by Julia Dahl
“It’s a little thin. I’d rather advance the police angle. Have you called the State Police yourself?”
“No.”
“Do that. Call me back.”
I pull over at a Stewart’s gas station and Google “State Police Rockland County” on my phone. A woman answers.
“Troop F,” she says.
“Hi,” I say. “My name is Rebekah Roberts and I’m a reporter for the New York Tribune. I’m working on an article about a possible homicide in Roseville. A woman named Pessie Goldin. Do you know who I might speak to about that?”
“Hold please.”
I hold. About a minute later she comes back on the line. “I’m gonna have to take a message.”
I leave my information and call Larry back.
“I feel like I’m making progress,” I tell him. “I definitely want to stay up here tonight. That’s still okay, right?”
“Do you really think there’s a story there?”
“I do,” I say. Should I tell him about Mellie? I can’t use anything I saw there—or at least, I shouldn’t—since I didn’t ID myself as a reporter. There’s a story there, obviously, about white supremacists buying and selling guns in preparation for some race war, but it’s not Pessie’s story. I decide to wait. I can pitch it later. “Something is definitely fishy with the cops. I just need to, like, give it a little time.”
He considers. “Okay. But if you don’t get anything for tomorrow’s deadline I can’t justify expenses, or keeping you out of rotation.”
“I know,” I say, thinking, is this when people like Jayson Blair started making shit up? “I’ll get something.”
I follow my GPS through Cairo’s “main street,” which consists of a feed store, a combination lawyer/real estate office, a hair salon, a sandwich shop, and a post office. There are many more storefronts, but they are all vacant. Outside the post office is a folding table manned by a man and a woman who look sixty-ish. Draped over the table is a carefully hand-lettered sign that reads IMPEACH THE DISHONEST LIAR OBAMA. I wonder if they bought a gun from Connie or Hank Hall recently.
I turn left just past a Dollar General and come to a stop at a two-story apartment building with moldy white vinyl siding and a handful of cars parked on the grass where the landlord was apparently too cheap to create a parking lot. I call Kaitlyn and tell her I am outside. A moment later a girl with a phone to her ear opens a ground-floor door and waves. I tuck my notebook and pen in the pocket of my jacket, lock Saul’s car, and greet her.
Kaitlyn is barely five feet tall; she probably weighs less than a hundred pounds. One side of her head is shaved and the other is dyed a faded pink over blond. Her apartment is shabby—a low ceiling and cheap Berber carpet—but like Mellie’s place, well taken care of. A vanilla scented candle is burning on the kitchen counter, and a futon and two fold-out camping chairs face the TV, which is tuned to E! Joan Rivers is making fun of someone.
“You want something to drink?” asks Kaitlyn.
“I’m okay,” I say.
“You’ve kinda got me nervous,” she says, sitting on the futon, leaning forward. Her left arm is covered with a sleeve of flower tattoos. “When did Pessie die again?”
“March fourth.”
She thinks a minute. “That’s right around when Sam stopped coming to work.”
“You guys work together?”
She nods. “At a big nursery outside Catskill. It’s kind of seasonal. We’re out on a crew doing gardens and stuff May to, like, October. Then we do shifts at the store in the winter, but the hours are erratic. Sam’s been sorta … different since he got back from prison. Gina—that’s our boss—she took him back, but he kept showing up late. And sometimes he’d be high. I thought she fired him but she said he just stopped coming in.”
“Why was Sam in prison?”
“We all got arrested—him and Ryan and me and this other girl—about four years ago. It was really stupid. The neighbors called in a noise complaint and the cops found all the pot we were bagging for Ryan’s dad. Plus a couple guns, which I didn’t know they had. I got lucky ’cause it was my first arrest. I just got probation and the landlord even let me stay here, thank God. But Ryan and Sam had priors and they both got jail time. Ryan got out after like six months and he totally straightened out. He stopped working for his dad and got back in school. Now he’s doing vet tech work in Hudson. Sam was in for a lot longer, though. He just came back around Thanksgiving.”
“Why was Sam in longer?”
“Something happened in there. I don’t know the details, but they sent him up to state prison. Which is a whole other ballgame.”
“Do you know where he was living after he got out?”
“I think he has a sister in New Paltz.”
“Aviva?”
Kaitlyn shrugs. “Maybe? I didn’t know her. I think he was back and forth between her place and Ryan’s.”
“How long have you known Ryan?”
“Since we were kids. My mom and his mom were close. Ryan had it really rough. It’s a miracle he turned out as normal and nice as he is. His dad was in prison for a lot of his childhood. And his mom killed herself while he was gone.”
“Wow.”
“It was really fucked up. She shot herself and Ryan found her. He was, like, eleven, I think. Him and Hank pretty much ran wild out there. Their grandma and grandpa took care of them until Connie—that’s their dad, Connie for Conrad—came back. The grandpa was from the South, I think. He was in the KKK. I heard he moved here because he’d, like, killed some black guy down there. He died of a heart attack or something before Connie got out. And the grandma … she drank a lot. Got both legs amputated from diabetes or something.”
“I think I met her.”
“I can’t believe you went out there,” she says. “Connie used to come to Little League games and yell at people and start fights with the other parents. My mom totally blamed him—and the grandma—for Beth’s suicide. She said they treated her like a servant. I think she had a couple miscarriages after Ryan and Hank and they were, like, pissed she didn’t make more Aryan babies.”
“Aryan babies?”
“I told you, they’re crazy. Hank dropped out in tenth grade but Ryan graduated and they always gave him shit, saying he thought he was better than them. He got a job at the hardware store but it was just part-time, not enough for rent or anything else. He ended up going to work with his dad to make enough to move out. Ironic, right? That’s how him and Sam met. Sam worked at a place on Connie’s route.”
“Connie’s route?”
“Connie’s got a gig delivering beer for a distributor in Albany. I mean, that’s, like, the cover. He’s always got whatever else you want, too. Pot and pills, heroin.”
And guns, I think.
“After Ryan got out of jail, he cut ties with his dad. He was like, I’m not going back in.”
“So when did Ryan come out to his family?”
“Are you kidding? They don’t know he’s gay. They’d probably kill him.”
“The girl I met out there, Mellie?” Kaitlyn nods. “I think she knew. She was like, tell them not to come around here. She seemed really pissed.”
“Fuck,” whispers Kaitlyn. “I can’t believe Ryan didn’t tell me. I wonder if he even knows. Him and Sam were pretty careful. They only went to clubs and stuff down in the city or up in Albany and they never hung out at the bars Hank and Connie and their friends go to. Sam was kinda messed up about being gay, too. Actually, the one time me and Pessie really talked, that’s what we talked about. She came over right after Sam got out of prison. We had kind of a welcome home party. She brought some really good food and she was telling me about where they grew up. I didn’t know anything about Jews and Sam never talked about it. Anyway, she said she used to think gay people were evil. But she and Sam were really close—I actually thought they were brother and sister at first—and she said she realized that Sam, like, couldn’t help how he was. That he must have been born that way and that if
God made him that way he must have had a reason. She was really nice. I can’t believe she’s dead. I can’t believe Ryan didn’t tell me.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?”
“Ryan?” She sighs. “That’s the thing. We had a fight a few weeks ago. I love Sam, I do, but I told Ryan I didn’t think their relationship was healthy anymore. I was, like, Sam needs help. Ryan knew, but … I mean, they’re in love. And Sam wasn’t always the way he is now. He changed a lot in prison. We used to kind of make fun of all the shit the Halls believe—race war and Obama the monkey and whatever stupid cliché crap they spout. Ryan doesn’t believe that stuff at all. I don’t think he ever did. But after Sam got out, he was talking like Ryan’s dad.”
“You didn’t think that was weird? A Jewish kid talking like a neo-Nazi?”
“Of course I thought it was weird! It’s fucking insane. But, I mean, that’s how it is. Was.” She pauses. “You know, Ryan and Sam used to talk about running off together. Going down South, someplace warm where nobody knew them.”
“You think they might have left town?”
She shrugs. “If they didn’t, maybe they should.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AVIVA
Sammy moved into the pot apartment. He stopped working at the gas station and, for the next few months, every time the phone rang I thought it would be the police or the hospital. But when Sammy finally did get arrested, he didn’t call me: he called Conrad Hall.
“It was no big deal,” Sammy told us a couple weeks later. Every month or two he showed up, usually without notice, for Shabbos dinner. Isaac and I have been OTD for a long time, but we both keep Shabbos, in our own way. We like to make dinner, and, if we can help it, we don’t drive. I make my own schedule, and I do not take jobs on Saturday. Isaac’s work with the contractor was sporadic and he got a part-time job at one of the shops on the main street near campus, selling t-shirts and incense and CDs. He couldn’t always take Saturdays off, but when he could, we spent the day together. We both like science fiction books, and sometimes we read aloud to each other while we cook. Sometimes I just sleep, or drink wine or take a bath. I try to take time for myself, to remember to be calm in my mind. Sammy doesn’t keep Shabbos; he once told me that he makes it a point to expend as much energy as possible on the day of rest. When he came for dinner, he was always on his way somewhere else.
“It wasn’t my fault, anyway,” said Sammy, when Isaac pressed him. “Ryan got a DUI and I was in the truck.”
Isaac was skeptical.
“I had a little pot on me, okay?” said Sammy, mouth full.
“And they just let you out?”
Sammy kept eating. He poured himself some more wine.
“Please answer my question, Sammy,” said Isaac. Isaac feels tenderly toward Sammy, but he does not know how to connect with him anymore. Isaac was the one who realized immediately that Sammy and Ryan were having sex. Isaac said he tried to talk to him about it, just to let him know that he had a friend, but Sammy wasn’t interested in talking.
“Fuck you, Isaac,” said Sammy.
“Sammy!” I said.
“It was nothing,” said Sammy, hissing into his chicken. “Ryan’s dad bailed us both out, okay? He felt bad because it was Ryan that got us in trouble. It was nothing. I wouldn’t have even told you but I put this address down.”
“Our address?” The Nazis knew our address?
Isaac put his fork down. “Sammy, I do not think it is safe for you to be friends with those people.”
“Those people? You mean goyim?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” said Isaac, his voice rising. Isaac is a quiet man. We had been living together for almost ten years and, until that evening, I had never seen him angry. “I am not stupid. I know who Conrad Hall is. I know what you must be involved in if he is using his money to get you out of jail.”
“Oh yeah? What do you think I’m involved in, Isaac?”
“Drugs, obviously.”
Sammy rolled his eyes.
“Now you owe Connie Hall a favor.”
“No I don’t,” he said, automatically. But you could see it dawn on him that Isaac was right.
I looked at Sammy, trying to get him to look at me.
“Come live here,” I said. “For a little while. Just until…” I did not know how to end the sentence. It didn’t matter. “Come stay. There are plenty of rooms.”
“I hate it here,” said Sammy, finally lifting his eyes, which had softened. “Do you know how stupid I feel with all these college kids around? I can barely read a book in English!”
Isaac and I looked at each other. Isaac knew exactly how poor a yeshiva education in Roseville was. He knew that just like in Williamsburg, the rebbes censored whole portions of textbooks; he knew that words like “university” and “dinosaurs” were blacked out with markers, just as Pessie’s “anatomy” lessons had been conducted without mention of entire regions of the human body.
“You’re smart, Sammy,” I said. “You will fit in when they get to know you.”
Sammy made an ugly face. “I don’t want to live with a bunch of hippies.”
Isaac and I exchanged a look. Hippies?
“What do you mean?” asked Isaac.
Sammy sighed dramatically. “It’s just not me, okay?”
“What’s not you?”
“All my friends are in Greene County.”
“Ryan’s friends,” I said.
Sammy glared at me. His moods changed so quickly.
“They’re my friends! I have my own life!”
“What do you think Conrad Hall is going to do when he finds out his son is having sex with a Jewish boy?”
“I’m not a boy!” screamed Sammy. He brought a fist down hard on the table. The wine glasses jumped; his glass fell into his food.
“You think there won’t be consequences?” asked Isaac, his voice steady. “If you think they are going to keep believing you are a German exchange student you are being very stupid.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are, Isaac? You’re not my father. You’re a fucking old faggot.”
“Sammy…,” I said, standing up. “I love you.”
“Whatever, Aviva. I came over for Shabbos, like you’re always begging me to do. This is why I don’t want to live here. I’m eighteen years old! I can do what I want. And I don’t want to live with you.”
Four months later, Sammy got arrested again. The charges were more serious, and this time Conrad Hall didn’t come to the rescue.
At the jail, the woman behind the bulletproof glass told me his bail was set at $50,000.
“That seems very high,” I said.
“It’s because of the gun,” said the woman.
“What gun?”
“There’s a weapons charge,” she said, and directed me down the street to a bail bond office where a man took my money order. After we moved to New Paltz, Isaac and I both put a little bit of money aside each month. The man who owned the yellow house took only a few hundred dollars in rent from us—just enough to pay his taxes. He had no mortgage and was grateful to have caretakers continue his work, housing people who were leaving the community. We joked that we ran a secret bed-and-breakfast. Once Isaac brought little chocolates home and we put them on the pillows in all the bedrooms, just to be silly. Some months there were half a dozen people in and out of the house; some months there was no one but us. We opened savings accounts at the same bank on the same day, and ten years later, I had almost ten thousand dollars in mine. Before I went to the bank for the bail money, Isaac told me he hoped Sammy knew how lucky he was that he had a sister who loved him so much. I don’t know, Rebekah. That day—and most days—I felt certain I had failed my brother.
I waited two hours for Sammy to come out. He was silent almost all the way home, staring out the window.
“You have a gun?” I asked finally, almost whispering.
“It’s not really mine,” he said. “I was just bo
rrowing it.”
“What do you need with a gun?”
Sammy sighed. “For protection, Aviva, don’t be stupid.”
It hurt to be called stupid. But this was not about me.
“Protection from what?”
Sammy didn’t answer immediately. We drove through town. When I moved here, I looked at the main street and all the happy college students and felt fortunate. I knew I could blend in. Sometimes it was sad knowing that all this learning was going on around me and I would never really be a part of it. Sammy could. But he did not want to.
“You know I’m a really good shot,” he said, finally. “Ryan learned to shoot when he was a kid and he’s been teaching me. We go to the range and sometimes out in the woods to practice. I could maybe have been a sniper in the army or something.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I have never held a gun in my life. I have never wanted to.
“I wish I’d had a gun when I was ten,” he said. “I would have killed him, Aviva. Boom. And everything would be different.”
“You think you would have been happier if you had murdered the cook?”
“He deserves to die,” said Sammy. “You know that.”
What could I say? He was right.
The next morning when we spread the paperwork on the kitchen table in the sunlight, we could see that Sammy was in a lot of trouble. He was charged with possession of marijuana and three kinds of prescription pills with intent to distribute, and criminal possession of a weapon. We called the phone number for the public defender and two days later I drove Sammy to his office. He told us that it was not good news.
“Six months ago I could maybe have gotten you probation and community service,” he said. “But the prosecutor has a hard-on for gun crimes. He’s trying to get on Cuomo’s good side for an endorsement since he’s up for election in November. And you’ve already got this other misdemeanor. I suggest you take a plea. I can probably get the sentences to run concurrently. Three months—give or take—then community service, maybe a fine.”
“Three months in jail?” I said. I didn’t like it. I have been to a lot of ugly places in my life, but jail was about the ugliest.