by Laura Bickle
“Here you are,” Mr. Haskins returns, waving a piece of paper and a pen, which I take from him. “You can sit in my office and fill it out. I’m sorry, but we don’t have any chairs out here, yet…”
He’s nattering, and I follow him back to a tiny room with DIRECTOR written on a piece of masking tape stuck to the door. The office is barely bigger than a closet. I step around stacks of paper and file cabinets to squinch into a tiny Victorian chair with a desk perched on one arm. I wonder if this is a test, to see if I can squeeze into the chair without disturbing anything. Mr. Haskins roots around behind his desk and gives me a coffee table book on Native American Mound Builders to write on.
The application is really simple—just name, address, phone number, age, and an emergency contact. There’s a space to answer the question: Why would you like to work for the museum?
I resist the urge to chew on the cap of Mr. Haskins’s pen. I write: Participated in a class presentation at the museum and would like to learn more about the museum and its artifacts. That much is true.
Mr. Haskins is babbling as I write. “If your history teacher agrees, we can offer you some AP credit.”
“That would be great.”
“We, uh, can’t pay you, since this is a volunteer position.” He frowns, staring down at the disaster zone that is his desk. “But I can write you an excellent college recommendation. You can also get free admission to the museum and museum events any time you like…” It’s clear he’s struggling to come up with other benefits.
I nod. “That’s totally okay.” I really didn’t expect any money. I know I’d only be making money if I was working at the hamburger shop, and this sounds like it’ll be much better. But having a job—any job—might be good for me so I can show my mom I can be more independent, more trustworthy.
Mr. Haskins grins in relief. “Great. When are you available to work?”
“I’m off school by three thirty on weekdays. I could do evenings or weekends.”
“Great. Any time you have is great for us. Seriously. You can work any time you want.” He sticks his hand over the desk to shake mine. “Welcome aboard.”
I blink. “That’s it? I have the job?”
“Yes!” He grasps my hand. “We’re delighted to have you.” He tucks my application into a file folder and jams it into a file cabinet. I’m sure that it’ll never be seen again.
I’m a bit stunned. It must show on my face, because he smiles at me reassuringly. “Really, we’re thrilled to have you. Interest in the museum by people under the age of the bingo set has been…lacking.”
“Thank you,” I say.
Mr. Haskins roots out from behind the desk. “Do you have time today for the inside tour?”
“Yes, please.”
He gives me the standard tour, often apologizing as he realizes that these are things he’s already shown my class: the public rooms, the current collection, the latest donations on display. I nod politely.
“But you’ll be spending more time behind the scenes,” Mr. Haskins says. He takes me to the doorway cordoned off with caution tape. My heart thuds, and I reach into my pocket for the catfish charm.
“What’s in there?” I manage to ask with a dry tongue.
“Since the flood, we’ve received a lot of donations. Most of them are junk, people looking to take tax deductions.” Mr. Haskins rolls his eyes as he descends the stairs. “You would not believe how many people try to donate their old encyclopedias or sets of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books as historically significant material.”
I can’t even remember a time when encyclopedias weren’t online. And the last time I saw a Reader’s Digest was in a doctor’s office waiting room, but I keep my mouth shut.
Mr. Haskins leads me into the room I snuck into the other day, and it’s still strewn with half-empty boxes. I don’t think it’s changed at all since I was last here. The same artifacts are spread out on the table.
“What I’d like for you to do,” he says, “is to go through these boxes and see if there’s anything interesting.” He gestures to a wall of precariously-perched cardboard boxes. The cardboard looks like it’s disintegrating, and it reeks of dust and cat pee.
“I’ll want you to put stuff that clearly doesn’t belong here in the Dumpster. Encyclopedias, National Geographic magazines…we have a list of stuff we don’t want. The other stuff, we’ll ask you to set aside for examination by the Historical Society. There’s a spreadsheet on the computer that we update to keep track of everything.”
“Okay. I can do that.” I gaze dubiously up at the wall of boxes.
“It’s not very glamorous,” Mr. Haskins says. “But it beats mopping out the men’s room.”
I laugh. “It’ll be great. Really.” I run my fingers over the sides of one of the boxes. It’s been scribbled over in Magic Marker. “Are all these from the same place?”
“They’re from all over. Some from that estate that I mentioned the other day. Some from folks cleaning out their attics. And there are some that we really dread going through.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. The stuff that is marked MARTIN. That came from a hoarder house.” Mr. Haskins shudders. “Her relatives were incensed after she moved to Florida. They boxed everything up and sent it to us. Which reminds me…if you find anything with roaches or bedbugs, we have big plastic bags for that. Let me know, and we’ll get an exterminator…”
Mr. Haskins turns to leave the room, still talking about bugs.
I reach into my pocket, fingering the catfish charm. I could leave it here, return it as I found it, and get off scot-free. It would be like it never even happened.
But I don’t return it. I keep my fingers tightly curled around it and follow Mr. Haskins up the stairs.
Maybe I’ll return it tomorrow, I tell myself. I have time.
Maybe.
*
Mr. Haskins gives me a copy of The History of Sumner County to read in preparation for my term paper. It’s a book that the Historical Society printed, which means black-and-white images bound with a plastic comb. I think they probably had it done at the local copy shop. I thank him for it and promise to bring grubby clothes to work in on my first day.
I still have a half-hour until Garth shows up. I don’t want to hover over Mr. Haskins, so I head out the back door of the museum. The museum sits along the riverbank, its weathered stone steps trailing down through a garden to a park near the river. The local civitan club has planted some marigolds and ornamental cabbage here that are still bright against the fallen autumn leaves.
The steps are slippery, and I stay close to the handrail as I descend to the park. A blacktop bike trail, wide enough for two people to walk abreast, traces along the edge of the river. It’s been many years since I’ve walked that track. I think it begins northwest of town at a rest stop and ends southwest in a pile of gravel because somebody ran out of money.
The river beyond it is a slow whisper of waves, the water brown and muddy. I have never known it to be clear; it’s always opaque. It can run fast in the spring and sluggish in the summer, depending on the melting of ice and how many beaver dams have been built up in its little tributaries. Today, it meanders along, whispering to itself as it moves around obstacles.
There’s an island in the middle of the river, a small one. Somebody built a house out there once upon a time. Now, it’s in ruins—just a crumbling foundation and two walls under a caved-in roof. Everyone visits the ruins when they’re a teenager, dragging boats up on the muddy beach and searching the hollow husk of a house for treasure from the time of the Civil War that’s rumored to be buried there. But nobody ever finds anything, and it winds up being littered with beer cans until the spring high water sweeps them away.
I sit down on a park bench to watch the rusty-looking water. The sun sparkles on it, and I imagine the river has not changed in all the time that people have lived here. It is eternal, a force upon itself. The sun is warm on my face, and I feel my eyes go half
-lidded as I listen to the soothing lap of the waves against the silt. I want to forget, to forget the stolen charm burning a hole in my pocket, missing bodies, Halloween parties, and everything else that’s wrong with the world. My heart has been beating a thousand miles a minute, and I just want the world to stop for a moment.
A splash startles me, and my eyes snap fully open. I look out into the water, hoping to catch sight of a beaver slapping his tail against the surface.
Something dark moves along the waves. Something sinuous. It moves with the current, undulating. It could be a log, and the movement of the water is simply working its magic on me, as it has so many others…
…but I swear that I see a fin and a black eye flash above the surface of the water before whatever it is dives back under and vanishes.
I hold my breath and watch for it, but it doesn’t return.
CHAPTER SIX
“WHAT’S THE BIGGEST CATFISH YOU ever saw, Garth?” I ask my brother a little while later. We’re sitting at Catfish Bob’s Pub, the local food joint, waiting on our to-go pizza order. The place is full of local kitsch: tree stumps made into bar stools, oars nailed to the walls, and a motion-activated singing bass trophy perched by the door. A stuffed catfish glowers down at us from the top of the bar.
Garth screws up his face and nods to the fish décor surrounding us. “You mean, in person? Not up on the wall?”
I glance at a picture of a man in a boat kissing a fish. “Yeah. For real.”
“The biggest one I saw was about thirty pounds. Jeff Luckbrenner and I went fishing on the Beer Float three summers ago.”
“You were sober enough to accurately gauge the size of the fish?”
“Yes. Unfortunately. We’d run out of beer, and I was just baking in the sun when I felt a tug on my line. Lothar was in the boat with us, and he started barking. I reached for the pole, but the line got tangled with the rope we were using to tether the cooler. Jeff and I tried to reel the fish in, and we nearly succeeded in getting a net under him before the line broke and he slipped away. Lothar was heartbroken and howled like a banshee. He was in the water after that fish.” Garth shakes his head. “I really freaked out when he went under a couple of times…Mom and Dad would kill me if I let him drown. Or if he got hurt trying to fight a catfish.”
I laugh at the image.
“But I figure the fish was about thirty pounds.” Garth holds his hands about three feet apart. “About this long. The size of Lothar.”
“They’d have been pretty evenly matched, then.”
“Maybe. But my money’s always on Lothar. He’d eaten our whole bucket of bluegill before tussling with the fish, but he still managed to stay afloat long enough for us to drag him back in the boat without capsizing.”
Everyone around here has a fish story. That’s the way of things. I start to tell Garth about the fish I saw at the park today…but I snap my mouth closed when a woman approaches us.
She’s in her forties, and not good forties. She’s got the kind of worn-out look that women get when they’ve spent too much time in bars and with the wrong kind of man. A little sad and used up. Her hair is bright red, and her eyeliner is smeared around her left eye. She smells like beer and cigarettes.
“Hey. Aren’t you the Sulliven kids?”
My back stiffens. I don’t know whether it’s the accusatory tone in her voice, or whether it’s the realization that, despite my best efforts with peroxide and hair straightener, that Garth and I still look alike.
“Yes,” Garth says mildly, his professional demeanor slipping into place. “Is there something I can do—”
The woman sticks her finger right in Garth’s face. “Yeah. There’s something you can do for me. You can figure out where the hell you left my son’s body.”
I can feel stares prickling at my back, and the ambient noise in the pub has dropped to silence. My heart begins to pound.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know you,” Garth says politely. He slides off his stool, and I follow suit.
“I’m Travis Jackson’s mother, dammit.” She leans into Garth’s face when she says it. Tears glisten in her eyes. “The Sheriff called me earlier today. Told me his body is gone.”
“Ma’am, I’m very sorry for your loss. But I’m sure that we could try to answer your questions down at the Sheriff’s Office…”
Mrs. Jackson stabs her finger into Garth’s chest. “I don’t want answers. I want my son! I know he’s dead, and I want him back, now!”
“Ma’am, I think—”
“I don’t care what you think! You idiots lost his body, and I want to bring him home!” She’s roaring now, sobbing.
There are people behind her, I realize. People from the bar, muttering among themselves. This is a huge scene, and I want no part of it. My pulse is pounding in the back of my skull against the weight of so many people staring at us. My breathing shallows, quickens, and I’m struggling to gulp down air.
I tug at Garth’s sleeve as the pizza boxes miraculously slide across the counter. Garth is still trying to be soothing. People get totally batshit over death, and it’s one of the most unpredictable things about our business.
“Why won’t you let her have her son back?” a man grunts behind her.
“Didn’t you hear—They lost the body! Lost it!” another growls.
“That’s not what happened,” I squeak. “We didn’t lose it. It was taken.”
The woman howls again. “Give him back to me!”
The guy behind the counter reaches for the phone. I figure that he’s probably calling the cops before this goes entirely pear-shaped.
Garth looks the woman squarely in the eye, still not losing his cool. Not once. Suddenly I have a whole new appreciation for my brother’s ability to stand his ground—and a whole new understanding of what my parents must be going through.
“Ma’am, I’m very sorry for your loss,” my brother says again. “But your anger here is misplaced.” He grabs the pizza boxes and moves past her. I scramble to catch up.
A big guy in a jogging suit blocks the door. I can see a trickle of sweat on the back of Garth’s neck.
“Excuse me, sir,” Garth says.
Silence hangs, punctuated by the woman’s sobbing.
“They’re just kids, Max. Let them go.” The man at the counter is holding the phone, threatening as if he has a gun in his fist. I flash him a look of thanks.
The man steps aside, and Garth and I scurry away. We trip the motion sensor on the animated bass hanging by the door as we escape, and he sings:
“Take me to the river…”
*
Garth and I don’t speak for a long time on the ride back. I watch his jaw clench and unclench, and my own knuckles are painfully white on the pizza box.
“This is bad, isn’t it?” I ask, at last.
Garth’s mouth flattens. “It sure isn’t good.”
We turn down the gravel drive to our house. Lothar is running loose in the yard, yapping at the top of his lungs, as he circles two sheriff’s cars.
“And that’s not good, either.” Garth parks the truck in the yard, keeping the drive clear.
My heart lurches in my chest. I hope that they’re here on some official business, and that whoever stole the floater hasn’t returned to hurt my family. I try to stay positive, but fear keeps creeping in. I don’t want to form the shapes of those thoughts in my head, but they crowd close, dark and menacing.
“Stay here,” Garth commands, popping open the door.
I ignore him. I put the pizzas on the seat and slide out. Lothar is all over me, yipping as if trying to tell me what happened. I pick the wriggling dog up and follow Garth around back to the Body Shop.
There are three men in black uniforms blocking the back door. Garth shoves past, but Sherriff Billings stops me with an arm.
“No, you don’t want to go in there,” he says.
“What is it?” I demand, my voice high and tinny. “What’s wrong? Is everyone okay?”
<
br /> “Your family is fine, but you don’t want to see this.”
I frown at him. I’ve seen everything: suicides, broken bones, even a few dead babies. It’s absurd that the Sheriff wants to protect me…from what?
Lothar wriggles free, lunging around the cops’ knees and plunging into the Body Shop. I seize the distraction and dodge past them.
My mom is leaning over a partially-unzipped body bag. Gramma and Dad are standing with Garth in the back of the room, shaking their heads. Relief washes over me. Lothar nips at the corner of the flaccid body bag that falls over the edge of the table. It registers that the standard-sized bag isn’t fully filled, like there’s a small body inside.
My attention flickers to the bag. “What’s going on?”
Mom approaches me. “Sweetie, I need for you to go upstairs.”
“Why?”
My dad puts his hand on my arm. “Charlie, please…”
Lothar reaches up and hauls down the corner of the bag with all his might. The body slides free of the bag, hanging partially off the table. I stare at it.
The body is covered in mud. I was right—it is small. A teenager. My size. My age, to be exact. Dark hair is plastered to a pale face, covered on one side by a purple bruise.
Transfixed, I approach. My mom reaches to pull me back, but my dad stops her. I stare down at the face, a familiar one. Her eyes are closed, mascara streaking down her cheeks. Her lips are slightly parted, and it seems as if she’s on the verge of drawing breath.
“It’s Amanda. From my class.” My heart hammers against my rib cage. “What happened to her?”
“She was found in a ditch on the side of a road,” the Sheriff says quietly. “Can you positively identify her?”
My thoughts spin. “Yeah. It’s her. It has to be.”
Garth pulls her back on the table, straightening the body bag around her shoulders. My dad picks up Lothar to exile him upstairs.
“What a shame,” Gramma says. She reaches for me, draws me back into a hug. “Did you know her very well, dear?”