Joe (3 page)

Chapter
Four

Sixteen
years ago, Sunnyland Daycare

Joe
Knowe, five years old, sits at a low table in a blue plastic toddler chair.
Around her, the one-room daycare is full of energized children. Joe looks at
the brightly colored clock on the wall to her left. She can’t yet read the
time, but she knows when both arrows point straight down in the circle her
mother will arrive to pick her up. The arrows are not yet at this point, but
they are getting close.

Joe watches the other children and the
two adult caretakers as they go about their business: removing every toy
possible from its storage spot, picking noses, crying and screaming, laughing
and running, and so on. Sometimes Joe plays too, but not often. Already she is
a serious little person, and brighter than most, though you wouldn’t know it.

Joe watches a little blond girl that she
sometimes plays with when the rare mood strikes her. The girl is pretty, with
bouncy golden curls and large brown eyes. Like Joe, she is five years old and
doesn’t speak much. Unlike Joe, it is because the girl is mildly challenged.
Her disability has yet to be diagnosed. Joe’s only disability is a thick
stutter, though her parents have on many occasions had her tested for the same
affliction the blond suffers from. The girl looks up and sees Joe watching her.
Joe is so unlike her blond-haired, blue-eyed parents, and the girl finds Joe’s
raven hair and strange eyes striking in some way. She smiles sweetly. Joe
returns the favor. She considers the girl a friend. Her name is Emily.

Joe’s hand begins to itch and throb. Her
left hand, her dominant hand. It is the first time this has happened, and Joe’s
little brow furrows as she sits at the low table in her blue plastic child’s
chair. Already, in just five short years of life she has become accustomed to
the images she sees, even understands what they mean, to the extent that any child
can truly understand. She also knows that she cannot let knowledge of these
images be gained by the
Adults
. Simple Joe, the name she would later be
dubbed in high school, has never fit her, not even as a child.

But this itching and throbbing sensation
is new, and Joe stares down at her left hand. In the center of the little
wooden table is a basket containing crayons and blank sheets of paper. Joe
watches as her left hand reaches for the basket and pulls it toward her. She
removes a sheet of paper and a black crayon, brow still deeply furrowed.

As she observes, her hand moves swiftly
over the paper. Her strokes are erratic but precise. Joe’s head tilts to the
side as she watches the picture unfold on her page, as curious as a
rubbernecker waiting for a big truck to pass so that he can see the wreckage.
The black crayon outlines, shades,
foretells.

When her hand stops, Joe does not
immediately remove it from over the no-longer-clear sheet of paper. For some
reason, she doesn’t feel ready to look. If she’d had the vocabulary to express
it, she would have said that she was
apprehensive
. At the time, the word
that comes to Joe’s mind is
spooked,
though that word is not quite
right.

Joe shuts her eyes, places her hands in
her lap under the wooden table, and opens her eyes. At first she does not
understand what she sees.

Well, she knows that it is a man, or
better yet, a
stranger.
Dark eyes, dark hair, a large nose and fat lips,
not ugly, average. Even at five years old Simple Joe can see the strangeness
behind the man’s eyes. Though it is just a drawing of a man, Joe does not
question that this man exists. At least to her he does. She has a word for him:
Boogyman.

What Joe doesn’t know, but even so will blame
herself for later, is that this man would soon be paying a visit to Sunnyland
Daycare.

Chapter
Five

Joe

I’d
chewed every one of my fingernails down to nubs before the door to the
classroom opened and another student entered the room. I kept my eyes down on
the page of the book I had been pretending to read. I didn’t care to look into
the face of another potential victim. The student who entered took a seat in a
front row desk at the head of the small classroom. I noticed this peripherally.
The words on the pages in front of me were perfectly visible, yet the meanings
of any of them were beyond me. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the globe
that had been set on my shoulders. And I was thinking about Emily, which was
never fun.

“What’re you reading?”

I looked up from the book, into the eyes
of the student who’d entered a moment ago. The class wouldn’t begin for another
fifteen minutes, and we were alone. The boy had turned around in his desk to
direct the question. I recognized him from my philosophy class. He was also one
of the students who liked to share his works aloud when the teacher allowed it.
He was pleasant-faced with blond hair and brown eyes. The word “jock” came to
my mind, though I don’t like to stereotype people, but even those who claim
this can’t help it when they see a person and a word pops into their head. I’d
heard his poems, though, and he was a decent writer, which in my mind suggests
at least a sound intelligence. Stereotypes again. I swear it’s a learned
behavior.

I had to think for a moment before I
recalled the title of the book I was reading. Normally I carry a book around
with me wherever I go. If I end up getting a minute to myself, I read. Though
you would think this would suggest that I do not wish to converse, there is
always someone who will ask what I am reading. No matter how many times this
happens, I am always caught off-guard by it. The question is always the same,
yet I have to think about the answer because I am on to a new book every two or
three days. What’re you reading is almost always followed by two other
questions. What is it about? And, is it any good? Unless they’ve read it or
heard of it before, which leads to a whole other conversation.

I flipped the book to its cover out of
habit. Looking down at it, I read, “
They Thirst
, by Robert McCammon.”

The boy’s mouth turned down. “What’s it
about?”

My lips pressed together, half
stutter-induced, half amused smile. “It’s a t-true vampire s-st-story,” I said.

“True?”

“I mean that-that-that the va-vampires
are real
vampires.
It’s a genuine huh-horror story. The vampires
ah-aren’t…nice.”

“Is it scary?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Read me the first line?”

I opened to the first page. I didn’t
like conversation because of my limits, but I liked other readers who wanted to
discuss books. “Tonight, there were demons in the hearth,” I read, smiling a
little at the way the words fell so easily from my mouth. It was a big part of
why I loved reading,

The boy grew silent and his brow
furrowed. “It good?” he asked.

I nodded.

“I’ll have to read it. I’m Michael.”

“Joe,” I said.

“Do you write?”

I nodded.

“I’ve never heard you read anything to
the class.”

I shrugged. “I duh-duh-do it for me,” I
said.

He smiled. “A true writer. I like to
write too,” he said, and his smile expanded, “but I like for others to hear
it.”

“I know. Your wuh-work is good.”

“Thanks,” he beamed.

Two other students entered the
classroom, a boy followed by a girl. I knew the boy; his name was John, and we shared
two classes as well. I’d come to consider him a friend, just one of those
people you have in class for a semester and become fond of but will probably
never see again after the class ended. He was of Asian descent, with straight
black hair that fell nearly to his waist and fingernails that seemed almost as
long. He was what some would call different, but then, so was I, and though
others tended to give him odd looks, I had decided I liked him.

John took the desk next to mine and
began pulling supplies out of his backpack. Michael gave me a smile and turned
back toward the front of the class.

“You write those four poems?” John
asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, luh-last night. Did
you?”

He snorted. “Yeah, in the class before
this one. What kind of writing instructor thinks that any real poet can produce
four
good poems in two days? She’s so stupid. Oh, and that was really
shitty of Professor Johnson to call you out like that this morning.”

John was a Lit major, like me, and the
two classes we shared were this one and the one before it. What I liked most
about John was not that he didn’t talk much, but that he talked
so
much
that I didn’t have to. I smiled. “Yeah. I guh-got-got a little embarrassed.”

John laughed. “No shit. You were all
like ‘s-s-s-s-sorry, muh-muh-muh-Ma’am,” he teased.

I laughed in return. This was another
thing about John that I found refreshing. He didn’t pretend that he didn’t
notice my stutter. Other people will listen to what I say and try to act as
though my speech impediment doesn’t make them uncomfortable, and while some
really didn’t mind, most did. It makes them feel the same way as when they see
someone with an enormous deformity on their face. They can’t ignore it, and yet
it would be considered rude to mention it. John had no such qualms.

“I only s-st-stutter when yuh-you’re
around because those-those-those fingernails are so duh-distracting,” I
replied.

John thought this was hilarious.
Watching him laugh made my heart sink. This was what college life should be, jokes
and laughs and carefree. I looked around the classroom, which was now pretty
much full. The teacher hadn’t arrived just yet, and everyone seemed to be in
light moods. They were all so young, so full of life. Why shouldn’t their
outlook be light?

Because I knew that it wasn’t.

One of the greatest mercies of life: not
knowing what’s going to happen next.

Chapter
Six

John

“So
what are you about to do?” John asked.

Joe shrugged. “Go huh-home, I guess.”

John looked over at the strange girl as
he walked alongside her. Her raven hair fell in a way that blocked most of her
face from view, but between the cracks of it he could see the odd silver-blue
color of her eyes, even as they stared downward. John had found the girl
interesting the moment he saw her, not beautiful or pretty, but interesting. He
supposed that was because he was strange himself, and birds of his feather were
rare. Mostly, though, her otherness had an allure.

“Hey, check this out,” John said,
removing a small orange ball from his pocket. He held his right hand out in
front of him and set the orange ball atop the back of his outstretched hand.
His left arm returned to his side. He rolled the ball up his forearm, balanced
it there, and rolled it back down, then repeated it twice more. “I’m not that
good at it yet, but I will be,” he continued, returning the orange ball to his
pocket.

“Pretty cool,” Joe replied.

John smiled. She thought he was pretty
cool. He wasn’t used to talking to girls, but this semester had been going
really well for him in that area. He’d not only made friends with the
strange-eyed, interesting girl beside him, but he’d gotten a pretty little lab
partner in biology as well. Claire, her name was. Now, there was a hottie.

“Huh-hey, I puh-parked over there. See
ya,” Joe said, splitting off down the path toward the east-campus parking
garage. John thought she seemed to be in a hurry for some reason. She’d seemed
anxious all day, in fact.

“All right,” he replied. “Hey, you
okay?”

Joe was already twenty feet in the
opposite direction, her back to him. She turned her head a little, but didn’t
look back. “Yup. Good,” she said.

He watched her walk away for a moment,
then turned back around and headed off. John didn’t own a car, so he went to
the bus stop. It was a pleasant day out, summer already creeping in when it was
only the middle of April. He enjoyed his walk across the campus, because UMMS
was an extraordinarily beautiful place. Most of the large buildings were made
of stone, which were set in rolling fields of plush green. The walkways were
all freshly paved, and Missouri hardwood trees cast large areas of shade where
students took lunches and naps and played guitars or studied. The University
owned all the land surrounding the campus buildings as well, and there were
lovely Victorian houses that served as homes to professors, fraternity and
sorority houses and offices for the teachers and staff. So yeah, the walk
wasn’t so bad.

John slowed as he passed a group of
freshman girls dancing on the lawn beneath an old oak tree, and felt the cell
phone stuck in the front pocket of his Levis vibrate against his leg. He
continued walking and fumbled the phone out of his pocket. When it was free, he
checked the caller ID on the screen to see who it was. The area code was 312.
He didn’t even know where that was, let alone anyone who lived there. Curious,
he hit the green answer button.

“Hello?” he said.

There was silence on the line, but he
thought he could hear someone breathing. He tried again. “Hello?”

Still no answer. John sighed, about to
hang up. Then:
Hello?

The voice was small and hesitant, a
woman’s voice. John didn’t notice it, but he had stopped walking, and students
on their way home were swerving around him, a bit annoyed that he was standing
in the middle of the walkway. For several moments he just stood there, the
phone pressed to his ear and his mouth hanging open, unaware of how he, with
his pin-straight black hair that fell past his waist and his circle-shaped
glasses, must look. It was if he had seen a ghost…or
heard
one.

“Hello?”

That voice again, a little louder and
with more confidence. He swallowed hard. Someone walking past bumped his arm,
mumbled an apology that John didn’t hear, but the little push at least got him
walking again. His mind, however, was stuck. He had heard it twice, that voice.
He hadn’t imagined it.

He forced a word through his lips, the
only one he could think of, because he was all of a sudden terrified that she
might hang up. “Jodie?” he asked. His voice came out in just a whisper, and he
hoped to God that she’d heard it, because he wasn’t sure he could speak again.
Saying her name felt strange, as he had not spoken it, nor heard it spoken, in
over six years. But it was familiar all the same. Very familiar. Sort of like a
precious thing that you lose in the house somewhere, and never find again until
years down the road when you are packing up to move to a new house. Yeah, kinda
like that.

She had heard him. “
Yeah, Johnny,
it’s me,”
her voice said, and John exited the sidewalk and plopped down on
a bench, unconcerned about missing the early bus home.

“Jodie?” he repeated.

He heard her giggle, just as she used to
do when they were younger, except her laugh was deeper now, throatier. He
wasn’t even sure how he had known that it was Jodie. But then again, how could
he not? Wasn’t this exactly the moment he had been waiting for for over six
years?

“Yeah. How ya been, Johnny?”

He heard himself answer, and thought
that his voice sounded odd giving his usual, knee-jerk response to this
question. “Good. How ’bout yourself?”

Over the line, all the way to the mystic
land of
312
—wherever the hell that was—he thought he heard her sigh. “
I
been good,”
she said, and paused. Then, “
I’m coming into town soon,
actually, and I was wondering if you might want to meet up… have a drink or
something?”

His answer flew through his lips as
though rocket-fired, way too quick for him to do a damn thing about it. “Hell
yeah!” he all but shouted.

Roses bloomed behind his cheeks, and
people passing by gave him a slightly strange look and continued on their way.
He was grateful that at least
she
couldn’t see him. When he heard her
laugh again, that deeper, throatier version of what he remembered so clearly,
of what he’d replayed over and over again these past six years on the nights
that, no matter how much he tossed and turned or masturbated or read, he could
not shake his thoughts of her, made his heart seem to tug itself together
again, but his stomach was in his shoes.

“Okay
,” she said. John thought he heard another sigh. Of relief?
He couldn’t tell. “
What do you got goin’ on on Monday?”

John had school on Monday, and work, but
his automatic response was, “Nothing. Monday? Nope. Nothing going on on
Monday.”

Jodie laughed again, and the long hair on
John’s head seemed to tingle with joy. “
Okay. I get in at eight pm and I’m
driving from the airport. You want me to pick you up?”
she asked. “
Could
be there at like nine. That okay?”

John reached up to scratch his face,
realizing only when his fingers touched wetness that a few tears had escaped
his eyes. He quickly cleaned them off with the sleeve of his green army jacket.

“I mean, you don’t drive, do you? I
don’t mind picking you up.”

He realized he hadn’t replied. “No, I
don’t drive,” he said. Of course she knew that. Jodie had seen John after his
car wreck his freshman year of high school. She had taken care of him, really.
She just had no idea how very much. Even still, he hated driving. “Yes,” he
continued. “Pick me up. Pick me up on Monday. I—” He cleared his throat. “I
can’t wait to see you.”

“Me too. I’ll see you then, Johnny.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you then,” he said, and
then he hung up.

John sat on that bench for the next half
an hour, even though it was going to cause him to miss the early bus and not
get home until after the sun had set. It didn’t matter. The day was so warm and
the birds were whistling sweet music in his ears.
Jodie was coming home.
He
just couldn’t believe it.
Jodie was coming home and everything was going to
be all right.

Come Monday, after a day of classes and
work, he would get to see her again, to hold her maybe, to hear that laugh of
hers again. And, maybe, just maybe, it would help to erase his last sight of
her, where tears had streaked down her face and she had called out and then she
was gone. That was how he remembered the girl he had fallen in love with, and
now the woman that girl had become was coming back, and she wanted to see him.

He sat on the bench, under the warm sun,
which seemed to him to be shining just for him—when truly it was utterly
indifferent—and felt as though he was in a fairytale and everything was going
to be all right. Yessir and holy schmokes. It would be all right.

Come Monday, that was.

What he didn’t understand was that life
was no fairytale, and there is often no smoke before the fire.