All the Wicked Girls

by Chris Whitaker

“Dream kidney?” Purv said.

  “All right, shoot,” Noah said.

  “Gandhi.”

  “Gandhi?”

  “You go.”

  “Schwarzenegger.”

  “Steroids, ain’t no tellin’ the damage they done. Gandhi wins easy.”

  “He was borderline malnourished.”

  “Fuck that. Mahatma was lean, but muscle lean, you can tell he worked out. He was pure too, get a piece of him inside you and you’re guaranteed to head up when your time comes.”

  Noah nodded. Purv always won.

  “How about you, Raine?” Purv said.

  Raine shrugged. “Elvis?”

  Purv closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Spastic colon.”

  Noah straightened up when he saw her. Raine watched too, Purv leaned forward between the front seats. They watched silent as the lady with the fire-red hair slipped from her apartment and climbed into her ’79 Taurus.

  “Could be headed to church,” Purv said.

  “Not this late,” Raine said.

  Noah pulled out and kept the beams low.

  “Stay back,” Raine said.

  “Relax, darlin’, ain’t my first rodeo,” Noah said.

  Raine sighed wearily.

  They drove five miles out toward Roxburgh and the Briar County line before she turned down Chason Road.

  Noah eased off the gas till the Taurus lights grew faint then disappeared down into the valley.

  They rode over a hill then saw the Taurus pull over.

  “Go past,” Raine said. “She’ll see us.”

  They drove a quarter mile before Noah found a spot he could turn around in.

  “Shit, we can’t lose her.”

  Noah floored the gas and watched the needle climb as they drove back through the woodland.

  “There,” Purv said, pointing.

  They followed the Taurus back up to Highway 45 and saw her signal right.

  “She’s headed back,” Noah said.

  “Turn round, we need to see why she stopped,” Raine said.

  When they reached the spot in the valley Noah pulled the Buick to a stop and they sat awhile and saw nothing much beyond trees. Raine reached for her bag and flashlight and they moved out.

  “There ain’t nothin’ here,” Purv said.

  Raine moved in front, cutting the light over the trees and the dirt.

  Noah saw it first, bushes grown wild around, at the front of a track so dark he couldn’t make out nothing at the end. He called them over and they stared at the mailbox, rusted, stuck deep in the earth, the red flag flipped up.

  “Could be a house at the end of the track,” Purv said.

  Raine opened the mailbox and took an envelope out. It weren’t sealed and there weren’t no writing on it. She pulled the paper out and shone the flashlight.

  “What is it?” Noah said.

  Raine swallowed. “Names, addresses . . . the forms from the clinic.” She glanced at him. “The girls, the girls who want to get rid of their babies.”

  They put the envelope back in the mailbox and hiked up the dark track, silent ’cept for their breath. It was warm and starry but cold fear fell over them. Raine held the gun in her hand and Purv held the hunting knife and Noah held the flashlight.

  The church was burned. There was a sign, WEST END MISSION, and Raine remembered back when they saw it on the news and her momma asked what kinda person it took to light up a church like that.

  “Della Palmer’s church,” Raine said.

  *

  Black saw candlelight so he walked toward the church, opened the heavy door and moved in from the sounds of the square.

  “I heard you stopped by the station earlier,” Black said as he saw her.

  Savannah nodded and he walked over and sat on the bench beside her.

  “That criminal crucified beside Jesus, he made it into heaven because he was sorry. That’s what people struggle with,” she said.

  “Forgiveness is a powerful thing, Savannah.”

  “It is. Sometimes it lies outta reach.”

  Black wondered how much of his life had been spent in the old church, asking but never giving.

  “Tommy called me. I meant to come see you, but I couldn’t face it. What I did. I’m sorry, Black. I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged. “All right, I’ll let you into heaven.”

  She laughed and it came out sweet and so sad.

  “I saw a lawyer in Maidenville. I’ve had the papers for a while but I see Bobby sometimes and I can’t ever imagine being without him. Is that funny, after what I did?”

  He looked up at the print, at Mary and the baby and the bird that didn’t fly. “No, it ain’t funny. Sometimes people need a break from themselves, sometimes it takes something God fuckin’ awful to make you see what you got and what you ain’t.”

  “Do you miss your children?”

  “I miss the life I might’ve had. I ache for it like I got a chance of turning back the clock. If we don’t learn from our mistakes . . . that’s the waste, right?”

  He heard her cry but he couldn’t see her tears ’cause the shadow of the cross hid her so fully.

  “This is your crossroads, Savannah.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You know, deep down you know ’cause people always do.”

  “I love Bobby.”

  “That’s all you need.”

  “Is it?”

  “It has to be, ’cause there ain’t nothin’ else out there.”

  “Is that naive?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I want to ask for a sign,” she said. “I want God to tell me that he has Michael and that we’ll be a family again. I think that’s what Bobby wants.”

  “Bobby’s searchin’ for somethin’ he knows he ain’t never gonna find. You either take his hand and help him or you leave him to get on.”

  “I can’t leave him alone. I can’t. He’s had an awful life, Black. The things they did to him in that home . . .”

  Black reached across and took her hand. He held it tight and closed his eyes and he asked God to make it right, he asked God to end it all now. He didn’t know what that meant for her and for him and the people of Grace. But he asked for light ’cause there hadn’t been none for such a long time.

  *

  The stairs moved; each bowed and noisy and flaking paint. Purv stayed in the Buick on the street, by the side door. He reckoned it was time to call in Black but Raine had the feeling in her stomach and that heat in her eyes so Noah drove where she told him, back to Adler’s and the lady with the fire-red hair.

  He stood beside her and she knocked the door quiet, it opened on the chain.

  The lady stood there, eyes tired till she locked on Raine and they widened.

  “Dolores,” Raine said. “I saw you at the clinic.”

  “How’d you know where I live?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Dolores shook her head. “You have to call the clinic, I can’t help you . . .” She began to close the door and Raine stuck her foot against the jamb.

  “I know about the mailbox. The burned church, I know what’s in the envelope.”

  There was a moment that stretched, where maybe Dolores was weighing things.

  “And I know you broke into the clinic. We got cameras, I open up each mornin’, I check the tapes,” Dolores said.

  Raine took it quick and shrugged it off. “Call the cops. I’m a minor, I reckon breakin’ and enterin’ ain’t nothin’ on what you been doin’.”

  Dolores looked at Noah, then at Raine, then she slipped the chain from the door and they followed her inside.

  They sat ’cause she told them to, and she closed the door ’cause her kids were sleeping. A lamp burned soft light but she looked cold and beaten.

  “What do you want?” Dolores said.

  “My sister is missin’. Summer Ryan.”

  “We get a lot of calls, more than you can imagine.”


  “Yeah, we saw the files.”

  “That’s just the girls on the books, the ones that go through with it. We get calls, walk-ins, they leave a fake name ’cause they’re scared and we don’t see ’em again. Every day, every week. Girls like you.”

  “Briar girls?” Raine said.

  Dolores swallowed and maybe her hands were trembling but she knitted her fingers tight.

  “What did you do?” Raine said.

  Dolores put her hand to her head and then rubbed her eyes. “They’re closing the clinics, shuttering ’em. There’s so many girls now. I knew someone would show. I didn’t reckon it’d be a couple kids.”

  “What did you do?” Raine said again.

  “What I thought was right, what I had to do. You can’t go to the cops, I ain’t got no one to care for my children.”

  “Tell us what you know. Is it him?”

  “I ain’t got money, my kids . . . their daddy ain’t here. I been to that church since I was small, the Mission, before it burned and before we had to stand in fields just to reach up.”

  Noah glanced at the window, it was cracked behind the drapes and he could hear the idle of the Buick.

  “I didn’t tell nobody when I took the job.” She ran a hand through her hair, her mouth set hard. “I was in trouble before, when I was young, I got a record,” she said. “They gave me a shot ’cause nobody else wanted to work there. I thought . . . with God, I thought about it but I got kids of my own to care for. I tried to talk to the girls who came in, to help ’em see, but Cara said I ain’t to do that.”

  The door opened and Raine almost reached for the bag before she saw it was a boy, maybe six or seven, hair jutting at sleep angles.

  Dolores scooped him up and took him out.

  Raine looked over at Noah and he tried a smile but they knew they were close now, that something was coming.

  “He gets up, sometimes five or six times, has done ever since,” Dolores said, as she sat. She had a drink, clear in the glass like vodka. “I was them, those girls, back when I was fourteen. I went to the clinic in Birmingham but I couldn’t see it out. The Mission, they reached out and they saved me.”

  Raine nodded slow, staring at Dolores.

  “The first time he called it was late but I was up ’cause even before I didn’t sleep good. Just one of those people, ‘the damned’ my daddy said, body don’t like to sleep.” She smiled a small smile. “He said he was from the church, that he could help the girls, he could save ’em too. That’s all I wanted.”

  “Who?” Raine said, inching closer, eyes locked tight on Dolores.

  “And I thought about the babies, those children and my children. I reckoned I could handle things . . . it’s murder. I saw a way to make it right, he said he’d talk to ’em, that he’d show ’em. He said it was clear, why I took that job, ’cause I was supposed to. God painted a path for me.”

  “Who is he?”

  Dolores met her eye. “Newspapers call him the Bird.”

  Noah swallowed.

  Dolores rubbed her neck, pinching the muscles hard. “I give him the names and he stops ’em burnin’. And maybe stops me burnin’.”

  “Jesus,” Noah said quiet.

  “What’s he done with them?”

  Dolores cried but palmed the tears hard. “I tried to stop right off, after Della, after she went missin’, ’cause I knew it was him. And I knew Della, she was a good kid. They make mistakes, even the good kids. He called, in the night, he called me and said things about my children. But I . . . and then he showed up.” She looked at Raine, her face ghost white, eyes sunk but the fear was sharp and clear. “At midnight he knocked the door and broke the chain and my son came out and saw.”

  “What did he say, the Bird?” Raine said.

  Dolores shook her head fast. “Nothin’. He just stood there till I backed right up, and then he turned and left. He knows me, it can’t be undone now; it’s gone on too long.”

  “All the Briar girls, they were all on the lists, they were all pregnant,” Noah said.

  Dolores nodded.

  “How come no one said, the newspapers?”

  “No one knows ’cept me and him.”

  “What about their parents?”

  “They either don’t know or don’t want to say. You know about the color of judgment; there ain’t forgiveness, not for all things, not for the shame. I think about the girls, maybe they’re safe and he’s just holdin’ ’em. But his eyes, his face . . .”

  “What does he look like?” Noah said.

  “The devil. He looks like the devil.”

  *

  They left Dolores staring straight out the window like she was lost someplace far. They made no promises ’cause all knew they’d be hollow. Bets were off, they knew of the Bird, that he was real, and how he was choosing the girls. They’d found out what the cops couldn’t, Black and Ernie Redell and all the state cops.

  “We gotta call Black now,” Purv said from the rear seat.

  “Black will go in blazin’,” Raine said.

  “Still have to make the call, Raine,” Noah said.

  “We will, after we see him,” she said.

  They parked deep in the trees a hundred yards from the mailbox, then they settled back and took it in shifts to keep watch. No one slept though, they were too close to something bad.

  An hour from first light the van pulled up. It was dark and rusted and the three watched in silent horror as it stopped in front of the mailbox.

  Raine felt the rush of her heart.

  “Can’t see who it is,” Noah said in a whisper.

  “Missouri plates,” Purv said.

  It moved off fast and Noah pulled the Buick out and worried they’d lost it before he saw dim light a long way in front.

  They followed for miles, till the sun began to break the night sky and they remembered to breathe again.

  “At least we’re headed back toward Grace,” Noah said, glancing at the fuel gauge. “We’re almost out.”

  They didn’t talk about what it meant, what they’d found and who they were following. They didn’t need to ’cause they all felt it.

  It was as they neared Hallow Road, as they saw the cloud towering, that the van turned sharp from the road down the throat of the woodland.

  They rolled right by, didn’t even slow ’cause there weren’t another way to do it. They weren’t equipped, not even close.

  “That’s Deamer land,” Purv said. “What do we do?”

  “We tell Black, all of it, we tell him,” Noah said.

  “We’ll get in shit. They’ll know we broke into the clinic,” Purv said.

  “We’ll say you weren’t there,” Noah said.

  Purv stared out the window. “Won’t matter . . . not once he hears.”

  “So we go in then. Through Hell’s Gate,” Raine said.

  Noah gripped the wheel tight. “I ain’t sure that’s a good idea.”

  “I’ll go on my own then,” Raine said.

  “You can’t . . .”

  Raine turned, eyes full. “You two have done enough. I’m grateful, serious, I ain’t gonna forget it. But I’m goin’ in, right now, ’cause my sister might be in there and she might be in trouble. I don’t know what it means, what he’s doin’. So you go, you tell Black now if you need to, whatever you reckon is right, but I ain’t waitin’ no longer. I got the gun, I know the woods.”

  Noah slowed as the road curved. He met Purv’s eye in the mirror. “You comin’?”

  “Come this far, ain’t we?”

  43

  Summer

  The room in that house. There was a lamp on a nightstand but it didn’t have a shade so the bright was hard. There was a bed and there was canned food stacked in the corner. The roof was bowed like there was weight sagging it down in the center. The smell of damp got in my lungs and I wanted to cough but the fear got hold of me.

  “I made you tea,” Samson said. “ ’Cause you sa
id you liked to drink tea sometimes. I want you to be all right.”

  He handed me a cup and I set it down on the nightstand and he told me to sit on the bed so I did.

  I looked at his hands and fingers.

  There was flowers by the bed.

  “Alabama Pinks. You ain’t supposed to pick ’em,” he said, following my eye. “They’re endangered, Wildlife Service are supposed to watch out for ’em.”

  “Nobody knows where they grow,” I said, my voice quiet.

  “My momma did. She showed me once, there’s a hidden spot in Hell’s Gate. She loved these flowers. I picked ’em for her. I brought them when she got sick and they made her smile so I reckoned it was all right, ’cause she needed them.”

  The bed didn’t have no sheets, just a mattress that was stained and cold and wet.

  “I can’t let you do it. I can’t let you take a life.”

  I heard it but I didn’t, the sounds were far and mixed, a different voice like it didn’t fit in that room on that night in Grace.

  I looked down at the ring my daddy bought for me with a blue stone the very same color as my eyes.

  “Summer.”

  I didn’t like my name then, the way it sounded when he said it like it weren’t nothin’ but a collection of meaningless letters.

  I looked up and somethin’ died in his eyes.

  “It ain’t about the right to choose. Life or death . . . we’re made in God’s image. You believe in redemption, Summer?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled. “I see it. What was meant for me. I see a way back for all of us.”

  In my mind I heard Bach and I saw Peter denying Jesus over and over. Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears.

  I called it on by givin’ myself over or sayin’ I had. I let myself be guided to this place ’cause that’s what fate does, it watches over you till you accept that your life weren’t never yours at all.

  44

  Bird Hunt

  They swung by the edge of the square and Noah slipped into the station and said morning to the auxiliaries. He carried a fat envelope of all they had and he left it on Black’s desk ’cause that was the smart move. They’d go into Hell’s Gate and hope Black beat them to the Deamer house and all that it held. Raine agreed to it, but she wouldn’t wait on nothing; on plans and checks and whatever procedures had to be followed.