Damaged Goods

by Heather Sharfeddin

  After a time, the rancid odor of pigs reached him, and he had a fleeting memory of staring down into a muddy sty filled with enormous dark hogs. He struggled to piece the memory together, but it was fractured, the way so much of his past was. He hadn’t raised pigs as a kid, or kept them as an adult. Where did this random image come from, and why did it carry such an overwhelming sense of foreboding?

  Silvie crept downstairs a few minutes after midnight, sleepless and thirsty. She peered out the kitchen window to the spot where Hershel had parked his truck that afternoon, but it wasn’t there. She looked around, pondering how long he’d been gone. What small comfort she had found there evaporated with the knowledge that she was alone. Hershel’s presence, though not warm, at least provided a sense of security. She needed the shelter he offered, and she’d come downstairs prepared to show him that she could be warm, friendly … whatever he needed her to be.

  She filled a glass at the tap and took a slow sip. Oregon well water tasted coppery and sharp compared with the water in Wyoming, and she liked it. She finished the glass and refilled it, then made a quiet inventory of the windows and doors. She tried the sash on the living-room window, but it wouldn’t budge. She checked the front door and found it secured with a dead bolt and a chain.

  When she returned the glass to the kitchen she found Hershel’s cellphone plugged into an outlet near the refrigerator. She glanced around, double-checking that she was alone, then scrolled through the contacts. When she found Kyrellis, her hand suddenly shook. She set the phone down abruptly and stared at it as if it were a poisonous snake. But it held the only connection to the man who had Jacob’s pictures. She took it up again and quickly pressed the call button before she lost her nerve. It rang only twice before he answered.

  “Swift. ’Bout time you called. You finally figure out what that girl is hiding?”

  “Th-this is Silvie,” she stammered. “You have my box.”

  “Silvie,” he said softly, as if committing her name to memory. “What a beautiful name.”

  “Just give it back. Please.”

  “I can see why you don’t want anyone to see these pictures.” He spoke softly into the phone, a sympathetic, fatherly tone. “Who took them?”

  “You have no idea what kind of trouble this will bring,” she said.

  “Yes … yes, you could be right.” He paused over the idea. “Was he kind to you, the man who took these? Even a little?”

  Her mind swam with conflicting answers. “He’ll come after you for them.” Silvie knew what Jacob was capable of, because she’d once witnessed his confrontation with a man behind the out-houses at the Hanley reservoir. It was dark, but she caught the flash of silver in the beam of the headlight before the man collapsed at Jacob’s feet. When he returned to the truck, wiping the blade of a knife with his handkerchief, he eyed her balefully.

  “He should have done as I asked,” he said matter-of-factly. The next morning, the sheriff was called out to investigate a murder at the reservoir.

  “Who will come after me?” Kyrellis asked. “Who is the man in this photo where you’re—” He paused a long moment. “Well, I don’t need to say exactly. I’m sure you know which one I mean.” He sounded sad.

  She flushed, imagining precisely which picture Kyrellis held.

  “That’s a fine-looking house—what I can see of it. He has some money, this man. Doesn’t he, sweetheart?”

  “He’ll kill me,” she pleaded.

  “Listen, my dear, he may have told you he would kill you if you told anyone, but men like that are not murderers. You’re not in as much danger as you’ve been led to believe.”

  “What do you want for them?”

  “I hate to admit it, but that is the question, isn’t it? How about the name of the man in the picture?”

  “He will kill me. He’ll kill you, too. You don’t know him.”

  “No, I don’t know this specific man. But I know men like him. Tell me his name and I’ll make sure he never bothers you again.”

  Silvie hung up the phone and stood in the dark kitchen, exhausted. She had no way of knowing how far Kyrellis would go. There was something approaching kindness in his voice, and it confused her. Maybe he had a soft spot that she could appeal to. He wouldn’t go as far as Jacob; she was certain of that.

  She wiped the sweat and oil from Hershel’s phone and returned it to the exact place where she’d found it. She went back upstairs to the bedroom and sat with the light on, trying to forget the memory of Jacob Castor slicing down a man with all the concern of someone ridding himself of a rabid dog, or the things he’d made her do afterward.

  11

  Carl was nearly to the highway when a white van pulled onto the rutty road leading into Campo Rojo. The driver slowed to a stop and leaned out the window.

  “You the landlord here?”

  “Nope.” Carl pointed to where the road forked to the left and disappeared into a stand of noble firs once intended for Christmas trees but long overgrown. “Jimmy Arndt owns the place. He lives back there.”

  “He got anyone that speaks English down at Camp Rojo to tell me which units get satellite TV?” He pronounced the name phonetically, with a j instead of an h.

  “No idea,” Carl said. “Just don’t put one on unit five. That’s mine, and I’m not paying for it.”

  The man scrutinized Carl as if he were joking. It was a common response, as if no white man would truly be living in a migrant camp. And it always put the short hairs on the back of Carl’s neck straight up like a mean dog’s. When Carl didn’t smile, the man drove on, taking the left fork into Arndt’s driveway. Carl trudged onto the highway and turned south toward the auction barn, shaking his head. How did these people expect to save money if they spent it on television? He knew from experience that when he returned home that evening every cabin in camp, with the exception of his and Yolanda’s, would sport a satellite dish directed at the southern sky, each like a proud American status symbol.

  A car whizzed past, spraying an icy mist across him. He zipped his jacket and picked up the pace. In the summer the mile-and-a-half walk past berry fields and filbert orchards to the sale barn was pleasant. The old houses in Scholls proper—a short strip of road that started at Groner Elementary and ended at the South Store—were a sight to behold in spring. Hundred-year-old magnolia trees, wisteria, rhododendrons, and generations of wild daffodils brought a charm to the place that new money couldn’t. The mini-mansions that had sprouted up along the ridgeline of Chehalem Mountain looked garish and self-important in the steely drizzle of winter. This time of year, the walk was simply a chore to be gotten done with.

  Hershel sipped coffee at the breakfast table, spying an oil painting at the bottom of the stairs in the other room. He half listened to Silvie talk about the greenness of Oregon. She was charmed by it in a childlike way. The painting, an Impressionistic view of a canal and a fishing boat in muted colors, had been in his family and it was Rachel’s favorite. A Dutch painter, he thought. Six thousand dollars? That appraisal seemed right. His sister had wanted it, but he’d gotten it. How?

  Silvie rambled almost nonstop about the camellia bush outside his kitchen window and how pretty it would be when it bloomed, making him question whether he even knew what a camellia bush was. Could he see the buds already forming there? He turned and gazed out the window at the bush. She wanted to know if it was pink or white, but he couldn’t remember it at all.

  “Pink,” he said. She wouldn’t be here long enough to know if he was right.

  He experienced a flash of Rachel’s anger over the painting, but he couldn’t bring the memory together. Tears. Shouting. Name-calling. He thought she’d sell it; that was why he’d taken it. It was a glaring lie. He was the one who would sell it. He simply hadn’t yet come into the right situation to catch top dollar. It suddenly seemed like the most precious thing he owned. It connected him to his family, however tenuously.

  “Have you called Kyrellis yet?”

 
; Hershel snapped back to Silvie. “I’ll call him now.” He’d been putting it off, hoping she’d decide to just leave on her own.

  “Swift, is that you?” Kyrellis answered.

  “Yeah, it’s me. We need to talk.” He glanced at Silvie, then stood and walked into the living room for privacy.

  “Did she tell you about the pictures?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. What do you want with them?”

  Kyrellis sighed into the phone. “How much do you think a man would pay to keep these pictures quiet? I mean, if it were you in one of these shots, how much would you pay?”

  “I wouldn’t know. It’s not me.” Numbers had flashed through his mind, but this was one object—or collection—that he could not appraise. And Hershel’s dislike of this man, despite his refined mannerism, was growing more precise. Whatever they had been to each other before the accident, he wanted nothing to do with Kyrellis now.

  “Well, that’s how we’re going to determine the value, so think about it.”

  “Let it go. You got the gun. I offered to pay you for your trouble. Why are you doing this?”

  “Why did this man take these pictures? Why did you sell your Charger? Why didn’t she put oil in her car?”

  “She’s a victim. She was twelve when those photos were taken.”

  “Mmm, that young?” He was quiet for a moment. “Yes, she is a victim. She is indeed.” Kyrellis whistled to himself as if amazed by something he saw.

  “C’mon, Kyrellis, you want me to call the police?”

  “I don’t think that would be a wise move on your part, Swift.” Kyrellis’s voice went suddenly hard. “You really don’t remember where you were the night of your accident, do you?”

  Hershel’s scar prickled.

  “Does the name Albert Darling ring a bell?”

  The prickle turned to pain, and a man’s face flashed through his mind, then was gone just as quickly. He couldn’t recover the details.

  “Think hard on that before you get the police involved. You wouldn’t want to bite off more than you bargained for.” Kyrellis hung up, leaving Hershel standing in the living room with the name Albert Darling bouncing through his brain, seeking recognition, begging for a home.

  “What did he say?” Silvie asked from behind him.

  Hershel didn’t answer straight off, but worked at recalling the face that had faded back into his muddled past.

  “Is he going to return the box?”

  “Not that easily, it seems.”

  “What am I going to do?” Her eyes remained on Hershel, as if he could fix this for her if he would just try a little harder.

  Hershel rubbed his hand over his head and stared at his feet. He couldn’t stand the way she looked at him. Like he’d disappointed her. “I don’t know.”

  “How much money does he want?”

  “He hasn’t said. But … I can imagine it’ll be a lot.”

  She watched Hershel, and he wondered if she was figuring his net worth. Would she expect him to pay Kyrellis’s price?

  “How much are these photos worth to the man who took them?” he asked.

  Her face went dark. “He won’t be blackmailed. That’s where Kyrellis is wrong.”

  “He’s the sheriff. Would he rather the media got hold of them?”

  “No. He’ll find Kyrellis and kill him. Then he’ll kill me. And maybe you, too. That’s the way he works. He won’t be blackmailed.”

  “Listen,” he said, “why don’t you take that job down at the South Store?”

  She looked up, astonished by the sudden change of subject.

  “I think it’s going to take some time to work through this. It’ll give you something to do, and you can earn some money.”

  She simply stared at him as if he spoke in a foreign tongue. Finally she said, “How will I get there?”

  “Well, it’s not far to walk from the sale barn. You can stay there.”

  “Oh,” she said, as if suddenly understanding that she was the butt of a joke. “You want me out of here.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but it’s what you meant.”

  “Wait, be fair. I … you’re welcome to stay here. I just thought, well, it’s closer. That’s all. I wasn’t asking you to leave.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “I can’t stay there. It’s scary. I’ll go. I’ll find a place to stay somewhere.” She disappeared, and he heard her footfalls on the wooden stairs.

  Hershel rubbed the pain in his scar and struggled with letting her just leave with no place to go. She wasn’t his responsibility. Wasn’t it enough that he’d offered her a place to stay?

  “Goddamnit!” He walked to the bottom of the stairs and hollered up. “Silvie, I didn’t mean for you to go.”

  She emerged from the bedroom with her backpack over one shoulder and the laundry basked with her folded clothes on the other arm.

  “Put that stuff down. You’ll stay here until we get this mess sorted out.”

  Without a word, she returned to the bedroom.

  Hershel heard a backpack hit the floor, followed by a basket. He sighed, vacillating between relief and irritation.

  By noon Carl had inventoried and organized three large deliveries for the upcoming sale. The first two consisted of various farming implements: ladders, pruning tools, and tractor parts. One cider press that was old, but still in good condition, and several boxes of household items. Boxes that Hershel would probably sell off for a buck or two for the entire contents of each one in a “take one or take ’em all” deal. But the third load had been full of antique radios and televisions from the estate of a man who had made his living repairing and selling them. Carl had spent twenty minutes trying to tune in the AM country-and-western station but, losing patience, ended up listening to Clark Howard instead. He liked Clark’s philosophy about money, but not the calls from people who were on the brink of investing everything they had in scams that played on their desires to be rich. He knew it was easy to criticize other people because he’d never had any money of his own to invest or lose, but this didn’t stop him from shouting “You idiot” at the radio every once in a while.

  Hershel arrived shortly after lunch and silently went to work marking lot numbers on pieces of masking tape and putting the radios into the order in which he wanted to sell them—least to best. Sometimes with specific collectibles he could frenzy the crowd, like sharks after meat. Another load from an architectural salvage yard came in at about two o’clock, and they worked side by side, moving the nicest items, like the brass andirons in the shape of eagles, to the front of the staging area, where people could look them over and see other people looking them over, too. Hershel was a master at fostering competitive wars among bidders. He had an innate understanding of human nature and had once told Carl that most people will pay more than an item is worth, and often more than they can afford, simply to make the others around them believe they’re well-off. Ego. Everything was driven by ego. All he had to do was tap into it. That same night he’d sold a Mission-style library table with fake-wood veneer for six hundred dollars. It might have been worth that had it been oak, but the two bidders were inexperienced at assessing antiques and had behaved like sparring roosters. One man surely awoke the following morning relieved, despite the momentary sting of defeat. Hershel laughed about and retold that story for weeks.

  “You remember anyone by the name of Albert Darling?” Hershel asked, breaking the silence and startling Carl.

  “Yeah,” he said cautiously. “He came round here looking for you a couple of times.”

  Hershel paused in his work and waited for Carl to elaborate.

  “Didn’t we liquidate his storage unit over in Sherwood for nonpayment?” At times it felt as if his boss was testing him, checking to see if he remembered. Of course he did.

  “Sherwood,” Hershel mumbled, and returned to his work.

  “Yep.”

  Hershel placed the stained-glass pieces behind the auct
ioneer’s podium in the grimy window, where they might catch a little light. But the dusty cobwebs and dead flies made them seem more like junk than treasures, and Carl climbed up after him and wiped the debris away with a dirty rag.

  As he unpacked a box of nineteenth-century door knockers, Carl sensed Hershel’s eyes on him. “Need something, boss?”

  Hershel shook his head and ripped the tape from another box, revealing tin ceiling tiles with Victorian-era stamping.

  “I think he was in prison or something.”

  Hershel scowled.

  “Albert Darling. Claimed you sold a gun that was his while he was in the big house.”

  Hershel squinted at Carl. “What do you know about the guns?”

  “I don’t know anything about that, boss.”

  12

  Karen Gibbs put Silvie to work that afternoon on a trial run. “Things start to pick up on Fridays,” she said. “But Saturdays are downright busy. If I like what I see, you can do the lunch shift from eleven to two.”

  Though Silvie hadn’t waitressed much, she’d spent long hours at the bar watching her mother. She donned an apron, slipped a new pad and pen into her front pocket, and hoisted a fresh pot of coffee off the burner. She greeted her first customers, a couple wearing matching fleece vests in bright orange. The man had on a flannel button-up shirt and jeans. The woman wore a turtleneck and leather ankle boots. Her straight blond hair was trimmed to a perfect blunt line, and she wore expensive sunglasses tilted up on her head even though it was pouring rain outside. They looked so freshly scrubbed that Silvie was afraid to stand too close.