Caring Is Creepy (23 page)

“He told me he wanted to draw comic books. He told me about his car.”

“Jesus Christ,” the M.P. said.

“He tell you where he was headed?” Officer Watkins smiled.

“Back to Hunter,” I said. “He wanted my phone number, but I said I’d only take his.”

“You still have that number?” the M.P. asked quickly.

I shook my head. “I threw it out soon as he drove off. He was nice enough but too old. I only drove with him because he said he knew my cousin Bucky. Turned out he was fibbing about that, but it was kind of funny the way he did it. I didn’t mind.”

“So that’s it, huh? Cars, comics and Cobbtown,” the M.P. said, his voice turning mean. “I don’t believe a word you said, little girl.” He made the word girl sound like the most terrible insult ever.

I glared at the rude little man.

“How’d you like this? How’d you like to come down to the interrogation room at Hunter? If you feel like it, we could talk all night about cars, comics, and Cobbtown.” The M.P. took a couple steps toward me, but Officer Watkins stepped between us and put a hand on the M.P.’s chest. The M.P. shook it off and for a second I thought something might come of it. A spiteful look went across his face like the shadow of a passing bird.

“There ain’t no call for that,” Officer Watkins said.

“There
ain’t
no call for me to stand here and listen to this little bitch lie to me.” When he said “ain’t,” the M.P. tried to put on a Georgia accent, but it just sounded petty and foolish. “I’m going to take her with me.”

“No,” Officer Watkins said, “no you
ain’t
. And I won’t have you cussing out children neither.”

The two men squared off and looked at each other. The carport was quiet for a while. I shifted my book bag from one arm to the other. Finally, Officer Watkins took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. When he exhaled, the smoke seemed to fill the entire area.

“I know something isn’t right here,” the M.P. said. “I know it.”

“Well, maybe you should wait and speak with the girl’s mama.” He turned and looked at me. “She works over at the hospital, ain’t that right?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, pointing in the direction of the hospital, about a quarter mile from the house on a grassy hill. “She’ll be there till late.”

“This isn’t the last of it. If you know where Loy is, it’s in his best interest and yours for you to tell me. Harboring a criminal is a crime. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, “can I go? I’ve got a lot of homework for tomorrow.”

“Homework.” The M.P. made a sound of disgust. “I bet.”

“Come on, now. Let’s go. There ain’t no need to keep harassing the girl, sergeant.” Officer Watkins smiled at me and put on his hat. “Have a good afternoon, Lynn.” He turned and then stopped short and looked back over his shoulder. “But if you think of something that might be helpful, you see this soldier has gone missing and might even be in need of help, make sure and call down to the sheriff’s office, you hear?” He handed me his card.

“Yes, sir.”

Officer Watkins winked. It was a strange wink, as if he also knew something wasn’t right here. Only he went about figuring it out in a different way. Or maybe it was just a friendly wink.

“One last thing, Miss Sugrue,” the M.P. said without looking back, “somebody took a dump at the end of your driveway.”

“You just can’t quit, can you?” Officer Watkins said.

They crossed the backyard and walked through the stand of pines that separated our house from the large, grassy strip below the hospital parking lot. The police car was parked over by the entrance. I wondered if it’d been their plan all along to sneak up on me or if they just wanted to talk to my mom too. The muscles in my neck felt as though they’d been wound around a stick. God, I thought, that was close.

O
nce those policemen were safely away, I decided to check on Logan first thing. All this talk about him had me feeling nervous. When I came inside, I found him out in the living room picking through the ashtray. He must of heard me coming because he made a mad scramble to hide behind the couch. I picked up a throw pillow on my way around the couch. He crouched in the corner, clutching a handful of cigarette butts. I chucked the pillow at his head.

“What are you doing?” I said. “Are you crazy?”

“I am.” He made a fake-crazy face that really did make him look a little insane. “I’m loony. Ha, ha. Bippy as a beaver hat.”

“No, really. What the hell are you doing, Logan?”

Out in the daylight, he looked even dirtier than I remembered, and I’d just given him another bath. The rash on his inner thighs had spread to his chest. I noticed he had scabs in the corners of his mouth.

“Nothing.” He chewed on his lower lip and smiled with his mouth only. His eyes looked glazed and empty, like my mom’s after she’s had her fourth beer. “Just getting some air.”

“Well, I just spent the last ten minutes talking to a mean M.P. and a policeman who were looking for you.”

“Shit,” Logan said, looking suddenly bashful. “Again?”

“Last time it was only the regular police, not the M.P. type,” I said. “You know they know you’re around here somewhere. And
what do you do? You hop around the living room with the blinds open.”

I grabbed his arm and dragged him back to the closet. He came along without any trouble, but he wouldn’t speak to me at all. My room reeked of cigarette smoke, which was better than Logan stink but still worrisome. So he’d been sneaking out and swiping butts before. When we got inside his little room, the smell was overpowering.

“You can’t smoke in here. There’s nowhere for it to go. You’ll choke to death,” I said. “Besides, you don’t smoke. I thought you said you hated open flames.”

“I’m trying to get over my fears,” he said, grinning with half his mouth. He’d already stuck another little butt between his lips. “And besides, I’ve got to do something with myself. You ain’t got a fucking clue how bored I am.”

He lit up, but the butt was so short he burned the tip of his nose with the match. When he saw me watching him, he wheeled around and hunched over. It was a strangely chimp-like move.

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s talk about it. Just put the cigarette out.”

“It’s out,” he said, grinning that strange grin again. He held up his arm and showed me a red mark on the inside of his wrist. It took me a second to realize what it was.

“Jesus, Logan, why didn’t you just put it out against the wall?”

“And mess up your painting? Shit.”

I gave him a worried look.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I borrowed these.” Logan held up an old bleach bottle with part of the top cut off. I’d kept my crayons in there when I was a kid. He shook it so it rattled.

“Where’d you find that?”

He gestured at one of the boxes against the wall and then picked up a half-dry felt-tip pen and started scratching out lines on his thigh with it.

“Just wait till you see my masterpiece when it’s done,” he mumbled, jerking his thumb at the wall behind his head.

I hobbled over and lit up that side of the room with my flashlight. He’d turned one wall into a cartoon strip. In the first panel, men in turbans chased a girl who looked a bit like me. In the next, they cut off her breasts. The blood formed a huge waterfall down the wall and he’d even colored a bit of the floor red. It looked like he’d melted a red crayon and let it drip and pool. In the final panel, the turban men chucked the girl’s boobs in a bonfire. The drawings were crude and brightly colored. The turban men had fangs. I felt sick.

“Jesus, Logan,” I said.

“I told you it ain’t finished,” he said, his voice small and sullen. “I have two more squares to fill. Just wait.”

“L
ook who’s here,” my mom said, presenting Dani with both hands. It was just about seven thirty.

I must of looked as though I’d swallowed a live tree roach because Dani piped up quick. “I’m only allowed over for a little while. Just long enough to get my social studies homework from you.” As my mom couldn’t see her face, Dani also allowed herself a giant wink.

Oh God, nothing good could come of this.

The moment I shut the door to my room, she let out a little whoop. “You didn’t think I’d let you get away with not giving me get at least a peek at him. He’s still here, isn’t he?”

“Well—”

“I knew it. This has to be quick. That story about homework was complete bullshit, but homework’s like a magic word, you say it and you automatically get a little parental slack. My parents are actually playing bridge over at the McKinleys’. I got about an hour before my mom calls to check on me.”

That, at least, was a relief. But still.

“This ain’t the best of times, Dani. He’s not feeling too well.”

“I guess I’ll have to cheer him up then.” She zipped into the closet before I could move in front of her. The door to the attic croaked.

“Wait, Dani, if he doesn’t know you, he’s like to—”

Dani let out a shriek. I went in after her as fast as I could,
thinking, Oh Christ, he’s gone and killed her. But by the time I ducked in, they were on either side of the attic, both looking scared half to the grave.

“I didn’t do nothing to her,” Logan said, pointing at Dani. “I thought she was the cops.”

“What in the hell’s wrong with him?” Dani’s lips tightened and the skin between her eyebrows wrinkled up.

I’d gotten so used to seeing Logan naked and grimy, it took me a moment to understand what she meant. Logan looked like something out of
National Geographic
.

“This is too much,” Dani said, backing away from him. “And the smell, ugh!”

“Who is this fat little girl?” Logan asked me. He clutched his red wise man ornament like a hatchet.

“Hold up a second, Dani,” I whispered.

“What,” Dani said, pushing me out of the doorway, “did you do to him?”

When I got back in my room, she had her hand on the door to the hall. Dani took quick, shallow breaths and squeezed herself with one arm.

“Let me explain,” I said. “It’s not what you think.”

“I don’t know what all you two have been doing back there, but … he ain’t what I expected.” Her eyes were red with tears. “At all.”

With that, she was out the door before I could say another word. If I’d of had even one more tear left, I would of cried it right then.

I
thought we were going to have sex, but he couldn’t get it to work. He wanted to. It was his idea. But it wouldn’t get hard. I rubbed it and put it in my mouth for a little while when he asked me to, even though the last time I tried this it made me gag.

“What’s wrong with it?” I said. I wasn’t trying to sound mean, but I guess it came out that way. I didn’t understand what the problem was. It always worked before.

By this point, we were both naked. Two candles sputtered in the corner. After Dani had left, I’d given him a fast sponge bath, but he was already completely filthy again and his eyes were almost swallowed up by charcoal-colored pockets of wrinkled skin. If they sunk any deeper into his head, they’d disappear. He said he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept more than a few minutes at a time. The little room seemed to smell even worse than it did before, but I thought maybe Dani’s visit had made me more aware of it. I made a note to buy some Febreze the next day at the Piggly Wiggly. But this was a stink I wasn’t even sure Febreze could fix.

“Nothing’s wrong with it!” he yelled. He took it into his hand and shook it at me. “Something’s wrong with
me
. With
you
.”

“Shhh,” I said. “My mom’s still awake.” I pulled my T-shirt on. Something black was smeared on the sleeve.

“I don’t care if she is,” he said. “I’m getting out of here tomorrow. Even if I have to go naked.” He shook his dick at me again. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time.”

“About what?” I said.

“About the clothes, for one.”

“No, that’s true,” I said, but this sounded like a lie even to my own ears. My voice came out flat and unconvincing.

“Right,” he said, folding his sweat-shiny arms across his chest.

Out in the kitchen, my mom shouted, “Like hell I will, Hayes!”

I shifted my attention to her phone conversation, so when Logan spoke again, it made me jump a little. He sounded levelheaded and clear. “What ever happened with all that? That mess with the boyfriend? That’s who she’s talking to, right?”

I didn’t think he’d been keeping track of this. But of course he could hear Mom’s voice as clear as I could. I’d noticed many years ago it was easier to hear the rest of the house from back here than it was to hear the attic from the rest of the house. He’d probably heard more about Hayes than I had with all that time on his hands and nothing to do but listen to my mom and make whacked-out cartoon strips on the wall.

“Yeah, probably.”

“She don’t seem to sleep much, or else she can do it in front of the TV. I never could sleep with people talking like that. The only time I can close my eyes is when she’s off at work.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. You got to believe that.”

“I don’t got to believe anything. My brain ain’t doing what I’d like. I don’t know.” Logan tapped each of my toes three times. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I know you’ve been outside, so you know I’m not lying about your car.”

“What?” he said, trying to act all innocent, but I could tell he was surprised.

“A girl at school told me on the bus this morning she saw you running around naked in the yard the other day. Lucky for us, everyone thinks she’s full of it. I can’t believe you did that. This
whole time I’ve been trying to protect you. You think it’s easy, hiding you like this? Well, it ain’t. I’d get in a lot of fucking trouble if anyone found out. As it is, people are getting suspicious.”

“Ah ha,” he said, making his fake-crazy face again. It wasn’t even close to funny this time. Just scary. “Ha, ha, ha.”

“Do you want to go to jail?”

“I’m in jail!” he near about shouted.

“Quiet,” I said, “hush.”