by Laura Ruby
“It’s the dairy farming, you know,” said Charlie over his shoulder.
“What?” said Finn. “What is?”
“The Rudes. They have all those cows. Cows will kick the crap out of you if you don’t get up to milk ’em early enough. And that awful smell alone would make anyone itch for a fight.”
Finn didn’t mention how cows were okay if you knew how to handle them and how Charlie’s living room stank with all the chickens wandering around inside. Maybe the old man noticed it, too, because he opened a window and pointed to a nearby pasture.
“There’s a fine-looking horse right there. Did I ever tell you that I spent some time on a horse farm?”
“You mentioned it,” said Finn, though Charlie had told him a million times, and would tell him a million more. Charlie Valentine’s grandfather or granduncle or whoever once had a stableful of huge draft horses called Belgians. The horses were used to drag ice that was cut from the lake in winter. People put the ice in deep pits and covered it with sawdust. Then, in the summer, the ice was sold to the iceman. In the fall, the horses were leased out to loggers. Everyone had heard these stories, because Charlie Valentine had been in Bone Gap longer than anyone else could remember, before Bone Gap was Bone Gap, as Charlie would say.
“Now they’re doing that again,” said Charlie Valentine. “Using horses instead of trucks to move the lumber. Saw it on the TV. Calling it ‘green logging.’ Can you believe that?”
Finn folded his arms across his chest, then winced as a bolt of pain rocketed around his torso. “Sounds like a good idea.”
“Of course it’s a good idea!” said Charlie Valentine. “That’s why they should never have stopped doing it! People forget everything that’s important. Like how you have to talk to your animals. They’ll listen if you just talk to them. We used to ride bareback. Didn’t need any fancy saddles or anything.” He eyed Finn with suspicion. “You’re not taking riding lessons, are you?”
“No.”
“Good,” said Charlie. “The way you learn to ride is by riding.”
“I know how to ride.”
“You don’t have a saddle, do you?”
“I don’t have a horse.”
Charlie Valentine thrust his top dentures from his mouth and sucked them back in again, his favorite gesture of disapproval. “So, how many eggs, then?”
“A dozen.”
“Any particular color?”
“Surprise me.”
Charlie Valentine had ordered his chickens thinking they were a special breed that laid blue eggs. The chickens had laid blue eggs, but they also laid pink and green and brown eggs, too, like every day was Easter. He was going to ask for his money back until he discovered that people driving through town on their way back up to the city would pay a fortune for a dozen Easter-colored eggs. But Charlie charged the locals a fair price, and charged the brothers even less. He said Finn and Sean were his favorites. And they had been, Finn guessed, until Roza.
Finn said, “Sean cleaned out Roza’s apartment. It’s like she was never there at all.”
Charlie scooped up the nearest chicken and sat in the only chair in the room. “Valentine’s not my real name.”
“I know,” said Finn.
“I’m not going to tell you my real name, so don’t even ask.”
Finn tried not to show his impatience. “I won’t.”
Charlie stroked the golden chicken into a trance. “Do you know how I got the name Valentine?”
“Your great love for mankind.”
“Who told you?”
“Everybody.”
“Who told you first?”
“Sean.”
“Sean is a smart young man.” Charlie leaned sideways and rooted around in a large basket sitting by his chair. He counted out a dozen eggs, which he set gently in a cardboard carton. “A good man. Gave up a lot when your mom left.”
“I know.”
“Not so easy to please, though,” said Charlie Valentine.
Finn sighed loudly enough to reinjure his ribs. This was not what he came for. But then, he didn’t know what he’d come for. What could Charlie say that he hadn’t already said? What could anyone say? Two months ago, Roza had been kidnapped. Finn was the only witness. Nobody believed his story. Not Charlie. Not Jonas Apple, the part-time police chief. Not even his own brother, who found it easier to pretend Roza had never existed.
Charlie Valentine said, “My old man was a bit like Sean. When I was young, I used to try to figure out the one thing that would make him proud of me. Or at least make him smile once in a while.”
Finn said, “I figured out that much.”
“They all looked for her. Your brother, Jonas, everyone. They hung those sketches in every town from here to Saint Louis. They called up to the cops in Chicago. There was no man matching the description you gave.”
Finn knew what Charlie meant. He meant that Finn hadn’t seen what he thought he’d seen. “Roza wouldn’t have left us.”
Even a man named Valentine had his limits. “Sean’s right. She was a fine girl, but now she’s gone. It’s time to stop mooning.” Charlie Valentine handed Finn the carton of Easter eggs. “Go out and find a chick of your own.”
Finn went back to his house and stood under a hot shower, even though it stung the cuts on his face and washed off his bandage. He dried off, pulled on fresh clothes—or the freshest ones he could find in the pile on his floor—and headed for the kitchen. He put up a pot of water to boil and rummaged in the cabinet for a box of spaghetti and a jar of sauce. Since Roza, they’d been back to eating a lot of things that came in boxes and jars.
Sean got home just as the water was beginning to boil. He stood in the doorway, nearly filling it to the top. Then he stepped inside, moved to the sink to wash his hands. He didn’t even look at Finn when he said, “Rudes?”
Finn cracked the spaghetti in half and jammed it into the pot with a wooden spoon. “They say hi.”
Sean said, “You’re going to need stitches in that eyebrow.”
“I don’t want stitches,” said Finn.
“Didn’t ask you what you wanted,” said Sean. “I’ll fix you up after we eat.”
Finn said the only thing he could: “Okay.” He got a couple of pops out of the fridge and plunked them on the table. Ten minutes later, the pasta was cooked and the sauce hot in the pan. Five minutes after that, they were done eating. Finn washed the dishes, Sean dried. Then Sean motioned him to sit back down while he got his bag.
Sean had been an EMT since he was eighteen. At twenty-one, he was an emergency room tech on his way to medical school when their mother, Didi, took up with an orthodontist she’d met over the internet and announced she was moving to Oregon. The orthodontist didn’t like kids, especially boys who would surely run around getting drunk and high, knocking off convenience stores and knocking up girls, or worse, sitting around the house and getting in the way. Didi told her boys that they were old enough to look after themselves. Hadn’t she given up so much already? Didn’t she deserve to be happy, too? Since Finn was only fifteen at the time, Sean opted to stay with his brother until Finn finished high school.
That was two years ago. Sean hadn’t mentioned becoming a doctor in a long, long while.
Now Sean cleaned out the wound, numbed Finn’s face with a shot, and sewed it up with a vicious curved needle clamped in what looked like a pair of scissors. Sean wasn’t even supposed to have these things; EMTs didn’t suture in the field. But Finn knew not to flinch.
Sean leaned back and inspected his handiwork. “You still might have a scar.”
“Whatever.”
“Did you at least hit back?”
“There are five of them,” said Finn.
“You want me to make a call?”
That was the last thing Finn needed, his big brother to rescue him. His sad and disappointed big brother, with his stupid faith in the power of Pine-Sol. “No, I don’t want you to call.”
“I’ll call.
”
“No.”
A tiny muscle in Sean’s neck twitched, the only visible sign that he was angry. “You haven’t been beaten up since you were a kid. This is the second time in a few weeks. You can’t let them get to you.”
“I’m not letting anyone do anything,” Finn said.
“You’re walking into it, then. What’s that about?”
“You cleaned out her room. What’s that about?”
Sean didn’t answer. Finn hated it when Sean didn’t answer.
“It’s been two months today,” said Finn. “Why aren’t you out there looking for her?”
Sean trashed the used bandages, then closed the black case with a snap. “If you care so much, why aren’t you?”
Roza
RUN
I’LL BE BACK.
Roza stood at the large picture window in the quiet suburban house and mouthed the words over and over, as if giving them form could make them true. But that was foolish. Also foolish: waiting at the window, hoping to see the yard teeming with police officers. Staring at the ceiling, listening for the sound of helicopters and the pounding of combat boots on the roof.
No one had come. No one was coming.
Except for him. He would come, as he came every day, to ask the same question: Are you in love with me yet?
At first, she’d answered his questions with questions: Who are you? Who are you really? What do you want? What is this place? What’s wrong with you?
But he would smile that bland, pleasant smile—the smile of an uncle, a teacher, a clerk, all those men with all those teeth—a smile that just made him all the more terrifying. “You’ll love me soon. You’ll see.”
This was not the first place he’d brought her. The first place was a cavernous room so cold and empty and dark that she could not find the boundaries of it—it was the size of a cornfield, it was the size of a country—and all she could do was wander screaming through the blackness. Then, one morning, she woke up and found herself in a giant bed in a sunny room with plush blue armchairs and a cherry armoire. He was sitting in one of the armchairs, looking pleased with himself. “I was wondering how long you’d sleep.”
She gathered the sheets up to her neck and scrambled backward so fast that her shoulder blades hit the headboard with a crack.
“Don’t worry. I won’t touch you until you want me to,” he said, as if he should be congratulated for such scruples. “Come, let me show you the house.”
She must have been drugged, because she couldn’t imagine how she’d gotten there, and because she did let him show her the house. It was a large frame house, with miles of slippery wood floor, a kitchen clad in stainless steel so shiny it burned, a living room with a fireplace and giant TV. A picture window faced the street, where other houses—identical except for their color—sat in a line like chastised children.
“Do you like it?” he asked. “I built it for you.”
Built it for her? Full-grown trees hunkered alongside the house, birds perching in the limbs as if posed. Had the trees been here first and the house built next to them? Or had he paid to have them transported and planted?
How long did it take to build a house?
“There are clothes in the closet upstairs. A very nice saleslady helped me select them, but if you don’t like them, we can always get more. And the TV has every show, every movie. Watch anything you want.” Again, the pleasant smile in that pleasant, even handsome, visage. “The kitchen is stocked. You’re looking a little thin. You should eat something.”
A long time ago, back in Poland, a horse had kicked a boy in the head, rendering him senseless and strange. This man had the same expression. Cheerful. Empty.
He gestured to a painting hanging over the fireplace. It took her a moment to understand that it was a portrait of her. She was standing in the middle of a verdant field, one blossom threaded through her fingers, another threaded in her long, coiling hair. A ring of girls danced around her. In the picture, an invisible wind pulled at her white gown, outlining her body so vividly that she didn’t seem to be wearing any clothes at all. Roza edged away from the fireplace, from the horrible painting over it, like an animal sidesteps a snake.
He didn’t notice, or if he did, he didn’t care. He peered down at her from his great height, those icy eyes on fire. She fought for breath, as if that stare was incinerating all the oxygen in the room, as if she would be consumed along with it.
He said, “You’re very beautiful.”
Roza had heard this many times before, but it had never scared her so much.
“I want to marry you.”
Her lips worked. When she finally spoke, she didn’t say, “No one is so beautiful.” She didn’t say, “You’re a kidnapper and a criminal and madman.” She didn’t say, “I’m in love with someone else.” She didn’t say, “Please don’t hurt me.”
What fell from her numb lips was what she’d said to a foolish boy she’d left in Poland. “I am only nineteen. I am too young to get married.”
“Oh,” he said, head tilted, considering this new bit of information. “Well, I guess we’ll have to wait till you’re not too young.” He turned and swept from the room. He opened the door to the garage, stepped through the doorway, and shut the door behind him. She heard the clicking of the lock, so loud that it could have been a cannon. The garage door opening. A car engine whirring to life. She ran to the front door, to the pane of glass in its center, and watched as a black SUV turned out of the driveway and drove past the house, disappearing from view.
Roza was Halina Solkolkowski’s granddaughter, not easily cowed by anyone—hadn’t her babcia once chased a bear from the kitchen using only a broom? Roza tried the door to the garage. It didn’t budge. She aimed a kick before she remembered she wasn’t wearing any shoes. She walked around the entire house, patting down every window frame for latches that weren’t there. She grasped the neck of a floor lamp with the intention of swinging it at the picture window, but the lamp was somehow stuck to the floor, and she couldn’t lift it, or any of the others.
She circled back to the front door, heavy wood painted white. She jiggled the knob. Yanked at it. Braced a foot against the jamb and pulled so hard her hands slid off the knob and she went sprawling. Like a cat, she launched herself at the offending wood. For a few wild minutes, she flailed at the door, pounding it with her fists, scratching at it until her fingernails were bloody. Then she stood, panting, staring at her wrecked hands until the sun set and the stars winked slyly in the purpling sky.
That had been weeks ago. Or what felt like weeks ago. Time moved so slowly here, or was it quickly? She had become unmoored from the present, loose and untethered, her mind rolling back into her memories, rolling forward into the future, anticipating, and then dropping again into this torturous, unbearable present. Here, there, everywhere. She still hovered in the window every day, mouthing the words I’ll be back, her prayer, her incantation, but her prayers weren’t working. She saw no police cars. She found no phones or computers in the house. Once, she had tried to light the kitchen curtains on fire, hoping that the flames would spread, engulf the house, and bring the trucks and the firefighters, but a hidden sprinkler system doused the flames before they even had a chance to catch. The curtains were barely scorched, and the man had replaced them without comment. Sometimes, she saw vans driving up to the other houses, sometimes mothers and fathers and children spilled from the vans, like now. She pinwheeled her arms and jumped up and down, stopping only as they vanished inside their house. No matter how much Roza shouted and waved, no one ever seemed to hear her. No one so much as glanced at the house on the other side of the street, at the girl trapped like a mannequin behind the glass.
Roza was tired of standing, of flailing, of praying. She moved away from the window and slumped on the couch, putting her bare feet up on the coffee table. He’d left piles of clothes in the closet and the armoire, but no shoes anywhere. He preferred her barefoot, he said. She had such lovely feet.
Roza didn’t agree. What was lovely about feet that could not take you anywhere?
What was lovely about feet that could not run?
Finn
SHOWDOWN
THE HORN AND HOOF SHOWDOWN WAS LESS A showdown than a show: steers and heifers, sheep and goats, even dogs and cats displayed and judged in tents around the fairgrounds. A few days after the Rude boys left him smeared on the road, Finn wandered among the tents, stopping to look at this sheep, that pig, this dog, that rabbit. And if the owners of the animals used the dumb nicknames, if they asked about his split eyebrow and split lip with a weird mixture of pity and satisfaction, Finn didn’t much care. First, because the lack of sleep was making him delirious, and second, because a crazy goat had chewed free from his tether and was following Finn around, trying to gnaw off his back pockets.
“Will you knock it off?” he said.
“Meh!” said the goat.
Finn kept walking. The question Sean had asked him rattled around his brain. Why aren’t you looking for Roza? But the truth was, Finn had never stopped. Right after she disappeared, he got Charlie Valentine to drive him out to the muddy fields where it had had happened, and made Charlie wait for hours as he scoured the ground for footprints and tire tracks, cigarette butts or fast-food wrappers—any evidence that the police had missed. He’d endured all of Jonas Apple’s endless, repetitive questions: “Now, I have to ask you if you can describe him one more time. You said he was tall. Tall like you? Tall like your brother? Are we talking six foot two or three or four? You said he was wearing a dark coat. Was that a black coat? Could the coat have been dark blue? Could it have been dark green? Did he have a beard or a mustache? Did he have a beard and a mustache? Never mind how he moved, Finn, I have here that she didn’t scream. Why do you think she wouldn’t scream? Why do you think she wouldn’t kick or run? You think maybe she knew this guy? You think maybe she wanted to go with him? Are you sure? How can you be so sure?” And Finn had borne the weight of his brother’s clenched fists, his long silences, his unspoken blame.