The Scamp

by Jennifer Pashley

  It took days, I say. It wasn’t, like, all at once and she was gone. They thought she would be okay, I say. But they couldn’t get all the water out.

  Like having pneumonia, he says.

  I guess. They called it delayed, I say. Delayed drowning.

  No one ever said it then. The doctor said it once, and then all the other people you have to talk to, the cops, a social worker, a funeral home director, neighbors, it’s all just sorry sorry sorry until it means nothing. It’s just people talking at you, words bouncing off you while you move like a robot and wish it were you, yourself, filled up with water and dying. Not a baby. Not your daughter.

  The little metal fan rattles on the counter inside the Scamp. I wonder how long the batteries will last.

  When? Couper says.

  Last year, I say. Summer. I say it in my head. Last summer. The summer before. This is the summer after. There’s next summer, and all the summers before that one.

  It’s pretty, he says. Summer.

  I named her that because I loved it, I say. And she was born in a cold snap, in January.

  Dead trees in the yard and gray frosted grass, and I was trying like hell to convince myself that the cold wouldn’t last, trying to project myself forward, one summer at a time.

  Couper dips his finger from one line to the next, this one a long one that hooks up around my belly button. It’s deeper, and wider, than the rest. My knees shake.

  Where were you? he says.

  I was right there, I say. In the backyard.

  I can feel the edge of the lawn chair in the backs of my knees. Smell the hose water and the cut grass. The azaleas along the back fence, hot, burning pink against white pickets.

  Let’s go, Couper says.

  Right now? What time is it?

  He looks at the phone. There are two missed calls. Almost four, he says. When he opens the curtains, the sky is still dark, still heavy, but lit by all the surrounding homes, the glow from the Walmart sign, the McDonald’s, the tall, bright, boxed lights of the parking lot. I don’t know how long I can keep this up, staying up all night, driving during the day, sleeping in the passenger seat beside him, interviewing, searching.

  Couper says, There’s a great barbecue joint about six hours from here, closer to where we’re going. They open early.

  You’ve driven this route before? I say.

  Many times, he says.

  twelve

  KHAKI

  I’ve seen reporters. Investigators. Cops. Some are better than others. In Sunbright, in the fall, I let a special investigator into my kitchen. I lived way out on a back road, a house that was mostly kitchen and porch with upstairs bedrooms and a cellar you could reach only from the outside. I was one of the few people short enough to stand upright in it. I’d grown my hair to my chin, dyed it a shining chestnut brown, and had gotten a dog. A big female German shepherd who had a purebred litter before I got her fixed. I sold them all for $1,500 apiece. Eight of them. The mother, mostly black, smaller than the big-footed tan male I mated her to. I named her Juneau.

  The investigator said they’d found human remains. Most of a foot, he said, the long bones dug into the dirt, the round ball of an ankle.

  A dog found them, he said, like this one, holding his hand out to Juneau, who rumbled a low growl at him. Near the riverbank, he said.

  I kept Juneau tight at my side. She was smart and well trained, would sit still and wait, alert, until I told her to do otherwise. She didn’t like men in or near the house, especially if they touched the property in any way. A mailman. A meter reader. An electrician. She could stare a man down.

  I lived near enough the river. I had a reputation, if you asked the right people, for kindness.

  You sometimes let strangers into your home, Miss . . . White? he asked me. He was a type. A balding, older guy who was tall and thin and had a bass voice. He wore regular clothes, plain-front tan pants and a button-down shirt with a vest, not a cop’s uniform. But he carried a badge. And a gun, close on his hip. He probably had a wife he’d been married to a long time. A high school sweetheart even. Might have had a daughter he doted on. That guy.

  When I didn’t answer him quickly, Juneau growled louder. I stroked her soft head. Did someone tell you that? I asked him.

  I heard you would not turn away someone in need, he said.

  I let women in, I said. A woman who needs a place to stay, who’s in trouble. Who needs shelter, I said. Sure.

  Not men, he said.

  I turned my body to face him, my hands out at my sides, emphasizing my stature. Me? I said. Alone? No.

  I went to the stove and poured him coffee that I’d made in a percolator, which he drank with honey. A Southern thing I never caught on to. I liked my coffee strong, and black.

  When did you start providing this service? he said.

  I didn’t set out to provide anything, I said. I just let a friend stay. And then another. That’s not a service. I lowered my chin, raised my eyes, smiled gently at him. That’s just how I was raised.

  Lies, and not.

  He had a picture of a missing Kentucky woman. Caitlin Rogers. She stood by a pickup truck with her hair in a long blond ponytail, her husband’s hand on her forearm, guiding, holding her in place.

  The same hand he would lay on her cunt and then tell her to hold still.

  Montana.

  She was thin in the picture. None of the weight of a baby in her hips, in her chest, yet. Her arms, long and slender.

  I took the photo and held it, looked at her face, small with all that scenery around it. I remembered her face when she was in my arms, and again, looking up at the trees, blood leaking in the whites of her eyes as her windpipe crushed against bone under the garrote. Her face swollen and bruised when I held her by the temples and dipped her head in the river.

  Have you ever seen this woman? he asked me.

  No.

  This woman did not stay here? he said.

  No.

  Who was the last woman to stay here?

  Not Caitlin Rogers, I said. And not from Kentucky.

  What was her name?

  Do you need to know? I said.

  He sipped the coffee, still cooling, in one of the handmade brown pottery mugs I’d gotten at a natural foods store miles away. They’d hung in the window of the shop, made by a local artist, each one different. Each one signed.

  Her name was Jessica, I said. She was from Montana.

  Her name felt cold on my lips. Montana. Cold, like river water.

  Where was she headed? he asked me.

  To see her mother, I said. In . . . I stumbled. Florida.

  Her name cracked my voice.

  Florida, he repeated. I hated to hear anyone else say it. I hated her name coming out of a man’s mouth. I wanted to be the only one to say it. The only one to taste those letters, in that order. They tasted like honey and sweet corn when it bursts milk onto your tongue, buttered and hot in late summer.

  Do you know if she got there? he said.

  This is not her, I said. Jessica is small, like me, I said, and dark haired.

  He shrugged. Do you know if Jessica made it to Florida? he said again.

  No.

  No she didn’t?

  No, I don’t know.

  He sipped, and then shuffled his feet in work boots under the table.

  You cared enough to take her in, he said, but you don’t know if she arrived there safely?

  She wasn’t my friend, I said. She was a friend’s friend. So no. I leaned against the counter with the sink behind me, the faucet tapping a slow drip into the enamel. I crossed my arms. Sometimes, I said, a woman needs anonymity.

  Sometimes we all do, he said. He slid the picture of Caitlin Rogers back into a manila envelope and thanked me for the coffee.

  It’s hard to find someone, he said, who makes a good-tasting cup of coffee. I’d put grounds and a bit of cinnamon, a dash of nutmeg on top to flavor it. He nodded at the percolator. But you sure do, he
said.

  Anytime, I said.

  Well, I hope we are no longer strangers, he said.

  But he never came again. I left there within weeks, and moved on to another river town, where I met Carolina, small as a mouse, underfed, misunderstood. I fed her down-home meals in a trailer kitchen, the kind of food they didn’t feed her at college. She stayed the winter and I wrapped her in fur, her body blue with cold, crushed with ice.

  thirteen

  RAYELLE

  The barbecue joint is called Hiram’s. It’s a lean-to shack with picnic tables outside, in the parking lot, under the trees, along a grassy edge of the road. People arrive at ten in the morning, and the smoke curls over the highway, sweet-smelling with hickory and spice. The air is heavy, hot and humid, with no breeze except what blows your skirt when a truck goes by. Couper ducks his head at the screened-in window, and a guy at the back with an apron and a spatula comes up when he sees him.

  Man, you did come back, he says.

  I told you, Couper says. Then, Give me a sweetheart deal, he says. He winks at me over his shoulder.

  Uh-huh, the cook says. He scribbles it down on a pad. And how’s your sweetheart doing? he asks. He cranes his head to where he can see me standing just behind Couper.

  Oh, Couper says. Different sweetheart, he says.

  I got you, man. The cook belly-laughs and heads to the back, repeating, Man, I got you.

  Different sweetheart, I say, at a picnic table under a pine tree. It’s sticky in spots and you have to be careful where you sit, or you’ll end up with sap on your clothes.

  I’ve been here before, Couper says.

  I heard, I say.

  A girl about twelve brings us a pitcher of sweet tea and tall glasses. She wears glasses and her legs, not far off the color of the tea, have that teenage wobble in the knee, a looseness in all her joints that will take her years to grow out of.

  If she ever does.

  I’m tired, and I feel a fight brewing. I’m about to rail on Couper for bringing me back to a haunt he’s been to before with some other woman. Even though I have no claim on him. I’m just a blip in his fifty-something years of sweethearting around the country. Still. It burns me.

  And then he says, Tell me. Were you drunk?

  When? I say. There are so many yeses: the night we met, the day we left town. Last night.

  When the baby died.

  More cars come in behind us, crunching on the dirt and gravel parking lot, kicking up dust. I watch the teenage waitress bring a tray of ribs to another table.

  Who gave you that idea? I say.

  You did.

  I never said that.

  You didn’t have to, he says.

  No, I answer. I wasn’t. When she died, I was in the hospital. It was nine in the goddamn morning. I wasn’t drunk.

  When she drowned, Couper says.

  What, are you on to your next investigation? I say. It was settled, I say. There were no charges. And fuck you for asking, I add.

  That doesn’t make it settled, he says. You know that.

  The girl comes to us next, carrying a tray with a full rack of ribs, a red-and-white paper carton of beans, and one of coleslaw. Between them, a hunk of corn bread. She lays down a stack of napkins and two square Wet-Naps.

  Enjoy, she says in a tiny, tinny voice.

  Couper eyes me over the food, waiting. Mouth watering, for ribs, for information.

  I was drinking, I say. I wasn’t drunk. I was sitting in the sun with her, I say. I just. I just put my head back, I say. And it all comes rumbling out of me. For a second. Just a second. I hold up my fingers like a little pinch. And in those couple of seconds, I say, she made her way over the side of the kiddie pool by herself. She fell in on her face. And I got her, I say. I got her out. In seconds.

  You passed out, he says. He takes a knife and slices through the rack, pulling away pieces for himself, sucking on the sweet sauce.

  I wasn’t passed out, I say. I closed my eyes in the sun.

  While drinking, he says.

  I could punch him right in the throat.

  Or myself. When I moved into my mom’s, that August, I went through a hair-pulling phase. I’d lie on my old bed, weave my hands into my hair, and pull as hard as I could, till my eyes teared, till my scalp burned. It was the only way I could manifest the pain. The only way I could give some shape to what was raging inside me, but it could have been anything. I could have clawed my own eyes out. Gashed my own wrists.

  Summer was pissed. Her face full of water, the longest parts of her hair, on top, hanging down, dripping in her eyes. She coughed and spat and screamed. I pulled her out of the water by her arm, and jounced her around, her bottom full and heavy anyway. We went inside, into the cool back bedroom, and I changed her diaper, put her in a fresh cotton dress, and she was okay. She had a bottle, and then I put her down. She was sleepy from an afternoon outside, from a good cry.

  I’d left the drink out there, on the arm of the lawn chair, sweating in the sun, the ice melted down so the whiskey was just a light, clear gold. I knew June Carol was on her way over before Eli came home. Coming with a pan of scalloped potatoes and ham. Shit, I thought. I looked in on Summer sleeping, flat on her back, her arms out, her legs fat and curved. I’m going to quit, I thought. I clenched my hands into fists. Tonight. When I noticed the glass, the evidence, sitting in the sun, I rushed out and grabbed it, washed it out, and brushed my teeth.

  Couper’s phone, on the table, goes off, vibrating the wood. He looks, and ignores.

  When did you take her to the doctor? he says.

  In the morning. And then I give him the same rundown I’d memorized for the nurses, the doctor, for the cops, the social worker, everyone who asked.

  I checked on her twice, I say, and both times, she was sleeping.

  I pick at a corner of the corn bread, hungry, but disgusted by eating. The bread is sweet, though, like honey, and has whole kernels of corn in it.

  You know what they say about sweet corn bread, Couper says.

  No. What?

  Made by a woman in love.

  No one says that, I say.

  He shrugs. What happened in the morning? he asks.

  She usually got up early, five or six, I say, but for whatever reason, we both slept in. Eli got up, and went to work, and neither of us woke up until like nine. When I went in to get her, she was up on her knees, rocking and coughing. There was a strange sound coming from her chest, I say. Deep and rough, and she was spitting up this stuff that looked like foam. Like soap suds.

  Did they admit her right away? Couper says.

  They sedated her, I say, and kept her under for two days to see if they could clear the water from her lungs. I went without June Carol, left before she came over, called my own mother and left a message, called Eli at work and left word that we were at the hospital.

  We went in on a Tuesday. She was gone on Thursday. She was born on a Thursday. So was I. My mother always said Thursday’s child has far to go. I sat out there in the hallway, outside her room, going nowhere at all, shaking from not sleeping, not drinking, while the nurses shuffled around me, waiting for my mother to come. Nine o’clock is pretty early for her.

  What’s it to you? I ask, sour. I watch him work all the meat and sauce off a long rib bone, lay it clean on the tray between us.

  Sweetheart, he says. It’s everything to me.

  Don’t lie to me, I say.

  I’m not, he says. I never have.

  Who were you here with? I say. Which sweetheart am I?

  I was here with my wife, he says.

  He has never said anything to me about anyone.

  Are you still married? I ask. He doesn’t wear a ring, but some guys don’t. Eli’s father thought rings were embellishments for ladies, were just a way that you secured your investment on the woman who would raise your babies for you, who would stand by your side through life.

  It takes him a long time to answer. I pour more tea. I take a ri
b for myself. They are sweet and so tender the bone is pink and the meat comes right off.

  No, he says.

  Are you sure? I say. It sure took you a long time to answer.

  I have a separation agreement, he says.

  But you’re not divorced.

  His eyes watch the road behind me. The dark eye moves at its own pace, not quite in sync with the blue one. Not yet, he says.

  Then he leans back, his tongue working bits of meat out of his teeth. He opens his chest, friendly, the way a dog rolls over and completely trusts you not to stab it, not to gut it open in the sun. His mouth is relaxed, not clenched, not turned in. He licks at the corner of his lip.

  How did it end? I ask.

  Which time? he says.

  The teenage waitress comes back, replaces our pitcher of tea, and asks if she can get us anything else.

  No, thanks, Couper says.

  The cold of the new tea goes right to the center of my forehead like someone placed an icy quarter there.

  How many times have you been married? I say. I press into my brow, rubbing away the cold. By now, a pile of clean white bones lies between us.

  Four times, Couper says. Then, You’re sweetheart number five.

  We are in the car already, full, and sleepy in the hot sun of midday, before I think to ask him.

  Wait, I say. Do you have kids? I think that if he does, they could be older than me.

  No, he says. His lips fold in, his mouth closed and heavy. I watch him watch the road up ahead, not ready to pull out, not ready to drive. I let it go.

  We’re at a different KOA when he tells me about the pattern of twos. That that’s the reason he pulled what information he could on Khaki and included her picture for Denis. That more than once, there have been two at a time. Alyssa, and then Jessa. Holly, and then Khaki. That Elizabeth, the college freshman, and Denise, a landscaper, went missing the same weekend. When they found Denise, he says, they found only her head.