The Dispatcher

by Jahn, Ryan David

  She turns from the plate and looks at Maggie. Her mouth hangs open for a moment and she breathes heavily from it. Finally she shuts her mouth, swallows, and says, ‘What happened?’

  ‘I dropped it,’ Maggie says. ‘I’m . . . I’m sorry.’

  ‘By accident?’

  Maggie nods.

  ‘It don’t look dropped.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Looks like you thrown it.’

  ‘I didn’t. I promise.’

  ‘How’d it get way over there?’

  ‘I’ll clean it up.’

  ‘You don’t have no shoes. It’s not safe. I’ll clean it up.’

  She turns back to the stairs and walks up them, each plank sagging beneath her weight. Her thighs brush together beneath her dress, making a swishing sound with each step. It makes Maggie think of her daddy sanding in the garage. She would help him sometimes. She liked the feel of the fine dust from sandpapered wood on her hands. Beatrice pauses at each step, inhale exhale, and goes one more. She walks through the doorway to the kitchen.

  Maggie walks to her mattress, away from what she is hiding, and sits.

  When Beatrice returns she is carrying a broom and a dust pan with her, and a small plastic grocery bag crumpled in her fist. She walks down the stairs the same way she walked up, one step at a time, standing on each with both feet and taking a breath, inhale exhale, before moving on to the next. She stops at the bottom of the stairs. She breathes heavily and with great effort. Her face is pale and beads of sweat stand out on her oily skin.

  Maggie stares at her with great concentration. Please die please die please die.

  She hates that she has those thoughts, she feels like a bad person for having them, but she can’t help it. She doesn’t think she could kill a person—she knows she couldn’t; the very idea makes her sick—but if Beatrice were to just die, that would be different. She knows she would feel guilty for thinking it if it happened, but she feels guilty for thinking it when it doesn’t happen, so it might as well. It would make her life so much easier.

  Part of her feels sorry for Beatrice. Part of her feels that in her own way Beatrice is as trapped as she is. But even so if she would just die all Maggie’s problems would be solved. If she died at the right time, anyway, with Henry gone for work and the door unlocked. If he was home and Beatrice died he might take it out on her. He certainly wouldn’t have any reason to keep her alive.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ Beatrice says, large chest rising and falling, rising and falling.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  After a while Beatrice nods. ‘Yeah.’

  Too bad, Maggie thinks, hating the thought.

  Then Beatrice walks to the shattered plate and bends down and sweeps the shards of glass into the dust pan. She dumps the contents of the pan into the plastic bag she brought with her, sweeps the floor once more, dumps the pan once more, ties off the bag, and stands.

  She did not notice that a large piece of the plate was missing.

  ‘You need to be careful about walking barefooted over here.’

  ‘Maybe I could get some shoes.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘So I don’t cut my foot.’

  ‘Henry says no shoes.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Beatrice stares at her a blank moment, then frowns. ‘Did he hurt you bad yesterday?’

  Maggie rubs at the thin scabs that have wrapped themselves around her wrists. They’re only about the width of a man’s pinky finger, but the wounds are deep, and tender purple bruises surround them. She thinks of the slaps across the face and tongues the split in her lip. She remembers the punch to the gut, the air rushing out of her, the feeling of drowning. And the fear: this time she might really die.

  She nods.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Beatrice says. ‘I don’t like it when he does that.’

  ‘He’s never going to stop.’

  ‘He don’t mean to hurt you. He’s just got a temper.’

  ‘He might kill me.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do nothing like that.’ She purses her lips a moment, thinking. ‘Not on purpose.’

  ‘He might on accident.’

  Beatrice exhales through her nostrils but says nothing.

  ‘You could . . . you could let me go.’

  ‘Sarah, you know we can’t do that.’

  ‘He couldn’t hurt me if you let me go. I wouldn’t tell anyone what happened. I wouldn’t tell anyone where I’d been.’

  ‘You don’t understand the world yet. It’s meaner out there than Henry could ever be, I promise you that. I know it.’

  ‘But I don’t want you to keep me here.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah. How many times do we have to have this conversation?’

  Maggie looks down at her lap, at her hands clasped there, at the brown scabs wrapped around her wrists just below them.

  ‘Sarah?’

  ‘Not too many more, I guess,’ she says without looking up.

  ‘Good. And don’t worry about the plate. I won’t tell Henry you broke it. It’ll be our secret.’

  Beatrice makes her way up the stairs and they protest under her weight.

  Fall down and die, just fall down and die.

  Beatrice reaches the top of the stairs. The overhead light goes out. A moment later the door closes, cutting off the light from the kitchen, and the deadbolt slides home.

  After a while Maggie’s eyes adjust to the darkness. She sits doing nothing for some time.

  Then she gets to her feet and walks to the back of the stairs and looks into the shadows beneath the bottom step. She wants to hold the shard of plate again. Her stomach feels tight at the thought of reaching into the shadows. She can see one corner of it. She reaches down and quickly puts her hand upon it and slides it out of the shadows. Nothing grabs her wrist or brushes against the back of her hand or nibbles at her fingertips. She picks up the shard of plate. She holds it in her fist and imagines burying it in Beatrice’s arm or leg or neck. It makes her sick to think about. It makes her sick, but she’ll do it. Maybe not in the neck. She knows there are important arteries there and a person can die. She doesn’t want to kill Beatrice. She just wants her hurt bad enough that she can’t chase after her when she runs. If Beatrice were to die on her own Maggie would not shed a tear, but she cannot kill the woman. But stabbing her in the arm or the leg, causing enough pain that she couldn’t chase Maggie up the stairs and out the front door, so she couldn’t get upstairs and call Henry on the telephone, Maggie could do that. If it meant getting away she could do that.

  She puts her thumb against the tip of the shard. It is very sharp, as is the inside edge. Too sharp to simply hold and attack with. She would cut her own hand to pieces. And she doesn’t want to have to get too close to use it. She needs to make a handle.

  She scans the basement’s dark corners for something to use. There’s her mattress piled with blankets, the cardboard box in which she keeps her few dresses and some books that Donald snuck down here for her (she has read them all at least three times), the sink at which she washes herself, the toilet plunger on the floor beside it for when it gets clogged, the boxes of Christmas ornaments and rags and dirty magazines and cowboy novels. She has read all of the cowboy novels, she likes that the good guy always wins, and flipped through the magazines. The magazines sometimes have good things to read between the dirty pictures.

  She walks to the sink and picks up the toilet plunger and tries to pull out the handle. That doesn’t work, it won’t budge, so she tries to unscrew it, first one way, then the other, and that does work. After four counter-clockwise turns the handle is free of the black rubber suction cup. Hopefully the sink doesn’t get clogged between now and her escape. If it does Henry will notice that the handle is missing and know she’s up to something. He’ll suspect it, anyway, and that will be enough. He’ll be mad. He’ll stand looking at her as his face goes red and his hands open and close, open and close, open and close. His nostrils will flare in his diseased nose. He’ll
reach into his pocket and pull out a roll of those things he eats and thumb one into his mouth and chew. He’ll ask her what she’s up to and no matter what she says he will call her a liar. Finally, once he’s worked himself up enough, he’ll come after her. She’ll run, but he will catch up. He’ll knock her down and kick her in the gut. All the air will rush out of her. She’ll look up at his red face, and then he’ll kick again. Darkness will come then. When she wakes up she will be hanging from the punishment hook. Her wrists will be bleeding. He will have found her weapon and he will walk toward her with it in his hand. He’ll grin as he walks toward her. There will be no humor in his grin.

  One two three four five six seven eight. She used to try counting down, so she could deal with large numbers right away, numbers that filled her head, but counting down made her feel that when she was finished something terrible would happen. Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .

  She opens a box of rags and pulls out a yellowed and torn T-shirt. It smells like Henry, a peculiar combination of garlic and sweat and beer and bleach. Just the stink of him causes her chest to go tight, makes it difficult to draw in breath. Her mouth is dry.

  With some effort she manages to tear the shirt into strips. She has to use her teeth to get the strips started, and it hurts her teeth and gums, and the cloth comes away from her mouth pink with blood and saliva, but once she gets the shreds started the fabric rips easily. After she has several strips of fabric ready she uses them to tie the shard of plate to the toilet plunger handle. She has to tie several knots and wrap one of the strips tightly around the handle just beneath the blade, putting an X around its base, to keep it from sliding down, but once she’s done with it the blade is in place securely and hardly wiggles at all. She’s pretty sure the glass would break before it came loose from the handle.

  Now: how will she do this?

  She closes her eyes and tries to picture it happening. She imagines several scenarios. In all of them there is blood.

  After a few minutes she opens her eyes. Tomorrow night after Henry has left for work she will wait under the stairs for Beatrice to bring down her dinner. Henry will have been gone at least an hour by then. There will be a much better chance of things going her way if he is miles and miles away. She will wait under the stairs for Beatrice with the home-made knife in her hand. If Donald comes over to eat as he sometimes does, rather than simply picking up a plate to take back to his mobile home parked behind the house, she will wait till the night after tomorrow. But if things are as they usually are, if she and Beatrice are home alone tomorrow night, she will wait under the stairs with the home-made knife in her hand and when Beatrice walks down them she will thrust the blade between the steps. She will slice Beatrice’s ankles. Beatrice will fall down the stairs. She will scream but the walls are concrete: no one will hear. She will scream and fall down the stairs, and at the bottom of the stairs she will hit her head on the concrete floor. She will be knocked unconscious. Then Maggie will simply run up the stairs and out the front door. She will run through the woods to the street. She will run down the street to the phone. She will call her daddy and her daddy will come and pick her up and take her home. He will let her sleep in his arms. She will be safe.

  If Donald is here she will wait till the night after tomorrow—she does not want to have to confront him if she doesn’t have to—but no longer than that. She cannot stand to wait longer than that. She has to get out. She would do it tonight if she could, but can hear Donald upstairs already. She can hear him laughing at something on TV. But that means he’ll almost certainly not come over tomorrow night. It is a rare night when he eats dinner here.

  She can do this.

  Tomorrow night she will feel her daddy’s arms wrapped around her.

  And she will not feel afraid.

  Henry pushes his way into the second-floor ladies’ room, leaving the cart in the doorway. He pulls a pair of yellow rubber gloves from the back pocket of his dirty Levis and slips his hands into them. The insides are still wet with sweat from the last time he wore them and slick, so his hands slide right in. He flexes his fingers within them, then pushes into the first toilet stall, its brown-painted metal door swinging open and hitting the inside wall.

  Bracketed inside each stall is a stainless steel receptacle for tampons and sanitary napkins. He pulls this one from its bracket and walks it to his cart and turns it upside down over the trash can and shakes. He glances inside. Bloody pads stick to the stainless steel walls. He bangs it against the inside of the trash can. He hates the smell of this part of the job: a musty stink of curdled blood and pussy. He glances inside the receptacle. One blood-streaked pad still sticking to the bottom. He reaches in and pinches it between two gloved fingers, index and middle, and pulls it out and drops it into the trash can.

  Then back to the toilet stall and sliding the receptacle into place.

  It is strange to him to be doing this. He remembers when this college wasn’t even here. When he was a boy this was just trees and weeds and mustang grapevines and blackberry bushes. He remembers climbing the vines. They grew so thick they weaved themselves into baskets and sagged between the branches of the hickory and oak trees. He would climb in those baskets of vines and lie in them like hammocks.

  It is strange how a town can grow up around a person. You’re standing still but all around you the world is moving, and one day you look up from your tiny piece of it and you’re lost: all the landmarks you used to know are gone, replaced by new landmarks that might mean something to someone but mean nothing to you. The woods in which you played as a boy were cut down for cordwood and have been smoke in the wind for decades, replaced by a city college you’re now expected to clean.

  And when you look in the mirror you don’t even recognize the face looking back at you. Who is that old man with his fat, fleshy face, with eyes like unpolished wood buttons, with a mouth like an angry scribble? Some stranger, surely. No one you’ve ever met before.

  There was a story in the Tonkawa County Democrat this morning about a girl who was kidnapped seven years ago, about a girl who made a single phone call only to vanish once more into the ether, and in that story there was a description of her kidnapper, and that description could easily be of the man you daily see in the mirror. Maybe they’re one and the same. But if they are it can’t possibly be you you see. A small, innocent boy who used to climb in trees pretending he was Tarzan could not possibly grow to be a man who kidnapped a seven-year-old girl from her own bedroom in the dead of night, who did that and worse. So why does that man gaze back at you when you look in the mirror?

  Why do his memories hold a place in your mind?

  The answer is clear: stop lying to yourself, Henry.

  Yes: he is that man. If it weren’t for Beatrice he wouldn’t be. But if it weren’t for Beatrice he wouldn’t be anything. He’d have killed himself long ago. He’d have drowned in his own vomit in the dirt parking lot outside O’Connell’s or the paved one outside Roberta’s. He’d have drunkenly driven himself into a tree. He’d have accidentally shot himself in the face. She is the only person who made him believe he might have something to offer someone. Despite the fact he’s not the sharpest axe in the shed, despite his temper, despite occasional trips to the county jail for public drunkenness or a fight (when drinking or incredibly angry he sometimes forgets his boy-howdy smile and back-patting personality; he forgets to keep what he really is locked in a room in the back of the house). She has stood by him. Unlike his momma who always told him he was just like his daddy, a useless hunk of no good who couldn’t find his ass with both hands free. Probably gonna grow up to be a drunkard whoremonger too.

  Beatrice has always stood by him. Always. So how can he be a bad man for standing by her too? He just did what he had to to keep Bee happy.

  Newspapers don’t understand those kinds of things. They describe everything as black and white: they have to have a villain. But he just did what any loving husband would do. Newspapers don’t underst
and that nor mirrors.

  Henry sprays the toilet down and then wipes it off with a thick blue paper towel. When he’s done with it he walks to the next stall and gets to work cleaning that one.

  Ian does not drive straight home after work. Instead of taking Crouch Avenue down to Crockett, he cuts south at Wallace, drives past the U-Haul rental place, and pulls into the dirt parking lot in front of Paulson’s Feed Store. He could lose his job for doing what he’s about to do, but somehow he doesn’t care. He cannot let Andy continue to hold Genevieve and Thalia hostage in that house. It isn’t right. He has to do something.

  He pushes open his car door and walks across the dirt to the front door, and then through it. The feed store is filled with the dusty but not unpleasant smell of feed pellets and hay. Andy is nowhere to be seen. The place seems abandoned. It is silent and still. Then the sound of movement from behind the store.

  Ian walks through the place and into the shed area out back.

  Andy is there with hooks in his hands, loading three bales of hay into the back of Vicki Dodd’s old Chevy pickup truck. When he is done, he throws the hooks onto a stack of hay bales and slaps the back of the truck two times. ‘See you next week,’ he says.

  Vicki’s liver-spotted hand pops out the window, her truck starts, and then she’s gone, leaving Ian and Andy alone.

  Andy turns to him and smiles. ‘Ian,’ he says. ‘What can I do you for?’

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s about Genevieve.’

  ‘Aw, hell, Ian, I feel awful sorry about that. I swear it’ll—’

  But Ian doesn’t let him finish. He rushes Andy and grabs him by the throat with his left hand, drawing his SIG with his right. He slams Andy against the sheet-metal wall, which sends a noise like thunder through the entire place, and puts the gun to Andy’s temple.