The More They Disappear

by Jesse Donaldson

  The pastor’s canned sermon droned on. Harlan wondered how so many lives could be summed up by the same rote words, wondered how much any single person there truly knew Lew. Harlan felt like it would take the words of all those gathered to tell Lew’s story, to tell any man’s, for that matter. He tried to think of who would speak at his own funeral, couldn’t come up with a single soul.

  The service ended around the time the pastor realized no one was listening. When he said, “Amen,” the deputies drew their guns and shot blanks in the air. Frank invited Harlan to take part, but he’d declined, which led to Frank muttering about Harlan being stuck up. The crowd covered their ears as the shots rang out. Frank looked proud as punch, bruise and all, as he aimed for the sky. The sound reminded Harlan of the day Lew died, only this time nobody cowered. They just stared at one another in dull, dumb shock.

  As the echoes from the gunshots died down, Lewis and Mabel stepped forward and tossed dirt onto the casket from something that looked like a giant saltshaker and a cemetery employee lowered the casket with a crank. Lewis returned from his burial duties and wiped away his daughters’ tears. Mabel Mattock’s face held more true sorrow than any of the others but she did not weep. She did not need to.

  Harlan slipped away and headed for the far edge of the cemetery. Unlike Lew’s final resting place, Angeline’s wasn’t blessed with shade from an ancient sycamore and didn’t have a view of the pond. Angeline had had a body made for water. In the summer, she and Harlan would hike to hidden eddies along the river and swim in the shallows. Angeline could spend hours floating on her back and looking at clouds, could swim across the river and back if challenged. Harlan had wanted her to spend the afterlife near something she loved but the only plot he could afford was weed-strewn and within earshot of the highway.

  Standing above Angeline’s sparse grave, Harlan became tongue-tied. She was just a name and dates. Angeline Chapman. Dead at twenty-two. Dead four years. When they’d met, their hearts had been unworn. Untested. Now Harlan’s was broken. That was his cross to bear but Angeline’s fate was so much worse—she would never know how it felt to be broken-hearted. Harlan couldn’t remember the last words she’d said to him. I’ll see you soon. I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you. It could have been any of those or none. Maybe she hugged him. Or maybe they kissed goodbye. Or maybe she ran excited to her tiny two-door car and drove off waving. He hadn’t made a point of remembering. There’d been so much future then. Now it all felt like make-believe.

  How could he explain to Angeline that he’d just been to the funeral of a man who’d helped free her father? That he’d gone to keep up appearances? It was a shit reason. Keeping up appearances was just another way of saying scared. Scared to do the right thing. And it was fear that had kept Harlan from hunting down Doyle. All those times he told himself he’d go when the time was right and yet it never was. Years. Years had passed. And still the fear. All the flowers and honeyed phrases spoken to the dandelions that grew above her grave meant nothing.

  Harlan imagined Doyle free and easy. Doyle strolling down an Arkansas street. Doyle flying a lure over a green river. He pulled a half-sunk rock from the ground and pounded at that name she’d inherited. Chapman. A simple Angeline would have been enough. A simple “A.” He bashed at the headstone but nothing changed. Centuries would pass before the name wore away. And by then it would be the work of God. Of wind and rain and hail.

  * * *

  Even though the casket was closed, Mary Jane could feel Lew staring at her. She was reeling from pills. She’d been popping them all morning. Even Jackson seemed to notice she was acting strange and kept asking her if she was all right. She kept saying fine. She was fine. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Fine. She distracted herself by counting the people sitting in front of her as if counting sheep. Whenever she reached the end, she started over.

  She watched Mark’s father and tried to picture Mark as a grown man. Trip Gaines didn’t know she and Mark were dating, didn’t know that Mary Jane knew his secrets. The drug lord of Marathon. What a crock. Mark thought his father was evil incarnate; Mary Jane just thought he was a jerk. Their unhappy home lives had brought her and Mark closer together, though sometimes she liked to pretend they were orphans who’d met on the streets. It made a better story. Didn’t matter that it wasn’t true.

  When Mark came back to Marathon on college breaks, he’d call the private line that had been her twelfth birthday present and they’d meet at the dollar movie theater one town over or along the dock for late-night make-out sessions. Those secret rendezvous and clandestine hand grabs, those midnight fucks in the back of his car, made her feel alive, made life mysterious and exciting. Together they shared secrets. Bonnie and Clyde.

  Imagining a future with Mark sustained Mary Jane through the funeral, sustained her as the preacher recited scripture, sustained her when Lew’s wife and son approached the casket, when the ceremonial gunshots rang out in the air, when her mother wiped a tear from her eye. Because Mary Jane knew why her mother cried. That was her cross to bear—a memory that refused to stay buried.

  It had been her freshman year, during the last months of her waning popularity as a pretty girl, before her future as just another face in the crowd. A group of juniors invited her to skip the homecoming pep rally. One of their brothers was a clerk at the Motel 6 and would let them party in an empty room for a joint and twenty dollars.

  They played a drinking game called Kings. At some point Mary Jane volunteered to get more ice so she could boot and rally. It was then—the moment she was contemplating vomiting outside a neglected motel the color of an ashtray’s bottom—that she saw her mother and Lew Mattock climbing the concrete stairs in a desperate clutch. She tried to convince herself that it was a mistake, that it was some other woman who only looked like her mother, but she couldn’t ignore the throaty laugh that rang out as Lew ran his hands over the woman’s body. She’d heard that laugh her entire life.

  She knew she should turn around and return to the rented room with the double beds and drink until memory became a blur, but instead she carried the empty ice bucket up the stairs, as if drawn by an invisible string. Through a sliver of space between the blinds, she saw Lew fucking her mother, pounding her as if he didn’t care how much damage he did. Lyda’s arms were tied to the bed and Lew’s fingers were clasped around her throat but they couldn’t stifle her voice. Her mother sputtered, moaned, begged for more, and Lew gave it to her, gave it to her until something broke inside Mary Jane.

  She ran down the stairs and into the parking lot but she didn’t have anyplace to go. She was stuck at the motel and soon her new friends would come looking for her and she couldn’t let them see her upset so she sat next to the ice machine and had a good cry. After the tears stopped falling, she filled the ice bucket and returned to the party, where she turned the nearest bottle up until she passed out. The others reveled around her slumbering body.

  She’d never confronted her mother about the affair, but that was the moment her life began its downward spiral. She’d never been able to talk to her father and then she lost her mother when she needed her most, when she needed guidance through the vagaries of adolescence. Her skin became oily and pimples followed and then one of her boobs grew bigger than the other and both of them sprouted dark hairs around the nipples. The optometrist prescribed glasses she never wore and she lost all the friends she’d ever had—the girls who’d come to her slumber parties in middle school—and all because she no longer looked like part of the tribe. Mary Jane blamed everything on that moment she caught her mother with Lew.

  It was Mark who’d kept her from spiraling completely. Mark, who she’d dated for a couple weeks in middle school the way kids that age date—bashful kisses in the hall, hands held in the movie dark. She’d broken up with him because that was how the world worked at twelve. Two weeks seemed like an eternity. Besides, Mark was odd. Shy. A bit of a loner. In a way, the same traits that caused her to break up with him in middle
school drew her back to him in high school. They explored their bodies and Mark called her princess line so they could talk deep into the night about the teachers they hated and the classmates they hated and the parents they hated and it was all so comforting. They never made anything official—boyfriend-girlfriend—they were above all that; they had an understanding. When he left for college, Mary Jane’s profound sadness caught her by surprise. Mark had been her best friend, her fuck buddy, the one person who didn’t abandon her, but it wasn’t until he left that she realized she’d fallen in love.

  The funeral plodded along and Mary Jane slunk into her cave. She wouldn’t allow herself to be sad that Lew Mattock was dead. Fate had brought her and Mark together for a reason. He was the boy who wanted the sheriff dead. She was the girl with a buried grudge. Lew’s funeral wasn’t a misfortune. It was a triumph. Proof they were capable of anything—terrible deeds, sure, but greatness, too. It was revenge. And when the popping sound of the crank that lowered the coffin started to ring out in a steady drone, Mary Jane lifted her head to watch the crowd scatter and realized she’d made it through the trial.

  She skipped out on her parents’ postfuneral brunch plans by feigning sickness. It wasn’t hard. Her father had been asking her if she was okay all morning and her mother was practically catatonic. They dropped her off at home, and Mary Jane’s heels clicked along the brick walkway and up the steps to the house. The paint along the banister of the porch had flaked to reveal the wood beneath. It needed to be sanded and given a new coat—the sort of task her father would begin but never finish. She smoked a cigarette but her hand wouldn’t stop shaking. She could barely hold the filter to her lips. Her nerves were on fire, her skin clammy. Mark had told her to stay in Marathon but she saw no reason to stay.

  She walked into the house and wrote a note. “Gone to Lexington. Back in a couple days.” It was vague but truthful enough to keep her parents from worrying. Then she climbed the stairs to her room and packed a bag. Her teddy bear’s battery bay reeked of pot, so she stuffed him beneath the bed. She imagined a private eye scanning the room for clues, but she wouldn’t leave any. Her face would be on milk cartons. She wondered how long it would take until her mother turned the room into something else. A guest bedroom? A yoga studio? Before she left, she considered taking a photo from the dresser—a photo of her on the stage or blowing out birthday candles—but the girl in those photos was dead now.

  * * *

  Lewis invited the pastor to lunch out of some misplaced sense of obligation. He thought the man would decline and was surprised when he said he supposed he should be there to comfort the family in their time of need. His father hadn’t been much of a churcher, but the man Ezra Baker hired left plenty to be desired. The cuffs of his suit had frayed and strands of hair swept his balding head like pieces of pulled cotton. He chain-smoked and bounced nervously on the balls of his feet whenever he wasn’t holding a menthol. When Lewis told Sophie to expect one more, she gave him an exasperated look, eyed the pastor, and mouthed, “Why?” Her father, standing nearby, chuckled softly.

  “It seemed like the right thing to do,” Lewis replied. Sophie nodded like this was the sort of answer she expected. She liked to tell Lewis he put too much stock in doing the right thing, liked to tell him he didn’t understand the way the world worked, but Lewis didn’t know what qualified her to judge. Sophie never seemed to do much of anything.

  Trip told Lewis he would buy lunch and bring it to the house, acted as if he was doing him a big favor when it was exactly that sort of mundane, achievable task that had brought Lewis comfort in the days since his father died. “Isn’t that nice of Daddy?” Sophie said, skilled at asking questions in a way that told Lewis how he was supposed to answer. He nodded.

  There’d been talk of having a wake and sending his father off in style, but the plans never materialized. Lewis didn’t have it in him to organize it and his mother wasn’t much help, so they settled on a small family brunch. Mabel set the table while the pastor smoked one after another on the back porch. Lewis checked on him now and again and the man would offer some halfhearted words of consolation. It’s a blessing to be with the Lord. He’ll live on through his family. Those sorts of things.

  At some point, his mother whispered, “I don’t know how you’ll get rid of that man,” and Lewis laughed. Sophie, who was pouring her father a Perrier with a slice of lemon, eyed them suspiciously. She was stoned on one pill or another. Red wine and pills were Sophie’s social bread and butter, a crutch her father fed.

  “It’s nothing,” Lewis said. Sophie didn’t look pleased. She hated being left out of the conversation, and whenever someone laughed, she assumed it was at her expense. She hadn’t always been so touchy or maybe she had and he’d never realized it. They’d been so young when they married, just a couple years out of high school. Sophie, for better or worse. Sophie since middle school. Everyone thought they were the perfect couple—the doctor’s beautiful daughter, the sheriff’s strapping son.

  Trip walked into the kitchen and sniffed the air. “Something sure smells good,” he said, lording over the spread he’d brought, though if he expected compliments, Lewis didn’t oblige. He was busy dealing with the yardbird the doctor had picked for the girls. The hen had been halved and its body cavity would produce in Ginny and Stella a volatile mix of fascination and revulsion. Lewis asked his mother to make Wonder Bread and game hen sandwiches slathered with salad dressing.

  Trip joked that they were butchering the poor bird a second time, and Mabel said, “The girls are still refining their palates.” Lewis laughed. His mother seemed more alive than she’d been in years. It felt wrong, laughing with her so soon after burying his father, but maybe it was just some bizarre form of grief. Everything about the day seemed so close to normal. His family could have been getting together for any other occasion and they would have acted the same way. The only piece missing was his father but his absence wasn’t felt. Not really. Except for the shabby pastor who hardly knew him, no one said a word about Lew Mattock. There were too many particulars to deal with—tables to set, glasses to fill. There was small talk about the weather, the never-ending task of entertaining Ginny and Stella.

  Trip took a sip of sparkling water and put his arm around Sophie. “You like my lunch, don’t you, baby girl?”

  “You know I do,” Sophie replied, always her father’s china doll. Lewis wondered if Sophie would ever love him as much as she did her “daddy.”

  Mabel finished plating the food and Lewis went to tell the pastor lunch was ready. Trip slipped out behind him and said it was time they had a heart-to-heart. Lewis hoped he wasn’t about to get a lecture.

  “What do you know about Harlan Dupee?” Trip asked, catching Lewis off guard.

  Lewis watched the pastor light a cigarette and examine the backyard trees as if he were a botanist. “Harlan’s all right.”

  Trip opened his suit jacket and put his hands on the rail of the back porch. On another man the suit would have been gray but on Trip it shined silver. Everything about him sparkled. His white hair, his platinum watch, his gleaming, toothy smile. If ever there was a man who could polish a turd into gold, it was Sophie’s dad. “I ran into the mayor and he told me they’re going ahead with the sheriff’s election. Anyone who files papers can run. It’ll be a bunch of nobodies, but Billy figures Harlan will throw his name in the hat. Needless to say, no one’s too excited about that. Your father’s a hard man to replace.” Trip paused, as if to give Lewis’s dad a moment of silence. “So I was trying to figure out who wouldn’t let the sheriff’s department go to heck and came up with the one man who might be able to fill your father’s shoes.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “You.”

  “Me? I don’t know the first thing about being sheriff.”

  Trip put a hand to Lewis’s shoulder. “How much do you think your father knew before he started?”

  Lewis shrugged.

  “People like having a Mattock
as sheriff. Besides, you’ve been running the security business for years. People trust you. And if you don’t run, Harlan will win, and I don’t want to badmouth the poor boy, but don’t you think you could do better?”

  “I guess.”

  “Damn right you could.” Trip clapped him on the shoulder.

  Lewis tried to picture himself as the sheriff, but the image kept morphing into a portrait of his father. “What would Sophie say?”

  “She’d support you, of course. Running for sheriff is a great testament to your father. To your family.”

  “What would I need to do to run?”

  “File paperwork with the county commissioner. I’d let it slip to a few people that you’re a candidate and the rest will take care of itself.”

  Trip made it sound easy, and even though Lewis didn’t like going along with his father-in-law’s plans, he often found himself doing just that. It was Trip who’d found their house and put the money down, Trip who’d told Sophie it was time to have children, Trip who’d extolled the virtues of the Volvo that Sophie used to shuttle those children to and from that house. The doctor had a way of phrasing things so that any other course besides his own seemed foolish.

  “So it’s settled?”

  Lewis liked the idea, not because it was a testament to his father but because it was a chance to do something for himself. He was tired of the same old, same old. He could spend the rest of his days goofing off at Riverside Security or do a job that made a difference. He needed a change and maybe this was it. He put out his hand for Trip to shake. “I’ll give it a shot,” he said.

  Trip pulled him into a clipped hug. “Your father would be proud,” he said, but Lewis didn’t believe it. Lew Mattock would have called his son foolish, but his opinion didn’t matter anymore. Lewis would run for sheriff and prove his father wrong.