If I Disappear

by Eliza Jane Brazier

  He sees that he has let himself out too much, and I watch him enforce a new relaxation, rock with his horse, flick his reins and lean back. “You don’t understand what it’s like out here. What it gets like. Even leaving for a couple days, like I done, you start to see things clearly you just weren’t seeing before. It was just the four of us out here for a long time. And Addy’s a psychopath, and Emmett’s a nut, and Rachel, she was chasing crazy, or maybe she was running from it, but either way, she was so close, things started to overlap.” He cranes back in his saddle. “You know how they say, ‘You can’t see the woods for the trees’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stay here long enough, you’ll know what they mean.”

  “But where is she? Where is Rachel?”

  “She left. Lucky girl.”

  “Her mother thinks she’s dead.”

  “Her mother—” His accent sours on the words, and he corrects it. “Her mother thinks whatever happens to work best for her at the time.”

  “But Rachel loved it here.” He seems surprised I know so much about you. “On her podcast, she used to talk about keeping an MMC Pack.”

  “MMC?”

  “Murder, Missing, Conspiracy. It sounds stupid when you say it,” I add off his look. “But it’s information a person keeps with someone they trust. Information that might help locate them in the event of their disappearance. Medical files, names of close friends, jobs, education, anything that might—”

  “I don’t know anything about all that.”

  “Did she have a close friend? Was there anyone she trusted?”

  He seems irritated by my questions, and I can’t help thinking that’s a clue. Why doesn’t he want to find you? Why doesn’t he seem to care? He has the bitterness of someone who once cared too much.

  “Rachel? Ha. It was a point of pride, to her, not to trust nobody.”

  “But she must have left clues.”

  He looks at me like I’m a child—no, he looks at me like I’m an adult acting like a child. “She didn’t leave clues because nothing happened. Simple as that.”

  “So you just think she’s gone. Just up and left with no explanation?”

  “You didn’t know Rachel.”

  “I did too know her.” I want to say I knew you better. I knew your heart. I knew the real you, the secrets you confessed in the middle of the night in my bedroom. The words you whispered in my ear.

  “You’re making more of this than there is. Her parents are crazy. They drove her crazy. She left. She doesn’t want to be found.”

  “What about the police? What do they think?”

  “The police?” he asks like it’s a dirty word.

  “You never told the police? That she just disappeared?”

  “She didn’t vanish into thin air; she walked out. Goddamn, I admired it. I wish I had the gumption.”

  “We need to talk to the police.”

  “We?”

  “Don’t you want to help? Don’t you want to find her?” He says nothing, and it bubbles up inside me. His apathy, everyone’s apathy. The world goes around and people are murdered and attacked and kidnapped and tortured and everyone just looks the other way. You disappeared and everyone just goes on living like you were never here. “This is exactly what the problem is, this is exactly what she always talked about. Terrible things happen and people just go on with their lives. They don’t want to get involved. They don’t want to help people. This is the reason evil exists!”

  He has gone flat with me, statuelike, but his eyes burn. “If I thought Rachel really was in trouble, I would do something.”

  “But you can’t always see it! You can’t always see it when someone’s in trouble.”

  “You’re in trouble; I can see that pretty clear.” He looks into my eyes for one, two seconds, and then he moves on down the trail.

  * * *

  —

  Later that night I am outside Jed’s garage. I feel guilty, like we are already aligned, like I am mean for not trusting him. But I can’t trust anyone. And I think Jed knows more than he said. He was here with you for a long time.

  The garage is fifty feet from his house. The door is open. If I am quiet, I won’t get caught. I step inside. I find a truck, a motorcycle, an ATV, everything big, black and shiny except for a lone pink helmet on the wall: his wife’s? I take it off its nail, examine it like evidence but don’t find anything. I set the helmet back on the nail.

  At the back of the garage, a silver hunting freezer hums. The sound rises as I move toward it—piercing, off-key. My imagination bleeds a vision of your body, curled inside the silver box like a child playing hide-and-seek.

  I know I won’t find anything pleasant in there, but I have to look. Seven bodies in one freezer. What if you suspected? What if you found out? What if you were talking about Jed?

  I square up to the silver box, try not to think how it’s shaped like a coffin. I press my fingers under the handles on either side and I force the door up. The cold wheezes out. It oozes over the bare skin on my face and neck.

  It’s not human, but it’s so unexpected, so serene, that I leap back in surprise. I wait for a smell, and when it doesn’t come, my nerves bubble and burst along my back.

  There is a dog alone in the silver box, like a picture of a frozen life. It’s a pit bull, and it’s looking up at me, like it’s waiting for its master to let it out.

  My heartbeat throbs in my throat. It takes my head a while to come up with a convincing narrative. The dog must belong to Jed, but why is it here? Why has he kept it? And, more important, how did it die?

  Episode 33:

  The Preacher Was a Madman

  Their bones were buried in the garden outside the chapel, beneath the flowering rhododendrons. Some were never identified. Some weren’t even human.

  The rest of the week, I am never alone with Jed, but I see him everywhere. Up on a roof, flying by on his ATV, walking up to the shooting range with his rifle at his side. There is something haunted and fragile about him, and I know I can’t rely on him for anything. I can’t rely on anyone but you.

  I make it my goal to get to Happy Camp; I need to see the ranch from the outside, to get perspective. I need to think, without other people thinking for me. I tell your mother I need Benadryl, tampons, a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale. She tells me allergies are a myth but gives me a box of maxi pads, then says she has something better for me to read and hands me Dear Mad’m. Your parents are so proud of their self-sufficiency that your mother is insulted every time I try to concoct something she can’t provide.

  I spend my evenings with Belle Star, petting her, brushing the burrs and knots from her golden mane and tail, teaching her to accept the saddle and the bridle without throwing a fit.

  On Friday, I tell your father I want to visit the book exchange in Happy Camp, hoping he might agree and influence your mother. I have read Dear Mad’m three times. Jed overhears and says, “I have a copy of the Bible, if you want to borrow it,” peering sideways at your father like he stole it.

  And it gives me an idea, the perfect alibi, the one thing your mother can’t give me.

  * * *

  —

  There is one church in Happy Camp. It’s a place I never would have found on my own, on an unmarked road in a brick building with no signage. The congregation is fourteen people from two families. There are three Moronis (one I recognize), all with fair hair and red necks wrinkled like chicken skin. One sits next to the woman from the coffee shop. The other family is yours: your brother, Homer; his wife, Clementine; and their daughters, Aya and Asha.

  The service is two hours. I will stay for ten minutes so I have ammunition if your mother asks questions. Then I will walk down the mountain to the police station.

  I was so excited to get off the ranch this morning that I forgot to take a Dramamine. My head is
swimming when I arrive. My vision pulses as I slip into an empty chair near the door in the white box room. Along the back wall there are two windows with the shades drawn. There is a clock on one wall, its cardboard face lightly punctured, and a plain wooden pulpit at the front.

  At nine o’clock, your brother takes the stand and welcomes us all to the meeting. He is dimpled and strong jawed. He is exactly the kind of man my mother wanted me to marry, someone who could pull off a sweater for the Christmas card, someone whose face would look great in miniature, boy and girl.

  My parents strongly objected to my divorce; it was the first and only time I ever outright disobeyed their wishes, but as soon as the papers were finalized, as soon as there was no going back, my mother started setting me up. We were sucked back into the past, like we could solve a problem (me) with the same old solution.

  As your brother talks, his eyes fasten on me. I didn’t consider how conspicuous I would be. I didn’t consider that he might report back to your parents if I leave early. Sweat pops down my back. My hands ache as he announces the first song.

  I take a hymnbook from the floor as two older woman shuffle in: gray hair, crinkled skin, stocking straps visible beneath the uneven hems of their skirts. There are dozens of open seats, but they stand beside me, waiting for me to move down. I slide down three seats, a Moroni on my other side. I am locked in the row. They dart curious glances in my direction as they pat their hair, creating clouds of dust or powder.

  The congregation starts to sing. There are so few people that I can hear every voice, hear my own voice; I try to pick the parts where it won’t be heard but it always becomes somehow exposed, flat and plaintive. They bless and pass the sacramental bread and water. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to take it or not—I think not but I do anyway; being in such close surroundings makes me nervous to separate myself from the group.

  Then your brother announces that this is a testimony meeting, which is where the members take turns standing in front of the congregation and saying, evidently, whatever comes to mind. The first Moroni tells us that this week he was sprayed seven times by the same skunk. This leads naturally to a lecture about the state of politics in this country, which your brother swiftly derails.

  “Remember what we talked about, Moroni.” He taps his nose and activates his dimples.

  Moroni drums his fingers on the pulpit, says, “Hmm,” out loud so we all know he’s thinking about it, then ominously concludes, “I think the skunk was a Liberal.”

  After the first Moroni and the second Moroni, a few of the children are pushed to the front. Soon everyone has spoken except me. The entire congregation sits in silence. The clock grows heavy with the weight of our eyes.

  “No one has to get up,” your brother says encouragingly, bouncing on his heels.

  I want to leave, but if I stand, they will think I’m volunteering to talk. I don’t have any idea what to say. Apart from not knowing what these people actually believe, I don’t have a lot to say about God. I don’t think you did either, although you never talked about it specifically, never wanted to get “political” or be “too earnest.” But I think we know better than to believe in some divinity overseeing everything. If there was a God, there wouldn’t be Murder, She Spoke. There wouldn’t be Laci Peterson’s fetus washing up the day before her own headless, badly decomposed body appeared on a shore in San Francisco. There wouldn’t be three Oklahoma Girl Scouts raped and murdered on an overnight camping trip. Even just sitting here, in a too warm, too clean room, pretending there is a God we are all praising, makes me kind of angry, if you want to know the truth. It makes me think about how the patriarchy was preserved for thousands of years because organized religion gave men magical powers and made women their servants, and now here we are in a world where women disappear and men run congregations.

  But everyone is watching me. And I am supposed to blend in, to make alliances. I am supposed to be brave, and most of all, I am supposed to do something, so I stand, and when my knees sway but don’t buckle, I let them take me to the front.

  I cling to the edges of the pulpit, suddenly seasick, like I can feel the road that took me here still swaying between either temple.

  “Um, obviously I’m new.” A polite titter. “I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for welcoming me to your church. I’ve never been to such a small church before. It’s neat.” Apparently, I am auditioning for their friendship in the fifties. “I look forward to getting to know all of you better.” I hope that’s enough, and I move toward my seat. I have left out the part about my faith in God, but I didn’t accuse a skunk of Liberalism, so I feel like I’m ahead of the curve.

  “Tell us where you’re from!” shouts a Moroni.

  “Visalia.”

  This unbalances them enough to get me back to my seat, but then the Moroni presses on. “What brings you here?”

  You, I think. I am looking for a woman just like me who disappeared. Her parents think she’s dead, but don’t care to confirm it. Her brother has electric dimples. Her coworker knew her well, but not well enough to wonder where she went.

  Thankfully your brother stands. “Let’s save questions for after the service,” he cautions, although there is still half an hour and no one left to speak.

  He unbuttons the top button of his coat. He brings out his Bible and he sets it on the pulpit. He turns on his dimples and then he shares the story of the prodigal son. He speaks engagingly, as if he had planned to speak all along, like he knew I would be here, like he chose this story specifically to tell me it’s not too late for me.

  “‘My son, the father said, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

  He takes us to the bottom of the hour; then we sing again and pray, and then the first session ends. I have one hour to quiz the police, one hour before I need to head back to the ranch.

  I stand at my seat as the others turn to face me. I want to get out as quickly as possible, but the two women form a wall.

  Your brother, the ambassador, is moving toward me. “Welcome. Welcome. What brings you out here?” The entire congregation, all fourteen of them, press in and I’m surrounded. The clock ticks weakly on the wall.

  I debate lying, but the community is too close; it will cross wires. “I’m working at a ranch.”

  Your brother’s shoulders lift. “Which ranch?”

  “Fountain Creek.”

  The congregation freezes, holds its pause for five, four, three . . . then shivers and splits apart, like your home is a way to break up a crowd.

  Your brother wipes a finger over his brow. “Aha!” he says like he’s discovered something. His wife steps in beside him.

  “I’m Clementine.” She offers a hand with thin, collapsible bones. “I hope you’re okay out there.” She speaks casually but her words are odd.

  “I just started.”

  She nods like that adds up. “We have our women’s group now, next door. I teach the young women, but you’re welcome to come with me if you want.” I only see two “young women,” and they are her daughters, your nieces. They step in beside her so your brother’s family all stand in a perfect row. Your nieces share your brother’s DNA. They are so beautiful, I feel sad that they are living where no one can see them, but then I remind myself their beauty is theirs, that a woman’s beauty doesn’t have to be shared.

  Everyone is very eager for me to stay, which I didn’t anticipate. I imagined myself going unnoticed, like I do everywhere else. Instead Clementine’s eyes glow with a soft thrill, as if she can will me into friendship. Instead your nieces smile and shyly curl their necks to giggle over their hands at me. There are so few people out here, it creates a hunger for human contact like I have never seen, but all I want right now is to be alone, under my own control.

>   “Actually—I’m sorry—I have to run a few errands. Just while I’m in town. I have to do a few things.” I stop, realizing the more I explain, the less likely it sounds. Why can’t I run my errands an hour from now? And the funny thing is, I know I can. Your mother has warned me about town, but she hasn’t forbidden me from going there; she hasn’t threatened me, but still I feel like I must follow her advice. She is not a woman to be crossed. I need to stay on her good side.

  Finally, the two women shuffle out of the aisle, and I seize my opening, rushing to the door. “I’ll be right back!” I shout stupidly.

  A random Moroni steps in front of me. “You been here long?”

  I spin to slip past. And I think: They will tell your mother. And I think: She will know. She will ask why I left, what I needed. Can’t she give me everything I need? But I banish the thought and escape to the hall and out the door.

  * * *

  —

  Down in Happy Camp, the emptiness enfolds me, the sense of abandonment that drifts through the cracked streets. I would have thought that out here I would crave people more, that I would miss them, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Even the fourteen members of the church felt like a crowd, their wants so heavily imposed on me. With so few people around, it’s like we are volunteering to live inside each other; sometimes we seem to share a head. That is why your mother’s wishes have such a strong effect on me. You felt this way too; you described it to me: I’m easily influenced. I need to be alone to think straight, but even out in the middle of nowhere, I am never alone enough.

  I walk past the Forest Service, up toward the high school, toward the police station. You told me it was open only four hours a day, but as I reach the station—a narrow building crowded into the corner of an empty parking lot—I see an officer inside studying his phone. He has peels of dark hair around a crown of pink that glows under the fluorescent light. His gut hangs in the hammock of his belt.