Day One

by Bill Cameron

  Eager’d seen the girl earlier. First he thought maybe he could work her for some change, but something about her stopped him. A pretty girl, dark-haired and dusky, with deep shadows beneath her eyes and worry compressing her lips. She smiled thinly at him as he skated past in the rain. Rather than stop, toss out a request for spare change, he’d kept rolling. Something about the smile, about the smooth curve of her cheek and the round brown depth of her eyes grabbed hold of him in the pit of his belly. He glanced back once or twice as he rolled up the block, almost wiped out against a No Parking sign. He was pleased when the bus came and went and she was still there.

  He skated to the corner, worked on ollies off the curb. It wasn’t a good spot for skating. No real lift from the sidewalk and too much traffic on Hawthorne, but at least he could keep an eye on her. Not that he could say why she’d need looking after. Just seemed like the thing to do. After a bit, some frizzy-haired fat lady came and sat at the bench, then climbed heavily aboard the next bus. All the while the girl gazed across Hawthorne. Looking for something, he thought.

  Or someone, maybe.

  She’s probably waiting for her boyfriend. A wave of doubt swept through him and he spilled out into the street. He jumped up quickly, afraid she’d seen, but she was still staring. At what? The Ship Shop?

  Eager forced himself to roll up the side street. It occurred to him watching her was a little weird. Keeping him from business too. Skating off a street corner for half an hour so he could check out some girl on a bench, no matter how pretty she was, didn’t put green in the pocket. He needed to get himself to a spot with more foot traffic. Outside Fred Meyer, say, where people came and went all the damn-dong day.

  And if he happened to skate by her on his way down to Freddie’s, well, who could say what would happen? Maybe she’d want to talk. That would be cool. He pictured the conversation, wordless in his mind, and a wave of heat swept through him. He popped a one-eighty and rolled back toward Hawthorne, in time to see her cross the street in front of him.

  As she moved, she threw quick, anxious looks over her shoulder. Eager hesitated, but once she disappeared beyond the corner, he followed. Maybe she was being chased by some dirtbag, an aimless drifter with black gums and stolen shoes. Maybe Eager could find some unknown reserve of strength and power. Kick the bastard into the street, arms windmilling, there to get plowed by Tri-Met. She’d fall into his arms in relief and gratitude.

  He tugged at his shirt collar as he rounded the corner, certain she’d be waiting.

  “I’m in trouble. Will you help me?”

  “Anything you need, I’m your man.”

  But she was gone.

  He stopped, looked up and down Hawthorne. The print shop across the street was open, same with the art supply store. But he could see through the front windows of both joints and she wasn’t in either. Between him and the auto shop on the next block, everything else was closed. He didn’t see any buses. Traffic moved at a steady pace both directions. Didn’t look like anyone could have stopped and picked her up.

  She must have been moving faster than he realized. He rolled past the Poekoelan dojo to the next corner. Maybe she had her car in for service and went to pick it up. He crossed 43rd, looked through the window of the auto shop.

  There were a couple of chairs in the small waiting area and a plant on the countertop. No girl. Some guy with big arms stood behind the counter. He gave Eager a look and went back to whatever he was doing. Farther up the block, a woman came out of Common Grounds. For a moment Eager thought it was her, blue jacket and dark hair, but when the woman glanced his way she had a pinched face and cats-eye glasses. She scurried across the street, cup of coffee in hand, and got into an Acura RL. Eager watched her drive off, thinking about how he could get eight bills for the RL’s driver side air bag, six for the passenger side. It occurred to him the girl might have just burned rubber, desperate for a coffee.

  But a sound from the auto shop parking lot caught his attention. A grunt, maybe a squeal. The lot was surrounded by a tall black fence with a wide open gate. At the far end, the garage door was closed. Parked inside was a beat-up minivan, a couple of Subarus beyond. The sound came from behind the van.

  He stopped at the van’s bumper, one foot balanced on his board over the rear truck, the other on pavement ready to push off. At first he didn’t understand what he was seeing. A big man wrestling with himself, crew cut on a bowling ball for a head. Looked to Eager like the fellow was pounding his pud, the way his big shoulders rolled around inside his tan jacket. Then the man moved and Eager saw the girl. His girl. The big man held her pressed against the fence, his hand on her neck. Her face distorted as she struggled, cheeks red, eyes like twin moons.

  “Your father-in-law is worried about you.” Big voice, but not loud, steeped in certainty. Something in the big man’s voice caused Eager’s eyes to water. Gone were any fantasies of fearsome heroics, vanished into vibrating air between buildings. The windows of the auto shop were frosted and closed, the windows of the coffee house the same. They were alone, unseen, unheard, shielded by a wreck. All Eager wanted to do was slink away before anyone noticed. But the look on the girl’s face, the terror and the pain, seemed to yank his voice out of him.

  “Heya—?”

  The big head turned, big eyes locked with Eager’s. The big hand released the girl. But that only freed up those meat hooks for use on the dumbass with the skateboard. Eager’s nuts seemed to crawl up inside himself.

  “Fuck off, kid.” The big voice rattled the windows of the coffee house behind him. “This isn’t none of your business.” Big hand balled into a fist. Eager pushed backward as the girl suddenly lashed out with her foot, connected with the big man’s knee. Eager’s foot rolled a pebble and he fell, tried to catch himself on the minivan. Popped the kicktail of his board with the heel of his other foot. The board shot into the big gut. Eager plopped onto his ass and in an instant the big man was on top of him. Big grunts. Limbs tangled. Eager drew in a breath pungent with the smell of eggs and fried fat.

  “You little son of a bitch—”

  The girl darted past. Eager sensed the movement, sudden shadow and light, the sound of footsteps on pavement. He’d run too if he could. He wanted to call out to her, tell her he was sorry. But the big chest pressed against his face, big knee crushed his groin. He struggled, twisted, grabbed big flesh. Tears squirted from his eyes, but the big head popped up, suddenly indifferent to Eager’s squirming. He pushed himself up with his big arms. Eager wanted to stop him, but he could only dream of being a hero to a pretty girl who would never know his name. As the big man twisted free of the tangle of boy on the asphalt beneath him, Eager did the only thing he could. He lifted the fucker’s wallet.

  November 16

  Police Seek Assailant In Assault On Sleeping Woman

  CANBY, OR: Police are looking for a man who broke into a Canby woman’s home this morning and assaulted her while she slept.

  The 31-year-old woman reported awaking about 6 a.m. to find a stranger in her bedroom. She screamed, at which point the man grabbed her face and neck and pressed her down on the bed, according to police.

  The assailant—believed to have entered the home through an unlocked side door—fled when the woman’s five-year-old son called out from the adjacent bedroom. The victim was treated at Willamette Falls Hospital for facial contusions and released. The boy was unhurt.

  Three Years, Four Months Before

  Pig Rode The Hot Breeze

  The only reason she had supper waiting when Stuart came in was Ellie had loaded the Crock Pot before she left the house that morning. Potatoes, carrots, onions and meat. Lots of salt and pepper, celery, canned beef broth. Ordinarily she’d warm some rolls or make a salad to go with the stew, but when she got home she tossed the prescription on the counter, still in its Rexall bag, and sat down at the kitchen table. Breakfast dishes still in the sink, a rare failure to wash up. Outside, low, dark clouds gathered but the day remained hot. She
listened to the stew simmer, stared at her hands. Rough farm hands. She thought she could remember a time when they’d been soft as a peeled orange. A different girl, another life. The scent of pig rode the hot breeze through the open kitchen window, mingled with the aroma from the Crock Pot. What on earth had possessed her to make stew in high summer? She wondered what that cold tomato soup she’d seen on the Food Network would taste like—what was it called? Not that it mattered. Stuart would never tolerate something so exotic on his table. She pressed her palms to her thighs, drew a long breath. All around her she saw the drab sameness of the kitchen, of her life. Chipped canisters on the counter, neat and in a row. Kerr jar full of old wooden spoons beside the stove. Her grandmother’s iron skillets on their pegs on the wall. All the effort she put into keeping things clean and wellordered now seemed so pointless.

  Just after seven Stuart slammed through the kitchen door. He didn’t bother to wash his hands, went straight to the refrigerator. “Hotter’n hell today. Did you think to pick up any beer?” Ellie hadn’t. The long drive into town, the doctor’s sterile office, the line at the pharmacy— they’d taken all her strength. She looked at the Rexall bag. A week’s worth of pills that would solve the least of her troubles.

  “I saw the doctor.”

  Stuart, bent down and staring into the fridge as though beer would appear if he wanted it badly enough, only grunted in response. Ellie knew he wouldn’t be interested.

  “It was a follow-up visit.”

  Stuart looked over his shoulder at her, fridge standing open beside him. The compressor kicked on to fight the stale kitchen heat. “What the hell does that mean? I gotta make two co-pays, is that what you’re saying?”

  “The doctor wanted to talk to me about my test results.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “What test results? I’m not paying for test results. I never said you could go to the doctor.”

  Ellie closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose. She could hear him breathing, feel the cold from the open fridge. “They’re your results as much as mine, Stuart.” She spoke from behind her hand.

  “Jesus, you haven’t done the dishes from this morning yet?”

  She wanted to shake him. “Have you been feeling funny lately? You know, down there?”

  “Down where?” He swung the refrigerator door shut, moved to the Crock Pot and set the lid on the counter beside the Rexall bag. “What’s in here? Stew?”

  She lowered her hand and looked at him. “I have chlamydia, Stuart.”

  “Sounds like a personal problem.” He chuckled, too witless to know half the joke was on him. With the dirt-crusted fingers of his right hand, he plucked a chunk of beef from the pot and juggled it from palm to palm.

  “You have it too.”

  “Have what?” He blew on his hands.

  “Chlamydia, Stuart. You have chlamydia.”

  It seemed to take a moment for her words to catch up to him. “Wait. That shit’s contagious?” He dropped the piece of meat. It fell with a wet splat onto her clean kitchen floor. “What the hell did you give me?”

  “I didn’t give you anything, Stuart. You gave it to me.”

  He opened his mouth but said nothing, his defense stalled behind the flash of anxiety in his eyes. Stuart had offered her so little. Little love, rare concern, infrequent and usually guilt-driven tenderness. His fidelity was all she had, and now even that was gone. In its wake, bitterness and desolation spilled into the emptiness left behind. “I can’t believe you did this to me, after the promise you made—”

  He dropped his gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  That morning at Luellen’s apartment, the kind words and pledge to change, they’d meant nothing. With Stuart, it was always just talk, meaningless words and empty promises offered up as a pretense, then forgotten once he got what he wanted. His voice now, sullen and whining, brought her bitterness to a boil. “You call infecting me nothing? Chlamydia’s a disease you get from fucking, Stuart, and the only person who fucks me is you.” Her anger seemed to give her clarity. “You might want to check in with your girlfriend. Or did you cheat on me with the pigs?”

  She felt herself buoyed by unexpected pleasure at his panic, but Stuart gave her no time to enjoy her triumph. His hand snapped out from his side like a snake, a backhand clout so sharp she experienced it as sound rather than sensation. Her mouth fell open as he pulled his hand back, balled into a fist. She felt the second strike, this one to the mouth. Tasted beef fat and dirt. He hit her again and she fell onto her hip and hands next to the table, knocked one of the dinette chairs over. Blood from her nose and split lip splashed onto the linoleum. Her clean linoleum. Above her, she heard Stuart’s voice, now muttering and frantic.

  “Oh, holy hell. Oh, Jesus ...” He stumbled through the door into the sitting room. Ellie pushed herself to her feet. She took the dish towel from the refrigerator door handle, wiped her bleeding mouth. “Jesus jesus jesus ...” Stuart had no idea what chlamydia was. The idiot thinks he has AIDS. Should have paid more attention to Lady Latex.

  Beyond the doorway, Stuart moved back and forth like an old boar restless with rut. The sitting room was darker than the kitchen, with lights off and clouds dense out the window. All she saw was his silhouette, his filthy hands raking his hair. “What’d that stupid skank do to me?” The sound of his voice, cracked and childish, the mention of the other woman, stoked Ellie’s anger back to a white hot flare. She dropped the dish towel and threw herself through the door. Her hands connected with the flesh of his neck, caught one of his ears. She grabbed hold and yanked. She felt blood between her fingers as a yowl burst out of him. He tossed her off with a shrug. She landed hard on the worn fir floor. His eyes seemed to flash out of the shadows. The faded flower-print wallpaper on the sitting room wall framed his florid face. One hand cupped his damaged ear.

  She felt her own blood and snot on her hands and knees as she tried to clamber backward away from him. Not quick enough. He kicked her in the soft cup between her neck and collarbone with enough force to lift off the floor. Her head struck the corner of the kitchen doorway and for a moment all she could see was a scatter of white light. Stuart grasped the front of her dress. “None of your damn business who I fuck.” His words crackled with rage. “Or when I fuck ‘em. Or what they send me home with.” He dragged her across the sitting room floor, tossed her onto the braided rug his parents gave them as a wedding present. She tried to move away, but he dropped down on top of her, pressed her to the floor with his knee.

  She realized with sudden sinking despair she’d uncaged the Stuart last seen that morning at the creek over a year and a half before. “Please—” Gasping, hopeless.

  “Shut up!” He slapped her so hard the rug couldn’t soften the blow as her head snapped around and her cheek cracked against the floor. “You telling me I got the clam dip, whatever the hell you call it? That what you’re saying?” He yanked open his trousers, the zipper and the seam of his crotch ripping with the force of the effort. She could barely see, but the violent worm appeared before her. “Lick it off, bitch.” He leaned over her and through the blood she smelled something like moldy bread. She reached out, struggling, searching, found the couch leg above her head. Tried to pull herself away from him, but he gripped her by the throat with one hand, cuffed her across the face with the other.

  “I told you to lick it off.”

  Her arms flailed, beat against him uselessly. She felt him straddle her, felt the slap against her cheek. His cock, flaccid and diseased. Bile rose in her throat. She tried to turn her face away from him but he gripped her more tightly. Strangling her, slapping her again and again with the filthy worm.

  “That’s right. You know, don’t you?”

  Her arms whipped around and her eyes bulged. She could feel him moving, gripping her with one hand and himself with the other. Her cheeks crawled with each meaty slap, as if she could feel the germs leap from his flesh to hers. Then he began to beat himself off
as he choked her. She tried to scream, knowing no one would hear even if she managed to force a sound past his grip. No living thing within half a mile except the pigs and horses, the rats in the grain bins, chickens in the poultry yard. Stuart couldn’t hear her either, listening only to the sounds inside his own head.

  Her eyes started to lose focus, but she could still see him, his face above hers, his hand on the worm. Reaching, desperate, her own hand brushed something, a basket. The basket she kept by the couch.

  Stuart’s head dropped, chin to chest. He moaned, a thread of saliva swinging from his bottom lip. Ellie overturned the basket, felt a pincushion, spools of thread, scattered buttons. She found the scissors just as Stuart expelled himself onto her face and neck, thrust her arm with sudden force. Buried the blades to the hinge in the right side of his head. He didn’t seem to notice. Ellie stared transfixed as he continued to squeeze and stroke, a horrifying rhythm. Then, strangely, his eyes took on an almost sorrowful glimmer and his lips struggled to form words.

  “S-s-s-ahhh, ... s-s-s-shouldn’t—”

  Slowly, he slid sideways to the floor and all motion ceased.

  For a long moment—a second, an hour—Ellie could only suck air through her aching throat. Then, bit by bit, she pulled herself away from Stuart’s limp form. She stumbled into the kitchen, found the dishtowel, ran cold water in the sink, washed off the viscid result of his final effort. Her skin felt hot and aware, as though she could hear electrical potential in the air through the pores in her face and neck. She moved back into the sitting room, horrified yet lured by incomprehension. She looked at him, expectant, anxious. Momentarily indifferent. He didn’t move. From outside, she heard a crackling pop, the sound of tires on gravel. She went to the window. Dusty white Suburban rolling up the long driveway. She stepped back and leaned against the couch, a thick sensation like hot mud in her bowel. At that moment, the sun broke through the clouds, one last blaze before dusk. A shaft of light fell through the sitting room window, glinted off the damaged ear, the scissor handles. In the orange light, Stuart’s eyes stared sightlessly, one down and to the left, one upward, as though he couldn’t decide which way he was going. Dead.