Stacking in Rivertown

by Barbara Bell

  “No problem, Becca. How’s the weather there?”

  “Mild.”

  “I envy you.”

  “It’s been damp and foggy as hell. Is Rob still getting the trout to rise?”

  “Yes. And you?”

  “Oh, they’re rising. It’s enough to bring a person to suicide.”

  “I wouldn’t joke about that, Clarisse.”

  “Good one. So send the tickets with the ID same day mail to the address I gave you before.”

  “You’re doing the right thing, Becca. And by the way, Merry Christmas.”

  “Ack,” I say. “Bah humbug.”

  We hang up.

  Miriam pulls me down to her. “I want her name, phone, and address, too.”

  “Okay.”

  “And if I ever hear you say the word ‘suicide’ again, I’m going to hire someone to watch you twenty-four hours a day.”

  I can see her point. And she doesn’t even know my history on that subject. “Sorry,” I say.

  We lie silent for awhile. When she turns to me, at first touching me gentle, we kiss. But panic takes us over and we make love like it’s despair, like it’s misery made flesh, her body the device I use to bring myself sorrow.

  Kat was gone for near a year and a half before Violet showed up. During that time I grew listless, and then so thin when my appetite dried up.

  But when Violet came, I got a boost in the futures market. Ben watched. And I was aware of him watching. It wasn’t long after that Ben prepared us our first round of speedball.

  Ben gave everybody a blow that night, but when I look back on it now, I know he was doing it for me, tethering me tighter.

  One taste is the love of the devil. Two tastes and the devil is your lover.

  I was a straight addict by the time I ended up in that hospital where synchronicity got me in its cheery little paws. But Violet, she was a needle freak. She got off on the sight of her blood drawn up into the syringe and mixing with the smack. She said she loved it as soon as she saw it. I think her eyes had ahold of her heart.

  That first night, Ben shot the others up. Then he led me out. I looked back before the door closed, seeing how everybody was blown out already. Ben brought me to a play room and stripped me to the waist, then had me sit in the only item in the room, a wooden chair. He tied me to it, but with my wrists tied in front to my knees.

  “So you don’t fall down and hurt yourself,” he said.

  He was right about the falling down part, but that’s not why he tied me to the chair. Ben wrapped on the tourniquet and got a vein standing up. I watched as blood pushed into the syringe. Violet liked the blood. For me, it was death in a needle. My wish come true.

  As soon as he dropped it in, Ben stood back, watching me. Then he smoked some coke, and I watched as all sorts of lines, shapes, and colors crept the world new. Ben’s face came into view. His lips and eyes poured me like the river. His magical fingers circled my breasts, now strange to me, but beautiful.

  Beside the river in autumn, the cottonwoods go gold. Slash oak gets a cast of crimson and the berries of the yaupon glow bright as blood.

  And in the middle of the night, when the river’s low and when the moon is near to full, you can wake and know the purest kind of still. It’s something about the white of the moon and how the tupelo stand quiet, like they’re waiting, and how not a leaf of the cottonwood turns.

  Oh, morphine. She wakes me with breath blown against my eyes. She dresses in purest silk, and dies like air against my lips. I’m broad as the sky is deep. I’m soft as the night is soft of sound, and dripped like amber drowned in flies.

  At night, the goatsuckers swoop and dive, singing, pity-pity-pit-pit. Pity the sleeper as the dawn begins to break. Pray for the devil, that his slender neck will break.

  Sunday morning, Miriam and I drive to Hayward so I can call Bates. She stands with me in the phone booth.

  “Hi again,” I say.

  “So what’s the deal?”

  “I’ll call you on your cell phone when I hit the city around one. I’ll tell you where to pick me up.”

  “Okay. And calm down, Beth. Everything will be fine.”

  “I’ll believe that when I’m safely back here.”

  We hang up.

  On the way to Miriam’s, we stop at a thriftshop. I buy a hunting jacket and some torn-up gloves.

  That afternoon at work, I corner Tom. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Hello, Beth,” he says.

  Why do I put up with this shit? “I’m flying to New York to try and finger the guy that stabbed me,” I say.

  “God, Becca. Want me to come along? I’m a great shot.”

  “No.” I lead him back into the wine closet. “If I don’t make it back—now shut up—if I don’t make it back, you tell Miriam everything. I’ll leave a note for her at my place, but I’d like it if you talked to her.”

  “Becca. It can’t be that bad.”

  “You’re right. Chances are I’ll be back Tuesday morning just as planned. This is only the big ‘what if?’”

  “Okay,” he says.

  Sunday evening after I close, I go to my apartment. I look over all my old IDs and lie them out on the table, placing them beside my picture of Mama with Vin stuck in the corner. Next to that, I set out the two notebooks of stories I’ve been working on. Then I write a note to Miriam, telling her about Terri, Beth, Clarisse, and how Becca got to Berkeley. I tell her how much I love her.

  I seal this in an envelope and put her name on it. Then I pack all my guns in my duffel with some clothes and my bag of money, which has grown since I’ve been working at Tutti. I take a cab to the Taurus and put the duffel in, but stick the Smith and Wesson in my jeans.

  Once I’m at Miriam’s, I pull out the pistol.

  “I don’t want this.”

  “I’ll feel better if I know you have it.”

  “I refuse to shoot a gun. I don’t care what’s happening.”

  “Leave it here for me then.”

  She nods.

  We get about two hours sleep. I dress as Becker, not wearing a gun for the first time in months. It’s going to be hell.

  She rides with me to the airport. I’ll never forget watching her stand, leaning forward, wanting to go with me. I pass through the door to the plane. Her eyes, those eyes I have wanted to see me for so long, see nothing but me as I walk out.

  The flight is tedious. I hit Philly, catching the scent of the East Coast as soon as I leave the terminal. I pull my hunting jacket close. A cold drizzle is falling. As I ride to the train terminal, I wonder how the Asian family is doing. I’m feeling a lot of good will toward them. I wonder what Bates threatened them with to get them to tell him about Rebecca Cross.

  I catch the train up to Penn Station, paranoid as hell. The subway drops me in SoHo. I call Bates, telling him where to find me, and I wait in a gallery, watching the street. Sure enough, up pulls that good old Chevy Caprice. I slide in the back. He takes one look at me and whistles.

  “Good disguise, Beth.”

  “Thanks,” I say as I lie down on the seat.

  We hit the station, him leading me in a back door, and me with a blanket thrown over. It’s too reminiscent of Ben. We go into an interview room.

  I sit down on one side of the table. He adjusts a mike and starts a recorder. He asks me what I remember about the night Violet died.

  I talk, but this doesn’t last long.

  “Tell me about Ben,” he says.

  I shake my head no. He punches the machine off.

  “That wasn’t part of the deal,” I say.

  “Beth, you more than anyone have a vested interest in seeing him put away. Just tell it to me. Then I can get the same info out of the ones he has now. What you say to me stops here.”

  “That’s why you brought me here. It’s about Ben.”

  “No. There’s a lineup later. But while I have you here, I’m going after as many birds as I can.”

  Bates punches t
he machine on. I force myself to start talking. I talk about the apartment where Kat and Ben got me. I tell him about the basement, Bates bringing me back again and again to the details, wanting me to remember more.

  The harder he pushes me, the worse the ghosts come on. The room winks in and out, and I curl up in my chair. Bates’ face takes on a glow, as if a red light has been flipped on, and the ghosts crowd close. They’re so loud, I have to close my ears so I can talk.

  “You’re lucky you made it out alive,” he says to me, his eyes having sunk back in, as though all his briefcases full of pictures have finally fleshed out, and here I sit, the walking dead, soaking the room in red.

  I stare off, hearing voices in my head as I’m bound, gagged, and blind on that mattress. Even whiskey won’t touch this.

  We wait. He leaves for awhile, locking the door behind him. I curl up in the corner.

  When Bates returns, he helps me up. “You’ll do fine,” he says. Throwing the blanket over me, he leads me down the hall. The blanket comes off. I look through the windows at an empty room with height markers like slashes under the fluorescents.

  Six men file in. Each is wearing a heavy overcoat, a wide-brimmed hat, a dust mask, and sunglasses. I walk the length of the room trying my damnedest. I see lights roving. I hear voices.

  He has them turn to the side so I can see the profile. One catches my eye. I stand in front of him, concentrating. I walk down the line, but keep coming back to him. There’s something, but I can’t place it.

  Suddenly, I know. I turn on Bates, jumping him like hounds jump a coon.

  “How could you? You fucker!” I’m trying to get to his face. “You goddamn mother-fucking shithead! You’re just as bad! You’re signing my death warrant. You think he won’t figure it out?”

  I run for the door, but Bates grabs me by the shirt and throws me against the wall.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” he says.

  I look at the man again. It’s Ben.

  “Why would Ben murder Violet? He’d say that’s a waste of his training. Why would he stab me? He says he loves me!” I squirm, going for his face again. “Let me the fuck out of here. I’ve got to get away from him!”

  He throws me toward the door, then opens it, pushing me across the hall into an interview room. He slips in behind me, locking the door. I beat against it, pulling on the handle. Then I turn and slide down. I notice that I wet my pants. I start screaming.

  Bates goes white as he watches me.

  Something happens inside me. It’s like someone flips an “off” switch. I fall silent. He waits, mopping his head with his crumpled handkerchief.

  “It’s got to be Ben that did it, Beth. That’s why the dust mask, the sunglasses, even the gloves on his hands. He didn’t want you to recognize him. I don’t know why he stabbed you. Maybe to teach you a lesson, but then he went too deep. You bled too much. Maybe that’s why he let you marry Jeremy. Maybe he scared himself.”

  “No,” I say. “You just want to get Ben so bad that you’ve screwed your mind around. I know Ben. He’s a fucker, but not this. Not all those kids.”

  “What about Matt? Matt was one of his. I figure the others are the ones who didn’t measure up in his basement. They were the failures.”

  The thought of Matt brings back that crack when his arm broke. I begin dry-heaving and crawl into the corner, burying y head. My feet and hands go numb. I can’t see a thing but a dull gray with a dim light off-center. The ghosts come, this time screaming, like how Violet described them to me.

  In time they fade. I feel the blanket that Bates tucked around me. My body begins to quake.

  “Beth?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Finger him. I can get him locked up.”

  I sit in a stupor. “You’re wrong about Ben, Bates. And if you think there’s a judge in this town that will lock him up, you’re stupider than I thought. He’ll blackmail the judge, and if that doesn’t work, he’ll go higher.”

  My head wanders off again. I have to work hard to think straight.

  “What time is it?”

  “Quarter till eight.”

  “My train. I can’t miss my train.”

  I feel his hands on my shoulders, lifting me up. Then he throws the blanket over me and opens the door. He has to help me walk. Then I’m curled in the back of his Chevy beneath the blanket.

  “Don’t let anyone follow,” I say over and over. I have him drop me at Penn Station.

  “You can still finger him,” Bates says. “Just call me. Tell me he’s the one.”

  “Then what? You want me to sit in a court in front of him and tell everybody what he’s done? You don’t have a clue, do you? If you’d been in that basement, you’d understand that nothing would ever make me lift a finger against that man. You’ve got the wrong whore.”

  I slide out and blend with the people moving in and out of the station. By now the drizzle has turned to a freezing rain. Still shaking and trying to work more feeling back into my hands, I load into a train car and let the train speed me into Baltimore. From there I take the plane to a layover in Memphis, screeching over the frozen rivers and fields.

  I can’t shake the sight of Ben standing in front of me wearing the dust mask and the sunglasses. I’m way past the dangers now, into some new territory so awful that I can’t bear to know a thing.

  Merry Christmas to me.

  The man with the dust mask and sunglasses stared at me. He took a step in my direction, then appeared to hesitate. He forced himself toward me and towered above. I stopped fighting the straps. I stopped screaming into the gag. All that was going to occur in the next few minutes became known to me. I could do nothing to stop him. My brain exploded.

  He hit my face hard with the back of his hand. Again. I went with it, easing the strike. I don’t know why I bothered. Habit, I guess.

  After a couple more punches, he stopped and looked down. I followed his eyes, gazing down also, for the first time seeing the switchblade pointing at my belly. From my ass to the top of my head, a fire passed through, and I felt a happiness, a white calm. I saw the knife slip into me, felt a sting, and heard a click against a rib. His hand jerked to the side. It reminded me of when Grady cleaned rabbits after he’d taken them out of his traps. My blood streamed over his hand, running between my legs, down my thigh, now breaking into rivulets, and winding downward along my leg.

  I smelled his breath and said to myself, this is as it should be. We are the perfect lovers, having loved now complete. And I am looking for Mama. I am singing for Kat.

  It doesn’t make sense, but I think I see Violet standing behind him, looking around his side, her eyes following the course of my blood running in thick streams.

  In the river, the water pours, disappears into the sea, evaporates, returns as rain, pours again. This is how it seemed to me as I sagged down, my head sinking to the side. The air swam with a glory of gnats and bees.

  I heard sounds, saw someone grab him from behind, and had a sense of a struggle, of his hand spewing blood. Then I was on the floor, having been untied, lying in a bath of blood.

  And I saw Kat looking older, and behind her was Violet again, both caring for me. I remember thinking how glad I felt that Violet wasn’t dead after all. Someone wrapped me in a blanket and lifted me. Then I was in the backseat of a car. Lights went by and by. I was placed on a stretcher. I watched Kat recede as I was drawn in under lights. Glass doors closed behind me.

  In Memphis, I change to another flight.

  Ben’s behind me. I’m sure of it. And Miriam’s waiting. He mustn’t see her.

  I fly into San Carlos instead of Hayward and take a cab to Berkeley. The cab driver drops me a few blocks from the garage where the Taurus is parked. I hide in an alley for a long time, waiting for Ben to walk by.

  No one comes.

  Now I slink along the street, letting myself into the garage. My vision keeps going in and out, leaving me blind for minutes at a time. When I can see again, the red c
ast remains.

  I sit in the Taurus. Every cell in my body is screaming for me to get out. To run. To blow town. But Miriam’s eyes follow me. I think I hear her crying, but then I realize it’s me as I lean against the steering wheel. Going to the back of the car, I yank out the Uzi and the Walther, then sink down, leaning against the side of the Taurus. I fall asleep.