The Big Ugly

by Jake Hinkson

  "Did you come here to try to get me to feel sorry for you?"

  "No," I said—but as I said it, I knew I was lying. I guess I did want her to feel bad, to admit that what she'd done to me had been the greater sin. But I knew she'd never feel that way. So I said, "I came here to see what you know about Frank and Junius Kluge."

  Her eyes lit up. For a moment, Kitty seemed alive again. She leaned forward and said, "You think I know something about Frank's business? I don't know nothing about Frank, Ellie. Don't you know that by now? You fucked Frank in my house. On a bed that I made that morning. And you think he tells me about … what? About some shady shit he's got going with Junius Kluge? You're honestly gonna sit there and tell me you think he respects me that much? You should know—you should know better than anybody that he doesn't respect me at all."

  She sunk back into her cushions.

  "I am sorry, Kitty. I am. But I paid for my sins. I did thirteen months. I lost my career. I lost my name and my future." I pointed at my battered face. "And this is the result of me trying to rebuild my life."

  The light in her eyes started to die, extinguished by the alcohol and apathy. "You deserve every bit of it. Don't you ask me to feel sorry for you, Ellie Bennett. You said hi to me every morning and then you went to a hotel at lunch and fucked my husband. I don't feel sorry for you. At all. Ever."

  I sighed and rubbed my skinned knuckles. Then I looked around at the squalor of Kitty's life. Crusted plates, cigarette burns. Nice things neglected and gone to hell in a house that from the outside still fit in with all the other houses on the street.

  She gulped from her plastic cup and then stared down into the alcohol like it was a crystal ball.

  "What do you see in there?" I asked.

  "I see," she said, "a woman with no future."

  I didn't know what to say to that. I stood up.

  She shifted her gaze from the cup back to the television. Another girl was being interviewed about another bad date.

  I said, "I'm sorry, Kitty."

  She took a sip of her drink.

  I left.

  As Kitty and I had sat in her dank little house and insulted each other, the gorgeous day outside had gone on about its merry way. The sun shone like a pearl in blue silk. The air was humid but not oppressive. Green lawns sparkled as children hopped over a sprinkler at the end of the block.

  I stood in Kitty's driveway for a moment, trying to remember what I had felt the first time I'd seen this street. I'd been here with Frank; I'd been here to have sex with him.

  There's the kind of guilt that you worry about and there's the kind that you don't worry about. The first kind is a torment, like a bee in your brain. It's a guilt that can make you hurt yourself in an attempt to make it stop.

  But the other kind of guilt is just a fact that you accept. It's like accepting something unpleasant about your body. You can't change it. It's just who you are.

  I felt that way about what I'd done to Kitty. I didn't like it about myself, but it was done. I'd suffered—and then some—for what I'd done.

  Standing in her driveway, though, made me think about that day with Frank. He'd been so sure of himself. He'd always been so sure of himself.

  I'd always thought that Kitty was my enemy, but I saw now that I was wrong. It had always been Frank. He thought he could play me. He had always been right. Until now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I'd made up my mind to go see Kluge and get my money. Let Frank Morley try to sell me out. I didn't care. I still had Kluge over a barrel. I could tie him to Belton and to Colfax's attempt to kill me.

  I pointed my car at Osotouy City, and I was practicing my opening argument to Kluge when my cell phone buzzed.

  It was some local number I didn't recognize.

  "Hello," I said.

  "Is this Ellie Bennett?" a man asked.

  "Sure."

  "What?" He was a little confused.

  "Yes, this is Ellie Bennett," I said. "Who the fuck is this?"

  He spoke to someone else on his end of the call. Then he said, "Someone wants to talk to you. Can you come see her?"

  "Listen, buddy—"

  "Look," the man said. "It's nothing bad." His voice thinned out, pleadingly. "Really. She just doesn't want to say anything on the phone. And she doesn't want to use names on the phone. She's mad at me for using your name just now. Guess I wasn't supposed to do that."

  "Where are you?"

  "You'll come see her? Now?"

  "Sure. Where are you?"

  "You know the club The Blue Odyssey?"

  "Over by the old rail yard?"

  "Yeah. There's a little side bar, Three Dollar Bill's. Come in there. It won't look open, but it is."

  We hung up. For a long moment, I just sat in the silence of my car. I didn't think. Didn't speak. Just sat there staring at the interstate over my skinned knuckles.

  In my gut I had a nasty feeling that Alexis was back in town.

  * * *

  Hugging the edge of the city, The Blue Odyssey was a refurbished train station—one of those abandoned piles of steel and brick that had been bought for pennies and sexed up into a big fancy dance club. I'd been there once with a boyfriend when I was a few years younger, and after a couple of hours of multiple dance tiers, cages, and strobe lights, I'd decided I wasn't young enough.

  Around the back of the place was a single rainbow-colored door with a tiny wooden sign on a nail that read $3 BILL'S.

  I parked in the gravel lot in front of the door. I didn't see another car. I walked up to the door, pulled it open, and walked inside.

  The two men at the bar turned to regard me. The bartender was a slight, handsome man, probably about fifty years old, with spiked, gray hair and a couple of black stud earrings. The man sipping a beer at three in the afternoon was chubby, with a round gut stretching a black T-shirt, and he had a bald head that shone from the long row of dim lights over the bar.

  "Hello," said the bartender.

  "Hi," I said. "I'm Ellie."

  The bartender nodded. He pointed past the small, empty dance floor, to a door on the other side of the room. "She's back there."

  I thanked him and walked across the room to the door and pulled it open.

  Alexis was sitting in a chair at a brown desk in the corner of a little office. Her hair was pulled back in a fat lime scrunchie. She wore a Dollywood T-shirt and no makeup.

  From a chair in the corner of the room, Kaylee glanced up from her iPad.

  There was a chair on the other side of the desk, so I walked over to it and sat down.

  Mother and daughter stared at my face. Alexis started to open her mouth, and then thought better of it. Sucking in her lips, she looked down at her hands in her lap.

  I just sat there staring at her. What the hell was I supposed to say?

  Without lifting her eyes, she finally summoned up the guts to ask, "Did you get beat up?"

  "Yes."

  "Because of me?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm sorry, Ellie. I'm so, so sorry."

  She looked up.

  I gave her a nod to let her know I heard her.

  She sucked in her lips again. Then she pushed them out and said, "I bet you're wondering why I'm back in town."

  "You would win that bet," I said.

  "What?"

  I didn't answer her.

  She said, "I have to tell you something, Ellie."

  "I can't wait."

  She turned to the kid. "Kaylee, sweetie, can you go watch your cartoon outside? Just sit down out there and wait for me."

  The girl hauled herself up and slunk past me, stealing a closer look at my bruises on her way out.

  When she'd gone, Alexis's cheeks flushed, then her eyes glassed over. Tears fell but she ignored them. "I have something I have to do. There's something I haven't told you. About why I left town. You know my momma died a few months ago?"

  "Yeah."

  "We weren't close. She was an alcoholic. A real
mess. Always a lot of booze. That's why I never drink. But that's beside the point, I guess.

  "Anyway, when she got ovarian cancer, I went down to Texas to see her, to be with her. And she told me something before I died. She told me about my father.

  "I said, 'But you told me my father died in a accident.' She always said he got killed in a car wreck their senior year of high school. Well, it turns out, she lied. She had dated a guy in high school name of Walter Pyle. He was a nice guy, and he did die in an accident the way she said. But he wasn't really my father. They never even had sex.

  "The guy she lost her virginity to was this boy at church, Jerry Kingston. He was the preacher's son. Remember Ezra Kingston? He was a big preacher in this state back in the day. First one with his own radio show. His son was Jerry Kingston, and Jerry was the one who got my momma pregnant with me."

  She pulled an old envelop from the purse in her lap. The paper was small and aged, but it had been well kept. She handed it across the desk to me.

  I took it, drew out the letter inside, and read it.

  Undated, it began:

  Dear Stephanie, I don't know what words to use that will express what my heart is feeling right now. I am like Job in his time of trial or Daniel in the lion's den. I feel that our Lord is testing me, and I am praying that I will have the strength to do His will and not my own.

  You and I have sinned. I tried to fight it, but my affection for you and my attraction to you were too much for me to resist. I am sorry that I ever let the Devil use you as a device to tempt me. I wish you had been stronger, too. I know it is not all your fault, but a man is tempted worse than a woman. That is biology. Woman are not tempted as much. They are made by our Lord to be instruments of His will, to produce beautiful children and raise them up right. I know that sounds like an old fashioned idea, but you know that our Lord has never cared about what is fashionable. What was right in His eyes so many years ago is right in His eyes today. It is up to us to live by His unchanging eternal word.

  You and I have talked many times about what the Lord has planned for me. Everyone knows that as my daddy's son, I am well positioned to do great things in His service. Everyone agrees that this is Providence. You told me just last week that when I preached at the youth camp, you felt moved by the Holy Spirit. I think we all felt it, and I am humbled more than anyone to say such a thing. I can barely bring myself to admit how much the Lord wants from me. I really think He wants me to do amazing things for His Kingdom.

  And that is why I feel like we cannot let this thing that we have done derail all the Lord has planned. The course of action that I suggested to you last night made you cry. Oh, dear Stephanie, if you only knew the tears I've cried on my knees before our Merciful Savoir.

  Please Please Please believe that I want this for you as much as for myself. I can't stand the idea that all your hopes and dreams would be undone by one mistake. Our God is a God of second chances. I think He wants both of us to do great things in His service.

  I cannot believe that we are meant to just sit by while one mistake destroys so much potential. Please consider for a moment that fixing our mistake may well be His Will. I know it seems like it can't be right. But the Lord often uses moments of fear and weakness—He often uses the mistakes of His children—to do great things.

  I cannot help but think of King David. The Bible says that he was a man after God's own heart. Yet David lay with Bathsheba and they conceived a child. They paid mightily for their sin, and the Lord allowed their baby to perish. In doing so, He brought David back into His Will. Perhaps, the Lord is trying to bring me back into His Will.

  In this letter you'll find the money we talked about. I hope you'll do this thing for both of us. I wish I could come see you or talk to you on the phone, but we both know that is probably not for the best right now.

  Please burn this letter. Let us always remember the passion we felt for one another and go forward from this sin into the Light of His Glory and Grace.

  God bless and Christ keep you,

  Jerry

  I closed the letter, slid it back in the envelope, and placed it on the table. Alexis immediately picked it up and stuck it in her purse, as if someone might walk through the door any minute to take it away.

  "Kingston wanted you aborted," I said.

  "Yeah."

  "Guess this would be an embarrassment to him."

  She nodded.

  "In fact," I said, letting the notion roll around in my brain, "this might even ruin him. I mean, these days who knows? Politicians get away with sex scandals. But this … a preacher, Mister Pro-Life, getting caught with a deal like this. It might end his political career. He'd call it a youthful indiscretion, but it'd turn his whole public persona into one big open hypocrisy."

  Alexis stared at the desk while I talked it through.

  "Your mother told you that you were Kingston's daughter. So you came to Arkansas and tracked him down. Which wasn't hard to do since his name is on a sign every twenty feet in this town. And … what? Did you try to shake him down for cash?"

  She scowled. "No," she spat out. "I just wanted to talk to him. To get to know him."

  "You tell him about the letter?"

  Her face softened and she twisted her mouth around before she said, "No." She shook her head. "Not at first."

  "But then what? Why did you tell him?"

  "He wanted me to go away. At first he was nice. He even said he was sorry. But when I kept coming around, he tried to get me to go away."

  "So you got pissed and told him that there was a letter."

  "Yes."

  "And then what?"

  She shrugged. "He didn't know what to say. He just turned white. And I left—I guess I just wanted to drop that bomb on him. But once I walked out, I wanted time to get away and think. I had to figure out what to think."

  "How did Kluge and his people get involved?"

  "Just the way I told you before. I skipped town, and they panicked. I didn't tell anybody why I was leaving, and they all flew off the handle and thought that I'd gone to the cops."

  "Christ."

  "When all that happened, I didn't know what to do, Ellie. I needed to get away and figure out how to make it right."

  "But why the hell would you come back? After what I told you?"

  She fixed me with a steady gaze. "What am I going to do? Run away my whole life? I'm twenty-five years old. Am I really going to lay low for the next sixty years?" She shook her head. "No. I know what I need to do now."

  "Please, tell me. Sitting here, I'll be damned if I know."

  "I need to talk to my father."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Kaylee was sitting by herself at a small table for two. As her mother walked over to the bar to arrange for someone to watch her, I sat down next to the kid.

  "Hi," I said.

  She paused her movie—some cartoon with talking squirrels—and said, "Hi."

  "I'm Ellie."

  "I know."

  "You do?"

  "Yes. My momma told me."

  I nodded. I gestured at the iPad. "What are you watching?"

  The girl looked at the technology in her hand and shrugged. She smiled and shook her head.

  "You don't know?" I asked.

  She started the movie again.

  And that was that for talking to the kid. Neither one of us was much of a conversationalist.

  I got up and walked outside and waited for Alexis. As I did, I wondered where Felicia was and what she was doing. I felt something—something that felt a lot like grief—whenever I thought about my niece. I guess I was grieving for myself, really. For the aunt I could have been to her, the aunt I'd always assumed I was going to be to her. Now, I guess that was ruined.

  Wherever she was and whatever she was doing, though, I knew she'd be okay. That kid in the bar staring down at cartoons all day while her natural disaster of a mother tried to navigate increasingly bad options—that one I didn't know about.

&n
bsp; Then I had a thought.

  What if there was a way to negotiate with the people involved in this thing to ensure that at the very least, the little girl would be safe?

  I walked across the gravel parking lot and stood by some rusted old tracks. They ran into the distance, past a couple of abandoned warehouses and a tall freight elevator, and disappeared behind a sloping, grassy hill. As the tracks vanished, they reached a point where it looked as if they were coming together. It was a trick of the eye, of course. The tracks stayed the same distance from each other, but from my vantage point it appeared as if they were forming one track.

  I kicked some gravel.

  Right then, out there somewhere, the most powerful people in the state were looking for Alexis. They each wanted something different from her.

  It occurred to me, though, that all either one of them really wanted was security.

  What did Kingston want? His reputation, his claim to authority, the chance to be a United States senator.

  What Colfax wanted was insulation, from scandal and from possible criminal prosecution. He, too, also wanted the chance to be a United States senator.

  Alexis and I would be crushed between the pincers created by those two men … unless I could wiggle us out from the middle, unless I could make them push against one another.

  * * *

  I ran back inside and told Alexis to wait for me, then I went into the back office and sat at Three Dollar Bill's desk and called Charles Hamill.

  "Miss Bennett, I'm surprised to hear from you," he said.

  "Why is that?" I asked.

  "Well, of course, it's a pleasant surprise," he said, "but our business has been completed."

  That's when I knew that Frank Morley had sold me out to Hamill rather than Kluge.

  "You think you know where Alexis is," I said.

  "What?"

  "But you don't."

  "Miss Bennett, I don't know what—"

  "She's not in Oklahoma," I said. "She never was. I lied to Morley."

  Hamill was silent for a while. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, "Anything else?"