I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The first car he’d been driving he abandoned somewhere, he was driving another, a stolen car with switched license plates. You came to see that his life was such maneuvers. He was tireless in invention as a willful child and would seem to have had no purpose beyond this and when afterward I would learn details of his background, his family life in San Jose, his early incarcerations as a juvenile, as a youth, as an adult “offender” now on parole from Bakersfield maximum-security prison, I would block off such information as not related to me, not related to the man who’d existed exclusively for me as, for a brief while, though lacking a name, for he’d never asked me my name, I’d existed exclusively for him. I was contemptuous of “facts” for I came to know that no accumulation of facts constitutes knowledge, and no impersonal knowledge constitutes the intimacy of knowing.

  Know what, girl? You’re not like the others. You’re special.

  That’s the reason.

  DRIVING FAST, FARTHER into the foothills. The road was ever narrower and bumpier. There were few vehicles on the road, all of them minivans or campers. He never spoke to the red-haired woman moaning and whimpering beside him but to me in the backseat, looking at me through the rearview mirror, the way my dad used to do when I rode in the backseat, and Mom was up front with him. He said, How ya doin, girl?

  O.K.

  Doin O.K., huh?

  Yes.

  I’m gonna let you go, girl, you know that, huh? Gonna give you your freedom.

  To this I could not reply. My swollen lips moved in a kind of smile as you smile out of politeness.

  Less you want to trade? With her?

  Again I could not reply. I wasn’t certain what the question was. My smile ached in my face but it was a sincere smile.

  He parked the car on an unpaved lane off the road. He waited, no vehicles were approaching. There were no aircraft overhead. It was very quiet except for birds. He said, C’mon, help me, girl. So I moved my legs that were stiff, my legs that felt strange and skinny to me, I climbed out of the car and fought off dizziness helping him with the bound woman, he’d pulled the blanket off her, her discolored swollen face, her face that wasn’t attractive now, scabby mouth and panicked eyes, brown eyes they were, I would remember those eyes pleading. For they were my own, but in one who was doomed as I was not. He said then, so strangely: Stay here, girl. Watch the car. Somebody shows up, honk the horn. Two-three times. Got it?

  I whispered yes. I was staring at the crumbly earth.

  I could not look at the woman now. I would not watch them move away into the woods.

  Maybe it was a test, he’d left the key in the ignition. It was to make me think I could drive the car away from there, I could drive to get help, or I could run out onto the road and get help. Maybe I could get help. He had a gun, and he had knives, but I could have driven away. But the sun was beating on my head, I couldn’t move. My legs were heavy like lead. My eye was swollen shut and throbbing. I believed it was a test but I wasn’t certain. Afterward they would ask if I’d had any chance to escape in those days he kept me captive and always I said no, no I did not have a chance to escape. Because that was so. That was how it was to me, that I could not explain.

  Yet I remember the keys in the ignition, and I remember that the road was close by. He would strangle the woman, that was his way of killing and this I seemed to know. It would require some minutes. It was not an easy way of killing. I could run, I could run along the road and hope that someone would come along, or I could hide, and he wouldn’t find me in all that wilderness, if he called me I would not answer. But I stood there beside the car because I could not do these things. He trusted me, and I could not betray that trust. Even if he would kill me, I could not betray him.

  Yes, I heard her screams in the woods. I think I heard. It might have been jays. It might have been my own screams I heard. But I heard them.

  A FEW DAYS later he would be dead. He would be shot down by police in a motel parking lot in Petaluma. Why he was there, in that place, about fifty miles from the cabin, I don’t know. He’d left me in the cabin chained to the bed. It was filthy, flies and ants. The chain was long enough for me to use the toilet. But the toilet was backed up. Blinds were drawn on the windows. I did not dare to take them down or break the windowpanes but I looked out, I saw just the clearing, a haze of green. Overhead there were small planes sometimes. A helicopter. I wanted to think that somebody would rescue me but I knew better, I knew nobody would find me.

  But they did find me.

  He told them where the cabin was, when he was dying. He did that for me. He drew a rough map and I have that map!—not the actual piece of paper but a copy. He would never see me again, and I would have trouble recalling his face for I never truly saw it.

  Photographs of him were not accurate. Even his name, printed out, is misleading. For it could be anyone’s name and not his.

  In my present life I never speak of these things. I have never told anyone. There would be no point to it. Why I’ve told you, I don’t know: you might write about me but you would respect my privacy.

  Because if you wrote about me, these things that happened to me so long ago, no one would know it was me. And you would disguise it so that no one could guess, that’s why I trust you.

  My life afterward is what’s unreal. The life then, those eight days, was very real. The two don’t seem to be connected, do they? I learned you don’t discover the evidence of any cause in its result. Philosophers debate over that but if you know, you know. There is no connection though people wish to think so. When I was recovered I went back to Menlo Park High and I graduated with my class and I went to college in Vermont, I met my husband in New York a few years later and married him and had my babies and none of my life would be different in any way, I believe, if I had not been “abducted” when I was fifteen.

  Sure, I see him sometimes. More often lately. On the street, in a passing car. In profile, I see him. In his shiny dark glasses and white baseball cap. A man’s forearm, a thick pelt of hair on it, a tattoo, I see him. The shock of it is, he’s only thirty-two.

  That’s so young now. Your life all before you, almost.

  Part Two

  Cumberland Breakdown

  TONIGHT AGAIN THERE’S that buzz-saw feel to the sky at dusk. Coming wind out of the mountains and unnatural heat for October. Like something breathing on you through its nostrils. And the poplars out back shivering. That scratchy whispering to drive you crazy. You turn scared half to death, but there’s nothing.

  In the kitchen she’s moaning: “Jesus. Tell me nooo.”

  At the sink running water. Or vacuuming the goddamn house one more time till the carpets are worn through. Or playing some of his tapes brought in from the truck, not the bluegrass she can’t listen to, it reminds her too much of him, and how she teased him for liking it, but Springsteen mostly, she knows by heart. Because she understands she’s going to talk to herself and what sounds come out of her moaning and a noise like laughing, or a drunk person, she can’t control and she wants to spare us hearing her.

  “Jesus! Tell me no!”

  Tyrell and me, we hate hearing any mention of Jesus. Especially now since the fire. Like, what good did Jesus do us? Dad died in a fire on the Temperance Vale Road seventeen days ago, and moaning to Jesus won’t bring him back. I know, Mom can’t help it. She’s been drinking Gallo wine. Dad would be embarrassed all to hell, to hear. Even with us kids it’d be O.K. muttering fuck, shit, asshole, as long as it wasn’t too loud and directed to any actual person, but if you uttered Jesus or Jesus Christ or God in any serious way Dad would get a frightened look on him, like anybody would. Because the first step to going nuts is talking to Jesus and God and the second step is them answering you back.

  I AM MELORA RAWLS, I’m thirteen years old. My brother is Tyrell, sixteen. We are Raleigh Rawls’s two children remaining at home. We were always close because of a certain thing that Tyrell did to me, not meaning to, when I was two years old and he was five
playing with this b.b. gun belonging to one of our older brothers he hadn’t ought to have touched, and crack! there’s a b.b. lodged in Baby Melora’s left eyeball quick and easy as a knifeblade cutting into butter. I am not blind in that eye exactly, in bright sunlight I can see blurry shapes and colors. I have pretended I don’t remember a thing of that time but in fact I do. I pretend not for Tyrell’s sake. He’s like Dad in that way, quick to take on guilt.

  Always Tyrell and me were close but since Dad has died in the Barndollar fire, that he was helping fight as a volunteer for the Ransomville Hook & Ladder, we are like twins almost. Tyrell is not one to talk much, but he will talk to me.

  “If I could look those fuckers in the eye,” Tyrell mumbles, in this voice so low and shamed I almost can’t hear, “and hear them say they are sorry.”

  Meaning he’d feel a whole lot better? That’s what he means?

  “People say any fucken thing comes into their heads,” I tell Tyrell, disgusted. “No guarantee it’s true.”

  This just rips out of my mouth. I’m not even talking in any normal way, but with my teeth gritted tight, and my jaws like I have lockjaw.

  Every day since the fire I’m getting more disgusted. I could toss kerosene and light some fires of my own. Them drunk Barndollars smoking in bed was probably the cause, and who’d want to give up his life for them? Tyrell is saying, “If they’d been worthy people. If Dad even liked them for Christ sake.”

  I say, “He didn’t know. He couldn’t judge. Firemen just go inside where it’s burning, they don’t expect to die.”

  Like our dad needed me to explain his actions. Like it was my right, and I knew what the fuck I was saying.

  Tyrell says, shaking his head, “The fucken Barndollars for Christ sake.”

  It’s like we are arguing with Dad, and getting fed up he’s so stubborn. Like he traded his life on purpose for theirs, which is a wrong way of interpreting it, I know. Like Dad wants to be dead, and the newspapers printing his picture and calling him a hero. For these welfare people that don’t give a shit, just pick up and go on with their worthless lives. I want to say to him now the joke’s on you, see, the Barndollars are alive this minute and you are dead and what good’s it do you being Raleigh Rawls the firefighter hero if you’re fucken dead.

  You’d think Tyrell and me would tire of this subject with the days passing but we don’t. Like a dog with a copperhead coiled around its neck trying to shake the snake off, crazy and foaming at the turning in circles not getting anywhere.

  Fifteen days have passed since the funeral. Seventeen, since the fire.

  This month of October we have not gone to school more than a few days. Mom never goes out either. Especially when it rains this is a small-feeling house like a cave so you’re in one damn room or another all the time practically. Unless you’re outside keeping deliberately away. Sometimes I run, run and run across the fields not giving a damn if my heart bursts, I’m running so hard, but after a while I turn and come back all sweaty and panting because there’s nowhere to go. Tyrell, too. There’s something drawing us back, like we are worried about our mother though beginning to be disgusted, too. Every pure good thought I have ever had, seems like it turns sour and sarcastic and disgusted the more I turn it over in my mind, I wonder is this something special with me, Melora Rawls with the legally blind eye, or is it like everybody else?

  “Jesus! Jesus! Nooooo.”

  A wail like somebody’s turning a knife in her guts. She turns the faucets on harder, a fucken flood out there in the sink.

  It’d be one thing if Mom believed in Jesus but I never heard that she did, much. Her or Dad either.

  It’s good that Mom stays inside. These days she’s scrawny and grubby and her dark-blond hair like seaweed and she’s wearing these old plaid Kmart slacks she’s had a hundred years, covered in dog hairs, and a pajama top, and nothing beneath. And wool socks of Dad’s on her feet, or barefoot. (Before the funeral Mom’s mother and sisters came over and took charge, thank God. Nothing Tyrell and me could hope to do here.) And Mom was this pretty blond girl, you wouldn’t believe her and Raleigh Rawls in their wedding photos looking like a glamor couple on TV. Now Mom looks puffy-faced drunk as Mrs. Barndollar. It’s too much effort for her to answer the phone, just lets it click onto the answering tape then never plays the tape. “People have told me all they have to tell me. They can go fuck themselves, and leave me alone,” Mom says but not in any angry voice just matter-of-fact. She has taken to sleeping half the day. In bed just laying there in the churned-up bedclothes. And on the sofa, and the TV on mute. Or she’s in the kitchen running water or vacuuming the house like I said, dragging the vacuum around like a swollen leg, banging into things and moaning Jesus-words nobody wants to hear especially not Tyrell and me.

  Sure we cried with Mom at first. We did all that. Plenty of that. And every relation of Dad’s or whoever coming into this house and breaking down and bawling, and we did it with them, and we heard the tributes at the funeral blah-blah-blah and it wore us out. Like Mom says they can go fuck themselves just don’t hang out here.

  So weird. I hate it. The way Mom’s eyes are bloodshot and caved-in looking and the pupils dilated but it’s like she is blind, staring at me and not seeing me. Not just the Gallo is causing this but these capsule pills her sister Frannie passed on to her from her own prescription for nerves. “To help your mom sleep,” Aunt Frannie informs us.

  Like Mom not sleeping is the problem in this house.

  WHEN HE SAID that about the Barndollars, Tyrell was cleaning his rifle. Cleaning and oiling his rifle that’s a twenty-two in that tight dreamy way of Tyrell. Not like our father who’d whistle while he cleaned his guns, brisk and with an air of wanting to get the job done so he could move on to the next thing had to be done. But Tyrell since the fire he’s in no hurry to get anywhere. He’s nerved-up and impatient doing the same few things over and over like somebody has hypnotized him which is how I feel, too, this weird combination of nerved-up and nasty-minded but nowhere to go with it. Like a dog Dad and his brothers used to tell of, their own dog, poking in a wood-pile and suddenly it’s yipping and thrashing around like crazy, a copperhead twined around its neck, and the dog desperate to shake off the snake, crazy and foaming at the mouth turning in circles not getting anywhere till one of the boys yanked off the snake, snapped it like a whip and broke its neck.

  Except this time Tyrell says glancing sidelong at me from where his rifle parts are on the table, on newspaper where he’s cleaning and scraping and oiling, and the smell of the cleaner sharp in the air, and the long blue-steel barrel of the rifle raised vertically, “We could change that, M’lora. That those fuckers are alive and Dad is dead, we could change that. Real easy.”

  WE SAW THE fire glowing against the sky like a demon pumpkin. We heard the air raid siren in Ransomville three miles away. If you’re in town close by the firehouse when that thing goes off you press your hands against your ears, the noise is so loud. It’s got to be loud, to summon volunteers to the station, that live outside Ransomville like Dad.

  It was 11 P.M. Dad wasn’t in bed but wasn’t all dressed. He shoved on his shoes, threw on a shirt, and was out of the house and into his truck in about the time it takes to tell it. Tyrell and I wanted to come with him but no, we could not. We stood in the driveway and watched him drive away. The red rear lights of the Dodge pickup gone as soon as Dad turned out onto the highway. And the siren kept on at the firehouse. And after a few minutes the fire truck siren began, that sound that makes your heart race. And there was the fire itself we could see at some place two or three miles beyond the creek. The Temperance Vale Road it would turn out, the ramshackle old farmhouse the Barndollars rented, with a fallen-down hay barn at the rear and a rusted Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the front yard with a hand-lettered sign FORE SALE that’d been there for a year at least.

  People had to laugh, Clyde Barndollar used to ride that motorcycle like he was some kind of Hells Angel biker on TV. Bla
ck leather jacket straining across his beer gut. Boots, gloves. Crash helmet. Gold chains around his neck. He’s a pipe fitter, or was. On some disability pension. Forty-three, it was printed in the paper after the fire. And Raleigh Rawls was forty-two.

  When Dad left for the firehouse, he didn’t know where he was headed of course. Whose house it would be. Or even if it was a house. There are not that many fires for volunteers to put out in our township, though there begin to be more once the weather turns. Mom was always scared to death something would happen to Dad but Tyrell and me, we never gave a thought to it. Not in a million years the thought would’ve come to me Daddy will be killed tonight.

  Raleigh Rawls was one of those volunteers forbidding any of his family from showing up at any fire to gawk like assholes and take pictures like some did. He was more scornful of such behavior than of people causing their own fires with wood-burning stoves, sparks igniting in rugs or chimneys, smoking in bed and drunken error. Still, Tyrell was disappointed, he’d have liked to go with his father this time now he was sixteen and had his driver’s license and believed he could help. He’d have taken off for the fire on foot except Mom screamed at him to get back inside.

  “A fire’s serious, damn you! A fire isn’t for playing around.”

  TYRELL WOULD SAY he hated her for that. Tyrell would tell me rubbing his hands over his jaws that needed shaving that she had insulted him in saying such a thing. That he, Tyrell Rawls, would be playing by going to any fire to assist. He was not a boy to play, she should know his seriousness.

  Tyrell was diagnosed as “dyslexic” at school which meant the special-ed class and he would work damn hard to learn to read which he did eventually, with two eyes so much slower than Melora with just one. But he did it. Through his growing up he’d been a serious boy.