The Magpie's Return

by Peter Wright

  “Get yourself ready for your piano lesson.”

  Fran meets you in the hallway. “That’s tomorrow.”

  “Your teacher changed nights, remember? We walked about it last week.”

  Fran’s expression blank. “I forgot.”

  “Grab your music. You know how she is about being late.”

  You join Fran in her bedroom. “I’ll never get to my homework.” She unearths a slim packet amid her desk’s clutter. “I’ve barely practiced this week. I try to lie about it, but she sees right through me. She’s weird like that.” A smile. “How about you do my math? But leave a few mistakes so my teacher doesn’t get suspicious.”

  Fran’s mother enters. Coat on, keys in hand. “Come on, honey. We need to go.” A turn halfway out the door, a hug for you, a wordless goodbye.

  You sit at Fran’s desk. The cat leaps onto the bed. The cat sits, sleepy eyes watching as you page through the math book. Formulas, graphs. Concepts you grasped years ago but which tonight bring the comfort of certainty. You close the book. Music from downstairs. The rain softer now, and you’re thankful you packed your poncho. A smile as you imagine your long ride through the night. You, a modern Huck Finn, a story your grandmother read you years before. Before, you slow at the word. Before.

  The cat lifts its head, a twitch of his black tail. The front door opens, and you picture Fran, rushed and frantic, a piece of music forgotten. Men’s voices—or is it the radio?

  “Kayla?” Fran’s father’s voice. “Kayla, can you come down for a moment?”

  You stop halfway down the steps. Fran’s father steps aside. A pair of policemen crowd the foyer. Their hats and jackets slick with rain. Fran’s father looks away but not the policemen. Their wide jaws. Their holstered guns. One slips a pair of handcuffs from his belt. The other beckons with a twitch of his fingers. “Come with us, please.”

  III.

  The awkwardness of her shackled hands. The pinch of metal. Cool rain on her hair. The policeman’s beefy grip, and the numbness radiates down her arm. The walk to the waiting cruiser. A dog barks. The scent of wet grass and fallen leaves. The sensation of eyes upon her from behind shut doors. “My backpack,” she says, as if its possession were the key to keeping everything from falling apart. “My things—”

  The policeman holding her arm guides her into the cruiser’s backseat. His other hand on the back of her head. The door slams shut. The seat smooth and hard, and the space stinks like her gym teacher’s office—disinfectants and burnt coffee. The smudged partition behind the front seat warps the dash’s orange lights. The radio’s terse chatter, addresses, numbered codes. A shotgun secured to the dash. The policemen climb into the front seat. The squeak of plastic and springs, the rattle of gear. Kayla looks back. A rain-streaked window. Fran’s father pauses then shuts the door. The porch light snuffed.

  She wriggles, the stifled instinct to push her wet hair from her eyes. The handcuffs dig into her wrists, and the twisted posture strains her shoulders. The driver puts the car into gear. The one who cuffed her speaks into his shoulder microphone. The car rolls beneath a streetlamp, its wash of light a snapshot. The partition’s array of handprints captured then fading back into the dark. “My clothes,” Kayla says. Her throat constricted. Her words lost beneath the radio voices, the cruiser’s muscled prowl.

  Her neighborhood glides past. The lit bedroom windows of girls from her team. Streets where she rode her bike. The husk of the house she watched burn. The playground where she broke her index finger. The high school’s fields, the empty hockey cages. All she knows turning liquid, the distancing flow she felt at dinner now a riptide. Coherent thought, the movement of her body—all of it beyond her. The cruiser reaches the river road and turns north. Neither policeman speaks. The dark deeper here, town’s streetlights replaced by overhanging willows. Wet leaves on the shoulder. Her panic a seed at first. An image that burns in eyes both opened and closed. Moonlight on pale breasts. A bandanna’s bite against a neck’s tender skin. Open eyes staring into hers.

  Breathe, but she can only manage shallow clutches. Her panic blossoms. She’s drowning, here with the air all around her. Her brain’s electric fire. The river’s black flow glimpsed between the trees. They’ll rape her. They’ll rape her and beat her, and when they’re spent, they’ll cast her into the river. Her wrists bound, the water claiming her. A burial without a witness. She’ll fade even in the minds of those who loved her. Questions at first, then less so. The swallowing of time. Even Fran. Even her mother.

  She feels the water upon her. Its weight and volume. She holds her breath, a fight to stave the river from claiming her. The pressure builds behind her eyes. Her throat’s ache before she surrenders with a gasp. She presses her shoulders into the seat, lifts her knees, and slams the soles of her shoes against the partition. The plastic quivers, ripples of orange light. She kicks and screams, powerless to lift herself above the surface. The water rushes into her lungs. The current cold and black.

  The cruiser jerks onto the shoulder. The crunch of gravel, and Kayla tumbles onto her side. Rain on the roof. The radio’s indifferent chatter. She rights herself. In the woody strip between the road and the river, a headlamp shines. The light hurtling closer then passing, the rattle of boxcars and tankers. The thunder of wheels in Kayla’s chest, and knitted into the din, the life and rhythm of every creature huddled along the riverbank. The cop in the passenger seat turns back. Half his broad face lit, a fire’s hues, and in the set of his jaw, she sees the cops who smashed their batons into the faces of the campus protestors. Who sat in their cars as houses burned and the mobs called for blood.

  “Fuck you fuck you fuck you!” she curses through scalding tears. The salt on her lips. Her hands bound and useless. Sobs so thick she gags—then gags again when she thinks of a pair of panties stuffed down her throat. She doubles over, coughing, her head between her knees. A spindle of drool hangs from her lips. She speaks into the dark space between her feet. Her words eked between sobs. “Just let someone find me. Don’t throw me in the river. Just let them find me.”

  The policeman’s voice breaks over her. “Get up.”

  She wipes her face against her jeans’ leg. The act of sitting impeded by the cuffs, and she thinks of an overturned turtle her father righted on a leaf-strewn trail. Finally, she sits, her lip bit as the policeman considers her through the partition that now bears the imprint of her shoes. In her gut, a shine no larger than a grain of sand yet which grows with each heaving breath. The light an understanding of defiance and strength. Let them do what they want. She’ll look them in the eye until it all becomes too horrible. She’ll hoard her pain and turn the act upon them, her stare the mirror they’ll carry for the rest of their lives, a reflection waiting beneath every moment of joy or contentment. A gaze waiting for them as they gasp their final breath.

  “No one’s hurting anyone, kid. But if you kick my seat one more time, I’m hog-tying you, and you wouldn’t like that. Understand?”

  She says nothing.

  He turns back. “Let’s go.”

  The river road empty. Silence after the train’s last car. Silence in her thoughts, the stillness echoed as they pass the steel mill. The plant over a mile and a half long. Empty lots where weeds strain between cracked blacktop. Barbwire and snares of windblown trash. A rusty fence cut and patched and cut again. Teetering piles of wooden skids and spools and casings. The smokestack rows, slender towers, and below, the stretching shops of crumbling brick and broken windows. Cranes that sway in thunderstorms and blizzards. Her grandfather and great uncles worked the mill, their fathers before them. The plant now the setting for the town’s horror stories. Rat infestations. Shooting galleries. The squatters, men lost and violent. Black Masses and butchered animals. Rumors, and who knows what’s true. For Kayla, a final look back. A flicker in one of the long windows, a small flame.

  They pass beneath the south-side bridge. Memories amid the shadows—the backseat of her parents’ car, raucous scho
ol busses. Trips to the museum or the riverside stadium. To Front Street’s festivals, the road closed and packed with vendors and food carts. Old town, this neighborhood that keeps an eye on the river’s ice jams and high water. The streets quiet tonight, everything the same then not. A burned-out block, a heap of beams and bricks, staircases that strain into empty air. Across the street, untouched homes fly flags of red and white.

  The cruiser slows. Three men step from the corner. The cop in the passenger seat lowers his window. The cool air, the heaviness of rain. The men wear ponchos. Their faces shadowed by baseball caps and hoods. Red bands around their arms, rifles over their shoulders. One of the men rests his forearm on the roof. His face lit in the dash’s orange. Droplets in his beard, more clinging to his cap’s brim. A laugh as he says they’re doing “a little night hunting.” He considers Kayla. “And where’re you taking this pretty thing?”

  “Girl’s center.”

  A smile. “If you’d like, we can take her the rest of the way.”

  “You’d better behave yourselves,” the cop says.

  The man steps back, his rifle taken off his shoulder and held before him. “Not us you got to worry about behaving right, brother.”

  The window rolls back up. The man with the beard points at Kayla and winks. The cruiser slinks off. Kayla turns, and the man fades in the dark. How easily men like him have risen in this new order. She’d been naïve before, the belief that people like her parents were the norm. She’d overlooked the world’s crueler histories—the crowds who filled the Coliseum or called for the burning of witches, the ones who loaded the trains headed to the gulags and concentration camps. A current that had always churned now free to rise from the rubble and claim its rightful, horrible place.

  They turn onto a side street. An unfamiliar neighborhood. A weaving through tightly packed blocks. Kayla tries to align their present with the river road, the Capitol building, but after a few more turns, she loses her bearings. The car slows. Their arrival marked with a tire’s scrape of the curb.

  The driver jots notes in a ledger. His partner checks in with dispatch. Kayla rests her forehead against the rain-streaked window. She swallows back her panic. The girl who planned five steps ahead now blind. She forces a series of deep breaths. Take inventory, she tells herself. Try to understand. Outside, a wide sidewalk. A tall fence lined with razor wire, and the drops glisten along the metal loops. Beyond the fence, an old graystone building. A school, she guesses. Tall windows. The building H-shaped, a middle corridor connecting two larger, parallel wings. She cranes her neck to take in all three stories. Between the building and the fence, a blacktop playground. A backboard, a hoop without a net. A swingless swing set. A tall pole, and atop, a pair of limp flags. She commits it all to memory, and the act grounds her.

  The policeman in the passenger seat gets out and opens Kayla’s door. His callused palm, an impatient yank onto the sidewalk. She shivers, the rain, her clinging T-shirt. A rough handling between the policemen, her hands still cuffed, each now clutching an arm. Numbness in her wrists and shoulders.

  The driver pushes the first gate’s buzzer. Kayla lifts her gaze. The rain a curtain around the streetlight. A security camera angles toward her. A buzz, and the driver swings back the gate. A small pen next, fences on either side of the walk. At the chute’s end, a second gate. Another button pushed, another buzz. The walkway continues, a short stretch to the entrance’s stone steps. Puddles cup the building’s spilled light. The tall windows caged. Kayla squints back the drops and studies the higher windows. Silhouettes gather behind the glass in both wings. All looking down upon her.

  Kayla’s feet slosh through the puddles, and if it weren’t for the policemen’s grip, she might have melted into the entrance’s wide steps. A light shines above the double door. Around the light, a hood, and the metal steams in the rain. Another camera bolted to the stone, a teardrop’s red eye. She feels the slip of years around her, the class photos taken here, poodle skirts and bell bottoms. The stone smoothed by the elements and the traffic of once-children now old or dead. A pause atop the landing, and the rain relentless. The matted hair she can’t pull from her face. Her clinging T-shirt and the handcuffed thrust of her chest. The driver stares, and in Kayla, a chill that has nothing to do with the rain.

  The door opens, a spill of light. A woman’s hand reaches to prop the door. A scolding for the police. “You can’t get her a coat?”

  They step inside. Kayla squints. The sudden illumination, the ceiling’s fluorescent row. The door shut behind her, and she flinches at the accompanying buzz. A taped line runs down the hallway’s center. Kayla pictures the building from outside and aligns that vision with this view then steps beyond, imaging what lies beyond the waiting corridor, the H’s link between the two wings. A memory of their old apartment, her father pushing aside the dinner plates and smoothing out their house’s blueprints. She blinks water from her eyes and continues her survey, a cataloguing of doors and nameplates and fire escapes.

  The woman in the green scrub top stands as tall as Kayla. A thin frame, square shoulders. Her blond hair pulled back, a ponytail that brushes the nape of her neck. Her ears pierced but unadorned. Scuffed white sneakers and a clipboard in hand. Her smile a weary echo of her lanyard’s ID. “The rose between two thorns.”

  The driver lets go of Kayla’s arm. “Now you’re just being hurtful.”

  The other policeman holds tight. “We have feelings, you know. But you can make it up to us with a cup of coffee.”

  “Want me to put some on?”

  A crackle over the policemen’s shoulder mikes. “Next time,” he says.

  An understanding for Kayla—this is all routine. That she’s the latest delivery in an on-going trade. She pictures the second-floor’s gathered silhouettes. The policeman lets go of Kayla’s arm, her torso twisted as he unlocks her handcuffs.

  “Let’s get you out of those wet things, honey,” the woman says. She turns to the driver. “Any problems?”

  “She’s a little shook up.”

  The other cop loops the cuffs back on his belt. “Thought we were going to dump her in the river.”

  The woman rests a hand on Kayla’s shoulder. “No one’s going to hurt you. OK?”

  Kayla thinks of Helen and wonders how different their fates are now. She nods and rubs her wrists.

  The driver opens the front door. A push of cooler air, the scent of rain. “We’ll expect coffee next time.”

  The other man follows his partner. “A fresh pot. Not that mud you gave us last time.”

  The woman stands at the door and calls after them. “How about you bring us a bag or two of those good beans I hear the downtown folks keep for their own?”

  “We’re just the protect and serve guys. We get the same shit coffee you do.”

  The door closes, another buzz. The nurse with a smile and a check of her clipboard. “Kayla, right? That’s all the heads-up I got.”

  Kayla nods. A young man with a shaved head and pencil-thin beard studies her from behind a window. A slot at the window’s bottom, a circle cut in its middle, the design of bank tellers and movie ticket booths. The man also in green scrubs. Behind him, an array of monitors, high angle shots, deserted hallways and stairwells. A darker screen shows the policemen’s return to their cruiser. The man behind the glass still staring, a return to his sports magazine after Kayla folds her arms across her chest.

  “Doing a bang-up job there, Jimmy,” the woman says.

  She leads Kayla to a small waiting room. A desk, a few chairs. Posters on the wall—STD symptoms, a fetus in the womb. The woman hands Kayla a towel and an examination gown. Another door, and the woman flips the light. A white, windowless space. Cabinets along one wall. Half-filled jars on a long counter, cotton balls and tongue depressors. A stainless steel sink. In the floor’s center, an examination table. The crinkle of paper, a roller’s spin as the nurse pulls a fresh sheet. “You can leave your underwear and socks on if they’re dry.”<
br />
  Kayla strips. A puddle beneath her wet clothes. She pulls the towel around her shoulders, dries off, and slips into the exam gown.

  The woman pats the table’s edge. “Up here.”

  Kayla sits. Her knees pressed together, toes dangling above the floor. A glimmer on the table’s metal stirrups.

  “You hungry?”

  Kayla shakes her head.

  The woman washes her hands and retrieves a stethoscope from a drawer. “Let me know if you change your mind.” She holds the stethoscope’s disc under her arm. “Warm it up a bit.” She puts in the earbuds and places the disc on Kayla’s back. “Deep breath.”

  She works the stethoscope around Kayla’s torso. “Breathe. Deeper. Good.” She asks about Kayla’s school and hometown. Kayla’s answers one-word whispers. The nurse’s hands busy, her routine rehearsed. A rubber mallet’s swing. A light shone into Kayla’s eyes and ears. A command to keep her head still and let her eyes track the nurse’s pencil. More questions, the sports she played. The nurse grins over the mention field hockey and points out the imperfections of her twice-broken nose.