He Started It

by Samantha Downing

Still, I didn’t worry too much about her. Everyone has phases. I was in my own first-year college phase and didn’t even recognize it. I thought I was the smartest person on the planet and everyone was too stupid to see it.

  That summer, when I was living back home, I heard Portia on the phone with one of her friends. We still talked on landlines back then. Texting was starting to become popular, but Portia didn’t have her own cell phone. Not in 2006.

  She was in her room and I was in the bathroom. We shared one, it was between our bedrooms and not accessible from the hall.

  ‘I swear,’ Portia said. ‘If my grandpa hadn’t done that, my life would be totally different. Totally.’

  Pause.

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. It’s, like, a huge thing, right? It changes everything.’

  Yes, I stayed to listen. You bet I did, because I thought she was talking about the road trip and Grandpa tying Nikki up. A few sentences later, I realized she wasn’t.

  ‘You understand,’ she said. ‘Because you’ve been molested, too.’

  Too.

  Portia had not been molested by her grandfather. She knew that. She understood what it meant to be touched in her private places, and no, Grandpa had never done that.

  I walked into her room.

  She was sprawled out on her black bedspread, phone to her ear, staring at the ceiling. It was plastered with rock band posters.

  ‘Um, hello?’ she said.

  ‘Hang up,’ I said.

  ‘Excuse –’

  ‘Hang. Up.’

  She did. Portia sat up, crossed her arms over her chest, and stared at me in a very pissed-off way.

  ‘Why are you telling people Grandpa molested you?’ I said.

  ‘Were you listening?’ She got off the bed, moving around quick, all full of fire and brimstone. ‘Oh my God, I can’t get a second to myself in this house. Not one second.’

  ‘Stop.’ I grabbed her by the wrist, making her face me. ‘Why are you saying he did it?’

  Portia said something that, to this day, makes me think she understood a lot more on the road trip than I thought she did.

  She smiled, her black lips parting to reveal her still-young, still-white teeth. ‘Because I can.’

  It’s not difficult to get to our middle-of-the-desert location. If you remember enough from before, that is. I do. I took note of everything because I was looking so hard for Nikki.

  Grandpa drove straight, just straight, until the road forked. He sat for a second, no blinker on, staring at Calvin in his rearview mirror. The investigator also didn’t have a blinker on. Grandpa went left and Calvin followed.

  Grandpa drove until he hit the dirt, which wasn’t far. Instead of turning left and staying on the road, he kept going straight. We were surrounded by huge rock mountains, each one crazier-looking than the last. Just like in Thelma & Louise. Years passed before I learned those desert scenes had been filmed in Utah, not Nevada.

  Grandpa continued winding his way through the dirt, around the hills, and after maneuvering around one particularly large hill, he pulled over and stopped. I know right where that spot is.

  You think that sounds convenient, and I have to admit, if I were hearing this story, I would think the same thing. But it’s not convenient. Not if you could see the rocks.

  They’re all different in the desert. From the distance maybe they aren’t, but up close they are. Grandpa pulled over next to one big round rock and two taller ones behind it. As soon as I saw them, I knew what they looked like.

  Portia was sitting behind me, and I turned to her and pointed.

  ‘Look. It’s a bunny,’ I said.

  That’s what the rocks looked like: two rabbit ears and a round nose. Portia started wiggling around, all excited. ‘Nikki’s here? Nikki’s by the bunny?’

  I didn’t answer.

  The rocks are what made it so easy to find the same place. One turn left, keep straight until the road turns to dirt, go around the hills, and after getting around the largest one, stop at the bunny. It’s not like this area had changed a lot.

  It still feels like the end of the civilized world.

  Eddie takes the Alamo exit, pausing to pull into a gas station convenience store.

  ‘Last stop.’ Before what, he doesn’t say. He’s just taken it upon himself to narrate the end of our trip.

  Portia heads to the restroom while Eddie and I go into the store. I get a large coffee with too much sugar. Might as well. My guess is this day will end very quickly or it won’t end for a long, long time.

  Eddie analyzes the ingredients in a protein shake. Portia comes inside and grabs a Smartwater – no alcohol today, I guess. We all need to fuel up somehow.

  Once we get back on the road, I give orders to Eddie. It’s a nice change.

  ‘Straight down that road,’ I say. ‘Left at the fork, then keep straight off the road and go around the largest rocks. Stop at the rabbit-shaped ones.’

  ‘I got it,’ Eddie says.

  It takes longer than I thought it did, maybe because I know what’s coming. Last time, every turn was a new sight, but now, as soon as the bunny ears come into view, my stomach jumps.

  ‘There,’ I say.

  ‘I got it,’ Eddie says.

  ‘You remember those?’ I say to Portia.

  She gives me a dirty look, albeit a mild one. ‘I wasn’t a baby the first time.’

  No, she wasn’t that. She was old enough to drug our cocoa, even if she didn’t realize it.

  When Eddie pulls over, it’s almost a letdown. Nothing is here – no marching band, no welcome banner, nothing to mark our arrival. And no one is waiting for us, least of all Nikki. Just the big rocks and a sandy hill protected from the wind by the bunny ears.

  A grave.

  Calvin Bingham has still never been found.

  ‘Looks the same,’ Eddie says.

  Exactly the same.

  I can still see it all, like it happened just a few minutes ago. Calvin and Grandpa, facing off between the cars, and we had ringside seats. We were in the van, looking out the back windows. Eddie had opened one of the side windows, the kind that used to have a little crank on it, so we could hear everything.

  ‘So where is she?’ Calvin said.

  ‘Oh, Nikki will be here,’ Grandpa said. ‘Anytime now.’

  ‘Really? Somehow she let you know she would be right here, in the middle of the desert?’

  ‘Yep. She sure did.’ Grandpa sounded like he was about to laugh.

  Portia leaned over and whispered in my ear. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s not coming, stupid,’ Eddie said.

  ‘Yes she is!’

  Grandpa and Calvin heard that. They both looked up at us. They both saw Portia’s little face contort into that expression kids make when they’re about to cry.

  ‘Where’s Nikki?’ she yelled.

  ‘That’s what I want to know,’ Calvin said, looking back at Grandpa. ‘You don’t know where she is, do you?’

  ‘Go to hell. I know where my granddaughter is.’

  Calvin rubbed his forehead like he was tired. And done. ‘Yeah, this has been great, and thanks for the tour of the desert.’ He moved toward his car, then turned back one last time. ‘Your daughter just wanted to make sure her kids were okay. She didn’t want to call the police on you. You know, she even told me about your wife dying and –’

  ‘You shut up about my wife,’ Grandpa said.

  ‘Look, I’m not even supposed to be talking to you. My orders were to follow and make sure the kids were okay, and you didn’t get into any trouble,’ Calvin said. ‘I don’t care what happens to you, and I’ve got no problem calling the police. You can tell them all about Nikki.’ He threw his hands up and turned away, back to his car.

  ‘Stop.’

  It’s not Grandpa.

  I was so busy with Portia, I never heard Eddie get out of the van. Now I see him, down below us, and he’s got Grandpa’s gun.

  Calvin saw the gun
and froze. ‘Now, wait a minute –’

  ‘Eddie!’ Grandpa said. ‘Give that to me.’

  Eddie did not move, other than to glance at Grandpa. ‘He’s going to call the police.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Calvin said. ‘I’m just going to leave. I’m quitting this job.’

  ‘You said you were going to call the police,’ Eddie said.

  ‘No, I meant I’d call your mother and she would call the police. Who knows, maybe she won’t?’

  Eddie did not waver. ‘That’s not what you said.’

  ‘Eddie,’ Grandpa said, taking a step closer to him. Closer to that gun. ‘This guy is just a hired investigator. He doesn’t care who Nikki is, let alone where she ran off to. He’s doesn’t care if the police are called or not.’

  I didn’t move. Couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, couldn’t turn away from the scene in front of me, which felt more like a movie than real life.

  Except the only one with a gun was my brother.

  ‘Lie,’ he said to Calvin, who now had both his hands up and they were both empty. ‘You’re going to call them. You’re going to turn Grandpa in.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘They’re going to lock him up and look for Nikki.’

  ‘Hey,’ Calvin said. ‘I promise you I won’t –’

  Eddie pulled the trigger.

  Not once. Three times.

  This, apparently, is what we do in our family when we feel threatened. We get violent. Or at least some of us do.

  We’re back in the same place, and we’re all staring at that sandy hill. I try to imagine what’s left of that Honda. It was just a hunk of metal when we left it.

  But I can still feel the heat of the fire.

  Eddie gets out of the car first, claps his hands together. ‘This is it.’

  We all stand in the clearing, looking up at the bunny ears. This should be our selfie, right here, out in the middle of nowhere. Eddie in his polo shirt and khakis, his Top-Siders so worn out they’re embarrassing. Portia in her short shorts and child-sized shirt, her black hair knotted up into a mess. Me in my khakis, tank top, and baseball cap. Felix’s baseball cap.

  ‘Seems smaller now,’ Portia says.

  Indeed.

  Eddie walks away from us and toward the rabbit rocks. He gets right up close to them and stands in the open space between the ears. He kneels down.

  ‘What are you …’ I stop because I can see what he’s doing.

  Portia turns around and watches him for a second. ‘Why are you digging?’ she says.

  He doesn’t answer, doesn’t look up. I have no idea what he’s looking for or why he is digging. He’s using his hands, pulling up the dirt like someone’s buried alive.

  The only thing I remember burying is Calvin’s car, with Calvin’s body burned up inside of it. We all pitched in, heaving dirt on it to stop the fire and the smoke. That’s what Grandpa was worried about – the smoke. He didn’t want anyone to find us before we were done.

  Eddie keeps digging, using his hands the way a child does at the beach. Finally, he hits something. There’s a crinkling sound as he brushes away the dirt and lifts it out.

  A plastic bag. The kind you used to get at every grocery store and drugstore before they started getting banned.

  ‘What the hell,’ Portia says.

  Eddie continues to ignore us as he rips open the bag and pulls out what’s inside.

  It’s my old T-shirt, the one I used to wrap up those ashtrays from the motel rooms. The one Nikki took when she ran. Only now the shirt has blood on it. Old, dried blood, a deep brownish-red color.

  Eddie unwraps the shirt and I hear the clink of the glass as the ashtrays shift. He pulls out one last thing.

  The other disposable camera.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ Portia says.

  Eddie looks like a kid on Christmas morning. ‘I wasn’t sure these would burn in the fire,’ he says, pointing to the ashtrays. ‘So I buried it all instead.’

  ‘Whose blood is that?’ I say.

  He ignores me and looks only at the camera, inspecting it from every angle. For twenty years, it’s been protected from the sun, water, and dirt. It looks brand new.

  ‘You know there’s no pictures on it, right?’ Portia says. ‘Nikki never took any pictures of me.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean there aren’t any pictures on it,’ Eddie says.

  My eyes keep shifting back and forth, from the camera to the bloody shirt.

  Nikki took a few pictures with that camera, but not of Portia. They were nothing important, just trees and street signs and our weird motels. Just so the camera had been used, so Grandpa believed the story. They were nothing worth burying, let alone preserving.

  ‘I’ve been waiting twenty years to get ahold of this,’ Eddie says. ‘I swear, I’ve had nightmares about someone finding this.’

  ‘If that’s true,’ Portia says. ‘Why didn’t you just come out here and get it?’

  He doesn’t answer. A list of options runs through my mind, like I’m playing a mental game of Risk and I have a secret mission to choose the most likely course of action. I think about the drive and all the directions I gave him. All the times he said I got it.

  ‘You didn’t know how to get here,’ I say. ‘You just pretended.’

  Eddie smiles. ‘Thanks for leading the way. Grandpa and I both came out here so many times, but we just couldn’t find it.’

  ‘Grandpa?’ I say.

  ‘Hell yes, Grandpa. You think Grandpa planned this second trip all on his own?’ He scoffs. ‘Who do you think planted the idea in his head?’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Portia says, spitting the words out.

  Of course Eddie was in on it. He always knew this trip was coming. How did I not see that? How did I not figure it out? That’s what happens when you aren’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

  ‘It was the animal that tripped me up,’ Eddie says, pointing up to the bunny-ear rocks. He laughs. ‘We kept looking for coyote ears. Passed right by these big rabbit ears at least a dozen times.’

  That’s how natural these dirt hills look against all these rocks. No wonder the burnt-up car is still here, still untouched.

  Eddie has been on a secret mission all this time; I just missed it entirely. We’re all haunted by something, and for Eddie it was old ashtrays, a camera, and that bloody shirt.

  ‘Whose blood is that?’ I say again.

  He stares at that T-shirt, shaking his head at it. ‘Here’s your Nikki,’ he says, nodding to it. ‘She’s been out here this whole time.’ He wraps everything back up, walks to the car, and puts it in the back. The box of ashes is waiting.

  I turn to Portia, who looks as confused as I do. ‘I have no idea what’s happening here,’ she says.

  ‘I found her,’ Eddie says. ‘She ran into the woods and I found her.’

  He turns around, but he isn’t holding the wooden box. Eddie is holding the gun.

  In a split second, I decide my best strategy is to ignore the gun and pretend he doesn’t have it. Or maybe I’m too preoccupied by what he just said.

  ‘What do you mean, you found her?’ I say.

  He leans against the bumper of the car like he’s settling in to tell a long story. ‘When I ran into the woods that morning, I found her. Well, actually she found me.’

  ‘What the –’

  ‘She attacked me,’ he says. ‘Nikki came out from behind a tree and swung those fucking ashtrays at me.’

  I shook my head. This wasn’t right, couldn’t be right. ‘You said you didn’t find her.’

  Eddie sighs.

  ‘Is everything you say a lie?’ Portia asks.

  ‘Eddie,’ I say. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘That’s the thing. Sometimes you don’t have a choice,’ he says. ‘When someone tries to hit you, you have to hit back. It was a reflex … I mean, it’s not like I had an option.’

  I take a deep breath. ‘So you hit her.’

  He nods.
/>   ‘And then what?’

  ‘She fell on the ground. Hard.’ Eddie looks away from me, toward the rocks. I want to crawl into his mind and see what he sees. ‘But she wasn’t unconscious. She kicked me.’

  I wait.

  ‘So I picked up those ashtrays and I hit her.’ His eyes refocus, they turn back to me. ‘On the head.’

  Nikki on the ground, hurt, fighting, kicking. And my brother hits her on the head with glass ashtrays.

  Imagining this makes me want to vomit.

  ‘She’s dead,’ he says.

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘No, no, no.’

  Eddie straightens up, squares his shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, it was quick.’

  The world spins. It already does, I know, and now I feel it. Just like I can feel those ashtrays hitting my head.

  ‘Grandpa knew she was dead?’ Portia says.

  ‘Of course he did! Why do you think he refused to call the police?’ Eddie stops and shakes his head. ‘I know you guys think he was a monster, but he wasn’t. He was protecting us. Nikki was going to ruin everything. We were all going to get blamed for her death, and for what she did to Grandpa. For drugging him, stealing his money … all of it.’

  I feel tears on my face. ‘No.’

  ‘That’s why you killed Calvin,’ Portia says. ‘You didn’t want him calling the police, because you killed Nikki.’

  ‘Because she was attacking me. Don’t forget that part.’

  ‘So that’s why we’re here? So you could get this stuff?’ Portia says.

  Eddie nods. ‘It was a loose end. I had to get it. If not for this, Grandpa would’ve just given me all the money and we wouldn’t be here.’

  No road trip. No answers. And I never would’ve known what happened to Nikki.

  ‘What did you do with her?’ I say. ‘Did you bury her?’

  ‘I dragged her into the lake,’ Eddie says.

  Now Felix is with her. Not that anything would be left of her body after twenty years.

  I look at him, my mind on that camera. ‘Eddie,’ I say.

  ‘I had to do it,’ he says.

  ‘Eddie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you take a picture of our dead sister?’

  He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t have to.