Bad Man

by Dathan Auerbach

  “This is scritta. They didn’t make this kinda paper there. Need a whole other machine.” Marty tossed the book back onto the table. “I think you gotta go to the cops now, Ben. I don’t know what else I can do far as helpin you.”

  Ben shook his head.

  “Whatever it is, dude, whatever you have against that one cop with the fucked-up arm…Go talk to someone else then. I dunno. I thought we’d find something here.”

  “I can’t. I said that already. He ain’t gonna listen to me.”

  “It’s his fuckin job to listen to you. What, did you burn down his granny’s house or something? Shit, even if you did, he’s still on the goddamn payroll.”

  “He says I killed someone.” Ben let the words hang in the sour air for a while before he spoke. “We was in the checkout.” Ben cleared his throat. “Me and Eric was at the checkout, and I had a lot of stuff on the conveyer. I wanted to go home. Then Eric says he needs to use the bathroom.

  “I…I don’t know why I didn’t just take him. He’s little. He has to go to the bathroom. It don’t matter if I asked him five minutes ago. It don’t matter if it was five seconds. I don’t remember what I said to him exactly, but I just wanted to get outta there.

  “Then this guy behind us, he offers to take him. I say no and turn back away from him, and then he offers again. Two times this guy offers to take my three-year-old brother to the bathroom. He don’t ask to take my money and buy my stuff with it. He don’t just ignore us or leave us alone. He offers something that don’t make no sense to offer. And he does it twice.

  “After everything happened and the police came, I tell them about that guy. And the cashier, she goes, ‘Oh, that was Bob Prewitt.’

  “Do you know that name?” Ben’s voice quavered.

  Marty nodded. “That’s Ty Cotter’s cousin.”

  “Imagine my surprise when I learned that very thing. I didn’t know Prewitt or Cotter. Not at the time. Not then. Anyway, the police are talkin to me and they’re askin about him, and I know, I mean I know, that they don’t care. Not about what I’m sayin. I can feel this while I’m telling them.

  “So I told James Duchaine—that one that came and saw you—I told him that I seen Prewitt in the parking lot tearing ass outta there in his truck. I don’t know why I said it, but they cared. Took ’em till the next day, but they cared. They never got no dogs for Eric, never made no statements about him. Talkin to Bobby Prewitt is the first and last thing that they ever did. And they needed to talk to him. They weren’t gonna and they needed to.

  “They get a warrant to search his property, but they don’t find nothin ’cept for two things: that he was growin pot inside his house, and that Bobby Prewitt didn’t own a truck.”

  Ben exhaled heavily and wiped his dusty hands on his jeans. “The end of this story is that Bobby Prewitt went and killed himself. He done it because he lost a custody battle he was havin with his old lady over their kid. He’d been fightin this woman for a long time, from what I was told. Had to make a real big case for himself.

  “He lost that custody battle because of the pot. Then a few months later, that kid had some kind of accident at the lake near the mom’s house.

  “I told Duchaine about everything, man. About Palmer, the flyers, the symbol. He don’t care. He just does not care. He says that I lied to him about what I seen. Figure he might have even thought that while I was telling it. I did see someone driving off. I did see that…

  “And what’s fucked up”—Ben laughed incredulously—“is that I know it ain’t true. It can’t be. But sometimes I can see him, man. I can see Bob Prewitt in that truck. Even though Duchaine says I’m a liar and even though he didn’t own no truck, I can see him peelin out in my head. Clear as day.

  “So I can’t talk to him, okay? Him, Missing Persons…don’t matter.”

  Ben leaned forward and lifted the book from the table. It felt leathery in his hands, soft and well worn. His fingers caressed the embossing on the cover. HOLY BIBLE. He thumbed through the pages, which felt as brittle and thin as rice paper in his hands.

  “I didn’t know this was a special kind of paper,” Ben mumbled.

  “You see how thin it is, though.”

  “Yeah, I guess I just thought they made regular paper and then split it in half, like two-ply toilet paper or something. Made sense in my head all the way up until I just said it.”

  On the very first page was a name written in an unsteady hand. “Beverly.” It was hard to tell what trembled the writing, whether it was before she’d refined her motor skills or after she’d lost them. Ben rubbed the soft page between his thumb and index finger. Faded ink stamped in the shape of BLACKWATER SCHOOL marred the page just above the scribbled name.

  There was a tremble in Ben’s leg. He shifted the book to try to catch more of the lazy light, but there wasn’t enough. Ben stood and moved toward the window, and as the sun touched the wispy paper, Ben felt like his skin might just slither right off his bones.

  In stamped ink, faded and pocked by time, there it was: mother moon smiling at her dancing son. Four curves and a line that reached all the way to a place Ben had never even heard of. A beacon that called to Ben.

  Ben wasn’t sure if he had said anything. He didn’t remember calling to Marty, but his friend rose from the floor to Ben’s side by the window.

  “L-look,” Ben stammered. “You see it, right?”

  “Fuck.”

  “That’s it, right? That’s the same thing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the same fucking thing, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is this? What the fuck is Blackwater School?”

  “I don’t know. You gotta go to the police. They gotta talk to Beverly.”

  “Frank’s dad!” Ben shouted. “Frank’s dad used to work there. He told me. He said that his daddy used to work there. What the fuck, man! Why…He said he never saw this before!”

  “Ben,” Marty snapped, “you hearin me? You need to take this book and show ’em, because someone needs to talk to that loopy bitch.”

  “He told me…he told me right before I found that flyer in my locker.”

  “So what?”

  “So what? He told Duchaine your accident was my fault. Said he never seen this before!”

  “You can’t see it. I don’t know why, but you can’t see that something’s wrong with Beverly. She ain’t your grandma, Ben! She ratted you out to Palmer.”

  “Then why would Palmer fire her?”

  “I don’t have any goddamn idea! But I know that the symbol is in her fuckin book! You’re holding it, dude. Look at it!”

  There was a throbbing in Ben’s skull, a kind of pain right behind his eyes that radiated outward like ripples in a still lake. With the book under his arm, Ben walked into the kitchen and turned on the faucet, hoping to wet his face and his throat, but the spout was nothing but an ornament now.

  “What’d you come out here for?” Ben snapped.

  “Why did you? You wanna say sorry to Beverly? You wanna see if she knows something about Palmer? Palmer ain’t the one you need to be thinkin about. There’s something wrong with Beverly, you dumb fuck. Open your fuckin eyes already!”

  Ben inhaled to speak, but his throat tightened, freezing his breath in his lungs. There was a prickling against his scalp, like cold rain the size of small needles. Using his kerchief, he tried to clean the glass, but the grime was on the other side. “C’mere,” Ben said, and motioned to Marty. “There. Do you see that?”

  “The window? Yeah, I see it,” Marty said, approaching. “What am I lookin for?”

  “Right there.” Ben pressed the tip of his finger against the glass and stepped back so Marty could use it as a sight. “Standin in them trees some. Look.”

  “Huh?” Marty cupped his hands on the window and leaned
against it. “No, I don’t see noth— Oh, Christ,” Marty whispered, his breath fogging the glass. “Ben, there’s a boy out there.”

  43

  “What’re we gonna do?” Ben hissed.

  “We’re gonna talk to him,” Marty replied, never turning away from the glass.

  The boy still hadn’t moved, though as Ben shifted on his feet, the stained window sometimes made it seem to Ben that the child had vanished right before his eyes.

  “We’re gonna see if blondie here knows where Beverly’s gone to.”

  “Look, he’s movin.”

  “I see him.”

  “He might not have anything to do with this place.”

  “Ain’t no one out here ’cept for us and him. What are the odds of somethin like that? What are the odds he ain’t seen her? Don’t know where she’s at? How’d he even find this place?”

  “You found it.”

  “I don’t think he can see us.” Marty moved so quickly that Ben almost missed the chance to grab his arm.

  “What’re you doin?”

  “I’m gonna talk to him.”

  “He might come this way. You go out there now and maybe he bolts. Let him keep comin.”

  “He’s just walkin the tree line. He ain’t stepped foot in the yard. Fuck off my arm. I’m goin.”

  “He’ll get away. We go out the kitchen, and we can get to him quiet.”

  “You ain’t getting to no one quiet. Let go of my fuckin arm.”

  Ben squeezed tighter when Marty pulled. Sneering, Marty rammed his knee into Ben’s bad leg. Lightning cracked in Ben’s skull. He stumbled, and Marty hurried through the front door. He moved fast. Ben saw a blur zip by the cloudy window. Marty’s voice sounded from the backyard. Ben had only reached the sink when he heard Marty shout again. And by the time Ben stepped out the door, Marty had already been swallowed up by the thick trees.

  The kid had run, just like Ben had said. Why wouldn’t he? The ragged steps moaned under Ben’s weight as he descended them before stepping into the yard. Somewhere in the distance, Marty hollered, and Ben could only think how unwelcoming that would sound to young ears.

  Ben had never seen Marty so angry or so filled with purpose. As he walked through the yard, Ben wondered where that righteous indignation might have been when Marty was keeping his own little secret.

  Keeping pace with them would be impossible. There was never anytime during the whole walk to this place that Ben had any sense of where he was, and now his leg was on fire. He’d lose his way, and then he’d be the one calling out in the maze of trees.

  Ben leaned his shoulder against the shed, then slammed his fist against it. Absently, Ben glanced at the side of the structure; most of the frame had bowed and split like easily peeked-through window blinds. He could see right inside. Some old tools sat on an older workbench. That was all.

  Sucking through his teeth against the pain, Ben slid his back down along the warped boards of the shed and sat on its dirt foundation. Gently, he pressed his knuckles into the muscle of his leg. “Motherfucker,” he muttered.

  Ben opened the Bible again and ran his fingers over the symbol, then set it on the dirt beside him. Blackwater School was up in Alabama, Frank had said. The Blackwater River didn’t stretch far into that state. Maybe it was close. What the fuck did it have to do with Eric? Ben didn’t ask himself that question, but his mind furnished him with answers anyway: images of his baby brother alone in a classroom with whoever took him, crying for help. Learning things that no little boy should know.

  Ben tried to listen to the quiet air. He plucked seeded grass stalks from the earth and picked them apart. Snapping a thick blade of grass off in the middle, Ben pinched it longways between the sides of his thumbs, just like his father had taught him when he was a boy still small enough to believe in magic. The taste of grass was bitter against his lips as he pulled air into his lungs. Ben blew, but there was no whistle, only the hollow sound of wind wisping through clutching hands.

  Ben tossed the blade back to its family. Marty hadn’t just wanted to talk to Beverly. He said that he’d hoped they’d find something out here. And then what do you know? They had. How lucky.

  It had been a long while since Marty ran into the woods. Ben listened, but there were no more shouts at all now. Marty was still out there somewhere, chasing a blond boy through the wild trees.

  Chasing a boy who looked an awful lot like Aaron.

  So the guh-good thing said, “Well, whu-what should I duh-do?”

  But there weren’t nothin he could do. Because he could fuh-feel the teeth now.

  It was too late.

  44

  Pushing air forcefully through his nostrils, Ben sat up and rubbed his face, concentrating on his tired eyes. As his knuckles pressed firmly into his sockets, Ben beat back the memory of the fight. Storming out. Sneaking in. He hadn’t heard his alarm, but it must have gone off, because he woke up to the faint sound of dishes in the kitchen. Right on time.

  He found his way into a shirt and pants and eased his door open. Warm light from the television flickered against the walls of the living room, but it had no audience.

  “Mornin, Pa,” Ben whispered.

  “Oh,” Clint said, then reached for another plate from the cabinet. “You off tonight?”

  “Store’ll be locked up by now anyhow. She sleepin already?”

  Clint nodded his head, then dipped his chin toward Eric’s room. “You want pepper in your eggs?”

  Ben nodded and drank three glasses of water to make up for the day before. He’d sat there for an hour before Marty finally came back, cursing, saying that the boy had just disappeared. He collapsed in a chair as Clint brought their plates to the table.

  “Leg seems bad.”

  “Ain’t never been that good.”

  “Got a line on a job maybe.”

  “Yeah?” Ben replied.

  Clint nodded, then brushed some egg out of his beard. “Know someone at the courthouse. Says they need a file clerk.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Somethin with files, I reckon. Getting files. Filin files.” The man took another bite, then pushed his eggs around with his fork. “You want it?”

  Ben rubbed his thigh with the heel of his hand. “What’s it pay?”

  “Does it matter?” Clint took another bite, leaving space for Ben to respond. “You let me know,” Clint added curtly.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes before Ben spoke again. He asked if his father wanted some company at work.

  At the distribution center, all manner of vehicles idled in a line just in front of an elevated concrete platform. Carbon monoxide steamed from tailpipes as drivers waited—some fast asleep with mouths agape—for the large, paneled door to retreat so they could fetch their freight.

  Yellow light poured down from a cracked aluminum cone, illuminating a man’s dramatic gesticulations as he moved his mouth at a pear-shaped woman with blond hair as thin as kite strings. Following his father, Ben stepped out of the truck and into air that was swirling with wind and bickering. Even from a distance, Ben could hear the voice of the man he’d come to see.

  “No way,” the man said. “Uh-uh.” He shook his head. Had his eyes been open, he could have seen from east to west.

  “You need to make it right,” the woman snarled, crushing a cigarette under her heel.

  “You need to climb down out of my ass,” he said, pointing from one to the other. “Oh, hey, look here. Here we go.” He frantically waved Clint over, despite the fact that he and Ben were practically at spitting distance from them.

  “Reggie.” Clint nodded. “Brandy. You both know Ben.”

  Reggie had dark skin and perfect teeth. A little heavy around the midsection, but he carried it in such a way that people would say he was a big guy, not a fat one. Little tracks of
gray cut through the black hair on the sides of his head. His glasses were thick, with large frames.

  “Hey! How you doin, young Ben?” Ben almost had a chance to answer before Reggie continued. “Now listen to this,” he said, tapping Clint on the chest with the back of his hand. He brushed some of Brandy’s ashes off his forearm. “A man can get dirty just standing next to you, Bran. Go on then, girl. Let him hear it.”

  “Next to me is as close as you’re ever gonna get. And who is he? King Solomon?”

  “King who? Just tell the man.”

  “Don’t make no difference. I don’t give a damn what he says—”

  “I don’t wanna get in the middle of this,” Clint interjected.

  “Oh, you right smack in the middle now. Spit it out, girl. You want me to tell it?”

  “Then he’d have to hear two stories. The one you tell him and the truth.” She smirked at Reggie, who scoffed incredulously. Frank really did look a lot like his father. “The other day Reggie asks me if I’ll switch routes with him—”

  “Just for the night,” Reggie cut in.

  “Just for the night. Says he’s got to pick his son up from work—”

  “He had a doctor’s appointment, and her route finishes right by his work—”

  “Goddamn, Reggie. Would you let me say what happened?” she spat, adjusting the collar on her denim shirt.

  “I’m just saying that my route finishes way over there”—he gestured—“by the—waddya call it—the raceway.”

  “What the hell does that matter?”

  “I’m just sayin is all.”

  “Go ahead,” Clint encouraged Brandy, who leered with striking disbelief at a puzzled Reggie.

  “Anyway, I say alright, even though I had already counted out my stacks and even though I ain’t never driven that route since they added what stops they added.”

  “You said you was happy to do it!” Reggie moaned.

  “It’s an expression. Why would I be happy to do anything for your old, ashy ass? The point is that when I was driving through Scotty’s Hardware on your route”—she scowled at Reggie—“I got a damn nail in my tire.”