by John Brandon
He sat down at his desk and squared a sheet of paper in front of him, readied a pencil, then wrote the following letter:
D,
I plan to kill a fifty-something-year-old woman in early June, an English teacher, and I would like to invite you to review the murder, to evaluate it as a work of art. I will smother this woman with a couch pillow. I have told no one of this but you.
Mr. H
Mr. Hibma did not feel in possession of himself. He didn’t know why he’d written this letter. He felt again like a character in a novel. Not a passive character, though—not at the moment. His story was going somewhere.
Mr. Hibma wasn’t going to mention which county he lived in, certainly wasn’t going to mention Shelby. In fact, he would drive to the middle of the state, somewhere near Orlando or something, so the postmark wouldn’t give him away. Mr. Hibma was going to go home and dig up the address of whatwouldtheythink. He was going to get an envelope out and slip his letter inside and he was going to drive to Clermont or wherever and pay whatever you had to pay to mail something to Iceland. First he was going to get a PO Box in Clermont, and he was going to use that PO Box as his return address. And he was going to have his mail from that PO Box forwarded to his villa. He was doing something. He was taking part in his life.
Toby had received, on his locker, a card informing him that his pole-vaulting book was overdue. The fine was a quarter a day. There was no mention of a maximum fine the book could accrue, of a retail value the library put on the book. Toby didn’t know if he could simply re-borrow the book, or if the library would take it away from him and put it back on the shelf, in case another student wanted a turn with it. Toby wanted to keep the book till the end of track season. He was going to keep it and then pay the fine. He had an allowance now. He could afford it. Not that the book was helping a great deal. All Toby could claim to have mastered, so far, was his natural fear of hurtling through the air. His grip and his stride were coming along. Except for the moment when he was supposed to gain altitude, to shoot upward, he could approximate the look of a pole-vaulter. He was a member of the track team. He was on the team. That was the important thing.
The first meet was upon him. Toby rode the bus with his teammates out to a complex that bordered the rock quarries, near the grounds of Lecanto Middle School. There was no crowd, not even parents. Toby drank a soda then jogged a lap around the track. There was only one pole-vaulter on the opposing squad, a sturdy Asian kid who wore a visor. Toby went over like a stand-up sportsman and shook the kid’s hand, and the kid wished Toby luck in claiming one of the two all-county spots. There were six pole-vaulters total, the kid explained. He, himself, would have one of the spots, and the other one was up for grabs. He told Toby one of the most pivotal parts of pole vault, this season at least, would be the coin flips. It would be crucial to never go first, because if you went first you didn’t know what height you had to beat. Pole-vaulters were supposed to alternate turns, but last year two kids had kept bumping shoulders as they crossed paths and they ended up getting in a fight. One of the kids got his tooth knocked out, the Asian kid told Toby, so now one vaulter went three times, then the other went three times.
Toby couldn’t quite follow all this. “The coin flip?” he said.
“I’ve got it mastered.” The Asian kid had a twinkle in his eye. “I’ve been practicing for months.”
“You can be good at coin flips?”
“Same as anything: practice.”
“When you practice, do you flip the coin yourself?”
“That wouldn’t do much good.”
Toby went off by himself to stretch. His team was designated the home team, so he would be the one to call the flip in the air. He wanted to call this thing right and tell the Asian kid that he hadn’t practiced a bit, that he was just a fortunate person. Toby drank some water, sized up the bar, and threw himself on the mat a few times. The 400 started. The runners flew up the straightaway, then bunched on the curve. When they passed Coach Scolle he ran with them for a stretch, grunting. Rosa and Sherrie sat in the direct center of the field, back to back, eating fries one by one. The female long-distance runners perched themselves atop the big coolers and painted their nails. When the 400 ended, there was no cheering. The runners slapped each other’s arms and climbed into the bleachers.
Here came the pole-vault official, silver dollar resting in his palm. He told Toby to call it, then tossed the coin and retreated a step. The silver dollar seemed huge. It somersaulted unhurriedly in the air.
“Tails,” Toby said.
The coin did not bounce. It was cradled by the grass, heads up. Toby looked at the Asian kid, who wasn’t bothering to gloat.
“You didn’t do anything,” Toby scolded him. “I’m the one who called it.”
“You went with your gut, didn’t you?”
“Flip it again,” Toby said to the official. “Just for fun. I want him to call it.”
“What will that prove?” said the Asian kid. “It’s a meaningless flip.”
“Pretend it has meaning.”
“Pretend?”
“Nice and high, now,” Toby said.
The official was amused. He flipped the coin.
“Tails,” the Asian kid called.
Up went the coin and down it fell. “Tails it is,” said the official. He picked up the coin and ambled off.
Toby took his three tries, not clearing more than eight feet, while his opponent serenely ate a container of cut melon.
Toby rode the bus back to school then walked home through the woods, passing close to Shelby’s house. The night he’d taken Kaley seemed distant, like a part of history. All the secrecy and intrigue had staled. Toby no longer got a charge from seeing an old man wearing those gray Velcro sneakers. Thinking about Kaley while he was at school didn’t buoy him, didn’t make him feel important. He wondered what he ever thought was special about her. She was fussy and messy and even without an appetite she managed to burn through food by leaving the containers open. She spilled half the water Toby brought down there. She was starting to smell in a way Toby couldn’t wash off. Toby still hadn’t uttered a word to her. If he did, it would be to yell at her.
When Toby got to the house he went in his room and took out his mother’s hand mirror. He’d told Shelby the truth when he said he had no pictures of his mother, but he had the mirror and that was all he needed. It had a faded, oriental-looking pattern on it. Its weight always surprised Toby. It felt good to hold. He squeezed it by the handle, cooling his palm. Toby sat on his bed, keeping his head stationary and angling the mirror so as to examine the corners of his room. He wondered if his mother had ever used the mirror, if she’d held the mirror in one hand and a brush in the other and sat erect on a chair near a window, if she’d left the mirror on a stand near her front door and checked her makeup in it. Toby doubted it. It had been a gift, probably, from someone not very dear. It had collected dust over and over and been wiped clean over and over. It had been unwanted, but too nice to throw out.
Toby forced himself to stand. He put the mirror back on the shelf and went outside, headed for a little gas station that mostly sold cigarettes and beer and lottery tickets. It was night. The wind singing in the tops of the pine trees irritated Toby.
At the gas station, he loaded up on junk food—packaged cakes full of creams and custards, cookies, candy bars. Kaley had to eat something. She didn’t like fish sticks or chicken patties or apples. Her cheeks weren’t plump anymore and you could see her spine right through her shirt. He had to give in and let her have soda too. She wasn’t drinking water.
Toby had to keep lugging the generator back and forth. He had to keep washing Kaley’s bedding and emptying her buckets. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. She could sleep. She wore that shrewd look, seeing through the dimness like a cat. The bunker smelled like Kaley and Kaley smelled like the bunker. The bunker was becoming her home, Toby a visitor.
Shelby wore yellow rubber gloves. She’d
lathered up the bathtub, had bleach and glass cleaner and some brand-new sponges. She was resting, sitting on the toilet bowl. She had already vacuumed all the carpets in the house, dusted the tables and dressers. She didn’t feel like they’d lived here long enough for it to get dusty. It had been someone else’s dust, the previous owners’ dust. Shelby arched her back to make her spine crack, relishing the scouring, chemical air.
She had a little radio with her, tuned to an AM station on which a very old man was relating stories about the past. Shelby felt like she was the only person listening to the station, like the old man was talking only to her, but she supposed that was how everyone felt. The old man was speaking about the establishment of the first national parks, about how men in need of work had come from all over the country to blaze trails and put in signs and build ranger stations. There were no commercials. When the old man went to pee, you had to wait for him to come back.
Shelby wondered if she was sanitizing the bathroom of Kaley. Shelby had given Kaley a hundred baths in here. She was scrubbing the last traces of her sister out of this room. She ought to be doing something constructive, like homework or like cooking or maybe exercising, but those things seemed so difficult. They required so much faith. Shelby felt comfortable on the hard, flat cover of the commode. She wished her father wouldn’t come home, that night wouldn’t fall. She could stay where she was and think of her sister calmly and honestly—just think of Kaley, not about whether or not Kaley was with them, whether she was gone forever. Kaley was not like other kids. It was a fact. She wasn’t like other people. Kaley never held onto anything, not grudges or promises. It was a type of toughness Shelby did not possess. Kaley could forgive. She was a person who could forgive the world and forgive the people closest to her.
The old man on the radio cleared his throat and broke it to his listeners that it was time for him to wash up for supper. Shelby heard his chair creak and then the swishing sound of his slacks.
The porch. Uncle Neal had his generator out, testing it—the same brand as Toby’s, but bigger. Uncle Neal had examined the roof, he told Toby, and stocked canned goods. Hurricane season was around the corner again.
“Maybe this is the year,” Toby said.
“This place ain’t worth a hurricane’s time. I’m doing this stuff because it’s the kind of stuff I like to do.”
“Preparing?” said Toby.
“No, wasting time. I like to waste time.” Uncle Neal massaged his nose and snorted, trying to dislodge something. “I made a to-do list, that way I can waste the whole day.”
A stinkbug landed on Toby’s thumb and he carefully brushed it away.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you if you got a tapeworm, because we need to get to the doc and get rid of it before I’m out of house and home.”
Toby shook his head.
“We’ve been going through snacks and drinks like I-don’t-know-what.”
“I’m growing,” said Toby.
“Going through toilet paper too. I guess the two go hand in hand.”
“Maybe I do,” said Toby. “Maybe I have a worm.”
“I think I lost my to-do list,” Uncle Neal said. “I’m going to sit in my rocking chair until it turns up. If you go in, bring me one of those cloves.”
Toby went in and choked down a few cold nuggets. He spotted a pack of black cigarettes and assumed these were the cloves. He pulled one out, went back to the porch, set himself up in a low chair, then passed the clove to his uncle, who pulled a match from somewhere and struck it on the porch floor.
“Think I’ll make it to hurricane season?” he asked.
Toby looked out in front of him, at nothing.
“I’d say it’s a coin flip.” Uncle Neal held his clove away from his face. “Did you grab the mail?”
“I didn’t.”
“I’m watching for the county newsletter. They’re trying to put in a putt-putt on Route 50. I’m going to speak against it.”
“Do you mind if I smoke one of those?” Toby asked.
“I won’t stop you.”
Toby fetched the rest of the cloves. When he returned to the porch, Uncle Neal struck another match and held it out toward Toby. The smoke was bluish. It filled Toby’s skull and sat in there. As soon as Toby had his clove going good, Uncle Neal looked at the one he was smoking, a dreary expression on his face.
“On second thought, let’s put these out,” he said. “This isn’t the mood for clove smoking. Cloves are for when you’re worn out but hopeful.”
Uncle Neal blew most of the burning ember off his clove, then tamped it out patiently on his knuckle. One of his knuckles was gnarled.
“I guess we’re not too hopeful,” Toby said.
“I should say not.”
Toby spun the lit end of his clove into the floor. He slipped what was left of it behind his ear. He didn’t want to be sharing a mood with Uncle Neal, but it seemed he was.
“What do you smoke in this mood we’re in now?” Toby asked.
“Don’t know,” Uncle Neal said. “Something we ain’t got.”
A little girl’s body was found in a scrub habitat across from Buccaneer Bay, a small water park located in the next county south. The girl had gone missing years ago. She’d been left in a shallow grave and little more than bones were left of her. Her parents now lived in Jacksonville and had been flown over to identify her hat and fill out paperwork. She’d been buried in high-heeled shoes someone had put on her.
All this had happened in the course of a single day—the body being found in the wee hours by an old-timer training his terriers, and the parents, at about two in the afternoon, making a statement to the press. When Shelby had arrived home from school, she’d known nothing about it. She’d found her father in the kitchen, mumbling in front of the sink, leaning on the counter in a way that made him look crippled. He refused to sit. He gave Shelby a summary, his voice stiffening on the phrases he quoted from the news. He told Shelby that he considered this little girl’s family lucky. He was facing Shelby now, leaning on the counter with his forearm.
“Stand straight,” Shelby commanded.
He did so, sort of propped himself. Shelby noticed a garbage bag on the floor, full of pamphlets. She nodded toward it and her father said he’d made an error joining all those, whatever they were—clubs. They couldn’t help him. They were support groups, that’s all.
“Is that so bad?” Shelby asked. She didn’t know what to do about this other little girl, what to say or think about it. It had nothing to do with her and her father. That wasn’t true, though. It was an insult. Shelby felt disrespected.
“I think it is bad,” Shelby’s father said. “I think being in all those groups will keep me from—” He didn’t finish.
“Maybe you’re right,” Shelby said.
“You don’t keep getting mail about it, do you?”
“You’re leaning again,” said Shelby.
“Why did I bring us here?”
The simple answer was that a job had been waiting for him. There was a guy high up in mosquito control that he knew from his boxing days. Shelby knew what her father meant, though. In any other county, none of this would’ve happened. Kaley would still be with them.
Shelby bent so she could catch her father’s eyes and he aligned himself. He did something with his jaw and drew an enormous, wheezing breath. “Are you going somewhere?” he asked. “You’re always going somewhere.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
“Toby? Is that where you’re headed?”
“Not today. He’s always busy.”
“What’s his deal?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure I know,” said Shelby’s father. “I don’t know what questions to ask anymore.”
“I don’t think Toby has a deal. I don’t think he wants one.”
“Is he okay, though? Is he okay for you to hang around with?”
“I’m not sure,” Shelby said. “I think that’s what I’m tr
ying to find out.”
“You will then,” said Shelby’s father. “You’ll find it all out.”
Shelby held her arms out, but did not move any closer to her father. She made him stand free of the counter, made him lead in the hug, provide the firmness. Her and her father’s lives were a series of injuries and insults to those injuries. Shelby wanted to see that little girl’s bones. She wanted to know every single thing that had happened to her.
“Was that some kind of prayer you were saying?” she asked. Her father’s arms were clamped around her, pressing on her ribs. “That mumbling when I walked in—was that a prayer?”
Her father squeezed tighter, almost stopping her breath.
Shelby dumped the contents of her book bag and replaced them with the handjob flag, a pack of snack cakes, and a staple gun she’d dug out of the utility room. Since her sister’s disappearance, no one—with the exception of Mr. Hibma, from whom she’d drawn a couple detentions—would dare discipline her. She’d been given a free pass on skipping school. She’d been caught stealing a cookie in the cafeteria and nothing had happened. She’d thrown her PE coach’s whistle in the toilet.
She followed the path she and Toby had taken to the library, then cut to the right at the fire road and shuffled through a corridor of spaced myrtles. She neared Central Citrus Baptist and took a moment at the edge of the woods. A painting crew was packing gear into a van, three guys all wearing denim shorts. Shelby watched as they slid a ladder into an apparatus on the roof of the van, dug bottles of sports drink out of a cooler, then crept out of the lot.
Shelby advanced to the front steps of the church, which were cordoned off with tape. The painters had done the steps, the front porch, the shutters. Shelby ducked under the tape and stepped up to the door, the soles of her boots sticking with each step to the newly painted wood, leaving imprints of her treads. It felt to Shelby like she was taking sides. She wasn’t sitting on the fence. She was doing something Toby would appreciate, no matter how he’d acted when Shelby first mentioned it. Shelby was doing something her Aunt Dale would approve of. She was doing something, she believed, that she herself could get behind.