F*ckface

by Leah Hampton

  She stared at the bedspread. “Can I just lay down? Robbie, can I do that?” She sat on the edge of the bed and ran her hand along a white pillow. It felt smooth and cool. She had forgotten her sex bag, her navy gym duffel stuffed with supplies. Her body started to shake.

  Robbie sat on the other side of the bed. His shirt pocket lit up and buzzed, but he ignored it. The glow from his phone swelled through the thin blue cotton and illuminated his chest.

  “Margaret,” he said, “you can do whatever you want. You don’t have to do a thing in the world.”

  Margaret stood. She put her hands under the sheets, pushed into their coolness up to her elbows, and drew them back. She climbed in, shoes and all, and pulled the covers over her face. She tried to stop shivering. Robbie didn’t touch her, but he inched a little closer. She felt the bed sink as he lay down. The mattress warmed with his body heat, and his phone buzzed again.

  “I’m sorry we’re not doing this how I said we would,” she said finally.

  “We’ll get around to it,” said Robbie.

  The blankets muffled her voice. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you more in school or go to prom with you or whatever.”

  “I didn’t ask you to prom,” Robbie said.

  “Yeah,” she said. She closed her eyes. The covers pushed down on her.

  “It isn’t even your fault,” she said. Her breath heated the sheets. “I’m sorry you can’t have what you want. I’m sorry Trina doesn’t do butt stuff with you or love you enough or whatever. I like Trina, but she’s a dumbass for that. I wanted you to have a nice time. I’m just sorry, Robbie.”

  Robbie Barnwell, whom Margaret had known all her life, didn’t respond. She felt him stretch out next to her on top of the grid-lined bedspread. His arm flopped onto the pillow above her, but otherwise he kept a foot of clean bedclothes between them. After a while, he began to breathe in an even rasp that matched the swish of traffic on the highway outside, and every few minutes, his phone buzzed and lighted. Its whirring traveled into the mattress. Margaret could feel Trina’s vibrations in her spine.

  They stayed in bed together for a long time. When the sun had set outside, Margaret pulled the shroud of covers off her face. She gasped cool air and turned to Robbie’s shadowy, still body beside her. His mouth was open, lips half-pursed. He still smelled like pine, but there was a musty undertone to the scent now. Robbie’s phone peeked askew from his breast pocket, its blue notification light blinking every few seconds. The flash reminded her of a lighthouse.

  Margaret listened to Robbie’s snoring, smelled his pine-musty breath for a few more minutes; then she slipped out from under the warm linens. She stood and rubbed her hands slowly along her sides to smooth her rumpled clothes.

  Never mind. Never mind any of it, she thought, and she took herself home in the dark.

  PARKWAY

  We find bodies all the time. Lots of folks come up here to die or kill or get killed. My first one came in the summer. We were up Back Branch, near the Virginia border, where the tree line thickens above the bald. It was me and Coralis, who trained me when I started with the park service. Coralis taught me pretty much my whole job, and the only part I’ve ever questioned is whether he taught me how to deal with the living and the dead the right way around.

  That first time, Coralis and me were heading from Back Branch to Sugar Knob. This was back in ’93, my first month on the job, before I got my own vehicle. I was one of the only woman rangers in the whole state then. We were heading north, coming out of an early morning fog, and we saw a flash off to the right, like a gleam off somebody’s smile in those old toothpaste commercials. We thought that was strange with it so gray and misty, so we checked it out.

  Coralis pulled over in the grass near a mile marker—the old stones, white and square, the ones you see all along the whole length of the parkway. When tourists first see them, they pull over to take pictures, touch the hand-carved numbers, but after a while, they stop caring and ignore them. Those markers look to me like little headstones, so I think people get creeped out after too many.

  We hopped out of the truck, looked down the bank, and Coralis pointed into the woods.

  “I see a wheel,” he said.

  We went down a few more feet, and we found this little old red Gremlin tucked down into the trees, like somebody hid it on purpose. She was in there.

  Through the rear windshield, we saw her long hair lying across the backseat, her head tilted at an unnatural angle. Her face was so white, I thought maybe she was sleeping. I kept inching toward the car; I guess part of me wanted to wake her up, whisper to her or stroke her hair to raise her.

  Coralis gripped my shoulder to hold me back and said, “Call it in, Priscilla.”

  That might be the only time he ever touched me or used my real name. His voice had a cold rattle in it, and the words shook in his throat. My voice shook, too, when I radioed the ranger station.

  I came back and stood next to Coralis, who clenched his teeth for a long time. Finally he said, “We should stay with her. Don’t let’s leave her alone, Pea. Not till they get here.”

  So we sat on the bank looking at her hair through that back windshield. State police arrived a while later, and homicide detectives and all. I stood out of the way when Coralis told me to let him handle it. Me being a woman and a rookie, I think he was worried I’d faint. I kept staring at the Gremlin while the cops took pictures, taped off a line, and the morning warmed itself.

  A few hours later, as the coroner packed her away, Coralis said I’d have to get used to finding corpses now and then.

  “Once a year,” he said, “maybe twice. Mostly cliff jumpers and accidents, mostly intact, but sometimes only parts.” He nodded at the body bag. “Sometimes frightful whole ones like her.”

  I crossed my arms and stifled a sob. I was real young then, young-minded, I mean, and I had never thought I’d have to do this kind of work. I just wanted to be in the woods.

  “Now comes the paperwork,” Coralis said. His face wasn’t stern like usual, and the deep lines around his eyes held less shadow. He didn’t smile exactly, but I could tell he was glad to have found her. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  On the way back to the ranger station, Coralis told me a bunch of stuff.

  “This job is boring as hell most of the time,” he said. Then he went on about how I’d spend less time than I wanted outside, and instead I’d just drive forever along the tops of mountains. I’d have to deal with things I couldn’t quantify, and some of the male rangers might hassle me, but mostly I’d get to work in my own way.

  “In the end,” he said, “it’s a fair deal, as long as you take care of the worst things.”

  “Like her,” I said, thumbing back to the scene behind us.

  Coralis nodded. “Nobody wants to see that on vacation. You have to look at it for them.”

  We rode in silence for a while, both of us watching the mountains, until the forest closed in and made a tunnel of green.

  “I guess it makes sense to dump a body up here,” I said.

  Coralis didn’t say anything until the thick canopy opened onto a valley view.

  “People use parks for selfish reasons,” he said.

  He pulled into a scenic overlook and cut off his truck. Slowly, he let go of the steering wheel and cast his hands toward the narrow valley below us. “Four hundred miles of parkway through some of the prettiest country there is, and everybody brings their shit.” He leaned forward and shook his head. “There’s more murders, starved dogs, more toddlers slipping off cliffs, more sadness than anybody knows.” He glanced at me, then at the road behind us, and shrugged. “We clean it up. Then maybe we give a tour, hand out some brochures. Almost nobody knows where they’re going. Maintain order, even when there isn’t any. That’s all.”

  It was the longest conversation he and I ever had.

  We never did figure out what lit up, what made the flash we saw before we found her. The Gremlin had a rusty old bumper;
no chrome, so that couldn’t have been it. Maybe a bird flew past carrying something shiny, or the light was playing tricks, or maybe we were just supposed to find her.

  The coroner said the girl had been there about three days, dying slow from deep wounds in her chest and guts. I only saw her face, white and clean, never any of the blood, which I was glad of.

  Turned out it was her cousin who had killed her. They caught him pretty quick, and we had to go to the trial a few months later. I was working my own routes and had my own truck by then, but the morning he was called to testify, Coralis picked me up early and we went to the courthouse together. He wore a suit that looked a hundred years old. I climbed in his truck and saw him all pleated and grim in his charcoal three-piece straight out of some museum painting, and I laughed.

  “Why’re you wearing that getup?” I asked him. “Coulda just worn your uniform.”

  Coralis gripped the gear shift and stared straight ahead.

  On the stand, Coralis explained to the jury about finding her. I sat in the back of the courtroom and kept still. Coralis talked in a flat one-two, methodical, looking down at his veiny hands, about how we came upon her, how we stayed with her. The victim’s family was up front with their backs to me. They leaned on each other, and I watched the light hitting them while their shoulders shook from crying. That girl seemed real close and fresh to me while Coralis talked. I studied her family a good while, but none of them had hair like hers.

  * * *

  I remember every body I’ve found the same as I remember that girl. I remember mostly how soft they always look, especially the accidents, if you can see their faces. Sometimes if they’ve been dead a while, the bugs have got to them, or they’ve been cut by a windshield or somebody’s slashed them up. Even then, it’s little things that make me go tender. Like the way a body’s feet are laid out. A lot of people when they die turn their feet inward, just like a baby does when he’s napping deep. Over the years, after what I’ve found, I believe we all get warm before we go. We sink down into some warm place like we did in our cribs when we were little.

  Most bodies I found had special marks, or little objects that surprised me. Five years ago, right after my youngest niece was born, I was on overnight south of Asheville, moving a fawn’s body off the road where she’d been hit by a car. I had my headlights trained on myself while I picked up the fresh carcass. She was still warm, even in the December chill, her body a velvety sack of limbs. As I stood to carry her off, I noticed the hand-painted billboard for the quilting museum about twenty yards ahead. It came to me that I should look behind it.

  Bodies have beacons, I think. They want to get found.

  I laid the fawn in my truck bed, took off my gloves, and went to him. He was leaned up against the back of the old quilting museum sign, staring glassy into the forest. No more than twenty years old, small and delicate, dead only a few hours from what looked like an overdose. A thin line of drool sparkled like a glass needle from the corner of his mouth. He had this little purse, a bag he carried, and for whatever reason he was still holding it when I found him. The bag had cats on it made out of white sequins, with little black whisker threads sewn in lines around the faces. It looked homemade, with perfect, tight stitches. There was something about him hanging on to that purse; I thought my heart might split.

  I squatted down, and how it was, was I talked to him. I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. I told him who I was, what I did; I talked about the fawn and how I’d come to be there. I told him how the grass looked around him in the dark, inky and cool.

  People think it’s peaceful here, I said, but it’s not. I put one hand in the grass to steady myself. Nobody should come up here if they can help it. But I could see him, I said. He was found. I rubbed my throat to slow my breath. I’m here, I said.

  I walked into the road and reached for the radio on my shoulder. Stood in the middle of the silent blacktop and called parkway dispatch and the sheriff. Then I came back and sat down. Authorities’ll be along, I told him, and you’ll be home soon, with your family or whoever’s waiting on you.

  I stared at the road; he looked into the forest. We both settled into the stillness. He was slumped sideways, one shoulder up higher than the other. His skin wasn’t scary like it could have been. Every part of him, even his clothes, was soft purple in the moonlight, like lavender paper. State bureau never did figure out who he was.

  * * *

  Coralis’s half sister Rita works at the casino in Cherokee; I see her sometimes when I take my nieces to their dance competitions. I went to find her and play some slots the day after I heard Coralis was dead. Rita told me I was the only person he’d ever agreed to train or allowed to ride with him.

  Rita’s mom, Coralis’s stepmother, was EBCI, so he went to the tribal school part of every year. Rita said when they were kids, Coralis would always get in trouble at recess.

  “He’d never come in,” she said. “The teachers would have to go find him. He’d be over at the creek, catching salamanders or watching elk. He never changed. Hardly ever talked, even back then.”

  I said that must have been rough, not having your big brother talk to you. Rita just shrugged. Then she gave me a drink voucher and said, “Least he figured out the right line of work for himself.” She tapped a long fingernail on her empty drink tray. “Just like you, Miss Pea.”

  * * *

  Coralis died from a heart attack. He was on duty, five days before he hit forty years of service, and two months before I hit twenty years myself. He sat down in front of his truck at the top of Herman Falls and passed on alone. If he made a noise, no one heard him over the white water rushing into the gorge. I felt bad for not being the one who found him, even though we didn’t work the same counties anymore. He never talked to the other rangers much, and he’d gotten even quieter in recent years. The last time I saw him, he was sulking around the rangers’ station. I made small talk at his mumbles, then he made like he wanted to hand me an article on that big garbage patch in the Pacific. He didn’t look at me, just gripped the paper like he couldn’t let me have it. Then he walked off with it still in his fist.

  I felt bad, too, that I hardly knew his people. I met his wife a few times before they divorced, and I see Rita when I go to Cherokee, but that’s all. Then again, I’m not sure Coralis saw his people himself much. None of his grandkids came to the funeral. We delayed the ceremony for them, but then Pastor said they’d got the times confused and hadn’t even left Knoxville, so we carried on with the celebration of life with a lot of empty chairs.

  Everybody talked to me after the service longer than they talked to Rita. Lots of people offered me condolences.

  Suzanne, who works dispatch up at the ranger station, patted my hand and said, “I’m so sorry, Pea. I know you two were best friends.”

  Being Coralis’s best friend was news to me.

  After the funeral, I decided I’d better take early retirement and find another job soon, while my family still knows my name. My wife, Danielle, told me I’m not allowed to talk about the parkway anymore. Coralis dying made me gloomier than ever. Even without the bodies, I’m not up to the job. Used to be we could live off what the park service paid, but they keep cutting benefits, and there’s more territory now since the state parks have started to close, and fewer rangers to cover it, and nobody to keep our trucks running. Last winter I had to buy my own tires, and I go out for longer and longer days.

  Danielle doesn’t want to hear it.

  “Don’t talk about it in the house,” she says. “It puts a blanket over everything.”

  * * *

  I didn’t quit until the last body. The teacher, six weeks ago. I found him when I was closing the main gates up at Old Balsam. We got hit with a March blizzard, always the worst, so we were scrambling to clear traffic and shut access ramps before anybody got trapped.

  It was snowing hard, and the evergreens around me were catching white thick and fast. There was no beacon or pretty flash like th
e others. No ease or calm. I didn’t think there was a body waiting. Instead I felt cold slip under my collar, felt anger all around me. I clunked the pin into the entrance gate and I stood there in the snow.

  I was supposed to wait, so I did.

  It didn’t take long to see him. It was like my eyes were dragged, like they had to pull to the left and look to the hemlocks. My eyes couldn’t not look. And I got that feeling in my stomach similar to what I got all those other times I found a body, but this time it felt worse, as bad as anything. This time harder and darker. Snow coming down all around me heavy and mean, my truck engine humming twenty feet behind, churning warmth too far to reach. My eyes pulled left, then up and along the hillside at the tree line. It felt like the moment before somebody fires a bullet, except the gun never goes off. As tense as that.

  At first I thought some coyotes had got a big kill, maybe a calf from a nearby farm. Most of the blood had been snowed over already, in that short time, even though he’d just done it. I got there soon after, real soon. It looked to me like meat hanging for a butcher.

  My knees bent. I wanted to run, jump in the truck. But this job moves muscles for you, so even though I wanted to crouch and hide and run, the whole time thinking somebody’s behind me, or in front, or all over, instead I stood still and reached inside my jacket to call it in and follow procedure. I can’t help but do what I’m supposed to.

  The snow eased up for a few seconds, and everything came clear. I saw his legs. His legs and back, blood everywhere. It looks so lonely, so human, the shape of a person’s legs hanging down. Something broke in me, and I started talking, real high pitched, saying nothing, rattling and whining like I did when I was little and my daddy would get drunk and belt me. I made that same baby gibber talk; it flowed out of me into my radio, into the cold.

  His legs were the only part of himself he hadn’t cut up. Everything else he’d carved and splayed. The examiner’s report, when I read it a few days later, said he removed his clothes slow and careful, climbed up, tied a noose, and sat in those thick hemlock boughs doing things to himself until he fainted from the pain and dropped from his own gallows.