Citrus County

by John Brandon

  Shelby had been enjoying a dream about gangs of sly otters who could convince women to do anything. But then she smelled something and the otters were gone. It was morning. The smell wasn’t part of the dream. There’d been a scent in the dream, but not a savory one. There’d been the scent of wet eyelashes. Shelby didn’t know where this new smell was coming from. She kept her eyes shut, didn’t look at the clock. Bacon and maybe something baking. She heard footsteps up the hall and a knock. The door creaked open. Shelby knew it was her father. She rolled and let light into her eyes, her hands shooting down instinctively to make sure she was decent, that she hadn’t writhed her pajamas up or shucked them off. She looked at the head poking into her doorway and it took her an exhausting moment to know that it was indeed her father. He’d shaved his beard. Clean-shaven, Shelby’s father looked vulnerable. The skin on the bottom half of his face was gray, unseasoned.

  “Be in the kitchen in five minutes,” he said, and Shelby could see the words being formed in his throat and born out his lips. He made a frisky motion with his eyes, then withdrew his head.

  What now? Shelby thought. He’d cooked breakfast, like the old days. No one had cooked breakfast in their kitchen in forever.

  Shelby slipped on a pair of her army pants and a tank top. There was so much to shelter her father from, so many threats to deflect. She wasn’t sure she had the energy.

  In the kitchen, Shelby saw five or six waffles piled on a plate, more on the way.

  “When did we get a waffle iron?” she asked, taking a seat.

  “Wedding present,” Shelby’s fathered answered. “It was in the attic.”

  “This house has an attic?”

  “It’s more of a closet in the ceiling.” Shelby’s father moved the syrup from the counter to the table, pulled two short glasses from a cabinet. He was jittery, as if afraid to lose momentum. He poured Shelby some juice, and then she noticed the juicer and a stack of grapefruit carcasses. There was bacon, too. He pushed a plate of it toward her.

  “I didn’t know we had a juicer, either,” Shelby said.

  “I got it when we moved down here.” Shelby’s father picked up a napkin and wiped his mouth, though he wasn’t eating anything.

  Shelby sipped her grapefruit juice. She squeezed syrup onto her plate and dipped a strip of bacon in it. She ate that strip and then another and then another. She grabbed a waffle. Her father was staring at her—a heavy stare, full of blatant pride.

  “I’m going to ignore my real feelings,” he said. “I’m going to make my real feelings think they’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  Shelby’s throat was thick with bacon. She wanted to hug her father or say something supportive. She saw herself doing it, hopping up and giving him a big squeeze around his trim waist and saying just the right thing, but she couldn’t get out of her chair. She couldn’t do more than sit there, cutting up her waffle.

  “I’m taking you to St. Pete,” he said. “The Dalí museum, then an early dinner at the pier.”

  Shelby pushed her plate away, suddenly full. “An outing,” she said.

  “That’s what it’ll be.”

  Shelby rose and went to her room. She put on lip-gloss and a lime-colored dress, then she brushed her hair.

  When she went out to the living room she found her father watching the preview channel, a scroll of all the programs that would air in the next couple hours. He looked overwhelmed. Shelby didn’t see the remote. She went over to the TV and shut it off, stood before it and did a spin, her dress flaring at the bottom. Her father was trying and she was going to help him if she could.

  Outside, her father opened her car door, ushering her. They drove down Route 19 in his plain sedan, then cut over to the expressway. They were both daunted by the silence in the car. Shelby had removed Kaley’s car seat weeks ago, but it was still impossible not to notice the lack of Kaley in the back seat, singing and asking questions and thumping the passenger seat with her blunt little shoes. Shelby knew what point her father had reached. He had nothing left but hope and prayer and things like that. He’d reached the point where there were no more physical actions he could take, nothing to do but accept that he’d lost the fight for his youngest daughter and had to move on to other fights. He kept clicking the radio off and on, trolling the static-plagued stations.

  “Let’s not talk about her today,” Shelby said.

  Shelby’s father patted her arm. He opened his window and turned the radio up. The station was an adult contemporary outfit from Tarpon Springs. They played a couple songs by Neil Diamond or whoever, then the DJ began plugging a bunch of charities.

  Shelby loved the paintings of the desert. Though she’d never been to one, she loved deserts. She would save them until she was old; she would not visit a desert until she felt death nearing. The docent at the museum was infatuated with Shelby’s father. She looked only at him when she spoke, and he kept ignoring her, gazing at the paintings.

  Shelby decided that she was not utterly desperate. She decided she did not need hopes and dreams. She had a good dad to help and an interesting aunt to visit and a boy to chase. She was going to sit back and watch things get better. If she wanted an open destiny, she had to allow that destiny to take shape.

  It had been a week. Nights and days. Too many hours to count. Toby couldn’t stay away any longer. He had to see. Whatever it was, he had to see. Before school, he looped around toward the bunker, this long route to Citrus Middle that had once been a thrill and then a chore and then a ruinous routine and this day was a relief. Toby’s feet knew where to step. His mind was losing darkness with the coming dawn. He felt old in his bones. He felt like the old man everyone had assumed he was.

  He stepped over a fallen branch, heavy with young green acorns, and rounded the last pinch of a turn and when he came near he could plainly see that the bunker door was flipped open. He came to a stop, hoping the unfinished light was playing a trick on him. He knew it was no trick. Toby felt that he had a moment before he’d drown in panic. He breathed the morning air. He had a moment before his ears would shut down with heat. His legs started up again. He was approaching the open bunker. The woods were the color of pencil lead.

  The broomstick was jammed in the latch. Kaley had forced the door open with a broomstick. The latch was probably broken now. Toby looked in and saw the cot against the wall and saw Kaley’s fallen tower. She’d stacked blankets and pillows and cases of canned goods and the books Toby had brought her and she’d used the bucket the cleaning products were kept in and she’d pushed the latch open and pulled herself out. Toby had no idea when.

  Time hadn’t stopped. Minutes were still passing. Minutes could make the sun rise. Without minutes, there were no days, no years. Toby wondered if Kaley had been cooking this up for a long while or if she’d acted out of desperation. He wondered how many times she’d tried to reach the latch, constructed her tower and failed and waited it out for more building materials, or had Toby’s absence prompted her to rely on herself? She was recast now. She had her own schemes. Her story was her own.

  Toby dropped his book bag on the ground and pulled on his mask. He began jogging circles around the bunker, winding wider each time. He could’ve run forever. He didn’t know if Kaley had been out for days or if she’d waited for the first light in the clogged vents this very morning. He knew she hadn’t been discovered, rescued. Toby would’ve heard. He had to get to her before anyone else did. She couldn’t be found anywhere close to the bunker, anywhere close to Uncle Neal’s property. Toby’s fingerprints were all over the bunker. What Toby could not think about was that she might be dead. He might find her dead or fail to find her, dead. All he had was what he felt, and he felt that she was alive.

  The light was thickening. Toby knew Kaley hadn’t found her way to the road. She hadn’t gotten close enough to hear the cars whizzing past on 19. She was still in these woods. Toby was nowhere near stopping. He weaved around thickets and ducked low branches, his mask already sopping wit
h sweat. Colors were showing now, the green leaves and white bay flowers and red azaleas. The kidnapping was, for the first time, just between Toby and Kaley. It had nothing to do with Toby’s evil destiny, nothing to do with Shelby or her father, nothing to do with Uncle Neal, Toby’s mother. It was just a crime, a violation of certain laws. The authorities couldn’t punish Toby, but there were other punishments.

  Toby was slowing. He’d thought he could run forever but he couldn’t. His next lap would take him almost onto Uncle Neal’s property, almost out to the swamp that extended back and blended into the springs. Toby thought he could hear the cars on 19, all rushing to get someplace important. He slowed to a walk. He had no bearing on the speed of the minutes. The minutes were not aware of his situation. He recognized every scent on the morning air, each of them full and slow. He pressed his palm against the rough bark of an oak tree as he stepped past it.

  When he saw Kaley’s stubbly orange hair reflecting the first honest morning rays, it took him a moment to believe it. He saw her skin and her scuffed white shoes. She was standing still. She was standing. She didn’t see Toby yet. He watched her. She kept looking this way and that, deciding which way to go, her head full of her own thoughts. She couldn’t move. She seemed not to want to. The cars could be heard, faintly, and their noise came from every direction.

  Toby walked up and Kaley didn’t run. Her face lost its alertness. She wasn’t scared or defiant. Toby didn’t know what to do. He felt he had no right to drag her, to pick her up or manhandle her. He felt unwilling. He felt like pointing Kaley in the direction of the road and nudging her into motion. He wanted someone to step in now, someone who knew what he was doing.

  Toby made a noise and Kaley moved toward him. She wasn’t serene or panicked. She may have felt just like Toby. He knew to begin walking and she walked next to him and he led her back to the bunker. They were far away from it, maybe half a mile. Toby felt like a tyrant. It wasn’t merely a violation of laws.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. It was the first time he’d ever spoken to her.

  She didn’t look up. She kept dragging her feet through swaths of weeds, knocking the frail flowers onto the floor of the woods.

  At school, Toby was feverish. He walked to class after class and then he walked to the lunchroom. The screeching of the other students, the reek of the county pizzas under the heat lamps, the fluorescent light glaring off the linoleum. He sidled back out against a current of bodies and found a quiet hallway. He walked as slowly as he could, perusing the tacked signs. Most of the classrooms were empty. Toby strolled down near the band room and back.

  He went up the eighth-grade liberal arts wing, ducking under an ornate banner. He approached the teachers’ lounge and could hear them inside—Mrs. Conner and the lady who taught Spanish. He hugged the opposite wall so he wouldn’t be seen out the little window. Here was Mr. Hibma’s door, open a crack. The lights were off but Toby heard a noise, a crunching sound. He nudged the door open and stepped inside, feeling like he was trespassing but also like he’d found an oasis. He couldn’t remember being here just an hour before, sitting in this room for class. He recognized the noise now, a pencil being sharpened. He saw Mr. Hibma’s desk. Mr. Hibma slouched in his chair, his back to Toby, turning the crank on the sharpener, which was bolted onto a big steel cabinet. The microwave beeped, startling Toby, and he looked over and saw a burrito in it. It smelled as bad as the county pizzas.

  “Mr. Hibma,” Toby said, not wanting to be loud but wanting to be heard.

  Mr. Hibma’s head moved slightly and his cranking let up. He didn’t answer Toby, though. He began cranking faster, before stopping and sighing and holding the pencil in the air. The pencil was a nub, just the eraser and a point. Mr. Hibma dropped it in the trash.

  “I’m supposed to be in lunch,” Toby offered.

  Mr. Hibma looked at the clock without curiosity. “What can I do for you, Toby?”

  Toby had never seen Mr. Hibma humorless. He was like a dying plant.

  “I need to talk to you,” Toby said.

  Toby had departed the lunchroom and had made his way to the liberal arts wing, had come into Mr. Hibma’s classroom and was now standing here staring at his geography teacher. His stomach was a stone. Mr. Hibma was the only adult who could help or hurt him. Toby cleared his throat.

  “I’m not really the problem guy,” Mr. Hibma said.

  “You are for me,” said Toby.

  “I wanted to be the problem guy, but I can’t. At this point, I’m getting by hour by hour, class by class.”

  “That’s how I get by,” Toby told him.

  Mr. Hibma splayed his fingers on the desk. “You’ve still got a chance, but it’s too late for me.”

  “I came here to say something,” Toby said. “Not to listen.”

  “Do you think you’re my favorite or something? I gave you all those detentions because that’s what teachers do and I was trying to be a teacher. I don’t have a favorite. If you want to be somebody’s favorite, start kissing ass. Definitely don’t bother people during lunch.”

  Toby used the sound of Mr. Hibma’s voice to brace himself. “You have to fix something for me,” he said. “I don’t want detention. I want to be in real trouble.”

  “You’re not going to be young much longer.” Mr. Hibma did something drastic with his mouth, some kind of smile. “Don’t waste time trying to tell people about your problems. Do things that are youthful until you’re not allowed to do them anymore.”

  The microwave beeped again. This time Mr. Hibma rose and pulled the burrito out with a paper towel and set it on a counter. He didn’t return to his chair.

  “That girlfriend of yours, I’d concentrate on her and quit going around seeking advice. It doesn’t become you.”

  “I’ve never asked advice. You’re thinking of someone else. Advice can’t help me.”

  “You stole something or you broke something. That’s all any of you kids can do.”

  “And what can you do?” said Toby. “I bet I can do worse things than you can.”

  Mr. Hibma glowered at Toby. Whatever he was feeling toward Toby, it was pure. Toby was catching up with the moment. Mr. Hibma was blowing him off, and he was allowing Mr. Hibma to do so. “You’re not tough,” Toby said. “Whatever other problems you have, another is that you’re not a tough person.”

  Mr. Hibma pressed his thumb into his jaw. “That hasn’t been decided yet,” he said.

  Toby had gone against his own closely held wisdom, had gone and tried to bring something important to an adult, and he was getting what he deserved. He felt he could breathe again. Mr. Hibma didn’t seem to have anything else to say.

  “I better go,” Toby said. “Before the pizza’s all gone.”

  “None of this is personal,” Mr. Hibma told him. “Nothing, you’ll find, is personal.”

  Mr. Hibma taxied past several pawnshops, a barber, a new chain restaurant that had decided to give Citrus County a whirl. He passed a sign warning drivers to watch for bears. stor. There it was, the mini-storage complex owned by Mrs. Conner and her husband. Mr. Hibma parked and went into the office, where he was greeted by a woman about his age who wore a ball cap. The Conners weren’t around, the woman told Mr. Hibma. “Just you and me,” she said. She smiled and jutted her hip. It seemed to Mr. Hibma that this woman liked him, and he combated this by acting businesslike. He asked for a price list and chose a 13 x 9 unit that went for $51 a month. Mr. Hibma picked out a heavy lock. He wrote the woman in the ball cap a check, waited for the code to the gate, then went into the storage area and drove around until he located C-63. It was cool, and taller than it was wide. Mr. Hibma fetched a lawn chair from his trunk, a pad and pen, and a tall can of iced tea. He pulled the door of his storage unit down, sequestering himself inside.

  Renting this place was the next phase in Mr. Hibma’s campaign of friendliness toward Mrs. Conner. He’d begun bringing her coffee each morning, delivering it right to her classroom, and she was more
or less eating out of his hand. When Mr. Hibma told Mrs. Conner about his acquisition of one of her storage units, he would gain her absolute trust. She would say nice things about him behind his back, stick up for him if other teachers gossiped about him.

  Mr. Hibma had unfettered himself from the delusional project to mold himself into a standard-issue teacher, and he’d come to realize that all the energy he’d expended winning his victim over had not been in vain. It had been necessary. Everyone knew Mrs. Conner and Mr. Hibma were getting along now. When she turned up dead, Mr. Hibma could cry and express outrage like everyone else. He could say, “Why now, when I’d just realized what an inspirational, dynamic person she was?” He would mourn with the passion of the convert that everyone believed him to be. Everything was setting up for Mr. Hibma. He had to grit his teeth and weather the home stretch of the school year. It would take forever but it would also go by in a blink. If he couldn’t bring himself to do what needed to be done, it would be because of his weakness and nothing else. Mr. Hibma didn’t especially feel like a murderer, but maybe you didn’t until you murdered. He had never felt, particularly, like a non-murderer. Someone had to commit all these murders that were always being committed. Why not him? Why couldn’t his story be the story of a killer?