The Drifter

by Christine Lennon

After that, the three of them started what was to become a regular, GPA-destroying thing: Betsy in the backseat, Ginny behind the wheel, and Caroline shotgun, making their first stop of the night at the drive-thru liquor store so Ginny could flirt with the guys who worked there until they handed over three bottles of Asti Spumante to underage girls who would never, ever pay. It would become their routine. That’s how it all began. Later, the John incident would be how it ended. But in that moment, Betsy still basked in the reflected glow of her slightly demonic friend and Ginny’s sweet but devilish smile, the glint in her eyes, which Betsy could see reflected in the rearview mirror.

  BETSY STEPPED OVER the edge of the claw-foot tub, wrapped herself in a stiff yellow towel, and cleared the steam from the mirror with her palm. Even after the shower, the crochet imprint was embedded on her cheek. She combed her fingers through her hair, pulled on her last pair of clean underpants, fresh Levi’s, and a threadbare black V-neck T-shirt and crept down the stairs with her army surplus boots in one hand, steadying herself on the railing with the other.

  Miss June was in what appeared to be the library, though the shelves that lined the walls were deeper and bowed in the middle from the weight of vinyl. Betsy had never seen a record collection so immense, or a turntable quite so old. June sat in an overstuffed chair that was bulging at the seams, exposing the cotton stuffing beneath, making something out of variegated yarn that appeared to have three sleeves. She was listening to jazz.

  “Thought you children might be dead up there, heh heh,” she said, not bothering to look up.

  “Hate to disappoint you,” said Betsy, forcing a smile. Dead girls. Always hilarious. “If I don’t eat soon, I might be.”

  “Got some biscuits in the kitchen left over from this morning,” she said. “There’s a place on the corner that’ll fix you up with some dinner. Cheap and good, the best kind.”

  Betsy ate the stale biscuit with honey on a chipped saucer in the dark kitchen and, newly fortified, walked the two blocks to the nearest liquor store. She bought a six-pack of Shiner—the cashier didn’t ask for her I.D. and Betsy assumed that it was because the last two days had aged her ten years—and a bag of Lay’s. Back on the wide porch of Miss June’s house, Betsy took a seat in a crackly rocking chair to watch cars rolling by and people strolling on the sidewalk making their way to somewhere in no particular rush. She breathed in the weighty, unfamiliar air and Miss June’s music, which drifted through the screen door. Betsy would never learn to love jazz, but that night she came close. She felt a little ragged, uncertain, raw in the strangest way, and the music mirrored that. She heard Gavin’s low, slow voice greeting Miss June inside and the creaking of the front door.

  “There you are,” he said, taking the chair next to hers. The scent of Camay soap had followed him from the shower. Betsy handed him a beer and a biscuit wrapped in a paper towel.

  “Yep, and I’m never leaving,” she said. “Miss June is making me an ankle-length vest that matches hers and I’m going to stay here forever.”

  “Just skip the finding a job and having a life part and head straight for retirement,” he said. “It’s a half-decent plan. But I couldn’t handle the jazz. Way too annoying.”

  I have to call my mom, let her know I’m OK, Betsy thought, feeling a familiar tightness in her chest. She’ll be worried. But the fact that she’d left town with a strange new guy, someone she’d barely known, to escape a serial killer might not soothe her mother’s nerves. It could wait until morning.

  “Do you want to call Adam and Brett again?” she asked. “Or we could go back by the house? Somebody’s got to be there by now.”

  “Nah, maybe later,” he said, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees, his leg brushing against hers. “I think we could probably entertain ourselves for a while.”

  Miss June was right. At the end of the block, they got a deep bowl of beans and rice with corn bread and a couple of beers for fifteen dollars. They walked aimlessly through the warm night, her arm around his waist, his across her shoulders, and she felt safer there, with him, on the street in New Orleans, than she had in some time. She decided not to press him for Channing details. That would keep for a while. On the way into town that day, they passed a billboard painted black with Thou Shalt Not Kill written across it in all caps. Of all of the commandments, Gavin had said, surely that was the easiest to remember, not recognizing the irony of the situation until it was behind them. It’s an odd place to go if you’re fleeing danger. Betsy had always heard how crime-ridden the city was. But the threat there seemed to be out in the open, recognized, hanging in the breeze like a shingle hung in front of a bar—a handbag dangling from a shoulder, ready to be snatched, a fight in the streets that spilled out from a crowded bar. You knew that bad guys were supposed to be there, so you wouldn’t be surprised to run into one.

  That night, the only thing that seemed to run wild in that town was music, and small bands played everywhere, in the backs of bars, on the sidewalks, even in the middle of the street sometimes. For a few hours, Betsy felt normal, maybe even a little happy, and deeply aware of the fact that it wasn’t going to last.

  When they got back to Miss June’s, well after ten, they fumbled noisily with the key out front. Every single step in the stairwell squealed under their weight, and they’d fully forgotten which one of the unmarked doors along the hall was theirs. They wondered, Are we the only guests? The key fit into the third door that they tried.

  “If you don’t stop with the laughing Miss June’s going to have to crochet you a ball gag,” he said, pulling her inside the room.

  “It’ll go nicely with my straitjacket,” she said, reaching up to put her arms around his neck. “You know I’m not crazy, right?”

  “Oh I know you’re crazy,” he said. “Because if you think I’m having sex with you in that ancient, broken bed you are out of your mind.”

  “Come on! It’ll hold up for one more night,” she said, grateful that he couldn’t see her face, flushed like a radish in the dark. “It’s built to last. Just think of how many times it’s been given a good workout over the years.”

  “Holy hell, now there is no way that’s happening. We could be the latest of thousands of people to be naked in that bed,” he laughed, and then stopped abruptly. “Actually, I might vomit.”

  “Sexy,” she said, using her big toe to pry off her boots. She lifted her face to kiss him.

  Betsy was used to the fumbling, the clumsy grasping for zippers and buttons, racing through the motions to speed through what felt like the humiliation of her own desire. Somehow, she still thought of that yearning as improper, unladylike. She was deeply aware of balancing her longing with her need to keep her number in the acceptable, if not exactly prudent, five-to-ten range until she graduated from college. Even if no one else was counting, she would remember the Georges of her life. With Gavin, it was different. She let him peel the T-shirt away from her torso, easing it past her shoulders and over her head. She moved her hands across his lower back. To him, she was already exposed. Her weaknesses, all of her doubts, had been splashed across the last couple of days.

  “I’ve thought about this at least a hundred times,” he said, burying his face in her neck. “I’d see you out somewhere, lurking in the back so no one would notice you, and I’d think, ‘How the hell does that girl think she’s invisible?’ I would look at you until I was sure you could feel me staring, but you never did.”

  “You’re so full of shit,” she said, turning her face so her mouth was near his ear.

  “Usually, yeah, but not about this,” he said, softly. “I said to Newland, ‘You know that Betsy girl, the one who works at the bagel place? What’s her story?’ He was like, ‘Nah, man. No idea.’ Next thing I knew, he was all over you.”

  He kissed the curve of her shoulder and sat down on the bed as Betsy stood before him, his hands around her waist. She pulled his shirt over his head and smoothed out his hair, the dim glow of the streetlight making the out
line of his features just visible.

  “What about the rickety bed?” she said, letting her jeans drop to her ankles.

  “One more round won’t seal its fate.”

  IN THE MORNING, they were surprised to see three or four older couples seated at two crowded dining tables, draped with extra large doilies, talking about jazz over pastries and coffee in still more chipped porcelain cups. The two of them ate their biscuits, fresh this time, bleary-eyed and sheepish, with a mug of strong coffee on the porch and prayed that no one had heard them stumble through the cramped hallway, or the tired springs of the seventy-five-year-old bed. Betsy went to the hallway to call her mom with her calling card. She was an adult, after all, mostly. She could handle the interrogation.

  “Hey, Gavin, check the paper for news about Gainesville, will you?” The story was by now making headlines everywhere. She was sure there’d be something written about it.

  Miss June held the screen door open for Betsy and then walked out to see Gavin.

  “Y’all from Florida you said, right?”

  “Right, we drove here from Gainesville,” said Gavin. “Some crazy shit happening down there.”

  “You better believe it,” she said. “Some more of that crazy shit in that paper today.”

  Gavin scanned the headlines and found the story on the second page. Two more bodies found. He dropped the paper and ran inside, just as he heard Betsy let out a long, low wail.

  “He was in the house. I knew it. She’s gone,” she said through tears. She closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands. She’s gone.

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 11

  EVERGREEN

  August 31, 1990

  Betsy’s eyes kept closing. She’d focus all of her effort to force them open, straining against the Valium, the Percocet she took an hour after the Valium, and the sandpaper texture her inner lids had acquired after forty-eight hours of sobbing. In a matter of seconds, they closed again. In the brief moments when they were open, her view was strangely menacing. From the passenger seat of Gavin’s car, which she’d reclined to a nearly horizontal position, the midmorning light was diffused through a giant, old cypress tree. Spanish moss hung from its branches like tattered lace, or decaying flesh decomposing from spindly bones. She would open her eyes, shudder slightly, and then they’d close again. How long she’d been repeating that cycle, she didn’t know. Finally, Gavin spoke, and Betsy was startled. She kept forgetting that he was sitting next to her.

  “We should probably go inside, I mean, eventually,” he said. Betsy didn’t know exactly how long they’d been parked. It could have been a few minutes, or an hour. She couldn’t say. They found a spot two blocks away from the church, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed. In the time since they arrived, the streets had filled with cars, and dozens of people had walked past their car, dressed in mourning clothes. Betsy wore the only black clothes she owned, a cotton knee-length T-shirt dress that was still wrinkled from the box, the thrift store sunglasses, and some oxfords she bought at the Army/Navy Surplus. She spotted a group of Ginny’s high school friends piling out of a white BMW, each in double strands of pearls and prim, somber cocktail dresses. Caroline’s mom, Viv, in a black suit and an enormous pair of sunglasses, walked toward the church with her head down and her arms folded. Betsy slunk further in the seat.

  “That church looks pretty small. And I don’t know if they chartered a bus or two, but it seems like all of Gainesville is here,” he said. “I just want you to be prepared.”

  “OK, I’m good. I’m ready,” she said. She slid on the glasses she’d bought with Louise and Not-Louise just days before, though it felt like months, years, a lifetime ago.

  Betsy looked over at Gavin, who was wearing a navy blazer, a white shirt, and a burgundy striped tie, articles of clothing she couldn’t believe he owned. None of it was pressed, of course, and he still looked like a rumpled mess. But the fact that he had ever been within a hundred yards of a Brooks Brothers shocked her.

  They walked down to the church, avoiding eye contact with everyone. It was easier for Betsy than she thought, through the fog of the pills. She had been ready to shirk away from hugs, to fend off anyone who approached her to offer condolences, but everyone must have known to stay away from her. Betsy kept her head down and grabbed Gavin’s hand, and the two of them winnowed their way through the crowd gathering in the back of the church to the center aisle and squeezed into the end of the second to last pew. At the front of the church, behind the pulpit next to the priest, she spotted her: Caroline.

  Once everyone was seated, Ginny’s parents, Robert and Martha, made their way in from the steps of the church, puffy-eyed and exhausted. Ginny’s older sister, M.J., stood behind them holding a writhing, wailing infant. Ginny hated M.J., who married a pompous young lawyer from Charleston named Griff, or Gruff, or something absurd that Betsy could never remember, and had a baby in the whirlwind eighteen months after graduating. The sisters were lifelong rivals, and since M.J. had gotten married, her newly religious, deeply conservative ways made Ginny look like a Riot Grrrl by comparison. M.J. spotted Betsy on the end of the pew and eyeballed Betsy’s men’s shoes and the faded, wrinkled dress before she realized Betsy was watching her, and then offered a sympathetic nod and a quick, forced smile. When Martha saw Betsy, her tears welled. She reached over to put her hand on Betsy’s stiff, frozen shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry,” Betsy said. It came out in a dry, throaty voice that Betsy didn’t recognize. Gavin squeezed her hand.

  “I know you are, sweetheart. Ginny loved you so,” she said. Betsy wouldn’t look at Ginny’s father. What would he, what would any of them, have said if Betsy told them the truth? She was in the apartment when it happened. Through the haze of the pills, Betsy remembered that night like it was a distant dream. She could have stopped it. Gavin reached over to shake Mr. Harrington’s hand briskly and wordlessly.

  The service was a blur. The priest, who had known Ginny her entire life, but apparently not at all, delivered a service that felt like it was composed entirely from captions written in her high school yearbook. There was a forced anecdote or two, a lot of “gone too soon” rhetoric, some unfortunate allusions to heaven.

  “We may find the present moment more than we can bear,” he said. Father Tom was a sturdy man with ruddy cheeks and fine, coppery hair that had been arranged and sprayed with impressive precision. He found Betsy’s eyes in the back of the church, which were locked on his with seething resentment, and looked away. “Jesus knows that, and so He meets us here. He offers us Himself, promising that our loved ones will rise again, and that our greatest flourishing is yet to happen.”

  When he finished speaking, Ginny’s high school soccer coach said a few stumbling words about her spirit and dedication. One of her high school friends talked about her being the most beautiful of all of the Royal Dames at the debutante ball. And then, to Betsy’s horror, Caroline took the pulpit.

  She wore a simple halter-neck dress, exposing the muscles and tiny bones of her slim, strong shoulders, and pearl earrings, of course. Her hair was pulled back off of her face. Even from the back of the church, Betsy could sense her calm. Caroline had a note card in her hand, but put it down quickly and shook her head.

  “Ginny was my roommate and my sorority sister for the last few years,” she started, her voice clear and strong. “Some people might say that she kept me in line, maybe even made me a little nicer, but I doubt it.”

  There was a low grumble of muffled laughter.

  “I know that she was the sweetest person I’d ever met. And every day we were friends, I was impressed by her kindness. She was funny, too, in that beat-up convertible. Everyone in Gainesville seemed to know Ginny Harrington. She was my best friend. Ginny and Betsy Young and me, um, and I.” Caroline searched the pews of the church for Betsy, who looked down at her lap immediately, intensely. She could feel Caroline’s eyes scanning the crowd for her, and she tried to will herself to disappear, to conde
nse her body or melt onto the floor of the church somehow. She felt Gavin’s leg press against hers and tried to control her quickening breath. What would Caroline do if she knew that Betsy was at the apartment the night Ginny was murdered, that she heard something, anything at all, and didn’t try to stop it? Betsy couldn’t bear it. It was a mistake, a fuckup of colossal proportions, and she would never tell a soul what had happened. She was high and paranoid, convinced that she imagined she was hearing something: That was her excuse? She felt unforgiveable, small, pathetic, scared. “We had some of the greatest times, and you know, I thought we would have more.” Caroline finally started to break, her composure dissolved, and she paused for a moment to collect her thoughts.

  “I don’t know if Father Tom can help any of us make sense of this, why this happened, why Ginny, why five college kids had to die in this way. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand. But my hope, for Ginny’s sake, is that justice is served, and served quickly. I know that I won’t find any peace until they catch that . . . the person who did this to my friend. But I hope Ginny does. I hope she’s at peace now. At least that’s what they say happens. I . . . I really don’t know. I don’t think any of us do.”

  With that, the priest put his hand lightly on Caroline’s tan shoulder and she walked slowly back to her seat.

  GINNY GREW UP in Winter Park, but her father was born and raised in Ocala, in the house where Nana Jean still lived. Her family had settled there back in the late nineteenth century, and the Harrington family plot at the Evergreen Cemetery was large and overgrown with vines. Ginny would be buried near her grandfather. Betsy knew Nana Jean never suspected that her lovely Virginia, the youngest of her five grandchildren would get there first.

  There was a plaque at the front of the cemetery that identified it as a historic place, stating that Civil War veterans and former slaves were buried there. That may explain why the land was divided into two parts by a road, segregated even in death. There were low, crumbling walls, some of the state’s only real ruins. Betsy wished that everyone she’d ever met who denied that Florida was part of “the South,” the proper South of mint juleps and formal stationery, could see that place. The moss-draped trees, the decaying headstones, the constant buzzing chorus of insects that played in the background all felt as Southern as it gets. And the dark thunderheads rolling in (the Harringtons planned the service and burial for the morning, no doubt, because of the likelihood of afternoon rain, but Florida weather wasn’t a system that was easily beaten), cast a heavy, damp pall on the day that made Betsy feel the presence of the past, all of those souls surrounding her, intensely.