Seasonal work, p.17
Seasonal Work, page 17
“Don’t drink around boys,” my mom told me. “You’ll get what you deserve.” This whole thing upset her. My mom is third-generation Belleville, used to lord it over my dad. We didn’t like seeing our town in the news, seeing a good boy from its best family accused of a horrible crime. It’s not that we don’t understand date rape. We’re not stupid or unsophisticated. We watch the same TV shows you do, go to the same movies. We have Facebook and smartphones and DVRs and computers and internet. Just because there’s cornfields and Kiwanis barbecues and produce stands along the highway, just because you drive through at sixty-five miles an hour—the speed limit is fifty, by the way—with your windows up and your kayaks and your bicycles, you don’t know us. You don’t know anything about us. The Stones are good people. Their name is on the old theater and the scoreboard and the snack bar at the community pool, which hires mentally slow people and contributes its proceeds to the booster club. They own a grocery store and a seafood restaurant, and they’re not the least bit stuck up. My mom would love to work for them instead of Happy Harry’s, but chains are buying up everything now.
When my photo appeared in the Wilmington paper, it wasn’t a big deal. I mean, it was on page one, and a lot of kids said, “Go, you,” and not at all sarcastic. A week later it was online, in a newspaper all the way in London, England, and it said: the face of belleville. Well, I’m not, but I would be proud to be that. And the part underneath, “A Town Unites in Hate Against Rape Victim,” wasn’t true. Because Tara wasn’t raped. No charges were filed; her lawsuit was dropped because her parents got cold feet, and they went back to Philadelphia. What about Daniel? What about Charley? I imagine them this fall, off at school, saying their names, saying where they’re from. She ruined their lives, or tried. And Charley’s not much, but Daniel Stone is the nicest boy you’ll ever meet. He lay down at her feet and let her walk across his back, and she says these things against him? Slut is kind, if you ask me. Girl gets caught having sex, says it wasn’t her idea, puts it on the boy.
Sure, Tara, sure.
And now she’s back. If she wanted to apologize, things would be different. But she’s never going to admit she was wrong. Never.
The playhouse. The vacant lot where we held bonfires. The dumpster behind Langley’s. The snack bar at the pool. And now the Greene house, which no one wanted to buy. I bet it’s insured. I bet it’s insured for a lot of money. “Jewish lightning,” my mother says the next day. I had forgotten the Greene family was Jewish. Outsiders made a big deal out of that, but that didn’t matter to us. And Tara got lots of extra holidays. I think she made half of them up. She was a liar, and that’s what liars do: make things up.
I know what I have to do, but I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to go to the cops, tell them about Tara. The mud on her sandals the night after the rain, the fire at the pool. How I saw her standing outside her own house when it went up in flames. If I go to them, I’m a snitch. Like her, only I’ll be telling the truth.
Tara must know what’s going through my mind, because she doesn’t follow me home on Monday or Tuesday. Or maybe I start leaving just a few minutes earlier, now that Wendi’s on time, since the pool closed down. But Wednesday, after I stop by the high school to make sure I’m not missing any major requirements, she’s waiting for me at the edge of the lacrosse field, under the John and Adelaide Stone scoreboard, the one with the ad for Langley Seafood along the bottom.
Then she sees the state trooper’s car, parked across the street, and she runs.
Two men get out. “Beth Ennis? Can we talk to you? Just a few questions. Can we talk to you?”
I look around. No one’s there, no one will know if I talk to them. Tara might, but that’s her problem, right? She was tagging after me, they saw her, she ran. They think I know something. But I don’t. I can’t know anything. I make up my mind that I’ll talk to them but I won’t volunteer anything. They teach you in kindergarten not to be a tattletale.
They take me to the state police barracks. In the car, on the way over, they ask me my age and I say eighteen. I guess they don’t believe me, because I see them exchange a look and they ask for my actual birth date, like I can’t do math. I turned eighteen two weeks ago. My mom had the option to hold me back, so she did, so I wouldn’t be the smallest in the class. The thing is, I’m kinda the biggest. I hit six feet at age fourteen.
“My mom held me back,” I tell them. “So I wouldn’t be the smallest. I mean, the youngest. I was never the smallest. But it wasn’t like it was with Charley Boyd’s parents. They wanted him to have an advantage when he tried out for football. They call that redshirting—which is different from Redshirts, which is a Star Trek thing.”
I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy. Speculative fiction is the better term, I think. Because fantasies are that Shades of Grey stuff, about love and sex. And science fiction sounds as if it’s about science. When it’s still about the people, you know? It’s all what if. What if?
They ask me again for the year I was born and I tell them.
At the barracks in Georgetown, they offer me anything I want from the vending machines—anything. I don’t want to appear greedy, so I ask for a Diet 7Up and a bag of Utz crab chips. They’re both really nice. Good cop, good cop. After all, I’m not a suspect. I’m just someone who knows things I wish I didn’t know. The mud on Tara’s sandals. Seeing her watching her own house burn. The thing she said about knowing how to make a fire from sticks. When I feel like I’m about to tell them something I shouldn’t, I eat a big handful of chips, sip my soda. The policeman is your friend. The policeman is your friend. That old song comes back to me from kindergarten, back when I was normal size, right in the middle of the class when we lined up by height.
“You know the house that burned, right?” one asks me.
“Know of it, sir. I was never inside.”
“And the playhouse? The snack bar?”
“Again, I know about those places, but they’re not places I ever went.”
“The vacant lot, the dumpster at Langley’s.”
They’re not from Belleville. They need my help.
“Well, the vacant lot is where we have the bonfires in the fall. For pep rallies. And, and, for other things. Langley’s is a seafood restaurant. It’s owned by the Stone family. Daniel worked as a waiter there, modest as you please. He didn’t need to work. But his family has what my mom calls good values. They believe in work. Daniel waited tables there in the summer. They have a really good fried oyster sandwich. My mom and I went there for her birthday once. But it was March, so Daniel wasn’t there.”
“So,” says one of them. They look so much alike, they might be twins. Tan suits, short dark hair. “If you think about it, every one of these fires is tied to the Stone family or the Greene family.”
“Well, not the vacant lot, sir. Everyone in the high school went there.”
“Still, it’s interesting, don’t you think?”
I don’t. I really don’t. But I’m out of chips and soda, and I don’t know what to do with my hands. I tent my fingers, then put my palms flat on the table. They’re really sweaty, and now my fingers have that crab dust on them from the chips.
“Sirs? There’s something I probably should tell you. I don’t want to, and I would appreciate if you didn’t let it get out. That I told you. Because, while I plan to major in law enforcement at Del Tech, kids can be very cruel. They’ll say I’m a snitch. I’m not. I’m the opposite. But Tara Greene is back in town. I’ve seen her. I don’t know where she’s staying, but I see her every day, almost. She was at the school just now. Did you see her? She ran away when she saw you. She walks home with me from the deli. And the day after the fire at the pool, there was mud on her sandals, and I saw her at the fire at her house. I don’t know why she would burn down the snack bar, although I think she and Daniel first started flirting there”—Wendi told me that—“and I don’t know why she would burn down her house, although her parents can’t sell it; maybe she thought they would get insurance money—”
They interrupt and say: “You know, we probably should call your parents.”
My mom is getting ready to go to work, and she’s pissed. But when she comes in, she says, “Let’s make this quick.”
I say, “Mom, I had to tell them. Tara did it. Tara started all those fires. And she’s been following me around for weeks now. I didn’t let her in the house, although she kept asking to come in. I don’t owe her anything.”
The cops do that thing where they exchange a look, then leave. My mom, so old, so used up, so not the pretty schoolteacher with the convertible that needs a new tire, does something that she hasn’t done since I was eight years old. She takes me in her arms, although she’s so tiny it feels odd. It’s like one of those birds who rides on the head of a hippo decided to give it a hug. Not that I’m that big, just that my mom is that small. By the time I was fourteen, when she had bad nights, I could pick her up and carry her, put her in the tub, put her to bed. I hated doing that, yet I miss it sometimes. She doesn’t need me as much as she used to.
“Oh, Beth, oh Bethie, what have you done?”
“Nothing, Mom. I wasn’t even sure until now that it was Tara. I—”
“Oh, baby,” my mom says. “You know that Tara Greene’s been dead since last May. Killed herself a week before graduation. She drove down here from Philadelphia and slit her wrists in that playhouse. You know that. Everyone in town knows that.”
The cops come back in. I bet they were listening to us all along. It’s one-way glass, usually, so they can see in, listen to what you say. Everyone knows that trick.
“But she set those fires,” I say. “Sorry, but she did. I don’t want to tattle, but I saw her, I saw her—”
“Beth,” the one cop says, “we need to go through where you were. Every night there was a fire, okay? Can you prove where you were?”
“She was home with me,” Mom says.
“Are you sure, ma’am? Are you sure?”
I say, wanting to be truthful, wanting to keep Mom from looking like she’s covering up for me: “I did go out the night of the fire at the Greenes’ house. But only after I heard the sirens. That’s how I know Tara was there. I went out my bedroom window. But I wouldn’t go out to do anything bad. You know that, Mom. I would never do anything bad.”
The two men in the tan suits look to my mom, who is crying now and rocking in her seat.
“Been working four to eleven since August 1,” Mom says. “The night shift. The fucking night shift. I don’t even look in on her when I get home. She’s always in her room with the door shut. At least—I thought she was in her room.”
Poor Mom. I probably should call her sponsor tonight. It makes her so nervous when I’m at the center of things. She doesn’t think I can handle it. That’s why she had that bad night last fall. But I’m a hero, Mom. I’m proud. I’m righteous. I don’t mind telling these police officers what Tara’s been up to, if that’s what I have to do. I’ll help them catch her, too. That will be exciting, almost as exciting as last fall, when I was the face of Belleville.
Part 4
The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to bear them, and sometimes three.
—Alexandre Dumas
Waco 1982
They called them black beans, although no one in the Waco Times newsroom could explain the origin of the term. They were just “Lou’s Black Beans,” dreaded equally by one and all. They appeared in the form of memos typed on scanner paper, the coded sheets that were threaded through IBM Selectrics when there were not enough computers to go around—and there were never enough computers, not in the crunch of afternoon deadline, not when one was the low woman on the totem pole. Forced to use a typewriter to file her copy, Marissa belonged to one of the last generation of journalists to type -30- to denote the end, but of course she could not know this in the summer of 1982. She also couldn’t know that she would give up on newspapers by year’s end, although the briefness of her tenure would not keep her from bragging, many years in the future, that she had once typed her copy and put -30- at the end.
Black beans arrived in one’s mailbox cubby, innocuous slips of paper until unfolded. Then they became the black plague. Death to advancement, death to career, death to ambition.
Marissa, Go down to the park and write up a little something on the groundbreaking ceremony for the new public restrooms (no big deal). Best, Lou
Marissa, There’s a program over at Baylor for young entrepreneurs, in which kiddos learn the ins and outs of business. But please—don’t give us a lot of cute stories about kids. Focus on the business basics. Best, Lou
Marissa, Where does navel lint come from? And why do I have so much of it? Best, Lou
The last one never happened. But it could, it might. Marissa came to believe that she would spend an eternity chasing down every idle thought that rolled through the mind of Lou Baker lonely as a tumbleweed, something Marissa had believed she would find in Waco, Texas, knowing very little about the state’s topography before she arrived there for a job interview on a sweltering April day. She feared that she would spend the rest of her life in Waco, Texas, because she had graduated in the middle of a recession and all the good newspapers insisted that applicants have at least five years experience and she was never, ever going to have five years experience.
Marissa was twenty-one years old.
The day she turned twenty-two, in late August, she found another black bean in her mailbox:
Marissa, Wouldn’t it be interesting, as summer comes to an end, to find out what is in the various lost-and-found boxes at motels, restaurants, the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame, et cetera? Best, Lou
No, she thought reflexively, as if the question were not rhetorical.
She made a dutiful effort to shoot it down. First rule of a Lou Baker Black Bean: Shoot it down. She called the motels. Mostly clothing. She called the restaurants. Clothing, a pair of binoculars. She called the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame and they seemed strangely proud of having nothing—nothing!—in the lost and found, as if part of being a Texas Ranger was making sure that a person was never, ever separated from a beloved hat, fanny pack, or billfold.
But when she dutifully reported back to Lou that there really didn’t seem to be much in the various lost and founds, the city editor asked for a list of the places she had called and scanned it with a puckered frown.
“I don’t see the Waco Inn on here,” Lou said.
That place. “I thought you wanted me to focus on the tourist destinations, along the interstate. The Waco Inn is pretty far off the beaten track.”
“But Tatum Buford, who owns the Waco Inn, was the person who gave me this idea. At the Rotary Club luncheon. He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if someone looked to see what was in the local lost and founds at summer’s end? I think it would be.’”
“Oh, it was a great idea in concept. But sometimes even good ideas don’t pan out.”
“Sure, if you just sit at your desk, making phone calls. You should go and ask to see the contents. Feet on the street, Marissa, feet on the street.” It was one of Lou’s favorite expressions, as mysterious in origin as the black beans.
“At every motel?”
“At every motel.”
“What if they won’t show me?”
“They have to, by law. Freedom of speech. Look, don’t forget the five W’s—they work, Marissa. You know what they say—no stupid questions!”
Marissa was pretty sure that the First Amendment did not apply in this situation and that there were plenty of stupid questions. But she resigned herself to spending a day or two visiting every motel in Waco and asking to see the lost-and-found boxes.
Lou tottered off, smoothing her too-tight skirt down over her hips. Lou was Louisa Busbee Baker, the first female city editor at the Waco paper. She had worked there her entire career, as she frequently reminded Marissa, starting in 1967 as a clerk in the features section—it was called Brazos Living, after the river that ran through town. She had moved up from taking paid wedding announcements to reporter, then to editor of Brazos Living and, for five years now, city editor. She was the only woman in management on the news side, a fact she frequently referenced. “As the only woman . . .” She favored tight skirts and high heels, although she always seemed uncertain in the latter. The general impression was of someone who used to be a knockout and didn’t realize that her knockout days were behind her. Lou was, by Marissa’s calculations, at least thirty-eight.
Marissa started on the interstate frontage road, where the motels were close together and she could cover a lot of ground. She had already interviewed clerks at almost every one, but no one seemed to remember her or the conversation, so she had to go through her spiel all over again. Perhaps they were as bored as she was on this despairingly hot August day. At any rate, they either brought out the box of left-behind clothing immediately or asked the manager for permission to do so, in which case the manager, also bored, did the honors.
The boxes themselves were remarkably the same from motel to motel, almost as if they had a single supplier or there were state regulations stipulating what could be used as a lost-and-found box at a motel. Plain cardboard, beginning to sag and soften in that way that cardboard does over time.
The contents, too, were similar. Clothes and more clothes, an occasional paperback, usually a romance.
The young clerk at the Motel 6 said: “Off the record?”
Marissa thought that hilarious. Off the record. As if this were Watergate, which was part of the reason she was a journalist. It was the reason that almost everyone in her generation had become a journalist. Follow the money, bring down a president. That’s what she should be doing, not staring into a cardboard box of dirty clothes.
