Dodging and Burning

by John Copenhaver

  So when I jumped, I was jumping up, into the heavens.

  As I surfaced, I screamed for help and thrashed around, doing my best impression of a damsel in distress. Eventually partygoers came to my aid. When I was on land again, surrounded by pale adult faces, I explained how I had wandered away from the party to stargaze. I told them I had been so distracted by the constellations, looking up, not ahead, that I had misjudged the end of the dock. Father propped me up, put his coat around me, and drove me home.

  In the morning, Mother offered to scrub the dress for me, but I told her not to bother, I would never wear it again.

  3

  CEOLA

  Bunny and I waited while Jay processed the photos in his makeshift darkroom, a bathroom just off the glassed-in porch—what was once a showpiece of the Greenwood home (so I’ve been told)—that Jay had transformed into his private space after the war by draping sheets and bolts of cloth over the inside of its roof and walls.

  Bunny lingered over a Royal Oak Times she’d plucked from a stack of well-worn periodicals scattered beside the cot in the corner, and I nosed around the room. The sun glistened on the panes Jay had failed to cover, its rays penetrating the damp glass and playing this way and that across the clutter. I flipped through several of the books piled high on the picnic table in the center of the room, holding them up to the light to read a sentence or two. Most of them were detective fiction and pulp rags, some military manuals and cartography books. At the far end of the room beside Bunny, who had positioned herself on his sagging, hospital-cornered mattress, sat a phonograph on a small table, its horn twisted outward like a big brass flower in bloom. Jay had propped records against it, including Billie Holiday, Artie Shaw, and my favorite, Anita O’Day, who I’d sneak from Mama and Papa’s collection and listen to when I was on my own. At the end of the cot was a U.S. Army–issue trunk, topped with half-empty bottles, many bearing the same labels I’d seen in Papa’s liquor cabinet. Pinned to the blanket over the head of the bed were photos of soldiers—maybe even a picture of you, Robbie—and above the photos, his Purple Heart and Bronze Star, dangling like icicles.

  Even though I’d never tagged along with you when you went to Jay’s—kid sisters are rarely welcome around teenage boys, doing boy things—I imagined you in this space: Your strong, rangy frame. Your dark flop of hair, tamed with a little tonic. The handsome sharpness of your nose, your chin. The softness of your mouth, a whisperer’s mouth. You would’ve been attracted to Jay’s stacks of books. I could see you circling the table, picking up novels and flipping through them, sizing them up. I could see you and Jay sitting across from each other on the cot, playing pinochle, silently studying your cards and deciding your bids. I wondered what you two talked about. In the months leading up to your birthday, I’m sure you discussed the war and how much you hated it, or how much you hated Papa and Mama for forcing you to sign up—or maybe you just told stupid jokes (“How does Hitler tie his shoes? … In little knotzies!”), or made up scary stories, or talked about movies.

  Jay eventually emerged from his darkroom, holding an eight-by-ten photo with a pair of rubber-tipped tongs. “The other prints are still drying,” he said, “but you can have a look at this one.”

  I scooped up an armload of books from the picnic table to make space for the photo. Bunny flung down her newspaper and crossed the room, determined to be the first to have a look. I dumped the books and returned, but she shot out an arm, holding me back.

  “Let her see,” Jay said.

  “It’s not—she’s too young,” she said.

  “I want both of you to see. Move.”

  Bunny shifted to the side, flapping her hands in exasperation.

  Still as a statue, trying not to give away the pounding of my heart, I looked at it. I could tell Jay had been close to her when he took it, about five paces from where she was lying with her head bent back over a rock, her curly blond hair all tangled like a web of spun sugar. Just above her breasts, blood was seeping into the edge of her light-colored, button-front suit, and her skirt was crooked over her hips. Her whole body seemed to be broken in two and twisted like some bad-mannered child’s baby-doll. Her arms were thrown wide, her dirty palms open to the sky. I imagined a horrible demonic force had hold of her, pinning her wrists to the ground. She was missing a shoe on her left foot but still wore a scuffed-up pump on her right, and her legs were crossed over each other, a swimmer frozen mid–scissors kick. All around her it was rocky and dusty, littered with twigs and dead weeds. Thin streams of blood, black as oil, fanned out from her head, running downhill and flowing around the edges of her stone pillow.

  Once we had gawked long enough, Jay trapped the photo with his tongs and carried it back to the darkroom. He brought out more photos, each similar to the first but shot at different angles, different distances, some a little blurry, others a little overexposed.

  I didn’t know how to react. Hell, I’d never seen a real dead body. How was I supposed to feel? Afraid? Spooked? Excited? Sad? The emotions floated by like a line of theater masks, each carved expression shifting, bending, becoming something else, none reflecting exactly what was inside my head.

  I thought of you, Robbie, of what you might have made of the photos. I hoped that, in thinking of you, I’d know what to do with what I saw, as if you, now somewhere between the living and the dead, the purgatory of all those missing in action, had some secret understanding of the dead—or at least how they’d want us to feel when looking at their corpses.

  A few weeks after word about you came, I swiped the letter from Papa’s desk. After studying step-by-step instructions in one of your magazines, I picked the desk drawer’s lock with a bobby pin. Hiding underneath the desk, I read the report one word at a time, sounding it out, like it was written in a foreign language. It said you and more than ninety other soldiers were missing in action after the Japs sunk the USS Johnston during a battle off Samar in the Philippines. It proclaimed your bravery and patriotism, it declared your sacrifice as the greatest sacrifice a man could make for his country, but it seemed distant, like the writer didn’t know you, like he was talking about some other Robbie. I wasn’t convinced. Although Papa was fit to be tied and Mama was harboring doubtful fantasies of your return, I knew, I just knew, that you would come home. There was no body, no dog tags to hold, no proof. So every day, I watched as the mail truck lurched to a stop at the mailbox, dust from the road curling around it, shimmering in the sun. I imagined when the cloud settled, you would be standing there in your fatigues, that somehow it had all been a terrible mistake. After all, a letter brought news of your death; why shouldn’t it bring you back to me?

  Jay gathered up the photos and returned them to the darkroom. Bunny started circling the table like a caged tiger. When he appeared again, she said, “We need to—no, you need to go to the police. There’s no question about it.”

  “Look, Bunny—”

  “There’s no question,” she said, delivering it like an order.

  “There’s still no body.” He flared with anger. “And the photos only incriminate me more. I wish you’d knock it off about the police.”

  She stopped and stared at him, her nose, chin, and lips like sharp points on a shield. I almost expected her to snatch her lipstick from her purse and unsheathe it like a sword. Part of me looked up to her, the part that admired her willfulness and her beauty, but another part, the bigger part, the meaner part, wished she’d go the hell away.

  “There’s no question,” she repeated, but faintly, then took a step forward, a move that seemed to throw her off-balance. “Oh,” she muttered, steadying herself, “it couldn’t be … ?”

  “What is it?” he said.

  She held up a hand, her eyes bright. “What was the dead woman’s full name?”

  “Lily Williams, I think. She mentioned her last name once. I wasn’t really listening.”

  “Could her name be Vellum? Lily Vellum?” She swung herself across the room and grabbed the newspaper
from Jay’s cot. “I read the headline, but I didn’t make it to the article.” She fussed with the pages, found what she was looking for, and scanned a paragraph or two. “Look,” she said, thrusting the paper at Jay.

  He read the story out loud, which went something like this: Jitters Gap—July 16. Lily Vellum, the daughter of Frank Vellum, a prominent attorney in Jitters Gap, went missing from her home on Friday evening between 9:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m. Because the Haden County police found signs of a struggle, and only a few personal items were taken and no note was left, they suspect foul play. The article also noted that the window to her bedroom had been forced open from the outside. I remember that in particular. Frank Vellum made a plea to anyone who knew about her disappearance to come forward. The police were searching for her boyfriend, William R. Witherspoon, for questioning. He went by Billy.

  There was a yearbook photo of Lily. She was thin and pretty and had short, curly blond hair, like the girl did in Jay’s photos. Her facial features were muted by the newsprint—except her smile, which was more of a tight-lipped grimace, a failed performance. She wore a double strand of pearls and a black V-neck. She couldn’t have been much older than Bunny.

  “That’s her,” Jay said. “That’s the girl I met on the train.”

  “Are you sure?” Bunny said.

  “Yes, that’s her.”

  We fell silent and moved away from one another. I plopped down on the cot, pulled my dirty knees to my chest, and stared at motes of dust filtering through the light. Bunny perched on the edge of a rickety chair with ripped caning like she was practicing her posture for finishing school. Her eyes had a shine to them. Jay paced the room, swiping his hand through his thick hair, molding it into a different shape with each gesture.

  “If Robbie was here,” I said, wanting to conjure you up, to feel you there with me, egging me on, “he’d say we should do something. Solve the mystery. Something. He’d know how too.”

  Jay looked at me, his eyes warm but sad, a blur of pain stirring quietly behind them. “You know, Cee’s right,” he said with a sudden punch of energy. “We should go to Jitters Gap and spy on Frank Vellum.”

  “Yes!” I said, jumping to my feet. “We have to.” I’m still shocked I didn’t say something gritty, like, We have to act now. We’re hot on the trail of a cold-blooded killer.

  He grinned at me.

  “Jay,” Bunny said, not acknowledging my enthusiasm. “You met Lily when you were coming back from Washington, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That was three days ago, on the seventeenth.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Lily was missing by the sixteenth. What was she doing here, having her picture taken, today?”

  He looked puzzled, his energy waning.

  “If she were kidnapped,” Bunny went on, “she wouldn’t be walking around Royal Oak. If she wanted to skip town, she would’ve taken the first train out of here.”

  “Good point,” he said dully.

  “And the shoes.”

  “What about them?”

  “I don’t know. She has on one in the photo, but you found both. That seems odd.”

  “Maybe the other came off when the murderer was moving the body,” I said, pleased with myself.

  “Okay,” she said. “But why take time to move the body, then leave both shoes behind?”

  “You’re right,” Jay said, shaking his head. “You’re absolutely right.”

  She offered him a vague smile but retreated again into a frown. “I really do think you should go to the police,” she said. “If you don’t, I will.”

  “What will you tell them?” he said.

  “You can’t decide to hold your own investigation, Jay. It just isn’t done. This isn’t one of Ceola’s trashy detective magazines.”

  “Hey!” I said.

  “But I’m the only witness,” he said, beginning to simmer.

  “That you know of,” she countered.

  “If you tell the police, I’ll look suspicious. They’ll suspect me. Don’t you get that?” His temples throbbed; his jaw muscles flexed. He was shifting again.

  Bunny bit her lip and studied his face. She was trying to put him together, it seemed—the curve of his mouth, the angle of his nose, the loose drift of his eyes—trying to figure out if the sum of his parts equaled a whole. But Jay couldn’t be assembled so easily, and Bunny’s expression, a stew of colliding emotions, melted, and she looked away. She had her principles, sure, but she didn’t want Jay to be falsely accused and dragged through hell any more than I did.

  “How do we get to Jitters Gap?” I said. “It’s over the mountain.”

  “My grandmother won’t let me take her station wagon,” Jay said, the heat in his cheeks and forehead cooling. “She keeps the keys hidden—from herself mainly, I think, so she won’t get in it if she’s had a few.” He raised an eyebrow at Bunny.

  “No. Don’t ask.” She crossed her arms.

  “Pleeease,” he said, curling out his bottom lip. I liked seeing him joke around.

  “Absolutely not. I can’t believe you would even—”

  Jay began whimpering like a puppy.

  “You’re ridiculous,” she said.

  “Please,” he said, dropping the act.

  She uncrossed her arms and shook her head.

  “Would your mother let you go out this evening?” Jay asked.

  “She’ll let me take it out if I gave her a good reason—but I’m not going to.”

  “What’s on at the Lincoln?”

  “Murder, My Sweet,” I answered immediately. I’d been waiting for Papa to take me to see it.

  “Tell her we’re going to a movie.”

  “I don’t like lying to my mother.”

  Jay smiled. “You’ve lied to her before—and your father. Remember your birthday party?”

  Bunny shot him a look. “Don’t push it.”

  “But you are going to do it?” he said.

  She blinked.

  We all agreed to meet back at the Prescotts’ around eight that evening. Bunny took off in her mother’s car, and Jay walked me across the pasture to the border of the Greenwood farm. When we passed by the spot where he’d found me reading earlier, I saw the pages of your magazine waving at us through the grass.

  “So you were reading ‘A Date with Death’ again?” He stooped to pick up your Weird Stories, July 1943. The Grim Reaper on the cover leered at his victim, a silly blonde in a form-fitting green dress. It was the third time that week I’d read it. He handed it to me, and I rolled it up and slid it into the front pocket of my middy.

  “Yep,” I said.

  “I thought you didn’t like it.”

  “I want to. I really do.”

  “But you just don’t.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  “The ending, I guess. There should’ve been a way out of it. That’s always the best part of a story—the way out, the escape. But Robbie didn’t see it like that. He said a scary ending stayed with you longer.”

  “Fate runs the show,” he said wearily.

  “I guess.”

  “So why do you read it over and over again?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just …” I faltered. I couldn’t explain it to him.

  “You miss him, don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Stupid question,” he said. “I miss him too.”

  We set out for the fallen oak that bridged the gully, which ran the length of the property. We were quiet, taking in the sky, feeling the evening coming on. A breeze rushed across the pond and stirred the thin branches of the weeping willows. The next day would be stormy.

  I could see from the strained look on Jay’s face that his leg was bothering him. I wanted to offer to help, but something stopped me, a dark and shapeless thing tugging at my heart. At first, I thought it was sadness, that I was missing you, but that wasn’t it, not quite. It was something more troubling. Maybe
I was sensing the seriousness of what we were up to. After all, someone had been killed, and that meant that someone in town was a killer. But it was more than that; it was akin to fear, but fear as a premonition—a holy dread, Mama called it.

  “Your brother used to make up stories,” Jay said, as we approached the oak. “Like the ones in his magazines. He’d tell them to me.”

  “He told me stories, too,” I said, and climbed on the log. Underneath, cold spring water trickled through tufts of wiry grass and black mud. I held my arms out, fingertips forming little circles in the air, and began a balancing act to the other side.

  “That’s something I miss the most,” he said. “He could tell the best stories.”

  “He wrote some of them down,” I said.

  “He did? Do you have any?”

  I stopped and let my arms fall to my sides. I was a little possessive of you, Robbie. I wasn’t sure I wanted to share you with him. “I don’t know where they are.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said in a thin voice, then leaped on the tree, jostling it and making me reel. “Whoa!” He caught my shoulders and added, “Sorry about that.”

  I pulled away and edged forward, arms out, focused on my feet. The cool, damp smell of the stream drifted up, and a dragonfly, a glimmer of iridescent blue and green, zoomed past me. Foot over foot, I made it to the roots, navigated their gnarled twists and bumps, and dropped to the mushy ground. Jay was moving slow, being careful with his leg, his face pulled tight in concentration. Again, I felt you there beside me, watching your friend cross the log for me.

  “The stories,” I blurted out, “they might be in his journal.” I immediately regretted mentioning it. I could feel you draw back from me and grow dim.

  “That’s right, he kept a journal. I forgot.” He glanced up and smiled at me. “Do you know where it is?”

  “No, he didn’t want me nosing around in it. Besides, he probably took it with him when he left.”