from the underbrush, crossed the road, ran to my house, and scrubbed my knee clean.

  “You really think she’s dead?” Hurley asked.

  I looked up at him and his face was blank. There was no color in him at all. Even his body was a strange shade of white, as though he had been drawn in as a pencil outline on paper and left that way.

  “How long do you think we’ve been looking at her?” I asked. “How long do you think we’ve been talking here and she’s been facedown?”

  Hurley still had the cigarette in his hand and he suddenly seemed to remember it, took a drag that didn’t burn, and dropped his hand to his side again. He exhaled but no smoke came out. “She could’ve been sneaking breaths,” he said.

  “Okay, yeah, maybe,” I said. “Let’s count. Let’s see how many seconds go by and see if she breathes.”

  We both started counting in unison. Our voices were the only sounds except for distant traffic and the faint familiar whine of a lawn mower, and it seemed strange to hear ourselves ticking off numbers—one, two, twenty, one hundred seventeen. I kept my eyes focused on her back so that if there was the slightest bit of movement I would catch it.

  At five hundred thirty I quit counting. Hurley went ahead for ten more, and then he stopped, too. “Did you see anything?” he asked.

  A small hot wind kicked up and the waves shifted her back and forth and back and forth against the thinning weeds from the shallow shore. She moved in unison—arms and legs and body all together. I knew it was hard to pull that off in the water. Part of you always wanted to dip below the surface and get out of sync with the rest. “Nothing,” I said.

  “Jesus,” Hurley said.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  A large soot-colored bird jumped down from an overhead tree branch behind Hurley and came up to the water near us. His eyes were hard black and sharp and there was a yellow line on his beak. He hopped up to the edge of the water, stuck his face into it, and then rubbed it under his wings. We were both hypnotized by the process and we watched him repeat it over and over until his feathers were fluffed and he glistened wet in the sun.

  “I don’t recognize her,” Hurley said.

  I looked down at her and tried to put her into some kind of familiar perspective. She was wearing a pair of jean cutoffs that were frayed and loose around the tops of her legs. Her legs were thin, and even though they were below the surface of the water I could tell that they were tan. The skin looked as if it had been pulled tight and there were creases set deep in the backs of both of her knees. She was wearing a gold anklet, and it was shiny, and one of her shoes was missing and her foot was bare. Her pale heel stuck out of the water. The other foot was strapped into a thin brown sandal with thick soles.

  Her T-shirt was dark blue, but maybe would’ve been light blue if she was dry. It stuck to her skin, and I knew that if I put my face into the water next to her and opened my eyes, I could look over at her and see that she had boobs. I could tell from the way her back was shaped even though there weren’t any bra straps. Both of her arms were drifting—the left one moving out a little ways from her body, the right one reaching out past the top of her head. There was chipped orange polish on her nails.

  “Look,” Hurley said. He had a stick in his hand and he was using it like a pointer. “Look at her hand.” He leveled the end of the stick over the hand that waved above her head. Her nails were broken and jagged. “She was scratching at something,” Hurley said.

  “Or she bites her nails,” I said.

  “Not anymore.” Hurley pushed the end of the stick against the back of her right hand and the stick dented her skin before it popped her hand below the surface of the water with a small splash.

  “Don’t,” I said. “Not with a stick, okay?”

  Hurley went back to shore, sat in the grass, and tucked his knees up to his chin, pushed his hair back. He put the stub of a cigarette in his mouth and found his lighter and went to work on it. I waded back to shore and sat on the ground and pulled the laces from my shoes. When I had both of them, I tied them together to make one long string.

  I walked the short distance to where the body was floating and I looped one end of the string around the girl’s left wrist, knotted it, and looped the other end around a broken piece of branch, knotted it, and stuck the branch into the soft mud. “There,” I said.

  “What do you want to do with her?” Hurley asked.

  “Keep her, I guess.”

  For the rest of the afternoon we sat on the bank and flipped through mental pictures of girls we knew, said their names out loud to each other, gave descriptions when we didn’t know the names, tried to figure out who she was. By late afternoon we had run out of names and faces, and Hurley was out of the mechanic’s cigarettes, and the mosquitoes were thick and biting and we decided to go home because there was nothing else to do.

  I didn’t eat and went to bed early. I took my sheets off so I could run them under the bathroom sink and get them wet so I could put them back and lay on them to try and break the heat. I dreamed without sleeping and the faces of girls kept repeating their images every time I tried to close my eyes. I could hear my parents eating in the other room, hear the sound of their silverware clicking, the sound of plates stacked in the sink. I heard the TV come on and I heard my father’s voice, and I thought I was asleep but I wasn’t. I finally gave up, took the phone in my room, and called Hurley. His mom said he’d gone to bed, but he took the phone from her and told me that he’d been just as unasleep as me. It was a suck way to waste a summer night, so I pulled on some clothes and walked over to Hurley’s and the mechanic and his mom had gone out, so we took a can of Pringles up to his room and dug the binoculars out of his sock drawer, popped the screen, and took our place at the window. It wasn’t even dark yet; there was still sunlight in a bright line on the horizon, and the sky was deep orange and made me think of the girl and her nails. I wondered if she was okay there on the shoreline, tied to the branch. I wondered if anybody would find her—I hadn’t thought about it before, the fact that we weren’t the only ones who used that strip of swimming space—and I wondered if maybe we should’ve covered her with something but I couldn’t think of what.

  “Do you think she’s okay?” I asked Hurley.

  Hurley was on his stomach with the binoculars pointed out the window toward the rows of houses and the street beneath us. “Who? Missy?” He shifted his weight and started fine-tuning the focus.

  “You know who I’m talking about.”

  “I think I’ve seen her before.”

  I sat up and accidentally kicked Hurley’s stack of magazines. The new world sex record issue—eighty-three men in one night—slid into erotic cookies—bet you can’t eat just one—slid into sex and alcohol (how to get it up when booze brings it down) slid into the Q and A on junk food making you a l
imp lover—take our remedy. The mechanic had great reads. I had secretly taken home the Cheryl Tiegs issue, had her safe between my mattress and springs, and if Hurley got blamed for that one disappearing, I would be sorry, but not very.

  “Who is she?” I said. “Is she from school? It’s that girl from my algebra class, isn’t it? That one girl who used to sit in the back and then she got moved to remedial, right?”

  “No, that’s Diane Kenyon, and she is very much alive. I saw her at Holiday Market today, bagging groceries.”

  “Then who is she?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I know I’ve seen her, though. Look at this—Mrs. Irwin is out in her yard in her robe again. Disgusting.” He tightened the focus on the binoculars.

  I read articles I’d already read in the mechanic’s magazines, and eventually the sun disappeared and we were shut into darkness. It was Thursday and the streets were quiet. One-Legged Ed’s driveway was lined with motorcycles and big guys smoking cigarettes and talking loud, but his garage was dark and there wasn’t much to look at. Sometimes we would see someone pass by the windows in his house and we would follow his movement for a while, watch him step out on the back porch, light a cigarette, stand out there and smoke until someone else came out, joined him, took a hit, passed it back.

  “I wanna go see her,” I said.

  Hurley was quiet for a while. He set the binoculars on his bed and rubbed at his eyes. “What are we going to do with her, Reece? I think we should tell somebody.”

  “I don’t want to tell anybody.” I could feel my heart under my shirt. I felt hot. “Not until we figure out who she is and we can report it. Maybe there will be some kind of reward.” I wasn’t sure why, but I wasn’t ready to lose her and I had to go see her and I would go with or without Hurley. We heard a motorcycle fire up and I closed the magazine. “Nothing in the garage?” I asked.

  “Nah, it’s quiet. Just the usual.” Hurley lifted the binoculars and looked out on One-Legged Ed’s house. “There’s girls there tonight.” He handed me the binoculars and I moved forward on the bed beside him. I could feel his bare arm against my shoulder, and I could feel the heat on his body, and I could smell him beside me—soap and sweat and laundry detergent. I looked into the darkness and tried to pick out faces in One-Legged Ed’s crowd. The girls were young, but older than us, and they stayed close to each other and to the men, and sometimes they reached out and grabbed one or another by the arm and there would be laughter and we could hear it over the rooftops.

  “I count five,” I said.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Nothing. Laughing. Drinking beer. Smoking. One is putting on lipstick. You want the binoculars back?”

  Hurley rolled onto his back and shut his eyes. “No. Just keep telling me. Where’s Ed?”

  “I don’t see him,” I said. Then the light flicked on in the garage and I waited and finally someone passed in front of the window and I could see it was One-Legged Ed and he had a girl with him. In the light I could see her better than the others, and she was small with long brown hair and skinny legs and she was wearing a skirt and she looked bored.

  “He’s in the garage. With one of the girls.”

  Hurley opened his eyes for a second. “What are they doing?”

  “Nothing. I can’t tell.”

  “Does he still have the bomb?”

  “Wait, she’s fucking kissing him. I swear to God, she has her tongue in his mouth.”

  Hurley sat up. “Give me the binoculars.”

  We sat on his bed and watched the girl kiss One-Legged Ed and I was turned on and disgusted and couldn’t seem to stop watching, and Hurley pulled his shirt off and I took the binoculars back and smelled Hurley and watched the girl and didn’t want to stop doing any of it. Hurley was whispering song lyrics, and he kept his eyes closed and he pushed at the front of his jeans with his palm. When he was asleep I left his house and walked out into the street and I could hear the music from One-Legged Ed’s and I wondered what would happen if I just went over there, knocked on the door, and invited myself in. I wondered if they would let me stay, or if they would beat the shit out of me and drag me home by my laceless shoes.

  I went home but did not sleep. I lay on my bed and didn’t fold the covers back, just waited for the light to come back to the sky and for another day to start. The heat did not break in the night and I was slicked with sweat by the time I heard my dad start the shower and my mother start the coffee and both of them move toward work. My parents liked to fight in low whispers and there was a lot of that lately, but I couldn’t decipher any of it and tried to forget it anyway.

  When there was less than light, and only the promise of it, I left my house and went back to the slough and cut through the grass and the trails and found the path to the shore where the girl was tied. I expected her to be gone, cut loose, and was just as scared as I was hopeful that I would find a broken stick, dirty laces, and nothing but green water, but of course she was there, just as we’d left her, facedown and not breathing and flexing with the small ripples of water. When I got close enough to the shore to see her, I heard a frog jump and there was a big splash and I screamed a little and then laughed at screaming and that sound scared me, too.

  I sat on the grass in front of her and saw the remnants of where we’d been the day before—the crushed cigarettes and stamped weeds. The shoelace was still tight on her wrist and the stick was still upright and anchoring her to the shore. Her hair covered her head in all directions and there was no chance even to see the profile of her face.

  “I wish I knew who you were,” I whispered. “I wish I knew you.”

  I stretched out on the grass and the ground was cool beneath me. Moisture crept up and dampened my shirt and it felt good and I closed my eyes for a second and when I dreamed, she was with me, in my dreams, and we were on our way to the prom, and I was in a tux with a pale blue shirt, and she was in a blue dress and I had a car that I had never seen before, but it was mine and instead of going to the dance, without saying anything, we decided to park out by the river, the real river and not the slough with its warm slow algae and green bullfrogs and smell, but by the river that moved and ran and went deep and stayed cold. We sat in my car and I played the Stones and she started kissing on me, on my neck, and I let her and she was beautiful. When I looked at her, it was as if I couldn’t see her exactly, but I could tell that she was beautiful, and I kissed her back and then it was as if I was watching it all from a window and I could see my silhouette in the car, through the rear window, and I was sitting up in my seat and she wasn’t, and I could feel her next to me, and also watching all of this from the window was Hurley, and he had his hand on the front of my jeans and he was pressing me, and I could feel him, too.

  When I woke up the ground was dry and the sun was already hot and I was thirsty and there were yellow weeds pressed into my cheek and a short trail of ants on my arm. The girl was still in the water and everything was the same. I heard a plane overhead but could not see it, just the trail of white it left behind as it split the blue down the middle like a seam. I kicked off my shoes and pulled off my jeans. I waded into the water next to her. There were places on her body where the water did not reach and she looked dry and hot and exposed, so I splashed water over her, slowly, cupped it in my hand and sprinkled it over her like rain. I stood close enough to her that I could feel her fingers touch me when the water shifted the right direction and she knocked against me and I let her. Her fingers did not feel like fingers, but I knew that they were and I knew that they were hers and even though I wanted to, even though I almost did, I could not put my hand around her arm and lift her enough to see her face, roll her onto her back and turn her to the sky.

  I went to Hurley’s but he didn’t open the door. His mom finally did and said that he didn’t feel well, was still sleeping, but she was having a party that night and I should tell my parents and I was welcome to come over and keep Hurley company. As I was walking back to my hous
e, I heard an upstairs window slide open and I turned around just in time to take a Hot Tamale to the head. “Get back here, fucker,” Hurley shouted. The noise set off a string of dogs barking and old Mrs. Irwin in her robe looked up from her front flower bed. Hurley gave a shrill whistle and then slammed the window shut. Mrs. Irwin looked at me and smiled.

  The mechanic was already at work and Hurley’s mom had called in sick so she could pick up the liquor and food and she was in such a good mood that she let me and Hurley eat Pringles and watch cable and let the air conditioner rip all morning. We repaid her kindness by tapping the keg for her and getting chairs out of the garage and hosing things down and putting out plates and bowls of peanuts and testing the beer to make sure that it was fresh and testing the cups by filling some with beer to make sure they’d hold the liquid and tasting the beer to make sure that it wasn’t lite beer because nobody drank that shit we said and by the time she sent us out of the living room and back to Hurley’s room, we were about half drunk. We took full cups with us and decided to try to keep them full for the rest of the night.

  By nine o’clock there wasn’t one person in the house who wasn’t holding on to someone else for balance, and the volume had reached its peak and Hurley’s Uncle Walt had put on Frampton Comes Alive and there were too many voices who thought they knew most of the words and were trying to join in on the choruses. At a quarter to ten, Hurley and I were sipping warm beer from the bottoms of our red cups, and we had the binoculars pegged on the street below, but all of the action in his house had moved to the backyard and all we could see were the cars parked nose to tail on the street. At eleven, One-Legged Ed left his front door and started crutching his way down the sidewalk, toward the Gatz house and the party that it had become.