by Ronald Malfi
2
Brandy Crawly awoke early, just as she did every Saturday, and winced at the slivers of sunlight that speared through the blinds. She remained in bed for several more minutes, watching motes of dust swim in the shafts of light, and considering the possibilities for the day ahead. The daylight hours were hers, to do with as she pleased after her chores around the house were done. Later that evening, she was babysitting Tabby Olson for some extra spending money. The Harvest Dance was only a week away—Jim Talbot had asked her to go with him—and there was an off-the-shoulder black dress at Macy’s over in Garrett that she wanted to buy. The babysitting money should put her in the black.
When she heard her mother’s bedroom door open and the old shower pipes clank and shudder in the bathroom, Brandy climbed out of bed. She combed her hair in the bevel glass then pulled it back into a ponytail. Then she bladed her body, sucked in her belly, and flattened her nightshirt against her chest to examine her profile. Her breasts were too small, her hair too frizzy, her nose just a vague, upturned nub between eyes that, in just the past year or so, had grown too widely spaced apart. She thought her legs looked funny, too. They were too wide in the upper thighs and too narrow at the calf. She lifted one foot and flexed the calf muscle, pointing her toes down like a ballerina. Had she continued with the track team through last year, her legs might have had a more even, tapered look.
Girls on the track team don’t get asked to the Harvest Dance by boys like Jim Talbot, she thought. And boys don’t like girls who run faster than they do.
She pulled on a pair of lacrosse shorts and glanced one last time with some dismay at her reflection in the bevel glass. Then she went downstairs to prepare breakfast.
She heard the screen door banging against the frame from the hallway. Entering the kitchen, she froze. The porch door stood wide open while the screen beyond banged and clattered in the breeze. Matted wet leaves lay in clumps on the tile and there was grit and debris like sprinkles of pepper on the kitchen counter.
Her initial conclusion was that someone had broken into the house at night while the three of them slept, and a cold dread overtook her. Suddenly, the rattling water pipes upstairs sounded as insubstantial as noise coming through a television set. Brandy went to the door and examined the lock and, to her immediate relief, she found that the lock had not been busted. This had not been done by any intruder. This had been the work of her stupid, careless brother.
Upstairs, she stormed into Matthew’s room, her brother’s name already on her tongue, but caught herself when she saw that his room was empty. The place was also a pigsty. Why the little brat couldn’t take his dirty clothes down to the laundry room, she’d never understand.
She was back down in the kitchen scrambling egg whites when her mother came down in her waitress uniform. Wendy pinned up her hair, went to the coffee machine on the counter, and poured herself a steaming mug.
“Got time for some eggs?” Brandy said, scraping the eggs from the pan into a plate.
Her mother sipped the coffee loudly. “What is this mess?” She was looking at the muddy leaves and dirt on the kitchen floor.
“Matthew left the door open when he went out this morning.”
“That kid,” Wendy sighed.
Brandy took the plate to the table and set it down beside a glass of grapefruit juice. “Can I have the truck for the day if I drive you?” she asked her mother, thinking it might be a good idea to head into Garrett and put the dress on layaway before someone else grabbed it.
“You know I don’t like you driving around when I’m not home.” Wendy went into the laundry room and reappeared a second later with a whisk broom. She opened the porch door and propped open the screen then proceeded to sweep the dead leaves and dirt out onto the porch.
“What’s the difference if you’re home or at work?”
“If I’m home I can come get you if something happens.”
“What would happen?”
“Brandy, you’re sixteen. You just got your license three months ago. Anything could happen.”
Brandy scraped her fork along her plate and said, “You know I’m careful. I’m a good driver.”
“You’re an inexperienced driver,” her mother said. “What if you blow a tire?”
“I’ll change it.”
“We don’t even have a spare,” Wendy said, sweeping the last of the filth out the door.
“Then I’ll leave the car on the side of the road and walk home, just like you would have to do if you blew a tire.” She set her fork down, her eggs only half-eaten. “It’s not fair that we have to share the one stupid truck.”
“That’s the thing that’s not fair, huh?” said her mother, lingering in the open doorway. A slight breeze caused her apron to flap. She was looking out at something in the yard.
“We can’t keep using Dad as an excuse for why we don’t have shit around here,” Brandy said.
In a small voice, her mother said, “Watch your mouth.” Then she stepped quickly out onto the porch.
“Mom.” Brandy felt instantly horrible. She turned around at the table and, from the kitchen windows, saw her mother cross down into the yard. She was still clutching the broom.
Brandy got up and stood at the back door. The pickup’s keys still hung from the pegboard on the wall by the door, so she knew her mother wasn’t just going to climb into the truck and drive away. Instead, Wendy Crawly went over to the line of hedges beside the garage, where she crouched down, the broom poking out from under one arm like a jousting pole. For one heartbreaking moment, Brandy thought her mother had broken down, fatally injured by her daughter’s careless comment.
When Wendy stood back up and turned around, Brandy could see her mother clutching something in one hand.
Heading back toward the porch, her mother asked her if she had actually seen Matthew leave the house this morning.
Brandy shook her head. “No. What is that?”
Her mother mounted the porch steps and set the broom against the railing. The thing she held looked like an article of clothing, wet and speckled with mud. “It’s one of your brother’s shirts.” Water dripped from it onto the porch.
The look that swam briefly across her mother’s face made Brandy uncomfortable.
Wendy Crawly looked over her shoulder and back out into the yard. She said, “I guess it could’ve fallen from the clothes line without anyone noticing.”
Brandy followed her mother’s gaze to the length of rubber cord that ran from the porch to the side of the garage, about four and a half feet off the ground. It drooped slightly in the middle. Then she turned back to her mother, who was fingering a series of holes in the T-shirt. “That kid,” Wendy muttered then stomped past her daughter back into the house.
Brandy turned back toward the yard. Something flapping against the low chain-link fence caught her eye. She stepped into a pair of her mother’s sandals that had been left on the porch and crossed down into the yard and over to the fence. Bending down, she saw a dollar bill caught in the diamond-shaped lattice of the fence.
Back in the kitchen, with the dollar bill tucked securely in the waistband of her lacrosse shorts, Brandy dumped the remainder of her breakfast into the trash then washed off the plate at the sink. She could hear her mother in the living room, searching for her purse and cursing quietly to herself.
“Your purse is in the laundry room, Mom.”
Looking distraught and glancing at the slender gold wristwatch she wore, Wendy hurried across the kitchen and into the laundry room. She began to say she didn’t see it but cut herself off midsentence. She reappeared in the kitchen, peering down into the opened compartment of her handbag.
“Okay,” Wendy said, zipping the bag closed and winding the strap over one shoulder. “What time do you have to be at the Olsons’ tonight?”
“Six.”
“Then I’ll stay late and pick up some extra tables at the diner.”
“You sure I can’t drive you?”
&n
bsp; “No. You can take your bike or walk. And you can throw in a load of laundry for me, too.” Wendy snatched the pickup’s keys off the pegboard on the wall. “If you see your brother, tell him I want him home before dark. There are leftovers in the fridge.”
Her mother went out the door, careful not to let the screen door slam, and a moment later Brandy could hear the stubborn growl of the pickup’s engine rumbling to life. From the kitchen windows, she watched as the truck pulled around the dirt turnabout then pulled out into the street.
After she straightened up the kitchen (and took a sip from the open bottle of Budweiser that stood on the bottom shelf of the fridge), Brandy went upstairs and took a long shower then pulled on some fresh clothes. Grumbling to herself about her brother, she went into his room and collected his dirty clothes off the floor—they were filthy and they stank—and kicked his muddy shoes under the bed. She gathered up her clothes from the bathroom, along with some blouses that were strewn about in her mother’s room, then she carried the whole bundle in a laundry basket downstairs. There was already a load in the washing machine and another jumble of colored garments in the dryer. She pulled a shirt and a pair of slacks out of the dryer, found them terribly wrinkled—they must have been sitting in the dryer for too long—then dropped them back in, along with a damp bandana, and restarted the cycle. She exchanged the unwashed clothes in the laundry basket for the damp ones in the washer and was about to carry them outside to the clothesline when she saw Matthew’s T-shirt—the one her mother had found outside in the yard—balled up on a shelf next to a tub of detergent and a box of fabric softener sheets.
She took the shirt down, held it out, and looked it over. It was speckled with mud and smelled of her little brother’s perspiration. The armpits were yellowed and the cuffs of the sleeves were frayed.
She turned the shirt around and examined the line of small holes running vertically down the back. Frowning, she poked a finger through one of the holes.
Outside, she was halfway across the lawn with the laundry basket in tow when she stopped. Matthew’s bike was leaning against the side of the garage. The pickup had been parked in front of it, so neither Brandy nor her mother had seen it. The bike—a red-and-black contraption their father had gotten him from a yard sale a few years ago—had grown too small for Matthew but he still rode it, cherished it. The chrome gleamed in the sun and there were waterproof stickers on the handlebars. The handgrips looked worn and the plastic seat was cracked.
She didn’t like the way the bike sat there. The single reflector at the front of the handlebars was a single eye staring at her.
Weekends, Matthew spent the entire day on his bike, usually with his dumb friend Dwight Dandridge. She didn’t like seeing it here now, with Matthew gone, having left it behind.
Brandy hung the laundry on the line quickly, her mind only half on the task. Sunlight glinting off the bicycle’s chrome and the single reflector kept catching her in the periphery of her vision.
It bothered her.
3
After she finished with the laundry, Brandy laced up a pair of sneakers, took another swig from her mother’s beer bottle in the fridge, then went back outside. The Dandridge house was just a few blocks up the road. With the air still cool and breezy from the previous night’s storm, the walk was pleasant enough despite her urgency.
The Dandridge house appeared over the next hill. It was a Cape Cod in the style of the Crawly home, but that was where the similarities stopped. Splintered, sun-bleached siding, crumbling porch steps, a roof that sloughed mossy green shingles like a reptile shedding old skin, the Dandridge house looked like the residence of a family of hillbilly cannibals in a horror movie. She had gone to the house only a handful of times in her life—typically to fetch her brother when he had forgotten to return home by curfew—though she had never been inside. Two of Dwight’s older brothers were in Brandy’s grade, Kyler and Fulton, and even though they weren’t twins she could never tell them apart. Equally long-haired and grimy, the Dandridge boys always smelled of cigarettes and spouted vulgarities with the unpremeditated casualness of sailors. There had been sisters, too, even older than Kyler and Fulton, but they no longer lived in Stillwater and Brandy could not recall their names. Mrs. Dandridge, whom Brandy had spied only a handful of times despite having lived a few blocks from the Dandridges her whole life, surfaced in Brandy’s head as a waiflike chain-smoker with sunken jowls, jaundiced skin, and the wide, gaping eyes of a curious owl.
As she approached the house, Brandy found herself thinking mostly of Mr. Dandridge, the father. He was a vulgar, overweight drunk who worked odd jobs around town. Often, his metallic-gold Ford pickup could be seen parked across the street from Brandy’s school, which was within walking distance of Crossroads, the local watering hole. On more than one occasion, she had read in the local blotter about Dwight’s father getting arrested for drunken misconduct, fighting, and a DUI. Now, as she stepped off the road and onto the flagstone path that led up to the front of the Dandridge house, it was Dwight’s father she was hoping would not answer the door. She couldn’t see the metallic-gold pickup at the side of the house, so she held out hope.
Brandy took the porch steps cautiously, fearful of their unsteadiness. Dragonfly wind chimes hung from the porch and tinkled in the breeze. A few wicker chairs stood around like uncomfortable strangers. Beside the front door, stacks of plastic flowerpots stood in curved towers. Her nose caught a faint but undeniable whiff of dog shit. Casually, she checked the soles of her sneakers then knocked on the door.
Some time went by before she heard commotion on the other side of the door. Someone shouted at someone else. A dog barked sharply several times then whimpered when a man’s equally sharp voice silenced it.
Damn, she thought. It’s him.
The door opened to reveal Mr. Dandridge’s bulldog face with receding hair. His cheeks were full and pockmarked, his lips a deep purplish hue. A perfectly round belly protruded from the sleeveless T-shirt he wore and hung over the waistband of paint-splattered chinos. His bare feet looked short and stumpy and threaded with coarse hair, like the feet of a hobbit.
“Hi, Mr. Dandridge. I was looking for Matthew. Is he here?”
His eyes appraised her. Brandy was suddenly very aware of her bare legs and the tightness of her shirt.
“Hey, Dwight!” he shouted into the house, though he didn’t take his eyes off Brandy. Behind Mr. Dandridge, Brandy was aware of a dog pacing anxiously back and forth in the hallway. A television blared from somewhere inside that horrible place. “Dwight! Get your ass over here, boy!”
Brandy shifted uncomfortably on the porch. Mr. Dandridge’s lecherous stare was like a hot spike being driven into her chest. Inside the house, the sound of rapid and heavy footfalls prompted Mr. Dandridge to waddle unceremoniously out onto the porch—Brandy shifted sideways, giving him a wide berth—and over to the assemblage of wicker chairs.
Dwight appeared in the doorway, a frown creasing his tanned and round face at the sight of her. “What do you want?” Dwight asked. His voice was squeaky, like an old cellar door.
“I’m looking for my brother,” she said just as Mr. Dandridge lowered himself into one of the wicker chairs. The chair made a rustling sound and Brandy was certain it would collapse under the large man’s weight. It didn’t.
“He’s not here,” Dwight said.
“Have you seen him at all today?”
“No. Last time I saw him was yesterday.”
“Do you know where he could’ve gone?”
Dwight rolled his meaty shoulders. He was wearing a Marilyn Manson T-shirt that was too small for him; the sleeves squeezed his thick forearms.
“Maybe someplace he wouldn’t have taken his bike?” she pressed.
“Oh.” Dwight’s eyebrows arched. “He might have gone to Hogarth’s.”
“The drugstore?”
“Yeah. There was a vampire mask in the window he wanted to buy.” His eyes darted furtively toward his f
ather then back at Brandy. “He had enough money yesterday and he said he wanted to buy it before someone else did.”
But why wouldn’t he take his bike? she wondered.
“Okay,” she said, already taking a step back from the door. Behind Dwight, the shapeless dog paced tirelessly back and forth, back and forth. “If you see him, tell him to come on home.”
Dwight nodded and shot another look at his father, who had lit a cigarette and now stared vacuously out at the road. Then he shut the door, leaving Brandy alone with Mr. Dandridge.
“Good-bye,” she said quickly, moving toward the stairs.
“Brandy, right?”
She froze. “Yes, sir.”
“Your daddy ever come back?”
It was like being slapped across the face by a stranger. “No.”
Mr. Dandridge grimaced, as if the cigarette suddenly tasted bad. A clot of bluish smoke wafted about his balding head. Eyes the color of oil continued to scrutinize her.
“Your mom at home?”
“She’s working,” she said curtly.
“She seeing anyone?”
Her first instinct was to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about, even though she knew damn well what he was talking about. Then she thought she might lie and say yes, her mother had been seeing someone lately. Either way, she did not want to have this conversation with Dwight’s father. She did not want to stand there and look into his hungry eyes a moment longer.
Either he sensed her discomfort or he simply grew tired of her silence. “Forget it,” he said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “Just get on home.”
She hurried down the steps and moved quickly down the flagstone path toward the road. She felt his eyes on her until she crossed the hill and disappeared from his sight.
4
No matter the season, nighttime always came early to Stillwater. The mountains were to blame, prematurely blotting out the sun and casting a dark pall over the sleepy little town. Livestock were ushered back into their pens after a day of grazing. Out along some of the more remote roadways where power had yet to be restored, generators kicked back on, one after another, until a sustained deep-bellied growl gently shook the earth. The old grain silo in the field off Gracie Street, which served as a fairly reliable if overlarge sundial throughout the afternoon, was now shrouded in the deep, black shadow of Haystack Mountain.