Little Girls

by Ronald Malfi

  Susan finished her ice pop and bounced over to him just as he was lowering the sump pump down into the hole. “Can I help?” she asked.

  “In a minute.”

  “What can I do?”

  He could see the surface of the water roughly fifteen feet below. He fed the pump down into it by the cord, hand over hand, until it was submerged beneath the black water. He pointed to the extension cord that was coiled like a snake in the grass. “See the end of that?”

  Susan scratched her head and looked blankly at the extension cord.

  “The end of the cord, Susan,” he said, pointing to the tri-pronged bulb at the end.

  “Yes!” She picked it up.

  “Go inside and plug it into the wall. Give yourself enough slack.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Unwind the cord so you have enough of it to take with you.”

  She bent, let out several feet of slack, then raced up the stairs and into the house.

  “She’s getting big,” Laurie said from the porch steps, watching her go. Ted clearly heard the maudlin tone to his wife’s voice.

  Down in the hole, the sump pump began humming beneath the water. Ted had one foot on the garden hose; after a few seconds, he felt the hose swell up as the water funneled through it. He gave up a few more feet of cord and let the sump pump sink to the floor of the well. Just a few feet of water. Not so deep. He estimated it would take a couple of hours for the entire well to drain.

  Laurie drew up beside him and peered down into the hole. “I threw some things down there when I was a kid,” she said, a hint of melancholia still in her voice. “I wonder if they’ll still be down there.”

  “I don’t see why not. Where else would they go?”

  “When I was a kid, I thought they would disappear and turn into wishes.”

  He liked the idea of that. “Maybe they did.”

  “Some, maybe.” She smiled but did not look at him. “Sadie threw things down there, too.”

  For a second, he didn’t know whom she was talking about. But then he remembered, and he wondered if she had been honest with him in her reason for wanting to drain the well.

  “Thank you,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. Then she turned, went up the stairs, and into the house.

  I hope there’s nothing down there. The thought came at him like a pop fly to left field. Nothing but stones and mud. He didn’t know why he felt this way, and that troubled him further.

  Susan bounded out onto the porch. “Did I do it?” she called to him, leaning over the porch railing. “Did it work?”

  “It sure did, sugar pie.”

  “Yay!” she cheered. “Now what?”

  He wiped his hands on his jeans. “Now we wait.”

  Steve Markham called about an hour later, and there was triumph in his voice.

  “Tell me the good news,” Ted said, grinning to himself. Having just checked on the progress of the well, he was out in the front yard with the cell phone to his ear.

  “Here’s the deal,” Markham said. “It’ll be a lunch meeting in the city, face-to-face, this Friday. It’ll be you, me, Fish, of course, and Fish’s agent. She’s a real ball-buster dyke, but she’s also in agreement with us on this, at least to an extent. She knows Fish is a prick and has already convinced him to hear us out.”

  “So he hasn’t necessarily conceded to letting me go ahead with the original outline—”

  “No, but he hasn’t told us to fuck off, either. And considering that’s his typical modus operandi, I’d say we’re looking like a couple of sweepstakes winners right about now, my friend.”

  “Brilliant. I’m sure I can convince him in person.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you can, if you do it properly. Kid gloves, you know? These overblown artist types, you have to coddle them, fawn over them, tell them their shit smells like strawberries and their piss tastes like champagne.”

  “Is that what you do to me?”

  Steve Markham laughed. “You’re still in Maryland?”

  “Yes.”

  “How soon can you get up here?”

  “To the city? I can leave Friday morning and be there for lunch.”

  “The meeting is set for eleven-thirty at Rao’s. I suggest you come in the night before. The last thing we need is for you to drive up Friday morning, blow a flat, or if there’s fucking construction on 95, and we both know there’s always fucking construction on 95. . . .”

  “I’ll have to check with Laurie.”

  “There’s one other thing, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I took a shot in the dark here, and nothing’s set in stone yet . . .”

  “Spit it out.”

  “I had a meeting yesterday with the guys at the production office about this whole mess. Apparently, the producers had no idea John Fish was such an egomaniacal asshole, and they all agreed you were in a tough spot on this. More than that—they agreed that if you pulled this off and got this thing to work, they’d be happy to work with you again.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “No, no—hear me out. I told them about that play you’d been working on before taking the Fish project, the one about the ex-priest and the prostitute.”

  “You did what?”

  “They want to sit down and talk about it. Right after we’re done with Fish’s bloated ass, we’re heading to their office for a meeting about it.”

  Ted’s head felt light and fuzzy. “Are you shitting me?”

  “I shit you not, good sir. But let’s not start jerking off about this yet, Ted. It’s a meeting, that’s all. But we’ve got their ear, so let’s make it something more.”

  “Count on it,” Ted said.

  At the bottom of the well, the pump began making gurgling, belching sounds. Ted peered down and saw the pump propped up on a mound of tarry black muck. The water had finished draining.

  “What in the name of Christ is that noise?”

  Ted laughed. “It’s my career coming back up the toilet. I’ll see you Friday, Steve. Thanks.”

  Laurie and Susan watched as Ted hauled the pump up out of the well. It dripped water and there was black muck stuck to it. Ted set it down in the grass. The black muck smelled incriminatingly like raw sewage. Together, the three of them peered down into the well at the soupy black sludge on the bottom. Laurie handed him a flashlight, which he pointed down into the hole. The shallow beam illuminated the crenellations in the sludge and glistened off clusters of brownish suds.

  “Snake!” Susan shrieked. She thrust an arm down into the hole and pointed. “Daddy, snake! Snake!”

  Indeed, he caught the smooth black slither wending through the muck. “There’s probably more than one down there.”

  “That old man said so,” Susan reminded him. “Remember that day we got here and he said there were snakes in the well? And you said he was lying, that he was pulling on my legs, and that there were no snakes in the well, Daddy—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know what I said.”

  “What’s that?” Laurie said.

  He saw it, too—a quick twinkle as the flashlight’s beam fell upon a particularly nasty-looking mound of sludge. Some plant-life sprouted from the sludge like slick, wet hair, and Ted had to pass the flashlight’s beam back and forth over it a few times before he caught the twinkle again. When he did, he held the beam on it. Something sparkled up at them from the darkness.

  “I have no idea what that is,” he said.

  “Wishes,” Laurie said.

  “Ooh,” said Susan. “Go get ’em, Daddy.”

  He clicked the flashlight off. “Why don’t you go get ’em, Snoozin?”

  “I’m not afraid of snakes,” she countered.

  “Yeah, well,” he began, but said no more. He wasn’t all that crazy about snakes himself. Nor was he keen on the idea of somehow climbing down into that stinking pit. It looked like those Vietnamese prisons they showed in the movies. He’d probably break his neck trying.
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br />   “It’s a diamond,” Laurie said.

  Ted snorted. “Yeah, right. It’s probably a piece of glass or tinfoil or something.”

  “No,” Laurie said. “It’s a diamond. One of my mother’s diamond earrings.”

  Ted blinked at her. “You . . . threw your mother’s diamond earrings into the well?”

  “Not me.”

  He opened his mouth to ask for clarification, but then remembered everything she had told him about the girl named Sadie from her childhood. She had told him about the time Sadie had wanted her to steal her mother’s diamond earrings. She had threatened Laurie with a used tampon the girl kept in a shoe box. The story had been too incredible not to be true and, anyway, what reason would Laurie have for making up such a horrific tale? He realized now that he hadn’t heard how that story had ended, though he could piece it together now—she had stolen the earrings, given them to Sadie, and Sadie had chucked them down the old wishing well. What kind of little girl does something like that?

  “There’s a ladder in the basement,” Laurie said.

  “Hold on.” Ted grabbed her wrist as she turned to head back to the house. “What are you saying?”

  “I’ll go down there if you don’t want to. It’s okay.” The smile she offered him was so innocent and pretty, it nearly shattered his heart.

  “You’re out of your mind wanting to go down there. You’ll break your neck.”

  “And snaaa-aakes,” Susan caroled, wagging an index finger as if to reprimand someone’s naughtiness.

  “Those earrings are worth a lot of money,” Laurie said. She didn’t try to pry her wrist free of his grasp. “Not to mention that they belonged to my mother. There’s a lot of other stuff down there, too. I’m sure of it. Ted, I just want to see.”

  What is going on with her? This isn’t my wife. This isn’t the woman I married. I don’t understand any of it.

  Gradually, his fingers opened up around her wrist. “You’ve got some air of obsession about you,” he told her. “I wish I understood it.”

  That sweet smile still lit up her face. “It’s my healing process,” she told him. “Let’s call it that, okay?”

  Good, he thought. Because “obsession” makes me too uncomfortable.

  “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll go get the ladder.”

  The ladder went down into the hole, the legs sinking a few inches into the fetid sludge at the bottom. Due to the narrowness of the well, the ladder stood almost vertically. Ted jockeyed it into the most secure position he could find, wedging it between two dimpled niches in the stone. He had equipped himself with a flashlight, a plastic garbage bag, a pair of bright yellow rubber dishwashing gloves, a broken broom handle nearly three feet long, and a wire coat hanger stretched into an approximate hoop covered in a pair of Laurie’s nylons, which Ted thought looked like a makeshift pool skimmer. He had fashioned a plastic shopping bag around each of his sneakers, and they were held in place just below the knees with several rubber bands.

  “Just keep the ladder steady against the stones,” he instructed Laurie before descending. “Hold on to it. I don’t want the damn thing wobbling all over the place.”

  Laurie gripped the extended legs of the ladder, one in each hand. “Be careful.”

  “Be careful, Daddy,” Susan repeated, glancing almost forlornly at him and then down into the pitch-black hole in the earth. “Watch out for that snake.”

  He swung his right leg down into the well and set his foot on the second rung down from the top. He felt the ladder sink lower into the muck another couple of inches. Gripping the sides of the well with both hands—he had tucked the flashlight, rubber gloves, the broom handle, and makeshift skimmer into the rear waistband of his jeans—he slowly lowered himself until his left foot came down on the rung just below his right foot. The ladder sank down another inch or two, and he waited for it to settle before continuing his descent.

  It was like sinking into a grave. The smell was no better—a putrid, eye-watering stench that came at him in a nearly solid cloud. Small flies and gnats dive-bombed his head; he swatted the larger ones away while still keeping a strong grip with his other hand on the rung just above his head. He imagined their tiny pinprick corpses stuck in the sweat on his forehead. Halfway down, he glanced up and saw the faces of his wife and daughter gazing down at him. They looked impossibly far away, as did the opening of the well itself, as if it had shrunk to the size of a softball while he wasn’t looking.

  Two rungs up from the bottom, he stopped. The well was just slightly roomier than a manhole, and it was with some contortion that he was able to reach behind him, select the broom handle, and withdraw it from his waistband. He crouched as best he could, propping one foot flat against the wall of the well while the other balanced on the rung of the ladder, and drove the broom handle down into the peaty black sludge. It sank down several inches before it struck what felt like solid stone underneath. He felt some relief. That’s not as bad as I’d thought. For all he knew, it could have been a bottomless chasm that dropped straight to hell.

  Releasing his grip on the broom handle, it remained standing straight up out of the muck. I claim this land in the name of Ted. He reached around his back again and felt for the flashlight, grabbed it, switched it on, and cast its harsh white beam down on the floor. He caught sight of the black snake retreating into a crevice between two stones, where the mortar had worn away. There were other critters down here as well—mostly bugs. Fat black beetles trundled through mossy, dark green strands of what looked like sea grass while spotted slugs appeared to respire—expanding, then deflating—each time the flashlight’s beam passed over them. Earthworms as thick as fingers squirmed and sought solace deeper into the mud. Whitish grubs wriggled up from a tarry swath of black slime; he could hear their collective movements, a sound grotesquely similar to squeezing a handful of wet noodles. There were other critters down here aside from the bugs, but these were all dead and in varying stages of decay—several water-bloated mice and a decomposed bird were among the ones he was able to identify.

  With the flashlight propped under his left armpit, he grabbed the broom handle again and, like a witch stirring a cauldron, drew tracks through the muck. Before he stepped down into that mess he wanted to make perfectly sure there weren’t any other critters hiding beneath the mud. Particularly critters with teeth.

  He realized pretty quickly that he would not be able to bend down with the ladder in the well with him. There just wasn’t enough room. Plus, it was slowly sinking into the mud, causing him to wonder just how deep into the earth the well went. He stepped down into the sludge and felt his plastic bag–wrapped sneakers sink into it.

  “Hey,” he called up the channel, his voice reverberating till it made no sense to his own ears. The opening at the surface was no bigger than a dime now. “Pull the ladder up!”

  Laurie didn’t respond, though her silhouette was still framed in the tiny lighted hole directly above his head. So was Susan’s. He was about to repeat the order when the ladder rose up out of the muck with a sucking, squelching sound, and began to ascend back up the throat of the well.

  “Shit,” he grumbled, quickly swiping at his face and hair as bits of gunk rained down on him. Didn’t think that part through. Once the ladder was lifted out of his way and the gunk had ceased dripping down on him, he directed his attention to the muddy heap in which he stood. Again, something sparkled as it caught the beam of the flashlight. It was partially covered in mud, so Ted crouched down, tugged on the rubber dishwashing gloves, and picked it up. It was a solid gold wristwatch.

  Chapter 24

  The items Ted found in the well included approximately seventeen dollars in loose change, a man’s gold wristwatch with a cracked crystal face, a single diamond earring (he had located only the one), a woman’s brooch that sprouted calcified tumors that looked like dried toothpaste, a few similarly calcified keys, what appeared to be the metal clasp from a girl’s barrette, a simple platinum band that loo
ked almost identical to Ted’s wedding ring—and was in surprisingly good condition—though it was not Laurie’s, a tie clip, a money clip, and various bits of cheaper jewelry that had been reduced to reddish bits of rust. Yet the most unsettling thing was a child’s plastic baby doll, its pink body reduced to a curdled tallow hue marbled with bluish veins of rot, its features faded into nothingness from its submergence for God knew how long in that swampy, fetid water. Ted had found other things while sifting through the gunk, straining the muddy water through the coat hanger with the pantyhose stretched across it like a miner panning for gold—countless buttons, bottle caps, the rubber sole of a shoe, and other bits of garbage, all of which he left down below.

  After Laurie and Susan lowered the ladder back down the hole, Ted climbed up with his plastic garbage bag dripping foul water onto the lawn. The poor guy was perspiring and smelled awful. Laurie took the bag from him while offering him a conciliatory smile. She felt as though she were on the cusp of some grand discovery, some penultimate revelation. The sensation was not dissimilar to dizzying vertigo.

  While Ted hosed himself off in the yard, Laurie took the bag around to the side of the house where she entered the kitchen through the side door. Susan followed close at her heels. Laurie placed the plastic bag on the counter, stopped up the sink’s drain, then dumped the items out into the basin. Susan dragged over a chair, climbed up, and peered down into the sink and at the items it held.

  “Pirate treasure,” Susan said, her voice full of awe.

  Laurie rinsed off the items beneath a lukewarm spray. The nicer jewelry cleaned up better than the cheap stuff. The gold watch had been her father’s; she remembered stealing it from a little hand-carved box he kept in his study and giving it to Sadie at Sadie’s behest. She hadn’t wanted to do it but Sadie held some power over her. Similarly, she remembered stealing the diamond earrings from her mother’s jewelry box. Sadie had worn them a few times to school but never at home and never around Laurie’s parents. When Laurie had asked for them back—her mother had become frantic trying to locate them throughout the house—Sadie had refused. She had laughed and warned Laurie that she would get the shoe box again. It has flies on it now, Sadie had said of the bloody tampon in the box. Big black flies. And if you tattle on me, I’ll make you put it in your mouth with all those big black flies on it. I’ll make you put it down there, too. Then one day Sadie had stopped wearing the earrings. Only now did Laurie realize where at least one of them had ended up.