Chapter Four
It took Li’l Ron a good forty minutes to bleed the cold from his bones. His father had not come home yet—he usually hit Del’s Bar after work. His nan was also gone. Li’l Ron used the quiet time to sit before the small heater in the living room, unthawing and reading
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
. He’d read the story last year in school, but seeing it on his nan’s shelf, and after spending time with Sweet Kate, it was more appealing than his dad’s collection of unread Stephen King books.
His solace was short-lived. Nan’s Buick came humming into the driveway just after five. He considered hijacking the book up to his room, but the heat felt too nice.
“Too damn cold out there,” she said, swearing on her way through the door. She was dressed in a long red coat festooned with a gaudy gold brooch, her grey pony tail hanging down from one of her oversized hats. The woman was crazy about big hats. His father told him it was an English thing.
“Your father’s not here?” she said, placing her hat on the coatrack behind the door and unbuttoning her jacket. “Down at Del’s, no doubt, drinking his wages.”
Ron ignored the jab, knowing it was the truth. She didn’t have to take the shot, but she always did.
“Don’t you have homework to do?”
Here we go,
he thought.
“Yeah, I was gonna do it before bed.”
She eyeballed the book in his hand, but kept her thoughts to herself—a first.
“Well, I don’t want you just sitting around doing nothing.” She looked into the kitchen. “There are dishes in the sink and garbage your father forgot to bring out to the garage this morning.”
“Yes, Nan,” he said, knowing better than to argue. He should have gone upstairs.
Rising up from his hot spot, placing the book back on the shelf, feeling the vacuum of cool air return, he moved past her.
As he did, she sniffed the air.
“What the hell have you been into?” she said.
“What?” he said, not sure to what she was referring.
“You can’t smell that?” She covered her nose and mouth with her hand. “You smell like you’ve been playing with a dead animal. Forget those dishes, go shower up.” She wandered over to the TV, turned on the news and grabbed her knitting bag from beside the coffee table.
Ron sniffed the arm of his sweatshirt, but got nothing.
“Go now, before you stink up my house. Bad enough your father is going to come in sweating beer from his pores. I don’t need a grandkid smelling like death on top of it,” she said, already twirling and hooking her needles around the lavender yarn.
“Yes, Nan,” he said, pulling the front of his sweatshirt up to his nose. Nothing.
Chapter Five
Greg Sawyer wished he’d never come back here. This shit little town had been in his rearview mirror. Yet, here he was, no thanks to Jennifer.
“Bitch,” he mumbled aloud.
“What’s that, Greg?” Del Kinney said. The man was making change for some kid that looked no more than nineteen.
“Nothin’, just bitchin’,” Greg said, trying to keep his words from slurring. Del would snatch his keys if he had to, if he’d let him.
What would Ma say then?
Greg thought.
Del gave the kid his change and moseyed his tall, lanky frame down toward Greg.
“Jen again?” Del said.
Del’s hazel eyes and easy smile were comforting.
“Who else?” Greg said.
“Lucy?”
“Ah yes, touché, my mother…” Greg raised his glass. “To the
two
most wonderful bitches a guy could ever hope for.” He downed the last quarter of Auburn Lager.
“Okay, Greg, let’s call it good. You want to keep the tab or pay up now?”
Greg’s head wobbled. “Come on, Del, one more for the road.”
“’Fraid not, bud, but listen, I’ll carry this over. I know you’re good for it. If not, I know where you live,” Del said.
“Yeah,” Greg said, pushing up from the bar, “I can grab a sixer at Jenner’s.”
“Greg,” Del said as Greg reached the door.
“Huh?”
“It will get better. Think of this as starting over, hitting Reset.”
“Yeah, don’t I wish?” Greg said, turning away, stepping out into the night.
It was cold, he could see his breath, but the heat from his booze-laden body held the frigidity at bay. He could still walk a straight line, vision hadn’t doubled yet. He walked to his Ford pickup, got in, started the engine and moved from the curb, heading to Jenner’s for a little more elixir.
Reset,
Del had said.
Some things can’t be undone,
he thought as he drove down Main Street.
A shiver ran through him.
“You stink,” Lucille Sawyer said, watching her son pass before the television and plop down on the couch.
“That’s not me,” Greg said. “That’s life.”
“Don’t get smart with me. Just because your father’s not here to thump you anymore don’t think I’m going to put up with it,” she said, never looking up from the scarf taking form in her hands.
“I’d be drinking with him, instead of by myself,” Greg said, popping the top of a Budweiser.
“Your father knew when enough was enough.”
“Yeah well, good for him.”
The room fell silent. Greg knew bringing up his father was a dangerous maneuver. His mother went one of two ways: she would either fly off the handle or clam up—her coping mechanisms for all things Big Ron, especially in the shadow of his death this past spring. Greg was lucky. Tonight, she went quiet.
Good,
he thought.
Upstairs, Li’l Ron, having dozed off atop his math book, slipped into a dream of the angel by the creek, Sweet Kate.
Chapter Six
“So, you left off at ‘I met a boy’,” Li’l Ron said, watching Sweet Kate as she placed her hand in the flowing creek.
“He was older than me. He came down here one night, mad at his parents or his girlfriend, I can’t remember which. I was beneath the bridge, dreaming of someplace better. Something plopped into the water from above, sending ripples. I tried to keep quiet—I didn’t want to be seen in my secret place, but more came down. The way the water shimmered in the moonlight and spread out from his rocks…it was like visual radio waves, like a signal, ya know?”
Li’l Ron pulled a Slim Jim from his backpack, entranced from his spot beside her. He watched her trying to play with the water—it passed through her with no acknowledgment.
“I remember I sneezed, and he yelled out ‘hello?’. I covered my mouth, but he came down.
“He was tall, handsome—curly, blond hair hanging down to his shoulders, T-shirt and jeans. I introduced myself as Katharine. He sparked up a cigarette and joined me by the water.”
“How old were you?” Li’l Ron said, tossing the last of the jerky in his mouth.
“I was almost fourteen. I told him I came here to get away from my problems. He didn’t laugh, didn’t scoff. He just said ‘me too’.
“He had a girlfriend. She wasn’t very nice to him. She made him feel like a failure. She was a…”
“A bitch,” Li’l Ron said.
“Yes, that’s what he called her.
“I didn’t say anything. I just listened. He seemed to like that. He started coming by every day, and then, sometimes at night. Eventually, I got more comfortable, and he listened to me. For the first time I had someone I could talk to. I liked it. I liked him. And I kissed him.”
There was a smile upon her face. Ron fought back a short burst of jealousy.
“He pushed me away, at first. But I couldn’t help it. I told him it could be our secret.”
“What about his girlfriend?” Ron said, trying to keep the agitation from his voice.
“She was still treating him poorly. We continued hanging out almost every day after school. Kissing and holding hands. I felt like I was in a fairy tale. I thought I could save him from his evil girlfriend, and he would save me from my empty life.”
“So did he leave her?” Ron said.
Sweet Kate got up and walked to the shadow of the bridge.
“On my birthday, he wanted to give me a present. He…he wanted to make love to me.
“I…I told him I wasn’t ready, and that he still had a girlfriend. We kissed and held hands, but then he started touching me. Telling me he was in love with me. That he would leave his girlfriend, and that we could get out of this town. I let him touch me, but then I said no, but he didn’t stop.”
Li’l Ron got up and went to her. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
There were no tears, but she was crying.
“You don’t have to tell me the rest,” he said.
“No, no, it’s okay. I need to,” she said, looking up.
Her crystal eyes glistened, begging him to stay and listen. He did. He wouldn’t leave her this way. The night was taking the remaining daylight, but he’d come better equipped today. He pulled his knit cap down over his ears.
“He made me. I cried all the way home. Three days later, he came back down to the bridge. He was so angry. He told me his girlfriend was pregnant, and that his parents were mad at him. That they wanted him to marry her.
“He told me he loved me and tried to kiss me. I smelled the beer on his breath, and I pushed him away. And he got angrier.
“I told him to leave me alone, to go to his girlfriend and do the right thing. He shoved me down. He told me I was just like them. Just like his parents and just like her. I got up and tried to run, but he grabbed my hair and threw me back down. I didn’t know what to do. He came at me, trying to kiss me again. I kicked him between the legs and ran.
“I made it to the top of the incline, but he was right behind me. I shouted for him to leave me alone or I was going to tell the police what he had done to me.”
Ron’s fist clenched and unclenched, his blood boiled beneath the surface.
“That’s when I saw it in his eyes. The same look as when he’d forced my legs open. This meanness…this rage. I was halfway across the bridge when he grabbed me by the throat and began to haul me back. I thought he was going to drag me back down below and hurt me again.
“He squeezed harder and harder, and then I felt a pain in my stomach. I couldn’t breathe. He began to cry. So did I. Then, he shoved me over.
“The last thing I saw was the water rushing toward me, and then it all went black.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ron said, taking her hands. She hugged him, placing her head on his shoulder.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Chapter Seven
Sweet Kate’s story haunted Li’l Ron all the way home. The fact that someone could harm, could hurt, could kill that precious girl…it was eating at his guts.
He had to find out who this guy was. Maybe he moved, maybe he was dead, maybe the son of a bitch still lived in town.
“Where the fuck have you been?” his father yelled from the front lawn; he had a nasty-looking cut above his right eye.
“I was riding my bike,” Li’l Ron said, hopping off and walking the Huffy to the porch.
“It’s fucking dark out here. You can’t be out this late with no…no note…” his dad said, stumbling into him.
He was drunk. Li’l Ron couldn’t recall ever hearing him swear so much.
“You leave him alone,” Nan said from the doorway. Li’l Ron wasn’t sure from the lack of light, but it looked like she was sporting a fat lip.
“What?” His father said, whipping around to face her. “Just leave me alone. This is my boy, and I’ll do what I like with him.”
“Get in here, Li’l Ron,” Nan said, ignoring his father.
Li’l Ron scuttled up the steps, slipping in behind her. He felt like he’d walked into a Lifetime movie. He watched his father falter and drop to his butt.
“Never mind him,” Nan said. “You just get inside, and get to doin’ your homework.”
“But he’s—”
“I know what he is,” she said. “Just do as I say. Go on.”
His drinking had gotten exponentially worse over the last few weeks, but Li’l Ron couldn’t have predicted it would progress to this.
Had he hit Nan? And she retaliated?
He rushed into his room without turning on the light, moving to the window. He gazed down upon his father, watching this alter version of him rolling around and slamming his fists into the browning grass. Li’l Ron contemplated phoning his mom, but the idea died at the thought of hearing her voice. He had not spoken with her since the night they moved.
His father picked himself up and stumbled to his truck, stopping at the door, searching his pockets and coming up empty. He opened the door, climbed inside and disappeared.
Good. Sleep it off.
Li’l Ron did have homework to do, but knew that between his father’s bad night and Sweet Kate’s story, his concentration for the evening was shot to hell.
Grabbing his headphones and the yellow cassette Walkman he’d dug out of his dad’s old box of stuff in the back of the closet, he settled onto his bed. The player was a far cry from his Zune, but it was better than nothing. His dad still had two full boxes of cassette tapes, and Li’l Ron had found three Metallica cassettes among them. He hit Play, closed his eyes and folded his hands behind his head. The words and music felt just right.
He thought of Sweet Kate. Saw her being choked, stabbed and tossed from the bridge like a piece of trash.
Tomorrow was Saturday. Maybe when his dad sobered up, he could ask him if he remembered hearing anything about a fourteen-year-old girl who went missing. He thought about getting up and going to ask Nan, but the heaviness settling over him like a warm blanket held him in place. He joined the song, fading into black.
Lucille Sawyer, knitting her way through the mix of sorrow and anger in her heart, tried not to think about her son and his ugly outburst. He was just like his father.
Big Ron had been a good, decent, God-fearing man, but on occasion would give in to the lesser man within him and lash out in anger. Beer was usually an accomplice, but not always. Some nights he would just bring home the ugliness from his job working for McCray’s Construction, and become foul.
Big Ron had raised his hands to her a relatively small number of times in the course of their twenty-six years together. She wished she could forget those incidents, but the scars beneath her hair were always there to remind her.
Greg Sawyer awoke in the cab of his truck sometime after 3:00 a.m., teeth chattering, body shivering from head to toe. Something was pounding in his head, trying to get out. He sat up and found he’d pissed his pants.
Reset,
he heard Del say again.
“I wish.”