by Aaron Polson
“Look, I’m sorry.” He held his head.
She looked up, her eyes puffy and rimmed with red. She nodded.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Really. I understand that you aren’t ready to tell your folks, okay?” He sat down on the edge of the bed, testing the space to see if he was welcome. “Congrats on the interviews, too.”
“I wasn’t ready…I will be, soon. It’s not just you—I haven’t even told them about my job.” Gina held out her hand. “I’m worried about that headache. You never have headaches.”
“No worries. I’ll be fine.” Calvin stretched one arm around her shoulders. “Take your time with your folks. I’m in no hurry.” He bent lower and focused on her brown eyes. “I understand, all right?”
Gina nodded.
“Look, I hate to go…that call was for work. I have something important to do.”
The inside of Idle Hour was covered with at least two generations of Coors Light and Budweiser posters, old enough that some of the women on the posters could easily be Calvin’s mom. A permanent cigarette haze floated in the air despite the public smoking ban two years ago. The building stretched half a city block with billiards tables lined up from front to back and old vinyl bar stools resting against the walls between a few upright arcade machines. A small area in front held a couple of tables for playing cards and the bar.
Calvin looked past the grizzled faces of the middle-aged regulars and saw Lenny at a billiards table under a cracked lamp in the middle of the hall. He was lining up for a shot and nodded toward Calvin as he approached.
“I thought this would be a good place.” Lenny looked at the ceiling, indicating the loud music. “Nobody will overhear us in here.” With a swift thrust, he sent the cue ball into the nine. “Join me?”
Calvin thrust his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “No. I’m terrible.” He slipped a twenty out of his pocket and folded it in his hand. “You’re getting expensive.”
Lenny sidled up to Calvin and snatched the bill. “Yeah, maybe. But this is good. 14-A, you know, Jane Doe or whatever, she was wanted for murder.” He bent to the table again and lined up another shot.
Calvin began to sweat and took off his jacket, tossing it on a chair against the wall. “Maybe I will join you.” He surveyed a collection of house cue sticks on a rack, held up a few, and made a choice.
“Arizona. She was wanted in Arizona. The car was stolen in Wichita. Sedgwick County plates.” He cleared the table, knocking the eight ball in the side. “I’ll rack.”
Calvin’s head swam, and he steadied himself using the cue stick as a crutch. He looked up, past Lenny and spotted Brad, Gina’s old boss, guffawing at the bar. Brad was short, but broad—he hit the local gym every day, mostly to work on his upper body by the look of his scrawny legs.
“Hey, zombie-dude, are you with me? Did you hear what I said?”
Calvin snapped to attention. “Murder,” he muttered.
Lenny walked around the table and stood close to Calvin. “Here’s the real crazy shit, okay? She killed this old dude and his wife. Cut their fuckin’ eyes out and left their bodies in the goddamn kitchen. The cops out there never found the eyes.”
Calvin’s eye twitched. “How do you learn all this?”
“Springdale’s finest think I’m some sort of idiot, I guess. They talk right in front of me, me sitting there with my Spiderman comic, shit. They must think I’m stupid.”
You’re not stupid—you took forty bucks from me this week, Calvin thought.
“Can you believe that? She didn’t look like some cold-blooded, freak killer.” Lenny chuckled.
“I need to do something,” Calvin said, almost in a trance. He drifted away from the billiard table and through the crowd. Calvin moved straight to Brad and tapped him on the shoulder.
Brad turned, “Oh, lookie, it’s Ansel freakin’ Adams. How’s your girlfriend, buddy?”
“You’re a dick,” Calvin said before blindsiding him with a right uppercut. Brad slipped off his stool, stunned by the sudden blow. Steel bands wrapped around Calvin’s arms before Brad could scramble to his feet.
Joel, the bouncer, dragged Calvin outside and dropped him on the damp sidewalk. “None of that shit, buddy. Go home, all right?” He towered over Calvin. Joel had played a few years of football in college before blowing a knee, and he still cast an imposing shadow.
Calvin nodded and started to pick himself off the ground.
Lenny popped out of the door. “What the hell were you thinking? C’mon, lets get you home before B-rad decides to come for round two.”
“Yeah…yeah.” Though sober, Calvin staggered to his feet, needing some help from his scraggly accomplice to keep from flopping back to the concrete. He felt dirty, dragged through a muddy field. Nerves pricked in his arms and legs like the tiny cuts from rolling in crisp grass.
“Look, champ. The cops were asking about you, too. You made the call the night Jane wrecked, right?”
Calvin nodded, his head swimming. “Yeah, first on the scene,” he muttered. As Lenny led him down the street, he imagined that girl—Jane Doe, the murderer—lying in the ditch with her eyes cut out.
“Shit, Cal. What were you thinking?” Gina stood in their bedroom doorway with her arms crossed, a dour look dragging her lips into a frown.
Calvin shook his head. “I just…something pushed me.” He eyed the room, resting his glance for a moment on the camera bag on the sofa. “How the hell did you know?”
She closed her eyes. “Megan called. She was at the bar, too.” Her eyes opened, looking black in the dim kitchen. “He’s a jerk, Cal, but starting a bar brawl—”
“I didn’t start a god-damn bar brawl. I just decked that asshole, and they tossed me out.”
“Whatever. It’s just not like you.” She uncrossed her arms. “Is it the job, Cal? I was on the computer today. I stumbled on some pictures by accident…that young woman…” She shuddered. “Something like that has to…get to you. That wreck…”
Calvin’s neck burned. He shivered, feeling hot pinpricks again. Anger. “How the fuck do you know what I’m like?” His voice swelled, filling the kitchen. “Shit!” He balled his fists and thrust one through the sheetrock next to the phone. The knuckles stung, streaked with blood and loose skin. Calvin pushed the throbbing hand to his mouth and sucked on the wound. Gina disappeared through the doorway. He heard a slam and the distinct click of his bedroom door lock.
He stuck the injured hand under the tap and flipped on the cold, letting the water cool his hand and his temper. His brain swam inside his skull, lost at sea somewhere. Thoughts bounced and rocked, but he couldn’t grasp anything long enough to make sense. Calvin wiped his hand on a towel and tumbled to the sofa, kicking the camera bag to the floor. The camera bag.
He reached for the bag, but the vice tightened on his head again and his fingers wouldn’t obey. Something seemed to crawl through his veins, forcing him to lie down. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, for most of the night—not asleep, but not quite awake. Toward dawn, he drifted into a fitful sleep.
Calvin dreamed of Gina. She held the camera bag over one shoulder. Brad was in the dream too, bare-chested and smeared with oil like at a body building contest. He wrapped one well-muscled arm around Gina’s slender waist and pulled her closer. She giggled. Brad’s eyes swelled, fading to a sky blue. Watch this, she mouthed before poking her thumbs into Brad’s eye sockets, pressing until an oily black goo squirted out.
Calvin woke in a cold sweat. The clock above his mantle showed 6:30 AM. He rolled off the couch, snatched his keys from the counter, and left the house before Gina stirred. He wanted to be away; something smelled of rot and worked on his stomach, telling him to go.
The phone nearly knocked Calvin out of his chair when it rang. He had been dozing at his desk in the newsroom, but now he recovered, wiped some drool from his lips, and grabbed the receiver.
“Sentinel. Calvin Morris speaking.”
“Calvin?�
� Lenny’s voice questioned. “Shit, Calivn. I figured they’d probably locked you up by now.”
“Who?” Calvin shook his head to break the cobwebs loose.
“The freakin’ cops, dude. They just called. They want to question you about the girl. You know, 14-A, murderous Jane Doe?”
Calvin glanced at his cell phone, noting a missed message from the Springdale Police Department and one from his house. “What…did you—”
“No. Shit no. Security told them you had been here. Crazy shit, man. Her fucking eyes were cut out. Rough job too, somebody must’ve done it with a dull butter knife or something.”
A ball of ice grew in Calvin’s stomach. The memory grabbed him, and he steadied himself against the desk. “What?”
“They want to ask you about it. They’re looking for something else, some evidence. A jar I think.”
Calvin scanned the area for his camera bag. Not here. When he glanced up, he spotted two police officers skirting around desks in the newsroom. “Look, Lenny…I gotta go.” He dropped the phone on the cradle.
“Calvin, what’s the good word buddy?” It was Jimmy Mann, cocky and ignorant, the cheese of Springdale’s finest.
“Just catching up on some paperwork. I’m sure you guys know all about paperwork.”
The other officer chuckled. Jimmy glared at him and faced Calvin. “Look, we had a little talk with your friend at the hospital…Lenny? Anyway, I’m sure you had nothing to do with defacing the body.” A moment passed in awkward silence, a verbal game of chicken. “Although I am a little curious as to why you had to go see her in the cooler. We would also like to know if you saw anything funny at the scene of the accident, before we arrived. Anything you didn’t tell us in your statement that night.”
Lenny, you lying bastard. Calvin straightened in his chair, meeting Jimmy’s gaze. “No. Why would I go and withhold evidence from you fellows.”
Jimmy smiled, trying to pull off some Hollywood-tough demeanor. “I dunno, Calvin.” He leaned forward. “But Jane was wanted for murder, and anything in that car could’ve been related to the case, and if you did—”
“I took something from the scene—that’s what you’re implying, right? If I did, I’d be dumb enough to be a member of the Springdale Police Department. Hell, I cut those fucking eyes out with a spoon. Is that what you want?” Calvin stood up, his heart rattling inside his chest, pushed past Jimmy, and turned. “Look, I’m busy, got it? Play Sherlock Holmes on somebody else’s time.” He held his head against the mounting pain as he hurried into the afternoon sunshine.
Gina sat at the kitchen table, pale and washed like a sheet of clean paper. A mason jar rested on the table in front of her. It was filled with something, a clear fluid like water. Six eyes floated in the water like bleached grapes, bits of flesh clinging to each and clouding the fluid. Calvin took a few steps into the room and noted that two of the eyes had electric blue irises.
Gina tilted her head toward him. “I found this in your bag Calvin.” Her hand shook as she pointed at the jar. “I was going to call you. I thought maybe you needed your stuff for work.”
The burning started in his toes this time, slashing through every nerve in his body. He stepped closer to the table, Gina stood, and the jar seemed to grow. “I—I’m fine.” One finger touched the glass, and six eyes spun to meet his gaze. He remembered the whispers. Those eyes had told him what to do the night of the wreck, they told him what to do that day in the morgue, but they were quiet now.
“I found this, too.” She held out his pocketknife. “I—I think I know why you did it.” She moved behind Calvin and gently pushed him into a chair. He didn’t resist. “She had such beautiful eyes—such blue eyes. Electric. Intoxicating.”
“Gina …”
Her fingers brushed across his cropped hair. “When I found the jar…it was like they were talking to me, Calvin. Whispering, telling me what to do.”
Calvin’s car was gone when the police arrived. They entered through the open door and found his body slumped against a wall in the kitchen. A dark stain swallowed the front of his shirt, a thick run of blood from his throat. Both eyes were gone, gouged out, leaving two rough wounds in his face. His old pocketknife sat on the table, alone, smeared and sticky with blood. The jar, the eyes, and Gina were nowhere to be found.
7: Grim Adaptations
On a late Sunday afternoon, Scab Hullinger caught an abomination in the Republican River about forty yards downstream from the old wrought-iron bridge south of Springdale. Glistening wet, heaving, and gray as a dislodged lung, the thing flopped and writhed in a cooler filled with murky river water. Three boys on the fringe of manhood, one thin like a twist of wire, one wide and solid like a bulldog, and Scab somewhere between—slender but athletic—stood on the muddy bank, staring at the thing.
“Damn Scab, that’s big. Nibbled like crazy on my fingers.”
“Did it get any of them?” Joel asked with a chuckle while rubbing his grubby hands across the front of his jeans.
“Naw. Just sandpaper gums like most bottom feeders.” Allen, a skittish rail of a boy with brown-black eyes bulging from his thin face, squatted next to the cooler. “I’ve never seen a channel cat that color.”
“Can’t be a channel cat,” Joel said.
“Like hell.” Allen spat in the mud. “Has to be. It’s got the flat head, whiskers and pretty grim looking spines on the sides.”
“Sure does. Cut myself on one of them.” Scab held the meaty part of his left palm, squeezing just hard enough to produce a thin stream of blood from a jagged gash.
Joel kicked the cooler with one muddy boot. The fish flopped slightly in the cramped enclosure, showing a wide, flat eye of green-gray. “You ever seen a channel with eyes like that?”
The three were silent for a moment.
“I’m gonna call Barry. He’s home this weekend.” Scab said, fumbling in his jeans for a cell phone.
Joel scratched his black hair. “Your brother?”
“Yeah, he’s studying fish and wildlife at college, right?”
Allen paced behind his garage while Joel cleaned the rest of the afternoon’s catch.
“You could help out, you pansy.” Joel wiped the filet knife on a rag. “It’s your house, your freezer, your fish.”
“You’re doing fine all by yourself.” Allen flipped open his cell phone. “Where the hell are they, anyway?”
“Hell if I know.” Joel rubbed his hands under the backyard spigot. He was shaking them off when Scab’s car pulled into the alley.
“Hey Scab,” Joel called. “Hey Barry.”
Barry Hullinger smiled as they climbed out of Scab’s Honda. Scab managed a cursory grin while cradling his wounded hand.
Gavin Hullinger earned the unfortunate nickname “Scab” in middle school when Cori Hamilton, still the prettiest girl in Springdale, caught him chewing on a bit of loose skin from his elbow in seventh grade PE. He grew out of his awkward, boney frame in the five years since and became starting linebacker for the Springdale Saints’ district championship squad. He was even the frontrunner for class valedictorian, but the name held on, as stubborn things will in small towns. His brother, Barry, had been one of the finest scholar-athletes to graduate from Springdale High School.
“Where’s the fish?” Barry asked.
The four young men stood around the stained cooler in Allen’s garage. The grayish fish-thing thrashed about, splashing a little water over the edge each time someone disturbed its temporary home, but otherwise floated motionless in the muck.
Joel picked mud from under his fingernails with a pocketknife. “So, channel cat or not.”
“If it is, it sure isn’t healthy,” Barry said, squatting next to the cooler. “This color…isn’t right. Those eyes…I think it might be dead.”
“Dead?” Allen asked. His voice shot up an extra octave.
“Well, it looks dead. Smell’s dead, too. I don’t know what’s keeping it going.”
“So what do we do?
Filet the thing, have a fry up with some beers?” Joel chuckled and then shook his head.
“I’m not eating that shit,” Allen squeaked.
“No,” Barry said as he stood. “We aren’t going to fucking eat it. Are you really as dumb as Gavin says?”
Allen frowned.
“I’m going to call one of my professors.”
“Your professor?” Joel flicked the knife shut on his pant leg. “What the hell for?”
Barry shook his head slowly and scratched his chin. “I don’t know. But something’s not right.” He glanced at his brother who was leaning against the side of the garage. “Look, I better get Gavin home”
“You sure we should be doing this?” Allen asked as Joel steered his truck over the rough gravel roads in Greenwillow Cemetery.
Joel shrugged. “Look, do you want to keep that freak-o-fish at your place this weekend?”
Allen squirmed in his seat. “Hell no. But what if Barry wants to see it again—”
“I don’t give a shit. The college-boy can fish it out of the pond.” Joel squinted into the gathering twilight ahead of the truck. “’sides, if it is a good sized channel—even a mutant one, it can take out some of the nasty little bullhead up there in Potter’s Pond. Maybe make the fishing worthwhile.”
“Yeah, I ‘spose so. But what if it is sick. Diseased or whatever Barry said?”
Joel smiled. “Well, it’ll clear up Potter’s Pond either way.”
Just beyond the city limit of Springdale, Kansas, in the woods beyond the boundary fence of Greenwillow Cemetery rested an abandoned farm pond. Years of disuse allowed the trees and brush—mostly crooked spruce trees, sickly cottonwoods, and gnarled redbuds—to encroach on the shores of Potter’s Pond. The name spun from the pauper’s graves, Potter’s Fields, of old. The boys understood little of the Potter’s Pond legend, only vague myths about the poor of Springdale being tossed to its green depths when they couldn’t pay for a decent funeral. That’s what the old men at Jenson’s Hardware joked about every time the boys bought a few dozen worms for bait so they could spend a Sunday afternoon catching tiny bullhead when they were younger. The pond teemed with those small members of the catfish family.