“You’re safe here,” the doctor said.
I stared at him. He was a fool.
“Where’s my daughter?” It was not a question.
Jim didn’t visit me—he wasn’t allowed to visit while the report was under investigation. He was put on paid leave from the sheriff’s office, so he stayed in our house outside Wheeler, putting Laurel on the school bus every morning, waiting for her when she got home again every afternoon.
When I was released from the hospital, I returned home and Jim moved in with a buddy and his family. They commiserated over what was clearly a misunderstanding. A bad patch in a good marriage.
An assistant county attorney met with me once. She came to the door in heels and a tailored skirt suit that showed lots of shapely leg. Her hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail. She wore dark-rimmed glasses, but only for effect. They made her look like a college student. I’d never met her, but knew of her—police officers and officers of the court are members of the same team. And cops gossip like schoolgirls.
Her name was Alicia and she was full of swagger, lugging an expensive briefcase, a cell phone clipped to her belt. She couldn’t have looked more out of place in Wheeler than if she’d parachuted in from the moon. If I’d had the smallest sliver of hope for rescue, which I didn’t, Alicia dashed it just by showing up.
We sat at the kitchen table, the better for her to take notes. I poured her a cup of coffee that she didn’t drink and set out a plate of oatmeal cookies that she didn’t touch. I fed her the story Jim had made up, and she saw right through it. Just like the doctor in Arizona, Alicia pressed for “the truth,” as if it were something tangible you could serve up on demand, like those cookies.
“According to the medical report, your injuries are consistent with a beating,” Alicia snapped, impatient, glaring at me over her dark rims. “We can’t do anything unless you help us. He’ll get away with it. Is that what you want?”
I was calmer than I thought I’d be. I shook my head. “He already has.”
Alicia’s penetrating stare bordered on disgust. She slapped her folder closed and stood up. I was surprised—she had a reputation as a terrier, and I thought she’d put up more of a fight.
“Women like you—” she muttered under her breath, shoving her folder in her briefcase.
Something snapped inside. I stood up, too, heat rushing to my face.
“And women like you, Alicia,” I said through clenched teeth.
She froze for a second, studying me. “What are you talking about?”
“You really should be more careful. When your boyfriend, Bobby, knocks you around, don’t call Escobar at the station house to cry on his shoulder. The man can’t keep a secret. And, my God, you should know it’s a recorded line.”
Her pretty face turned scarlet. Later, I would regret being so blunt, so mean. But caught up in the moment, I couldn’t stop myself. Laying into her felt electrifying, like busting loose from a straitjacket, and for the barest second I wondered if this was how Jim felt when he lit into me.
She slammed the front door behind her and we never spoke again. I did see her in court at the hearing for the plea agreement. Without the cooperation of the victim—that would be me—the case was weak. Jim’s defense attorney and Alicia worked out a deal: if he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct, the felony assault charge would be dropped and he’d serve minimal time. A felony conviction was too great a risk for Jim—it would mean the end of his police career, not to mention a lengthy jail sentence.
The judge agreed. It took all of two minutes.
To this day, if anyone should ask—and no one ever does—I would tell them the same thing I told everyone else: I got upset that day, slipped and tumbled down the stairs. I would swear it on any Bible put in front of me.
I would swear it because Jim wants it that way.
What they don’t know is what happened the same afternoon that Alicia stalked out of our house.
After she left, I opened the back door to call Tinkerbell in from the yard. It was chilly, and after a run she liked to curl up on her blanket by the kitchen stove. Usually she was ready and waiting, but not that day. I called again and again, listening for her yippy bark, expecting to see her fox tail fly around the corner. But there was only uneasy silence.
I stepped outside, and that was when I saw Jim’s Expedition parked to the side of the road a short way from the house. The windows were tinted, so I couldn’t make out if there was anyone sitting inside. I scanned the yard again, panic rising.
That was when I saw Jim.
He was standing next to the shed, watching me. It was a bloodless stare, and it stopped me cold. I stood there transfixed, unable to speak or move. Or turn and run.
He took a slow step toward me, then another. All the while his eyes fixed on me, pinning me like an insect to a mounting board. Then he stopped. I noticed then he was carrying something in his arms. His hand moved over it, like a caress. It whimpered. It was Tinkerbell.
I opened my dry mouth, but it took several tries before I could manage words.
“Jim, you’re not supposed to be here.”
He smiled—but that, too, was bloodless.
“Now, that’s not very nice, is it, girl?” he baby-talked playfully in the dog’s ear. “Not a ‘Hello,’ not a ‘How are you?’” He looked at me and sighed. “Just trying to get rid of me as fast as she can.”
“How . . . how are you, Jim?” I stuttered, struggling to sound wifely and concerned. “Are you eating well?”
He laughed softly.
“Come here.”
“We’re not supposed to talk.”
“Come here.”
“Laurel will be home from school soon.”
“We’ll be done by then. Come here.”
His voice was pitched so pleasant, so light, he might have been talking about the weather. I started to shake.
I moved toward him. When I was close enough, he told me to stop. He turned to the shed, opened the door and gently dropped the dog inside. Then he closed the door again.
I could have bolted then, but to what purpose? Jim was faster, stronger, cleverer. And at that moment, I didn’t trust my legs to hold me up, much less handle a footrace.
Before he returned, he grabbed something that was leaning against the shed. I hadn’t noticed it until then. It was a shovel—the one with the spear-headed steel blade he’d bought last summer when he needed to cut through the roots of a dead cottonwood tree. It still had the brand sticker on it: When a regular shovel won’t do the job.
When he came back, he offered it to me. I shrank from him and shook my head.
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “Go on. Take it.”
The shovel was heavier than I’d expected, or maybe I wasn’t as strong. It weighted my arm and I had to grasp it with both hands.
“Follow me,” he said.
He led me behind the shed, just short of the six-foot wooden fence that lined the rear and sides of the property. He searched the ground for a moment, considering, as if he were picking out a likely spot to plant rosebushes. Then he pointed.
“There,” he said.
“Jim . . . I don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand, idiot? You got a shovel. Use it.”
His voice was mild, his mouth quirked in what might have passed for a smile. But his stare was like a knife. Like a spear-headed steel blade that would have gladly cut me in two if only it could.
I didn’t dare disobey. I took a deep breath and stabbed the shovel in the dirt. I set my foot on the shoulder of the blade and kicked. I began to dig.
The tool was built for plowing through rough ground with the least resistance. Spear it in, kick the blade deep, carve out wedge after wedge of red earth. It was easier work than I would have thought, except for one thing: I wasn’t sure w
hat I was digging.
But I had an idea.
A ragged hole was getting carved out, the pile of fresh dirt along the edge growing bigger, when Jim dragged his foot along the ground, drawing invisible lines.
“Here to here,” he said.
I straightened and wiped the sweat from my face with my forearm. I leaned on the shovel handle, panting, and considered the perimeter he’d just marked off.
A rectangle. Just big enough to hold a grown woman, maybe, if her arms and legs were tucked tight.
A grave.
One wedge of earth at a time.
Jim had pulled a bare stem from the bougainvillea bush near the fence and was twirling it aimlessly in his fingers.
“You aren’t done yet,” he said.
I could hear scratching coming from inside the shed. Tinkerbell was pawing at the door, anxious to escape. I turned in desperation toward the wood fence that was boxing me in. With Jim. With no way out. I knew how the dog felt.
“That goddamn hole won’t dig itself,” Jim said mildly. “Ticktock. You want Laurel to see?”
Instinctively, I glanced at my wrist, but I wasn’t wearing my watch. My mind reeled. I could try to stall until the school bus came. A busload of children, a driver—I could dash out and scream for help. Jim wouldn’t dare do anything then, would he? Not in front of witnesses?
No, of course he wouldn’t.
But what he would do was take no chances. The second we heard the rumble of the bus engine, he’d do exactly what he’d come here to do, before I had a chance to run away or make a peep. Before the bus ever got close.
And after the bus had dropped Laurel off, after it had rumbled away again, Jim would still be here, with blood on his hands. And what would happen to her then?
I picked up the shovel and stabbed it back in the dirt. I had a hole to dig, and now there was a deadline.
By the time I’d finished to Jim’s specifications, I was queasy from the effort. I stepped back, leaning against the fence to catch my breath, still grasping the shovel. Jim walked to the edge of the hole and peered in, cocking his head and pursing his lips. It wasn’t awfully deep, but apparently deep enough.
He walked over and wrested the shovel from my grip. I cringed.
“Stay put,” he said.
Then he turned and headed to the front of the shed.
I heard the shed door unlatch, heard it open, heard him mutter to Tinkerbell to stay put, just as he’d ordered me. I heard the door close.
It wasn’t but a few seconds until I heard the whine again . . .
Then nothing.
I pushed myself off the fence and stood frozen in place, still trying to catch my breath. Straining hard to listen.
I heard the shed door again, this time opening. Then Jim rounded the corner, the shovel in one hand, Tinkerbell in the other, toted by the scruff of her neck.
The dog was limp, her head lolling. As I stared at her broken body, an incongruent thought raced through my mind: When a regular shovel won’t do the job.
It wasn’t my grave I’d been digging, but hers.
Jim halted in front of me, the corners of his mouth working like a tic, his eyes bright. “Take it,” he said, holding the body out.
Numbly I gathered the dog in my arms; she was still warm, still soft. I could feel her firm ribs, so familiar. But there was no trace of the familiar thrum of a beating heart.
I looked at Jim, awaiting orders.
“Go on, stupid,” he said. “Dump it in.”
At once I turned and knelt at the hole. I leaned forward and slid her body into it. I arranged the legs, the head, to approximate something natural. I smoothed her white ruff, my hand lingering, but only for a moment. Then I stood up again.
Jim leaned the shovel back against the shed and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Don’t forget to clean this. Use the hose. And oil the blade so it won’t rust.”
He nodded at the dog.
“Now cover that up.”
There was no malice in his voice. No exultation. He sounded like any sane man might.
My legs buckled. I was on my hands and knees when he drove off.
May 18
On Jim’s last day off, he took Laurel and me grocery shopping. He drove us into Wheeler to the Food Land market, and as a family we walked the aisles, Jim holding Laurel by the hand and I pushing the cart. He has lived in this town for thirteen years, since moving here from some town or other in Utah—the exact location keeps changing when he talks about it—and one way or another he knows everybody. They greet him warmly in the produce section or at the meat counter or by the bakery, and he shakes their hands and asks after the family, the kids, chatting about work, the weather, what’s biting right now.
I can tell by their easy banter that they like him. They like us. They don’t like me necessarily, because I am so reserved with them, and so very quiet, so deficient in small talk that I give them nothing of substance to form any real opinion. If pressed, they would probably say there’s nothing about me to actively dislike. But they do like us as a unit.
As often as not, Jim will take us shopping like this. If he knows he’ll be working, and a grocery trip is required, he will make out a list ahead of time and go over the particulars with me so I understand to buy the multigrain bread he likes, for instance, and not the whole wheat. Or the rump roast rather than the round. He will estimate the total cost, including tax, and give me enough cash to cover it. Afterward, he will check the receipt against the change, which he pockets.
Besides the Expedition, we also have a car, an old Toyota compact, which I may use with permission, for approved trips. Before and after his shifts, he writes down the mileage in a small notebook. He alone gases it up, and I know from the fuel gauge that he never puts in more than a quarter tank. He changes the oil himself. Rotates the tires. If it needs servicing, which it rarely does, he has a mechanic friend who does the work on his time off for spare cash.
From outside our fishbowl, Jim is a solicitous husband who takes care of his family. He is a hard worker with a responsible job. Good company with his friends. To women, still a striking man in his uniform.
He’s invited out often for a beer after work, a weekend barbecue, but usually begs off. Family time, he’ll say. For us as a couple, the invitations come less often and are nearly always refused. Some invitations aren’t so easy to turn down—when a colleague retires, for instance, usually a ranking officer—and the occasion must be observed.
Two nights ago, for instance, the sheriff’s wife threw a retirement party for a captain with twenty-seven years under his belt. She held it in their lovely home on a southside hill overlooking Wheeler. The weather was warm and the night was so soft, the party spilled over into their garden—it was well irrigated, green with new sod, landscaped with huge bougainvillea bushes that were heavy with scarlet bracts. I sat in a corner under a trellis of flowering vines, smelling their sweetness, listening to the Tejano music in the background, the bursts of laughter. Lanterns hung over the brick walkway; the boughs of an acacia tree glittered with strings of lights. If you closed your eyes, you could be almost anywhere.
The evening was going so well that a band of Jim’s buddies didn’t want it to end. After the speeches, the toasts, the cake decorated like a fishing boat, after the sheriff’s wife began thanking everyone for coming, they urged Jim to join them as they moved the festivities to the Javelina Saloon, and Jim had had just enough rum and Cokes to break with habit and accept this time.
The Javelina isn’t as rough as it once was. I understand that years ago it was a dive frequented by the sort of drunks who pried hubcaps from the cars parked in the business lot next door so they could bankroll their next binge—usually on a cheap, fortified wine called Garden Delight. Then it was turned into a biker bar, with loud Harleys in and out at all hours, straddled by rough-looking ride
rs who wore dark T-shirts with slogans like Bikers Eat Their Dead. The bikers scared off the hard-core winos, many of whom turned in desperation to infusing Aqua Net hair spray into big gallon jugs of water. It made a cheap and wretched home brew they called “ocean.”
One winter night, a brushfire ignited behind the saloon and ripped through an adjacent field where a half dozen hard-cores were camped out with their wine bottles and jugs of ocean. Most managed to stagger off, but one woman couldn’t get out in time. She burned alive. They never determined the exact cause of the blaze. It might have been a campfire that the wind had whipped out of control. Or it might have been a lit cigarette deliberately tossed into a patch of dry grass by someone who wasn’t about to have his Harley stripped for parts.
Life is cheap in such places, but that brushfire convinced the city council to demand a crackdown on liquor establishments that cater to rough trade. The Javelina closed down. It reopened again weeks later under new management, the Harley decor still in place, because it was too costly to change out. Some bikers still drop in when they pass through town on the interstates. But now its main clientele is mostly working class—not least of all local police officers and deputies looking to kick back or decompress.
I had never been inside the Javelina before, but I’d often seen its big billboard from the east-west highway—the giant wild boar, tusked and razor-backed, charging at some unknown target in the distance.
You could hear classic country music from the parking lot and smell the Marlboro smoke and beer. I could swear I caught a whiff of gunpowder, too. Inside, the music thumped and a small disco ball revolved above couples slow dancing or boot-scooting on a dance floor thick with sawdust and stained with tobacco juice. But the color scheme was still orange and black, and a vintage Harley Davidson, stripped of its engine, hung from the ceiling above the bar.
I felt conspicuous from the start in a dress that was two sizes too big and shapeless from neck to knees. Jim’s choice. The other wives seemed to glisten in their tight, pretty, shiny fabrics. In their high-heeled sandals and sling-backs. Hair curled and tucked just so, or flat-ironed till it streamed like water. Their lips were painted red, mauve and pink, and more often than not parted wide in laughter. They leaned into their men, slapping their shoulders playfully, pulling them to the dance floor. I watched them and my heart began to race, my palms to sweat. I struggled to catch my breath.
The Hummingbird's Cage Page 3