What You Don't Know

by JoAnn Chaney

  But really, it can happen anywhere.

  For example: a quiet street in a suburb of Denver. The houses are small and older, mostly made of brick, and the lawns are big. There’s an elementary school a block away, and kids play outside without being watched too closely by adults. There are no children out today, because most of them are in school, and the others are inside, probably in front of the TV, because it’s too cold to be out. Many of the houses have Christmas decorations, lights and wreaths mostly, and one house has a plastic nativity scene in the front yard. It’s not life-size, but it’s pretty close, and the baby Jesus has been stolen and replaced with an empty milk carton wrapped in a blanket, although no one has noticed it yet. It’s a nice place to live, not too far from the glitter of the big city but far enough. A good neighborhood to raise a family.

  There is a man walking down the street—he is a man, legally, twenty on his last birthday, although he has the acne-ridden face and scrawny arms of a boy. He is pale and small and his hair needs to be washed. He’ll beef up in the next few years, he’ll hit the gym and start lifting weights and eating plenty of protein, and he’ll wash his car with no shirt on so everyone can admire all his hard work.

  That is, it’s what he’d do if he lives that long.

  This boy is Jimmy Galen; he doesn’t have a car and has to walk everywhere, point his feet in a direction and go. He doesn’t like to walk on any of the main streets, tries to stick to the side roads and shortcuts, through neighborhoods and parks, over fences and along sewage drains. He doesn’t like anyone to see he doesn’t have a car, doesn’t like to think of the pitying looks he gets as people drive by, seeing his shoulders hunched up against the wind, his eyes squinted against the sun. So he takes the back routes, in the hopes he’ll never see anyone he knows.

  “Why does it matter what anyone thinks?” his mother asks when he complains about his lack of wheels. “So what if you have to walk?”

  “You don’t understand,” he says. “You don’t have to walk anywhere.”

  And she doesn’t, because she already has a car. He loves his mother, doesn’t want to fight with her, but how’s he supposed to get anywhere without a car in this city—how’s he supposed to get a girlfriend?

  “You’re still young,” his mother says. “Walking will do you good.”

  “You have a car.”

  “I have to get to work.”

  “So do I,” he says. “You could buy me a car, you know.”

  She snorts and waves her hand, goes back to watching the local news. That’s all she’s been watching the last few days, ever since that Simms girl turned up dead. It wasn’t all that long ago that she wouldn’t even talk about Seever, wouldn’t let anyone mention his name, because it could’ve been Jimmy buried in his crawl space, he could’ve been one of those poor kids on that long list of names.

  I only met him once, he’d say when she’d start in about those dead kids, usually after some wine, but she didn’t want to hear it. We lived down the street from him for six months before we moved. I mowed his lawn twice.

  My Jimmy’s a lucky boy, his mother had told the nice lady reporter from the newspaper all those years before, when Seever’s trial was ongoing and everyone was talking about him, and his mother had been so pleased when her name had actually been printed, she’d clipped out the article and saved it. Seever didn’t take a shine to him. He let my boy live.

  “You know we can’t afford another car,” his mother says now. “If your father was alive—well, that doesn’t matter. We don’t have the money.”

  Jimmy shrugs into a coat, not wanting to see his mother have another breakdown about his father, who fell asleep behind the wheel on the interstate and never even saw that tree coming. It’s been three years since then, and she still brings up her dead husband every time Jimmy asks for money, as if they’d be straight-up millionaires if her husband were still alive. He figures he’ll save up for a car, although it’ll be years before he has enough for something good. Tough titty, said the kitty, as his dad used to say.

  “I’m outta here,” he says, but his mother isn’t listening, she’s so caught up in the news about that girl. He thinks about ripping the plug out of the wall, reminding his mother that he might be next, that whoever went after Simms might need another victim, that’s what the cops had said when they’d called that morning, that Jimmy and his mother should be careful, that they were contacting anyone who’d ever been connected to Seever, just in case. He thinks about telling his mom that she’d better drive him to work so he’d stay safe. But if he said that her imagination would start running wild, and then she’d be all over him, she’d want to take him to work every day, and then pick him up, and she’d sneak into his bedroom at night to check on him to make sure he was okay. So he doesn’t say anything, just shrugs into his coat and zips it up as far as it’ll go before heading outside, out into the cold. It’s the middle of the day, and the Second-Story Killer, or whatever they’re calling him, seems to be after only women, so he’s safe.

  Outside, it’s freezing. It often gets cold here, but this—this is something else. It hasn’t been cold enough for the schools to close yet, but they’ll probably be shut down tomorrow; they don’t want kids getting frostbite while waiting for the bus or walking to class. But at least they’re all inside now, not out here with him, trudging through the piles of snow his dickhead neighbors never bother to shovel off their sidewalks, and by the time he gets to work his feet’ll be soaked through and he won’t be able to feel them until they start to thaw and hurt like hell.

  It’s mostly the thought of his feet that makes him decide to take the bus, although he hates everything about public transportation. He hates the extra-long buses the city has, like two worms connected in the center by an accordion, and he hates the fact that even though most of them are brand-new, they still smell like piss. He doesn’t know why that is. The plastic seats are shiny and free of gum and the floors are mostly spotless, but they still smell. Like some guy stood in the middle of the bus, right in the springy thing that keeps the whole thing connected, and unzipped, spraying urine everywhere.

  But what does Jimmy Galen hate most about the bus? That anyone can see him riding it. Anyone. And riding a bus is even worse than walking, especially if your friends see you doing it, and they blast by while you’re waiting inside the clear plastic walls of the bus stop and shoot you the finger, screaming and laughing, because their parents bought them a car to drive, and you’re the fucking loser waiting to take a bus to your job at the mall, where you sell shitty sports memorabilia to lame kids or single old guys with nothing better to spend their money on.

  “If you signed up at the community college I might let you take my car to class,” his mother said that fall, after everyone went back to school and the streets seemed empty.

  “I just graduated.”

  “Two years ago,” his mother said, snorting. “If you want to get a good job, you have to go to college these days.”

  “You never did.”

  “Things were different back then,” she said. “Times have changed.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  But he didn’t think about it, because he had no interest in college. College was for smart kids, kids with brains, and Jimmy isn’t all that bright. At least that’s what his dad had always told him, and that’s what the teachers in high school had said too. Actually, the teachers had usually said something about him not living up to his full potential, which in real-speak meant he was a fucking numbnuts, which was how his dad always put it. And even though his mom told him not to believe it, told him that no one understood him, he thought all those people were probably right. He’d spent an entire year in middle school wondering if he was retarded, like full-on short-bus retarded, but then realized he was stupid. Not stupid enough to actually benefit from the lack of brain cells, but pretty stupid. So why waste the money on college? He figured he’d stay at the store, work his way up. It wasn’t a bad gig, and he
liked most of the other employees. They were nice to him, didn’t make him feel like an asshole. He doesn’t need those dipshits he went to school with, who just want a punching bag. He’ll make new friends, work his way up into management. Get an apartment, a girlfriend.

  He’s thinking about these things while he waits at the bus stop, huddled in a corner, the sleeves of his coat coiled over his hands and his face nuzzled into the collar, his breath leaving a damp patch on the fabric. He’s alone in the plastic booth, because everyone else is either too smart to be out on a day like this or has a car. He’s so occupied with this, so furious that his mother will spend hundreds of dollars on boxed wine every month and not even consider cosigning a car loan for him, that he barely notices the person come into the booth and sit right beside him, even though there’re three other metal benches, all of them empty. He doesn’t notice anything until there’s a sharp point digging into his side, poking all the way through his coat and T-shirt and into his skin.

  “What the fuck’s your problem, man?” he says, trying to jump up, but the guy has one hand on the back of his neck and the other pushing the knife deeper into his side. The year before, one of Jimmy’s friends had been accidentally stabbed in the thigh at a house party, and he’d told everyone that it’d taken a while to feel the pain, that he hadn’t felt anything until he looked down and saw the steak knife sticking out of his leg. But now Jimmy knows that’s bullshit, because the pain is immediate, even though the knife can’t be very far in, an inch, maybe not even that.

  “There’s no problem,” the guy hisses. “No problem at all.”

  “I don’t have any money, man,” Jimmy says. He’s sweating, big beads of it running down his back and into the crack of his ass. “I’ll give you my wallet, but there’s nothing in it.”

  “I don’t want your money.” The hand tightened when Jimmy tried to turn his head, so he was left staring out at the falling snow. The guy’s breath smelled like cigarettes, and he was wearing a cologne that smelled familiar, or an aftershave. Jimmy didn’t know.

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Oh, you’ll see.”

  He’s going to piss in his pants. He’s never been so scared, and his bladder is about to let loose and soak his pants, run down his leg and into his shoes. Maybe, Jimmy thinks, he’ll laugh later, because he thought his socks would be wet from the snow, he couldn’t even imagine how bad things could get. Now, having a little bit of snow in his shoes sounds like a luxury.

  “This is what I get for taking the fucking bus,” Jimmy says.

  “Shut up.” The guy forces him to stand, makes him walk out of the shelter and back into the cold. There’s no one around, no one on the street so he can scream for help, there’s not even any cars driving past. It’s like everyone is dead and they’re the only two left alive on the whole planet, trudging across the frozen ground under a slate sky. It makes him think of that TV show his mom likes so much, where most everyone is dead and there’re groaning zombies lurching down the streets. That show makes the idea of everyone being dead seem almost nice, like it could be a great time, but this is different, this is wrong and he doesn’t like it at all.

  “Where are we going?” Jimmy asks, but it’s too late, the guy is shoving him hard, and kicking him in the back of the knee, so Jimmy crumples forward, slumping into the open trunk of a car idling at the curb, a neat and easy trick, like the guy had planned the whole thing, practiced the move until he got it perfect. He tries to sit up, to get up and run, but he can’t because he’s lying on some slippery fabric, and when he gets a handful of it he sees it’s silk, bright colors with fuzzy pompoms sewn up the front, like something a clown would wear. He doesn’t think about this long, because he’s gotta get out of this car, he’s heard that you should never let some psycho take you to another location, somewhere secluded where they can have their way with you, and although the advice is usually given to girls, he thinks it probably holds for him too.

  “Hey man,” Jimmy starts to say, and—

  * * *

  Jimmy wishes he were dead, and he thinks that’ll come, sooner or later. He doesn’t know where he is, or how much time has passed. He is tired and he is hungry and he is in pain. And he is cold. He doesn’t know when he was undressed, but everything is gone, even his socks, and he must be in a basement or somewhere underground, because the floor is plain cement and he can hear the guy climbing stairs in the next room every time he leaves or comes in, his feet slapping against the bare wood steps.

  “I’m not gay, I want you to know that,” the guy says, crouching beside him, his hands dangling between his thighs like they were having a normal conversation, and Jimmy nods, because he doesn’t care, he doesn’t give two shits whether the guy is gay or not, he wants to go home. He wants to sleep in his own bed and eat his mother’s meat loaf and lumpy mashed potatoes, and he’ll never ask for a car again, not ever, if he could go home to her. “This isn’t about you.”

  “I don’t know,” Jimmy croaks. He’s thirsty, and his throat is nearly swollen shut from all the screaming. He knows he’s not making sense, but it doesn’t matter, because the guy nods, thoughtfully, like Jimmy told him exactly what he wanted to hear. This guy likes to talk, and he’s told Jimmy all about his life, his job, but mostly about a woman.

  “I’m doing this for her,” he says. He has some tool in his hand, Jimmy doesn’t know what they’re called but they look sharp and they look mean and they look pinchy. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying not to see, but the guy slaps him lightly on the face until he looks again, because if there’s one thing this guy hates, it’s to be ignored. “She needs this, and I’d do anything for her.”

  “Please, no more,” Jimmy says, but this guy, whoever he is, isn’t the type to respond to begging, or even to reason, and there’s more, of course there is, it feels like hours but it might only be minutes, because pain warps time, it draws it out like a taffy bender at the county fair, stretches and then bends it so there’s no beginning, and there’s no end.

  Just before Jimmy loses consciousness for the last time he sees the easel in the corner, and the stack of canvases on the floor beside it. It reminds him of his father, who used to lie on the couch in front of the TV and pop a DVD in of that painting guy—he’d been dead a long time but his dad had liked him so much he’d ordered the full set of videos—the guy with the afro and the soft voice, and his father almost always fell asleep to that show, because he said it was soothing, the soft noise of the brush against the canvas. What did that afro-guy always say? Jimmy tries to remember, he doesn’t have the strength to open his eyes but he needs to know, he can remember his father’s socked feet propped up on the arm of the couch and the way his mother would try to be quiet as she moved around so her husband could nap, and Jimmy would sometimes sit on the floor and eat through a sleeve of crackers and watch the guy paint and scrape out the shapes of trees and shadows, and those were good times for him, maybe the best times.

  We don’t make mistakes. Jimmy remembers, this is what the guy always said, and it makes him smile. His mouth is full of blood, but he still smiles, to think that he could remember, even though the words seem to come to him from a howling distance. Just happy little accidents.

  HOSKINS

  December 10, 2015

  Hoskins is in the dark of his own bathroom, fumbling for the light switch. He doesn’t find it right away, and for a moment he’s gone back in time, to when he was a kid and there wasn’t anything worse than the dark, and he was always sure that something was going to reach out and grab him from the shadows. But now he’s a grown man, a cop, for Christ’s sake, and the last thing he should be afraid of is the dark, but he still feels a touch of panic as he runs his fingers along the wall. He’s never felt this way, this touch of fear at the base of his spine, but now he’s sure someone’s in the bathroom with him, because cops are always being targeted; they found a cop murdered in his own garage last week, shot in the back of the head and—

 
His fingers find the switch.

  He looks to make sure there’s no one with him, then into the mirror, and runs his fingers along his chin, over the puffed skin beneath his eyes. There’s the old familiar tingle inside his mouth, where the fat of his cheek rubs against his teeth. He gets canker sores when he’s under stress, not one but many, oozing wounds that line the inside of his mouth and make it nearly impossible for him to speak without pain. He’d gone to the doctor for it, years before, not able to pry his lips apart without a yelp of pain, hoping for some help.

  “I’m not a magician,” the doctor said. “You’ll have to wait it out. Gargle saltwater.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t have some magic pill I can slip you.”

  “I don’t need magic. I need help.”

  He’s awake because he was dreaming about Carrie Simms, and the two other girls, their faces bloated and black, and they’d been chasing him, although he didn’t know why. And then he’d tripped, he’d fallen but it was in slow motion and he couldn’t move, it was like being frozen in time, and then he was awake, the blanket stuffed into his mouth to keep from screaming. He twists the sink’s faucet, then waits for the water to get hot, his fingers gripping the sides of the basin so tightly they’re white and bloodless. He stands there a long time, not moving, watching the reflection of the room behind him, as if there might be something waiting back there, ready to jump out of the shadows and come for him. It’s only when the water starts steaming that he snaps out of it, sticks his hands under the tap and then yanks them away when it burns.

  “Why’d you kill all those people?” Hoskins had asked Seever, more times than he could remember, it was the question they kept circling back to. Seever had a different answer every time; he would lie and scream and sometimes he’d not answer at all, but even in silence there’s some truth.