States of Motion

by Laura Hulthen Thomas

  “Are you out of your mind?!” Gina shouted at Red.

  “Are you?”

  Arthur holstered the nozzle to the tank and laid the extinguisher carefully on the grass. He looked at his parents as if lunacy was just what he’d come to expect from the two of them. Wincing, Red wiped his wrist. Had she actually drawn blood? Gina snatched his hand and planted a kiss on the scrape.

  Red looked at her warily, and then locked his fingers with hers. He dropped to one knee. The Dragon’s tank lurched. The goggles’ strap bunched his hair into a silvery haystack. “Gina, my darling, I’m down on my knobby knee for you. Come away with me across lawn and fence, across sea and sand.”

  “Get up, Red.” Gina tried to yank her hand away, but Red held on tight.

  “Mom. You’ve got to come quick.” Arthur took the foil from her other hand gently.

  “I’ll travel to the ends of the earth. I’ll lay waste to any tree that stands in our way.”

  “Mom, it’s Donder’s blood all over the carpet.”

  “I love you.” Red brushed his lips against her fingers.

  “Red, please.” Drops of sweat tumbled down her cheeks, or was she crying?

  “Say you love me, Ginny.”

  “It’s green, Mom. And there’s a lot of it.” Arthur tugged on her hand.

  Gina burst out, “God dammit, Arthur, I can’t stand any more of your fibbing!”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Arthur said wonderingly, as if he’d been alive long enough to have seen it all.

  The neighbors arrived home the next week to find healthy, well-fed cats—Donder’s only sign of trauma was a neat seeding of stitches along his neck—a patch of fresh sod where the evergreens had once stood, and a note of apology from Gina, scrawled on the first blank page of the lovey notebook. Gina wasn’t surprised to receive no word, and no payment, from the women. Arthur bolted to play with Colt and Priscilla the moment they arrived home, but on that score, too, not a word came from over the fence. Gina had written her note right after the entry on Priscilla and Arthur. The women would know she knew what they thought their children might be up to.

  The morning Candy trundled a quartet of new evergreens across the lawn, the burlap-wrapped young roots bouncing in the wheelbarrow’s tangerine bucket, Gina took a break from packing the kitchen and headed to the fence. Helen was digging in the sod Red had laid before he left for the Middle East. Arthur, Colt, and Priscilla were playing on the neighbors’ swing set opposite the fence. Arthur wound Cil’s swing chains in a tight corkscrew. Gina scrutinized the children as Cil whirled in a blond blur while Arthur and Colt cheered. Still acting just like innocent kids.

  Helen looked up with more curiosity than resentment when Gina leaned over the railing. Gina decided this was a good omen.

  “Sorry about this welcome home, Helen. We tried to save the trees, we really did.”

  Helen studied her blankly. “Sounds like you did what you could, Gina. We appreciate your quick thinking.”

  “Sorry, too, about the carpet stain. I didn’t know Arthur was using the bleach to clean up after Donder.”

  “Our fault for storing Clorox right next to carpet cleaner.”

  “I’d like to help out with replacement costs.”

  “That would be appreciated.” Helen’s gaze flickered to Candy as she rolled up with the trees. “Must have been quite the storm.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. A direct lightning strike.” Gina smiled weakly. Candy plunked the wheelbarrow down with a grunt. “Real fire and brimstone stuff. Felt like the end of the world.”

  “Huh.”

  “And it’s been so dry. These guys just lit right up. Nothing we could do.”

  Helen’s gaze eased to the scorched fence post. “Looks like your fence almost went up, too.”

  “It took some quick thinking to save the yard.”

  “So I hear.” Candy took Helen’s shovel and launched into a vigorous excavation.

  Helen said, “Arthur tells us that Red left for his new job? In the Middle East somewhere?”

  “Qatar, actually. We join him next week.”

  “Guess his Gulf service came in handy in the long run.”

  “Reaping the rewards from his bullshit war, right?” Candy hurled a load of dirt toward the fence.

  Helen said, “We knew you had lost your job, Gina, but we didn’t know Red was also unemployed. This must have been a very difficult time for your family.”

  “The losses all came about rather suddenly.”

  Helen cleared her throat. “You know, Arthur told Colt that his grandmother committed suicide and that his grandpa has a psychic girlfriend.”

  Gina blinked. “Well, she’s not his girlfriend.”

  Candy said, “The term Arthur used was consort.”

  “Arthur did make quite the story out of it, didn’t he, honey?” Helen said. “He said that he saw Grandpa kissing Madame after Grandma and his baby brother found each other in heaven.”

  “There’s some truth to that,” Gina admitted.

  “Arthur also said that Donder was covered in green blood because she was wounded in the yard when you let her out and you never noticed when it got infected.”

  “That’s not quite accurate.”

  “And that Donder almost died at home because Red was burning down our trees with his dragon, whatever that means, and you were stabbing him with a sword and Arthur had to put the fire out himself before you would save Donder’s life.”

  Helen swept her hair up to fan her neck. The fiery sun shimmered on her glossy russet streaks like an early peek at autumn’s color. The jade-green lawn shone fiercely. The dahlias’ bright pinks and purples glinted fresh and lovely against the deck’s rich cherry stain. The kids’ voices rang out, Arthur’s giggles tuned to Colt and Cil’s light, happy laughter. One last glimpse of brilliance on the other side of the fence.

  Candy rested her shovel against her shoulder. Both women stared at Gina.

  Gina met their gazes squarely. “Isn’t it wonderful? Arthur’s always had such a rich imagination.”

  Sole Suspect

  The body in the road had become a reliable kindness. Tucked nimbly in the sharp dip on Judd Road just past the hairpin curve out of town, the body could be a trick, a blink, exhaustion’s shadow. A chalky moon lit the curve. Beyond the light’s rim, darkness poured into the hollow’s bleak drop. Just in time again, Perry swerved off the road. He parked under the near-headless birch and aspen, canopies shorn wide for the power lines. The shoulder was choked so tightly with brush that Perry’s rusted truck bed jutting into the lane became the obstacle the next motorist might see too late. Perry’s door swung open almost to the head, which didn’t, at first, flinch. Maybe this was the night someone else had finally hit the body.

  A harsh wind cut through the bare branches. No buffer now against the chill. Perry’s jacket might as well be his skin. Had the lying down begun before the cold set and the leaves dropped? Perry couldn’t recall when he’d first come upon this body. After the girls had been discovered last month, this he knew. But he couldn’t say when exactly these encounters became routine, and then, necessary.

  The body wasn’t waiting for him in that hollow every night. Perry never asked the questions he should ask; that if the body appeared on some nights, why not every night? What erratic calculus of despair determined a night’s decision to lie in wait for collision’s bliss?

  Perry was awaiting positive identification, which the authorities told him might come tomorrow. A foregone conclusion, since he and the Other Family had immediately identified the girls’ clothes. Remarkably well preserved after twenty years underwater. Elsa’s dressy blouse was laid out on the authorities’ steel table, sleeves thrown out at right angles as if frozen in one of her impulsive hugs. Her denim cutoffs lay below the blouse, a strip of steel gleaming in the gap between hem and waistband like a prosthetic belly. The blouse’s frilly scallops were fringed with mud. Dirt blotted the sleeves. Mud stain
s dotted the pearly buttons. Not a single button was missing. Not a speck of the mud on the blouse or cutoffs turned out to be aged blood, so the authorities finally knew to rule out foul play. A technician would have removed this blouse delicately from his daughter’s skeleton. The cutoffs would have been pulled cautiously from her hips to avoid dislodging joints, shattering evidence. The silver glittering sandals with the Roman straps, now lake-bed brown with the buckles flaking rust, would have been carefully guided from each foot’s frail bony accordion.

  The clothes were pinned and air-dried to stiff, unnatural poses before Perry and the Other Family were summoned. The living knew that, like the DNA testing that would be compared against samples from their own bodies, identifying the clothes was a formality. The car, a ’71 Mustang hauled up from the shriveled lake, was well known as the car Perry had given Elsa for her sixteenth birthday. The water level hadn’t dipped so low in a century. Drought had dried up the wells on his out-of-town properties but had given Perry his daughter back.

  He didn’t know how the Other Family felt about closure, but he wasn’t about to hand over last hope on a platter to the authorities. He’d studied the items as if he’d never seen these clothes, as if the unearthed car wasn’t his well-known ’71 Mustang with two female bodies strapped in the front seats, a mangled rear tire that must have blown and hurtled the car off the bridge. He told the authorities he couldn’t positively identify this clothing. Hadn’t too much time passed to be certain? Some items were missing, too. Intimate things. Were the authorities keeping Elsa’s undergarments from his sight out of delicacy? The authorities hadn’t recovered her cheap silver earrings either, but Perry didn’t notice the baubles weren’t among these personal remains.

  He was not present when the Other Family identified their daughter’s clothing, so he never would know if they’d given up their hope easily, even gratefully.

  Perry slammed the car door. The body stirred at the sound. Alive, still a man. Perry helped him to his feet. Wrapped his coat around the man’s gaunt shoulders, tucked him gently into the passenger seat. Hurrying for no good reason. If the man was in a hurry to live, he’d have risen on his own. If the man was in a hurry to die, he wouldn’t choose to lie on a road rarely driven after dark. But Perry felt the urgency of their time together. Moving the truck out of the next motorist’s way. Protecting the man from the cold and the country night’s sticky ink. Perry thought that regard for this man’s welfare made him hurry, but the rush was meant to beat the clock on Perry’s dead heart. He could kill this man as easily as he could rescue him, because, given time, didn’t reputation always become character?

  This man was not yet Perry’s age, but not young enough to be reckless, to have not thought things through. But, too, not ready to die. He would take to Perry’s care, is how Perry knew. Put his fingers to the dashboard vents. Thaw out, smile a bit, relax into Perry’s coat. He would never begin a conversation and he didn’t tonight, either. Decisions could be made about what to find out and what to leave be.

  Perry pulled onto Judd Road. The old F-150’s engine rattled now like a lingering cough, but there wasn’t a thing wrong with it. Tonight the man couldn’t seem to get warm. He was fidgety, fretful. He kept rubbing his hands in front of the heater vents, then sticking his fingers between the seat cushions or in his lap. His smile was one of those Perry envied, radiant and straight. A few facts, released stingily, during their first rides together. The man lived with his parents. They did not know of the roadway roulette. The man would prefer Perry run him over than take him back home.

  Perry nursed assumptions: an alcoholic, an unstable, a man diverted from the course of reason. But he did not reek of poisons, did not appear drugged. Perhaps he was one of those users who thrived on fooling his family. Once Perry had looked up the Marion Road address to find the number unlisted, no name attached to the property. He’d poked around a bit for the man’s identity. Hadn’t been too diligent. There were certain benefits to the man remaining a stranger.

  Perry usually accepted the man’s silences, which he interpreted as invitations to fill, but there came a point when he wanted to crowbar some answers.

  —If you want to die, why not choose a busier road?

  —I don’t drive, the man told him.

  —What’s that got to do with it?

  The man blew air into his cupped palms as if about to whistle.

  —Out here, where else could I walk to?

  The wind picked up, whistled through the F-150’s aging window seals. Moonlight shimmered on the pavement like an early frost. The man pointed out the way home even though Perry knew the route, a left down Marion, one of those narrow, single-lane dirt roads. There the jarring washboards chiseled by long-ago summer rains would fragment their conversation, save Perry the burden of finding out why this man sought to die.

  Denise was the other girl’s name. Perry didn’t know what she was wearing the night the girls disappeared. He’d barely spoken to Elsa on her way out, which was why, he told the authorities, he couldn’t say for certain about the clothes. Back when the authorities had questioned him—closely, Perry was the sole suspect—he described Elsa’s glittery sandals, which he remembered flashing on the drab living room carpet. He didn’t tell the authorities how he’d frowned over the cutoffs and dressy blouse. The clingy denim rode too high on her thighs. The Sunday Best top seemed like an insult to Sunday paired with those shorts, and she’d buttoned the blouse up tight to her slender neck. Not a trace of flesh until those long legs, as if she were lowballing the flirtation, and he didn’t like her going to a teen party at the gravel pit in the first place. She was wearing earrings, silver dangling baubles that flashed like grins as she told him good-bye.

  Should have driven the girls himself, he’d always suffer this guilt. A straight shot down Judd Road, across the bridge over the lake that had taken their lives. He’d have watched them walk up the gravel path to the ridge where the other kids were stoking the bonfire and pulling on beers, shadows against flames on a hot starless night. He’d have noted what Denise was wearing so he could keep tabs on both girls. Parked down the road within sight of the fire. All the way down the path, Elsa’s silver sandals would have twinkled on her slender ankles. He’d craved this vision over the years, her glittering feet like sparklers’ tails tethered to his vigilance. This vision sometimes relieved him from his doomed wonder about why she’d left, and where she’d gone, and when she might return to forgive him for some offense he wouldn’t know to call a crime.

  Maybe Denise knew, and that’s why they’d grown close that year. Perry had known Denise only a bit, mostly by the loud laughing voice that overtopped Elsa’s quiet murmur. He’d wondered afterward whether Elsa’s soft voice was not her natural tone after all, but muted so he wouldn’t hear what the girls were planning on that hot summer’s night. Pretend to go to a party and just keep driving down Judd, which bisected Moon, which doubled back to Michigan Avenue to I-94. Once on the interstate, the girls could vanish before anyone knew to look for them. It was a good plan. It could be done.

  Over time, Perry grew to love Elsa’s flight as he loved her. So what if she’d never called? Showed her pluck. She’d made it to a better place, a place he wasn’t meant to find.

  The Other Family was convinced that a killer had snatched the girls on Judd Road. After Perry’s arrest, the Other Family was convinced this killer was Perry. Maybe they’d thought him guilty right up until the moment the wheels unexpectedly crested the lake’s murky surface, so near the places that had been searched so methodically, and then hopelessly. Maybe they needed to identify Denise’s clothes and confirm the DNA match to see in Perry the father who had lost what they had lost, who suffered nightmares, spun wild stories, prayed, and raged and wept dry as they had. He wondered whether they preferred their beliefs about Perry to the truth, as he preferred the fates he’d concocted for Elsa. Perhaps he would turn out to have been their last hope. Perhaps his killing of the girls would be seen, now, a
s more sensible than this discovery; the girls’ cruel suspension in gloomy waters, near to the bridge, near to their families, close and unfound until a freak disruption in the rainfall’s seasonal pattern had revealed them.

  The grieving should crave closure. The grieving should be grateful the drought offered up to the light their dear ones belted dutifully in their last pose.

  Perry’s daughter was thirty-six when she was found, had been dead longer than she’d been alive, and he did not want that corpse, he didn’t.

  Perry asked the man straight out.

  —Do you know who I am?

  Shivering, the man looked him over carefully. Seemed to consider the question one he must respond to in just the right way, so he wouldn’t be viewed as guilty, or stupid.

  —I do not.

  This could be evasion or it could be the truth.

  The engine rattled, died away on a thin whine. Tomorrow the odometer would turn over to 300,000. The truck was new when Elsa went missing. He hadn’t expected it to outlive his daughter. When he was the sole suspect, the authorities had dismantled Perry’s truck. Stripped it down to the axle. Vacuumed the carpets and cushions. When they put it back together, the truck ran like it was fresh off the lot, had run beautifully ever since. Now he rarely drove it at all except on these night runs to a tenant call or the townie bar when he couldn’t stand to be at home. During the day he didn’t care whether the engine still turned over, but at night he liked to prove that he’d nurtured such stubborn longevity.

  Just before the turn down Marion, the man reconsidered.

  —You live out this way. Near the lake by the gravel pit.

  By now the town identified Perry in many different ways. Always interesting to find out which identity a person attached to him. That night, he was associated with the lake. Another night the man might recognize him as the father whose daughter was recovered. On another, Perry might be remembered as the suspect in her disappearance.