The Shoebox Trainwreck

by John Mantooth

Tonight, she remained silent, and Missy couldn’t blame her. The night came in through the car windows and seemed to settle on her skin. In a strange way, it made Missy sad, but it was a sadness she never wanted to let go of. In this moment, Missy knew her life was changing, beginning a shooting star’s journey across the sky, angling for extinction, yearning to be snuffed out against the spinning whorl of the heavens.

  “Momma.” This time she spoke firmly. You will listen to me.

  “Yeah, darling?” There was a drugged quality to Momma’s voice.

  “You’re not going to believe me, but I’m going to tell you anyway.”

  Momma turned her gaze on Missy. “Don’t,” she said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t tell it. Sometimes, baby, things are better left unsaid. Whatever it is, don’t think on it. Think on something good instead. God made a whole world of good things—” she gestured to the landscape outside her window, “—but people always want to think on the bad stuff.”

  Missy shook her head, determined to speak. “No, Momma. Sometimes the bad stuff gets you even if you don’t think about it. Danny has this man that I’m supposed to meet Thursday night.”

  Momma kept her eyes fixed outside the window. “Your brother is doing the best he can. He’s the closest thing you’ve got to a father now. If he thinks this boy is good for you . . .”

  “He’s a man, Momma, an adult. He wants to see me with my clothes off. Is that what a father is supposed to want for his daughter?”

  “I don’t want to hear anymore.”

  “You’ve heard enough. Are you going to just let them get away with this? Danny is holding track over my head. He knows I’ll do anything to get to run.”

  “Sometimes you’ve got to let things work themselves out, Missy. Nothing is as bad as it seems. And sometimes anything you do is bad. Sometimes, you just don’t have a good choice. But that’s part of growing up. Now I don’t want to hear another word about it. You’re spoiling a perfectly nice ride.”

  Every Wednesday night, Coach Hudson held a team dinner at his house. He lived a few miles from Missy, so sometimes, when the weather was nice—like tonight—she’d jog over.

  He greeted her at the door, smiling. “Such dedication. You know there is such a thing as overdoing it?”

  Missy smiled back. She liked Coach Hudson; he had a way about him, easy, yet firm. Sometimes, she liked to think her father would have been like that.

  “How are things at home?”

  “Better,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be able to run Friday.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  He ushered her on into the house where several of her teammates were already seated and laughing at an old video of Coach high jumping in college.

  “They called me ‘Stick,’” he said.

  “More like pogo stick,” one of the girls said as the twenty year younger version of Coach flung himself over the bar.

  Mrs. Cindy, Coach’s wife, made spaghetti and meatballs and told stories about her husband’s stuttering attempts to ask her out.

  “He was soooo nervous,” she said. “He couldn’t ask me out directly. He had to go through my brother, if you can believe it.” All the girls laughed.

  Later, they watched more videos. Coach talked about runners from the past, mentioning Danny, saying he was “darn fast.”

  She was halfway home that night when she felt the warmth of headlights on her back. She turned and saw it was Danny. He eased alongside her and spoke through the open window. “Get in.”

  He drove slowly, as if he wanted to put off arriving at the house as long as possible.

  Finally, Missy said, “Tell me who it is.”

  “I can’t do that. It’s not part of the deal.”

  “Then tell me the deal. Tell me something.”

  They were nearing the gravel driveway that would take them to the house. Danny pulled over to the shoulder of the road and put the truck in park. “There’s nothing to it.

  He’ll be behind the two-way mirror. You won’t even know he’s there. We’ll have some music on. You can even pick it. Dance. Take off your clothes. Show him what you’ve got. He’s paid for an hour.” Danny sighed. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, this guy won’t try anything. He’s harmless like that. We go way back.”

  Missy couldn’t imagine anyone who would pay to see a young girl as being harmless.

  “You’ll be fine. And once it’s over you can go take the regionals and then state.”

  “I told Momma.”

  “You did what?”

  “I told her what you were planning.”

  “Are you stupid? That’s the sort of thing that would give her a heart attack. She can’t know about this or anything in the shed. You understand?”

  “She already knows,” Missy said. “But you don’t have to worry. She’s good at ignoring the truth.”

  Danny exhaled heavily and shook his head. Rain began to fall, thumping on the roof of the truck, lazily at first, then with growing urgency.

  “What was my dad like?” Missy said.

  “Huh?”

  “What do you remember about him?”

  “Your daddy?” Danny shrugged. “I remember him taking me on his tractor out into the field. He’d let me drive sometimes.” He stuck his hand out the window, letting the rain soak it. He smiled, as if remembering a particularly long lost memory. “When there was a tornado once, in the middle of the night, he took us all into the bathroom. I was so scared I didn’t even care then that he wasn’t my real dad. I wanted him to hold me. But instead, he was holding you, rocking you and Momma. I sat across from you guys, in the tub, trying to act tough. Shit.” He laughed. “You weren’t more than five and you had this doll you carried everywhere. Name was Tina or Katrina or something stupid. Later, when you and Momma and Dad had all fallen asleep and I could hear the wind blowing outside and it sounded like the world was going to end, I took that doll.”

  Danny paused long enough to produce a cigarette and light it. He blew a stream of smoke out into the rain.

  “I took that doll and opened the front door. The sky was so black I felt like the world had disappeared. I could feel the wind shaking me from side to side, but I went out into the yard. The trees were bent over so far, I could nearly touch the tops of them with my hand. Behind me, I could hear the house shaking, but at that moment, I didn’t care. I didn’t belong, and I was mad at you because you did. I threw Tina into the air and watched as she flew over the trees and out into the woods.”

  “Did I know? I mean, did I miss her the next day?” Missy asked, speaking low, afraid she might break the spell that Danny seemed to have inexplicably fallen under.

  Danny flicked his cigarette butt into the rain. “Nah. I felt like shit the next morning and went to go get it. It was wet, but you didn’t care. The worst part was you thought I was a hero or something because I saved your doll.”

  He lit another cigarette and cleared his throat. “I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”

  “Now, I’m the outsider,” Missy said.

  Danny screwed his face up and looked out at the rain. He puffed his cigarette twice before turning back to face her.

  “You think there are always choices. But here’s the thing: sometimes the choice you have is rotten no matter which way you go.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel and then put the truck in gear. “I think you understand that now.”

  She started to respond, to ask him why he couldn’t take it back this time, just like he’d done when she was five and he had been the hero, but the words wouldn’t come out, or if they did, they were swallowed in the sound of the tires crunching over the gravel drive, the tattoo of rain on the roof of the truck, and some other noise—one that might have been the hiss and snarl of the past trying to reconcile itself with the present.

  “He’s here.”

  Missy looked up from her science book. Danny stood in her doorway.

  “Let�
�s get it over with.”

  Mechanically, Missy closed her book and stood up. She watched Danny’s feet as she followed him outside and through the backyard, past Momma’s Ford and the apple tree, to the shed.

  He held the door open for her and winked. “Nothing to it. Just pretend Brad Pitt is behind that glass.”

  Missy felt sick.

  “Well, if you’re not a Brad Pitt fan, picture somebody else.”

  “I get it,” she said.

  Danny held his hands out in surrender as Missy stepped past him into the shed.

  “When he’s finished, he’ll knock on the glass,” Danny said.

  Immediately, Missy felt the presence behind the mirror. Someone was back there.

  She was about to ask Danny if he had any music, but before she could, he pushed the door closed, leaving her alone with the man behind the mirror.

  Missy focused on her own reflection staring back at her. Momma was right.

  Sometimes anything you do is bad.

  Still this is the best choice, she told herself. Maybe not the right choice, but she had to run track. It was that simple.

  Missy took a last glance at her face in the mirror, trying to memorize the way it looked, especially her eyes because she knew, no matter what, she’d never see those eyes again. Then she stepped away from the mirror and began to remove her clothes.

  She’d barely pulled off her panties when the door opened. Her back was turned to the closet, and she tried to turn around, but a hand fell on her shoulder and drove her forward into the couch. She screamed, and her open mouth struck the cushion. She tried to turn around, to see who was behind her, but he’d moved his hand up to her head now, and pushed her face in the couch. The cushions reeked of stale beer and cheap perfume. She couldn’t breathe. Her nose felt smashed, flattened into her face, and then she felt his other hand, rough and hard, prodding her, exploring, penetrating. She pushed back from the couch in an effort to breathe, but she couldn’t gain any purchase; her forearms slid between the cushions and her fingers grazed coins and moisture and paper clips. And still, she couldn’t breathe.

  Then her fingers grazed something else. It was cold and hard and buried deep under the cushions. She stopped pushing back and let him crush her into the couch. She got her hand around what she’d found, and it felt like freedom. It felt like a choice.

  The barrel faced out, and best she could tell, she had a decent chance of hitting him somewhere in the groin area.

  She pulled the trigger.

  The noise itself seemed to free her. The shed welled up with it, and it was like a sharp line in the history of her life, a signal flare that woke her from a deep sleep and thrust her into the present.

  The roughness she’d been trying to ignore behind her went away. The man cursed under his breath and fell on her, burying her under his weight, driving a sharp elbow into her back, making her gag in pain. At least now, she was able to squirm away from him, even as she felt the warmth of his blood running out on her own leg.

  As she tried to get up and face her attacker, a hand clutched at her arm and yanked. She nearly lost the gun, but only juggled it instead of dropping it completely. Whirling around, she fired again.

  This time the bullet hit her attacker in the face, opening his cheek like a bloody, second mouth.

  Coach Hudson tried to speak, maybe to curse her or tell her he was sorry for the way things turned out, or maybe just to ask for help, but words got lost in the blood. He began to gag and spit, and the red ran off his chin like someone had smashed a tomato against it.

  Missy wanted to say something to him, something vengeful and profound, something that would let him know just how betrayed and hurt she was, but no words could convey those feelings, so she tossed the gun back on the couch and began to dress.

  Danny arrived first, surveying the scene for a long time before speaking. “Son of a bitch. Did he hurt you?”

  Missy pulled on her socks. “He tried.”

  “We got to clean this up,” Danny said. “Right now.”

  Missy shook her head. She felt like the world had crystallized around her, slowed down somehow, become a place she could see for the first time. She didn’t doubt herself now, even in the face of the violence and all the uncertainty that might follow.

  “First we’ve got to get rid of the body,” Danny said. “We’ll load it into my truck and take it down to the river. Dump it there. Then we’ve—”

  “No.”

  “—got to get rid of this couch . . .”

  “No,” Missy said again.

  Danny turned away from Coach Hudson’s body and faced Missy. When Danny saw the gun, he grinned. It was a stupid grin, the kind you give a child who you haven’t quite learned to take seriously yet. “What the fuck are you doing with that?”

  “Aiming it at you.”

  “What for?”

  “We’re calling the police.”

  “The hell we a—”

  Missy fired a shot just past Danny’s midsection. The two-way mirror exploded, glass glinting, spreading over the couches and floor and Coach Hudson like shiny, little seeds.

  Danny’s mouth hung open, frozen in midsentence.

  “Call the police,” Missy said.

  Danny held his hands up. “What are you going to tell them? You’re the one whose prints are all over the gun.”

  “I’m going to tell them about you, Danny. How you set this up. How Coach Hudson paid you.”

  “I’ll tell them different,” Danny said. “Me and Momma will tell them we knew nothing about it. You’ll go down. And anyway, this would kill Momma. You know that.”

  “Maybe,” Missy said. “But if it doesn’t, she’ll finally be able to live again.”

  Just then there was a sound at the door. A knock. No, not a knock. It was the sound of something bumping against the doorframe. Missy turned and saw the wheels of Momma’s motorized chair edging open the door. Missy dropped the gun to her side as Momma rolled into the shed.

  No one spoke as she surveyed the situation, her eyes half-shut, as if she wished nothing more than to close this scene out completely, to wipe it clean somehow from her sight, from her memory. But then she surprised Missy. She opened her eyes completely. She looked. First at Coach Hudson and then at Danny, her eyes registering nothing as they passed from the floor to Danny and finally over to Missy. Her gaze lingered on Missy, as if seeing her for the very first time. Then she turned to Danny and spoke.

  “Call the police.”

  Missy forfeited sectionals because she spent Friday afternoon at the sheriff’s office, answering the same questions so many times, she reeled them off like answers on a history test. Because that’s what they were, right?

  History.

  Momma was in the kitchen when she came in, and when Missy saw her, she started to cry. Waving her over to her chair, Momma embraced her and whispered in her ear. “Don’t think on it anymore. Just close your eyes and think about something good.”

  So Missy did. She thought about the future, lining up on the starting block, a fine sheen of sweat already laying cool on her skin, hair pulled back in a ponytail, muscles taut, twitching with anticipation for the starting gun. And when it sounded, she would fire off the block, eyes on the finish line, her heart alive, a winged muscle in her chest. She’d hear her teammates urging her on, cajoling her to go, go, go, go, and somewhere in the midst of their cacophony, she’d hear her mother’s voice at last, clear and strong, confident and unafraid. She’d hear her saying the things she said in Missy’s dreams, and those words would be the ones more than any others that would keep Missy running.

  On the Mountain

  I was up watching television, drinking beer, waiting for the night to give way to morning when I heard the horses. I went to the kitchen window and saw three riders. Fetching my shotgun from the mantle, I turned on the porch light, and went out to meet them.

  It was my sister, Kate, her husband, Pete, and his brother. They called the brother Sonny.r />
  I waited for them to come close enough to see me. The porch light shone in their eyes.

  Kate hung back, staying at the edge of the gravel road; her mare, a beautiful, charcoal-coloured animal, stomped nervously on the rocks, crunching and scattering them beneath her hooves.

  Pete and Sonny tied their horses to a gum tree. I waited on the porch.

  When they got near enough to make me out, I said, “Howdy.”

  Pete wore only blue jeans and a pair of boots. He kept at least ten yards between us. He carried a holstered pistol on his hip, and he glanced back and forth from Kate to me, as if trying to understand how the tenuous connection between us might have led him to my front yard. If he’d heard my greeting, he gave no indication.

  Sonny wore even less: his blue jeans had been ripped into shorts. He was barefoot. He stood a foot taller than Pete and was twice as thin. The hairs on his chest were damp with sweat.

  “I got a sick dog I can’t shoot,” Pete said.

  “A what?”

  “My dog needs shooting.”

  “And you came all the way down the mountain to tell me that?”

  Pete ignored my astonishment. A truck went by out on the road. All of the windows were busted clean out. Somebody hollered “hillbilly,” drawing the word out like a rebel yell. Pete bit his lip and waited for the truck to pass. Sonny glanced at the road and then back to the horses, as if they might be the ones offended by the insult.

  “I’ve come close to it. I can’t do what needs to be done.”

  I gestured to Sonny. “What about him? He can’t fire a gun?”

  “Sonny’s come close to it, too. All of us have.”

  I looked at Kate. “What about her?”

  “She don’t handle guns.”

  “She doing all right?”

  “She’s making it.”

  I watched Kate, barely recognizing her as the little girl I once knew. She had changed so much, most of it willful, I decided, some of it just due to time. Her body hid inside of a shapeless jumpsuit that concealed her femininity. The paleness of her face made her seem ghostlike in the early morning dark. Even her body language had changed. She sat very still in the saddle, as if afraid that a sudden movement would betray her existence, causing others to remember her. Only her hair seemed unchanged. It was as red and flowing and long as I remembered.