Damaged Goods

by Heather Sharfeddin

  “Swift,” the man said, as if remembering Hershel personally. “How long you worked for that son of a bitch?”

  “A while.”

  “He’s crooked.”

  Carl had heard it all before and didn’t care to hear it again. “Been all right to me.”

  The sheriff’s patrol arrived from the north, casting strobes of blue and red across the gray morning. Traffic was beginning to pick up, and a few drivers slowed and stared as they passed. The sheriff parked in front of the pickup and pulled his hat on before stepping out. He held his hand carefully centered over his gun. Carl hated law-enforcement men. He believed the profession was a magnet for the worst sort of control freaks and insecure weirdos society had ever produced.

  “Hear you two are having a fight,” the sheriff said as he reached them.

  The man who had stopped to help was suddenly outraged. “We aren’t fighting. I came around the corner and found three Mexicans kicking the shit outta this guy.” He gestured at Carl.

  Carl shook his head, sending pain shuddering through his temples. There was no way the man could know those three were Mexican—not in this light. Today, however, would not be the day to stand on principle.

  In Silvie’s dream she was ten years old. A hot Wyoming summer had parched the ground to powdery dust. Sagebrush and prickly pear were all that survived out on the rocky plains, and the family had escaped to the Muddy River for the afternoon. Her father had stopped at the Gas ’n Go and let her pick out a small bag of chips and a soda. Silvie tucked them along the floorboard in the backseat of their Maverick, a treat to be savored, something to look forward to. Her father was an amateur fossil hunter who worked for the school district as a custodian. His hobby, which he preferred to pursue alone, had given him intimate knowledge of the southern Wyoming landscape. In Silvie’s dream he took them to a remote, deserted stretch of river with a wide grassy slope and a deep pool. There she shrieked with delight and plunged into the tepid water, splashing wildly, while her mother situated herself on the bank. Melody carried a box of blush wine, something of a constant prop, and a romance novel. Her father disappeared up the slope to a rock quarry in search of fossils, despite his daughter’s insistent pleas to watch her jumping into the water.

  Silvie’s dream was always the same. Her father wanders over the low-flung bank, a canvas sack draped across his right shoulder. He never looks back. He never comes back, though Silvie waits.

  Silvie woke in a strange place to the rumble of snoring. She stared up at the ceiling, the familiar dream still casting its gloomy pall—its suffocating sense of abandonment. She could feel his presence next to her. Her life had changed so suddenly. She was now a waitress at the South Store and expected to report to work that morning, and Hershel would be off to find tires and a battery for a car that was not hers but would be hers in the practical sense. As she stirred, thinking of a shower, trying to put this development into perspective, Hershel rolled over and wrapped his arms around her. It felt surprisingly nice there, warm and comforting. He pulled her against him so tight she could hardly breathe, her face buried in his hairy chest.

  Jacob had come back to the tavern the week after they’d first met. She heard his voice echoing through the dining room as she bent over her schoolwork in her usual corner of the kitchen. Her skin had prickled with excitement at the sound of that distinct and confident tone.

  “Where is she?” he asked. “Where is my little scholar?”

  “She’s home, where she belongs.” Melody Thorne’s voice was pleading. Silvie felt her mother’s fear, and it somehow made his request more exhilarating.

  Perhaps Jacob had seen Silvie slip in the back door earlier, or maybe he just had a way of knowing. A man like that knew things that weren’t apparent to others, Silvie believed. Her initial disappointment rapidly turned to relief that her mother stood between this man and her.

  “Nonsense,” Jacob boomed. “She’s in the kitchen. Send her out.”

  Melody poked her head around the corner, jerking her chin hard toward the dining room.

  Silvie got up from the chair and smoothed her skirt, feeling somehow underdressed anyway, and slowly walked out to where Jacob waited. His eyes lingered on her for a long moment. He said nothing, just tilted his face to the side and appraised her. Then a smile spread over his lips, even while his eyes stayed firmly fixed, making Silvie feel even smaller than she was.

  “There’s my girl,” he said. The phrase became his calling card. My girl. He would call her that so frequently in the coming years that Silvie would consider it a second name, but the resolute firmness of that first declaration remained to this day. My girl.

  “She needs a break from the books, I think,” Jacob announced. “An ice-cream cone is what she needs.”

  “But she’s got schoolwork to finish,” Melody protested.

  Silvie turned and looked over her shoulder to see her mother chewing her lip, wringing her hands, and Charlie behind her looking grim. Finally her mother relented with a meek shrug. “I guess she can go.”

  Charlie neither relented nor stopped it. He simply stood in the doorway between the bar and the kitchen, a dark expression on his tired face. He kept shaking his head in a slow back-and-forth gesture that Silvie tried to puzzle out as she followed Jacob to his waiting truck. She thought about it many more times in the years that followed. He knew—Charlie knew.

  Silvie tipped her head back and looked at the cleft in Hershel’s chin. She felt dirty. She’d never cheated on Jacob before. She missed his familiarity, his warmth. She missed the way he talked to her. She missed breakfast at Alison’s Café and the way Jacob always teased the waitresses. She missed his aftershave, and the way he smoothed her hair and twirled it around his fingers. It left a hard lump at the back of her throat, and she felt tears coming. But at least Hershel was more likely to let her stay now … to protect her.

  “I’d better get in the shower,” she said, and slid from Hershel’s arms, wishing for something to cover her nakedness.

  “Don’t go,” he said, pulling her back into bed. He peered at her with eyes blacker than she had imagined anyone’s could be. He pressed his lips to her forehead, then her nose, and finally to her mouth. He thrust his tongue into her and explored. She let him, feeling helpless. Then he rolled on top of her and parted her legs, sliding inside. He was so much bigger than Jacob, and it took her breath away. He seemed to find new depths with each forward thrust, which she found invasive but not unpleasant.

  After several minutes, Hershel groaned and fell against her, smothering her. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered.

  He propped himself up on one elbow, gazing down at her. He gently smoothed the hair away from her eyes and kissed her nose. She smiled up at him, for no other reason than she’d never guessed that the quiet and sometimes curt man who’d rescued her on the highway would behave so tenderly.

  “You do know it, don’t you?”

  She laughed, despite herself. “I have to get ready for work,” she said. “It was your idea, remember?”

  “What was I thinking? I could’ve had you in my bed all day, but instead I sent you down to the South Store to get a job. I will never cease to amaze myself. I must be the biggest moron roaming the planet.”

  She slid out from under him. He let her go, watching as she crossed the room in the nude, hugging her small breasts to herself as if to hide them. Wishing she could do the same about her ass.

  Hershel found Carl at the sale barn, his face bruised. The left side of his jaw was swollen to twice its normal size, and there were crusts of blood around his nostrils. Dark streaks stained his shirt. The man limped around as if he were eighty.

  “What happened to you?” he asked. But even this discovery couldn’t dampen his jovial spirits. He felt like a new man.

  Carl shrugged and winced as he hoisted a small box of canning jars onto his shoulder. “Couple of guys got me confused with someone else is all. I’m fine.”

  “What guys?”


  Carl carried the box to the end of a long aisle of household goods. “Just some new guys in camp.”

  “Why would they confuse you with someone else?”

  Carl dropped the box and turned to Hershel. “You never asked these sorts of questions before.”

  “I guess there are lots of things I never did before,” he said to Carl. He smiled, unable to stop himself.

  Carl stared, apprehensive. “You’re in a good mood.”

  “Yeah, guess so.” Hershel thought again about Silvie and how she’d walked into the restaurant that morning while he waited in the pickup, making sure she was safely inside the building, as if she might be abducted in broad daylight. So what if he never asked these questions before. That was a different Hershel. He would ask after his employees if he felt like it. He’d take an interest in why the only person who seemed to still be here, taking care of things and tending to business after all these months, was coming into work bloody and limping. Hell, he might even call his mother.

  “I filed a police report. It’s no big deal.”

  “Good.”

  “Kyrellis called,” Carl said.

  “What did he want?”

  “Wanted to know if you’d be down here today.”

  He clenched his hands into fists. Perhaps the man had decided on a figure. “Wonder why he didn’t just call my cell?”

  Carl sorted through boxes, marking their contents on the flap with a grease pen so that it would be easy to work through the items during the sale. He’d delivered the message and couldn’t be drawn into a conversation.

  “He’s got a box that belongs to Silvie,” Hershel said, then wished he hadn’t.

  “I’m really sorry about that fuckup,” Carl said. “It’s been bugging me.”

  “Just did what you thought was right,” he said, and started toward his office.

  He tried to hold on to his good mood, but it was sifting away like fine mist. He’d made a phone call that morning to Trent Campbell, a local auto reseller, to find out if Trent had parts he could use to get the Porsche running again. Trent was terse on the phone, claimed he didn’t have the parts and couldn’t order them. Hershel asked him if he had any cars to put through the next sale, and Trent laughed without humor. They’d worked together in the past, but how long he couldn’t pin down. A decade at least. Anything that stayed on Campbell’s lot more than ninety days went to auction. But the man was gruff today, stating that he didn’t think he’d be using Hershel’s services in the future. Campbell thought he’d made that clear already. When Hershel inquired why, the man simply called him a “first-rate asshole” and hung up.

  The first thing Hershel did when he got to his office was go to the file cabinet, pull open the top drawer, and begin to search for anything that had to do with Campbell’s Auto Liquidators. He found nothing more recent than a two-year-old receipt for three cars. Campbell typically put the newer-model cars in reasonable condition through Hershel’s auction, and the others went to the salvage yard for parts. He stared at the paper. Was it really two years ago that he’d last sold cars for Campbell? That’s how he picked up Floyd, his Charger. Campbell had planned to part it out, but when Hershel saw the car, he talked the man into putting it through the sale. He could still remember the way it sat on the lot beckoning to him. The paint was oxidized, the weather stripping gone, the windshield cracked. But it was irresistible.

  “It doesn’t run,” Campbell had told him. “I can get decent money for parts, though. It’s a classic. The front end will bring a thousand bucks.”

  “Exactly,” Hershel said. “Someone will want it to restore.”

  Campbell shook his head. “It’ll need to bring at least eighteen hundred or I’m better off parting it out.”

  “It will.” Hershel felt his skin prickle as he relived the conversation. He bought the car himself for six hundred dollars. And then he towed it to his house, where he restored it over the course of a year.

  He looked down at the receipt. It was shortly after the date on that piece of paper that Campbell figured out that the newly restored Charger was the very same one he’d sold through Hershel’s auction—at a loss. The brazenness with which he had taken advantage of Campbell and their business relationship astounded Hershel now. Did he think the man wouldn’t find out? Why would he risk his business like that? It didn’t make sense. There had to be more to it.

  Silvie watched a spider scuttle across the kitchen floor at the South Store. It had a large brown abdomen with a triangular design that reminded her of a Navajo blanket. The summer she turned eighteen, she encountered a spider just like that one in Jacob’s backyard. It had strung a perfectly symmetrical web in the space between his toolshed and a juniper bush. She’d watched it grow over the weeks, until it was monstrous in size, and though she had a particularly irrational fear of spiders, she left this one alone. It fascinated her, and it was confined to this place out in the open, honest about its intentions, not like the funnel spiders that tunneled along the walkway or under the decking.

  One evening, as she waited for Jacob to finish up some work in his den, she sat in the garden sipping iced tea and watching the spider. A honeybee flew into the web, tearing it so badly that it was held in place by only two strands. The bee was nearly the size of the spider, but the predator pounced so rapidly that by the time Silvie was on her feet and bent over the scene it had already begun to spin its prey in circles. The bee fought hard, thrashing furiously, piercing the growing cocoon with its stinger over and over. It took minutes for the spider to finally subdue the bee—a fight that might have gone either way had the honeybee gotten just the right angle on the spider. When it was over, the bee was unrecognizable in its thick white shroud. A mummy, though still alive, still trying to break free.

  Jacob appeared behind Silvie, startling her.

  “What’s so fascinating?” he asked, placing his hand on her hip, just above her buttocks.

  “That spider caught a honeybee,” she said. “You should’ve seen it. It fought so hard, and it took forever for the spider to win.”

  Jacob scowled at Silvie and said, “You didn’t cut it loose? You just watched it die?” He traced her face with his eyes, clearly disturbed by her willingness to stand by and do nothing.

  Silvie studied the cocoon, still quivering with life, and wondered what was going through the bee’s mind right then. Terror? She had trouble reconciling her place in this event, her responsibility. Wasn’t this life? The weak overtaken by the strong?

  Jacob gave her a hard swat on the butt. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “You okay?” Karen asked, bringing Silvie back to the kitchen and the stack of dishes in her hands.

  “Yeah,” she said, and dropped them into the sink before washing up.

  “Order up for table three.”

  Silvie dried her hands and collected the hot plates, balancing them precariously on her forearms as she stepped out into the warm dining room. The smell of freshly baked bread and the high-pitched whine of the espresso machine brought a smile to her face. The crowd was larger today and people were still coming in, dressed in fall fleece, their ears and noses reddened by the winter cold. They carried maps of Washington and Yamhill County wineries and discussed their routes. Where next? We can go out to McMinnville and circle back through Amity. Or up to Warden Hill in Dundee and then downvalley to Salem. Places with romantic names that she’d never heard of and could not fathom—Oak Knoll, Vista Ridge, Sokol Blosser, Erath. They even chatted across tables with strangers about where they’d been that morning, where they were headed, and which wineries they recommended. She wanted to be like these people, walk in their world, experience life as they did. Unencumbered by the problems she faced, these were the kind of people magazines like Western Living and Sunset were written for. No doubt they had cloth napkins on their tables, crystal in their china hutches, maybe even sleek-coated horses in country stables. Their lifestyles were remote and fascinating, nothing like hers. Still, the bust
le of people swept away all thoughts of Jacob or Hershel or Kyrellis. For the moment, she could imagine that she belonged here with these people, and it was a reprieve from the reality of her own life.

  15

  Hershel watched Kyrellis come in and speak briefly to Carl before finding his way to the open office door. Kyrellis paused there before stepping inside, smoothing the silver along his temples with his thick hand. His face was aged with soft lines, and his eyes made him look perpetually remorseful. He took the chair opposite Hershel’s desk without waiting for an invitation, unbuttoning his coat as he sat.

  “I heard on the police scanner there was a fight down at the migrant camp this morning. Looks like your man got the worst end of it.”

  Hershel leaned back in his chair and bent a paper clip between his fingers. It figured that Kyrellis listened to a police scanner.

  “I don’t mean to tell you how to run your business, but a loser like that will only cause trouble.”

  “He’s been decent help,” Hershel said.

  Kyrellis glanced over his shoulder into the warehouse and shrugged. “At least he’s white.”

  “What do you want, Kyrellis?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Why so unfriendly?”

  “I don’t like what you’re doing.”

  Kyrellis dug through his coat pocket and dropped a photograph on Hershel’s desk.

  Hershel stared down at the little girl in the picture, her hair in ponytails, wearing knee socks and nothing else. She lay back on a bed, legs spread. Too young even to have breasts. His stomach lurched. Her flat stare couldn’t hide her pain. He swiped up the picture and tore it into pieces.

  “Hey!” Kyrellis came out of his seat. “That could’ve earned us both some money now.”

  “You sick fucker! You want to exploit her. I want to protect her.”

  “That’s very admirable of you,” Kyrellis said genuinely as he sat back again. “But a girl like that is too far gone to protect. You think you can undo what another man has done? Face it, Swift, she’s damaged goods.” He sighed heavily. “It’s okay that you tore that one up. I was planning to give it to you, anyway. I have others at home.”