My Heart Is a Chainsaw

by Stephen Graham Jones

  MY ANSWER TO THIS NOW AND ALSO IN MY HEAD THEN WAS "YES," SIR. WAY DIFFERENT. STACEY GRAVES'S DAD WAS "LETCH GRAVES," WHICH PRETTY MUCH SOUNDS LIKE A BORIS KARLOFF CHARACTER ALREADY. BUT NOW WE'RE SKIPPING AHEAD LIKE YOU SAID, FOR SALIENT DETAILS, AND ALSO BECAUSE THIS IS SO MUCH REWINDING AND TYPING.

  "I mean, I was ONE of the camp counselors. And I guess now I'm camp counselor for the whole [bleepity beep] county, right? Funny how that works. But the way they did it, each grade had their own counselor. It was supposed to keep the big kids from bossing the little ones around. So none of those 4 were my watch, nosiree Bob. They were 12, 12, 14, and 16, if I'm not mistaken. Well, Jefferson came to camp 14, but he turned 15 the second day of camp. That was the day we took the canoes out. But he didn't die during that training, just got wet. Like all of us. That was the real fun of it. If you were wet at the end of that day, you got your badge."

  JUST SAYING, MR. HOLMES. YOU FIND ME ONE OF THOSE BADGES AND THERE'S NEVER ANY HORROR PRANK EVER AGAIN AT HENDERSON HIGH.

  "But Jefferson Stoakes. None of us knew what to make of… what can you even think, when a kid you know turns up dead with a wasp nest not just crammed into his mouth, but kind of in PLACE of his mouth? And one detail Alison Chambers might still know from her dad was that Jefferson was floating on his BACK. In the WATER. And yellow jackets, they'll avoid water. It gums their wings up or something. Or maybe it's like those baggies of water Dorothy puts up in the patio? You know Dorothy? Dot's? You too young for coffee yet? Give it a year. But we were all just stupid [bleeping] kids back then too -- no insult. Now, after Jefferson, it was… let's see. Howarth, yeah. Crane Howarth. He had the prettiest goddamn jump shot I've ever seen in real life. He just would have sold insurance or drove a truck after high school, I know. But watching him play, it was -- I guess that's what people mean when they talk about grace. He could rise up and have that ball launched and perfect before you'd even realized he'd stopped."

  DOES THAT COUNT AS "LOCAL COLOR," SIR? SPORTSBALL STUFF? IF NOT, THEN HOW ABOUT SOME ARCHERY.

  "No, no, not arrows. It say that in that article? No, Crane turned up at the bottom of the bluff, must have been trying to climb it. It was a… maybe don't print this next part? Used to you'd climb the bluff, and one of your friends would point out to everybody else that the moon's just cresting, look how big it is, and when everybody looked up you'd already have your pants pulled down to show them the REAL moon -- I never did that, though. And, after Crane, the bluff was strictly off limits. Still should be, you ask me. The whole place, I mean. Somebody's gonna get hurt over there."

  OR, YOU KNOW, CONCEIVED OVER THERE, MR. HOLMES. BUT THE INTERVIEWER'S PERSONAL DETAILS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO MATTER. I DON'T KNOW WHICH CABIN IT WAS ANYWAY, SO CAN'T SAY THAT DETAIL. BUT I DID KNOW THE NEXT NAME TO ASK THE SHERIFF ABOUT.

  "No, it's Brockmeir, like 'brock' plus 'mayor,' just you don't say the y-part as hard. But she was… as far as we knew back then she was just Remar Lundy's weird little niece. But I guess, living back in the trees at their place, one of her older cousins had maybe told her about the Lake Witch, I don't know. And she took it to heart, maybe. She wasn't right in the head, I'm saying. It probably didn't help that all us junior detectives around the campfire -- to us it was even money that it was Stacey Graves who'd got Jefferson and Crane. This was right after the big fire of 65, Bear teach you about that? Good, good. Know your history, don't [bleeping] play with matches. What I'm saying though is that we were all kind of spooky already. And it was kind of a thrill too, you know how it is at camp. But yeah, before you ask, it was me who ID'd her for Don Chambers when it was all said and done. But that was after. I mean, that was 2 tragedies later, that's how I should say it. The 1st of those would be Anthea, Anthea Walker. She was the 16 year old. But she was short, that's the thing. Guess she had to be to fall into the big cook pot. Except she didn't fall, we all knew that. How do you fall into something you hardly even fit in? We heard it was a dare -- that won't be in your article there either. The story Midge and Gun Saddleback -- they were the ones trying to make a go of Winnemucca that summer -- the story they were trying to get us to all buy into was that Anthea pulled the short straw in cabin 2, so had to be the 1 to make the run down to the canteen, investigate just what mystery meat was for lunch the next day. But, Anthea -- we all called her Thea, kind of like your old man's Tab -- she was friendly with the Brockmeir girl, see? That's probably how Amy Brockmeir was able to get behind her so close, push her in."

  BECAUSE WE HAVE TO PROVIDE CONTEXT FOR NON-LOCALS, WHEN THE SHERIFF ABOVE SAYS THEY WERE ALL SCARED OF THE "LAKE WITCH," THE STORY HE'S REFERRING TO THAT YOU AND ME KNOW BUT NOBODY NOT IN PROOFROCK KNOWS IS THAT A 100 YEARS AGO SOME BOYS AND STACEY GRAVES THE 8 YEAR OLD WERE PLAYING "WITCH" IN THE SHALLOWS OF THE RISING LAKE AND THEY SWUNG HER AND THEN THREW HER OUT AS FAR AS SHE COULD TO PROVE SHE WASN'T A WITCH, BECAUSE WITCHES FLOAT, EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT, BUT SURPRISE, THE WATER WOULDN'T LET HER IN, SO SHE FLOPPED OVER ON IT, HUNCHED UP LIKE A CAT, HISSED AT THE BOYS THROUGH HER CRAZY HAIR AND RAN AWAY ON ALL FOURS TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LAKE TO FIND HER MOM THAT HER DAD HAD PROBABLY KILLED AND HIDDEN OVER THERE ALREADY, AND THIS IS HOW LEGENDS ARE BORN, SIR.

  "Well, yeah, that was Friday night. Saturday night was -- [4 letter bleep] -- that was when I saw what I saw, yeah. Which I don't know I should be repeating, even for history. But… well [same bleep]. I mean, Bear, your teacher, that's his real name, he knows all this already. He was in cabin 4, the 6th graders. So I guess it's okay. He won't put this paper on the wall, I'm pretty sure."

  AND HERE'S WHERE I WENT FULL GERALDO.

  "You gonna believe an article by a reporter who wasn't there or you going to buy the story of the guy who WAS there? Nobody saw what I saw. It was Amy Brockmeir, none of that mistaken identity bull [bleep]. That's easy to say from the armchair, I mean. But I was there, little miss, feet on the ground, lump in my throat the size of a cantaloupe. This was Saturday night, our last night there. I don't know why we hadn't all gone home already, with kids dying left and right. I'd got up to pee, but the privvies, they were all the [bleeping] way to the other side of camp. On the way over, I rounded this 1 corner -- at first I thought it was a badger, I guess. I can still see it, I mean. You know how a badger, when it's eating, it kind of bunches up in the middle, like it's humping whatever it's eating? Strike that, don't write that down, shouldn't have said it. But I think they eat that way because of something to do with how their throats are. Rolling at the spine, it forces the food back faster than just an esophagus can."

  IF YOU THINK I SAID ANYTHING ABOUT HUMAN CENTIPEDE HERE, SIR, THEN THINK AGAIN. I DIDN'T WANT TO STOP HIM.

  "Trigo, that was her, yep. Number 4. She'd just moved to Proofrock 2 weeks before school let out. Her dad was the new dam keeper. This is 2 or 3 dam keepers before Jensen, who's there now. Being the dam keeper, that's like working a lighthouse. Don't know what her dad thought he was signing on for. They were just over from Montana. She was either Italian or Indian, olives or arrows, I never knew. But you could tell she could scrap if she had to. She had this way of looking at you, too. I've only ever seen that look again once, across all my years. The day my daughter was born. But anyway, yeah -- with Stoakes it was wasps. Howarth, a fall. Walker, a cooking pot. But now it's -- Amy Brockmeir, she was EATING, I piss you not. And then she looked up to me over the Trigo girl. What was left of her, I mean. Amy's hair was matted up, her nightgown all in rags. The lower part of her face was all black with -- well, with what she'd [serious bleep] been doing to the dam keeper's daughter. I used to always imagine what if I'd ran over, right? What if I'd tackled Amy Brockmeir off her. She didn't die right away, either, the -- the dam keeper's daughter. But she couldn't say anything. Her throat was… it's why I was the one who had to tell that it had been Amy Brockmeir. That I'd seen her, that she was the only one at camp with hair like that. The next night Mr. Trigo locked himself in the control booth of the dam. He was crazy with being sad, blamed himself for bringing his daughter to this go
dforsaken place, you know how it would have to be. That night the lake came all the way up to the bank building before Don Chambers shot out each corner of the only window in that control booth. Lake came all the way to that 2nd brick on the sidewalk. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen, the water sloshing up like that, to swallow us all. And when I heard about Don Chambers shooting that glass out, I think that was when I felt these 5 points on my chest for the 1st time. He was Marshall Dillon, I mean. He was Chuck Connors.

  JADE WATCHES MOSTLY HORROR, THANKS.

  "Before your time, before your time. And yeah, that article's right about Amy Brockmeir. She ate her blanket in the state hospital. I hear they pulled 2 feet of it up her throat. Ask me, that proves it. But, like I was saying, all we'd been saying around the fire all week was 'Lake Witch,' 'Lake Witch,' so that was where my head went at 1st. Which is why I didn't run tackle her off that Trigo girl. But [bleep], I was 11, and had, well, had HAD a full bladder, right? [Bleep] straight I got up on my getaway sticks, made for the water. That was the 1 place we knew Stacey Graves couldn't go, because of Ezekiel's holy singing being already under there, and his tolerance for witches being so famously low, so that was where I hid, and I never looked around, kept my face down as long as I could hold my breath, and maybe a little longer than that even, but all that meant was that in my head I had to see her scratching and clawing at the surface of the water right over my back, not able to reach into it. But like I say, I was 11. Stacey Graves was just a story to get us home before dark. What's worse in the real world are messed up kids like Amy Brockmeir. Sorry to burst your bubble about the Lake Witch, there, little miss. [bleep]. This badge means I have to traffic with evidence, though, not urban legend. And remember, eyewitness testimony is only as good as the head behind those eyes, and I was just a kid then, only 11. But Don Chambers explained what I'd seen to me, and it made sense the way he said it back, going slow through it so I could hear it was important. When I heard him telling my story back to me, I mean, even I could hear it for the campfire story it was. There were some facts in it he could use, though, like the crazy hair, the nightgown, and he used them to keep us all safe, and that was it for Camp Winnemucca. It's for the best, too. Bad memories over there."

  "BAD" IS A RELATIVE TERM, SIR.

  "You look like him, you sick of hearing that? Something around the eyes, there."

  AND YOU WONDER WHY I WEAR SO MUCH EYELINER.

  "Yeah, yeah, I caught that. Guess the newspaper didn't nail down just every detail, did they? Her dad's name was Trigo, and of course hers was too, and that's what everybody called her, I guess because that's how Miss Spellman read her name from the roll that first day. But her front name, her first name… it was Melanie. Her name was Melanie."

  WHICH IS A PRETTY NAME, SIR.

  A VERY PRETTY NAME.

  DON’T GO IN THE WOODS

  In A Nightmare on Elm Street, Nancy’s dad is a homicide detective, so she has pretty much unfettered access to the whole station, can waltz in and treat all the uniformed cops like Tatum treats Dewey, and they just have to fumble their papers and let her pass by.

  Jade is no Nancy.

  Meg stops Jade at her big L-shaped desk, which is pretty much the reception desk, won’t let her back into the hall that leads to Hardy’s office, to Records, to the Evidence closet, to the two holding cells, and to the only room Jade has access to, once every two weeks: Janitorial Supplies.

  “Community service,” Jade explains, trying hard to sound as unenthused as possible, like there’s twenty other places she’d rather be right now.

  “Community what, dear?” Meg asks, followed up by two quick bats of her fake eyelashes.

  “For… you know,” Jade says, and rolls the left arm of her coveralls up to show her angry scar that, earlier—oops—she’d drawn centipede legs coming off of, like suicide is a bug she can pass with a handshake.

  Meg sucks air in through her teeth, has to look away fast. Jade can still hear her daughter Tiff throwing up in the tall grass. Like mother like daughter.

  “He said you might have some filing for me,” Jade explains, using her pleasant voice.

  “During working hours maybe,” Meg explains right back with just as much false cheer.

  “You’re here.”

  “Special circumstances.”

  “I can’t go home right now,” Jade says, covering the rest of that particular story with a “don’t want to talk about it” shrug, a purposeful breaking of eye contact that can only mean it’ll crack her tough-girl façade if she has to go any further into this.

  Meg bites her top lip in then rotates halfway around in her chair, tapping the plastic button of her pen on the front of her top teeth, which Jade takes as a strong reminder not to chew on any pens in this office.

  “Why is everyone here?” Jade’s not physically able to keep from asking after a few slower and slower tooth taps. “Somebody die, what?”

  Meg doesn’t twitch a single muscle on her face, just keeps looking around for a menial enough chore. One someone with zero clearance can do, someone with negative clearance, which is to say: this one’s got sticky fingers, hungry eyes, and a bone to pick with authority. Only trust her as far as you can throw her, and keep in mind that you don’t have any arms.

  “You wore your other work clothes,” Meg says, holding the back of her index finger under her nose so Jade gets the drift.

  “Laundry day,” Jade tells her. Or, challenges her with.

  “Are you presentable under them?”

  “What do you—?”

  “Do you have other clothes on?”

  “What’s wrong with being a janitor?”

  “Too many pockets,” Meg says, staring right into Jade’s soul, “too roomy. An enterprising seventeen-year-old could smuggle a coatrack out in that.”

  Jade stands and slowly unzips, holding Meg’s eyes the whole while. She steps out of the coveralls, rolls them into a ball, sets that ball on Meg’s desk, careful not to disturb all the inboxes and trays and pencil holders.

  What she’s wearing now—what Meg can see now—is a shirt with a Raymond Pettibon gig poster silkscreen of a bare-breasted dead woman named Janie, and Janie’s friend asking Jesus, also pictured, about why, if he’s Christ, why oh why won’t he raise Janie?

  Meg’s lips tighten with disapproval.

  “I can put them back on,” Jade says, taking a seat, slouching down in it like the criminal she is, “but who knows, I might steal all the staplers. Get a pretty good price for them on the street. Kids these days can’t get enough office supplies, I’m sure Tiff’s told you.”

  “You can stuff envelopes is what you can do,” Meg says, standing with purpose, her posture prim and schoolmarmish.

  “I live to serve,” Jade says, and hauls her ashes up, follows Meg… all the long way to the next desk over?

  “So I can keep an eye on you,” Meg informs her.

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Jade says, and starts to take a seat in the empty rolling chair but Meg’s already rolling it away, replacing it with a battered stool.

  “Helps with posture,” Meg says, reaching around behind Jade like to straighten her up but not going so far into legally fraught territory as to actually touch the temporary employee.

  Jade allows her posture to be improved, straddles the little stool, and takes the envelopes and flyers Meg provides, enduring her walk-through as well: proper method, desired results, blah, blah. The flyers are pale green, are for some referendum to restrict the airspace over Proofrock.

  Hilarious.

  “Sorry, Sherlock,” she says, and licks envelope number one, starts her stack of done-withs, pulls up the second flyer in desperate need of a careful crease.

  For the first forty or so of them, Meg watches, harrumphing at Jade’s more sloppy attempts, humming conditional approval over the better ones. The sun goes down and the overhead lights become more important. Phones ring and radios hiss, feet scuffle, and Jade’s shoe-polished ha
ir, she has to admit, is letting off an acrid scent that she thinks might be either getting her high or dollying her up to some ledge she’s meant to tumble off.

  At the hundred and fourteen mark she nods forward, her forehead resting on the top of the desk for just a moment’s peace, but Meg clears her throat in a wake-up way and Jade startles, leans back into it.

  “How many hours is this so far?” she asks.

  “You keep your own time,” Meg says. “We’ll just hope it matches the time sheet I turn in to the sheriff.”

  “Wonderful,” Jade says, and accidentally-on-super-purpose rips the flyer she’s trying so hard to fold just right.

  “Recycling,” Meg tells her, directing Jade to the bin across the room, by the copy machine—same model as the library’s, probably the same purchase order—and by the time Jade shuffles back she knows it’s not worth the pleasure of wasting paper if it means she has to get up each time to do it. Her back does feel better, though. Maybe stools aren’t as evil as she’d always thought.

  “What is that smell?” Meg asks minutes or hours later, interrupting whichever reverie Jade’s jellyfishing through. “Did you spill gas on your…” She jabs the rolled coveralls with the button of her pen.

  “I don’t drive,” Jade tells her, voice creaky at first. “And they don’t trust me with the lawnmowers.”

  “Probably a wise precaution,” Meg says as if to herself, and turns to some task on her computer.

  A hundred and thirty stuffed envelopes later, the fourth pile of them teetering in most dangerous fashion, Hardy steps in as if through the batwing doors of a saloon.

  “Megan, I need you to—” he starts, is stopped just as fast by Jade’s presence.