Chapter Four
Someone had spray-painted blue curlicues on the legs of the water tower at Jacob J. Garrett Memorial Park, and it was left looking oddly dainty, as if it were wearing crochet booties. The park itself—the last place Natalie Keene was seen alive—was vacant. The dirt from the baseball field hovered a few feet above the ground. I could taste it in the back of my throat like tea left brewing too long. The grasses grew tall at the edge of the woods. I was surprised no one had ordered them cut, eradicated like the stones that snagged Ann Nash.
When I was in high school, Garrett Park was the place everyone met on weekends to drink beer or smoke pot or get jerked off three feet into the woods. It was where I was first kissed, at age thirteen, by a football player with a pack of chaw tucked down in his gums. The rush of the tobacco hit me more than the kiss; behind his car I vomited wine cooler with tiny, glowing slices of fruit.
“James Capisi was here.”
I turned around to face a blond, buzz-cut boy of about ten, holding a fuzzy tennis ball.
“James Capisi?” I asked.
“My friend, he was here when she got Natalie,” the kid said. “James saw her. She was wearing her nightgown. They were playing Frisbee, over by the woods, and she took Natalie. It would’ve been James, but he decided to stay here on the field. So Natalie was the one right by the trees. James was out here because of the sun. He’s not supposed to be in the sun, because his mom’s got skin cancer, but he does anyway. Or he did.” The boy bounced the tennis ball, and a puff of dirt floated up around him.
“He doesn’t like the sun anymore?”
“He doesn’t like nothing no more.”
“Because of Natalie?”
He shrugged belligerently.
“Because James is a *.”
The kid looked me up and down, then suddenly threw the ball at me, hard. It hit my hip and bounced off.
He blurted out a little laugh. “Sorry.” He scrambled after the ball, dove on top of it dramatically, then leapt up and hurled it against the ground. It bounced about ten feet in the air, then dribbled to a stop.
“I’m not sure I understood what you said. Who was wearing a nightgown?” I kept my eye on the bouncing ball.
“The woman who took Natalie.”
“Wait, what do you mean?” The story I’d heard was that Natalie had been playing here with friends who left to go home one by one, and that she was assumed to have been abducted somewhere along her short walk home.
“James saw the woman take Natalie. It was just the two of them, and they were playing Frisbee, and Natalie missed and it went into the grasses by the woods, and the woman just reached out and grabbed her. Then they were gone. And James ran home. And he don’t come out since.”
“Then how do you know what happened?”
“I visited him once. He told me. I’m his buddy.”
“Does James live around here?”
“Fuck him. I might go to my grandma’s for the summer anyway. In Arkansas. Better’n here.”
The boy threw the ball at the chain-link fence outlining the baseball diamond, and it lodged there, rattling the metal.
“You from here?” He began kicking dirt in the air.
“Yeah. I used to be. I don’t live here anymore. I’m visiting.” I tried again: “Does James live around here?”
“You in high school?” His face was deeply tanned. He looked like a baby Marine.
“No.”
“College?” His chin was wet with spit.
“Older.”
“I got to go.” He hopped away backward, yanked the ball out of the fence like a bad tooth, turned around and looked at me again, waggled his hips in a nervous dance. “I got to go.” He threw the ball toward the street, where it bounced off my car with an impressive thunk. He ran after it and was gone.
I looked up Capisi, Janel, in a magazine-thin phone book at Wind Gap’s lone FaStop. Then I filled a Big Mouth with strawberry pop and drove to 3617 Holmes.
The Capisi home sat on the edge of the low-rent section to the far east of town, a cluster of broken-down, two-bedroom houses, most of whose inhabitants work at the nearby pig factory-farm, a private operation that delivers almost 2 percent of the country’s pork. Find a poor person in Wind Gap, and they’ll almost always tell you they work at the farm, and so did their old man. On the breeding side, there are piglets to be clipped and crated, sows to be impregnated and penned, manure pits to be managed. The killing side’s worse. Some employees load the pigs, forcing them down the gangway, where stunners await. Others grab the back legs, fasten the catch around them, release the animal to be lifted, squealing and kicking, upside down. They cut the throats with pointy slaughter knives, the blood spattering thick as paint onto the tile floors. Then on to the scalding tank. The constant screams—frantic, metallic squeals—drive most of the workers to wear earplugs, and they spend their days in a soundless rage. At night they drink and play music, loud. The local bar, Heelah’s, serves nothing pork related, only chicken tenders, which are, presumably, processed by equally furious factory workers in some other crappy town.
For the sake of full disclosure, I should add that my mother owns the whole operation and receives approximately $1.2 million in profits from it annually. She lets other people run it.
A tomcat was yowling on the Capisis’ front porch, and as I walked toward the house, I could hear the din of a daytime talk show. I banged on the screen door and waited. The cat rubbed up against my legs; I could feel its ribs through my pants. I banged again, and the TV switched off. The cat stalked under the porch swing and cried. I traced the word yelp on my right palm with a fingernail and knocked again.
“Mom?” A child’s voice at the open window.
I walked over, and through the dust of the screen could see a thin boy with dark curls and gaping eyes.
“Hi there, I’m sorry to bug you. Are you James?”
“What do you want?”
“Hi James, I’m sorry to bother you. Were you watching something good?”
“Are you the police?”
“I’m trying to help figure out who hurt your friend. Can I talk to you?”
He didn’t leave, just traced a finger along the window ledge. I sat down on the swing at the far end away from him.
“My name’s Camille. A friend of yours told me what you’d seen. A boy with real short blonde hair?”
“Dee.”
“Is that his name? I saw him at the park, the same park where you were playing with Natalie.”
“She took her. No one believes me. I’m not scared. I just need to stay in the house is all. My mom has cancer. She’s sick.”
“That’s what Dee said. I don’t blame you. I hope I didn’t scare you, coming by like this.” He began scraping an overlong fingernail down the screen. The clicking sound made my ears itch.
“You don’t look like her. If you looked like her, I’d call the police. Or I’d shoot you.”
“What did she look like?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve said it already. A hundred times.”
“One more time.”
“She was old.”
“Old like me?”
“Old like a mother.”
“What else?”
“She was wearing a white bed dress with white hair. She was just all white, but not like a ghost. That’s what I keep saying.”
“White like how?”
“Just like she’d never been outside before.”
“And the woman grabbed Natalie when she went toward the woods?” I asked it in the same coaxing voice my mother used on favored waitstaff.
“I’m not lying.”
“Of course not. The woman grabbed Natalie while y’all were playing?”
“Real fast,” he nodded. “Natalie was walking in the grass to find the Frisbee. And I saw the woman moving from inside the woods, watching her. I saw her before Natalie did. But I wasn’t scared.”
“Probably not.”
“Even when she grabbed Natalie, at first I wasn’t scared.”
“But then you were?”
“No.” His voice trailed off. “I wasn’t.”
“James, could you tell me what happened when she grabbed Natalie?”
“She pulled Natalie against her, like she was hugging her. And then she looked up at me. She stared at me.”
“The woman did?”
“Yeah. She smiled at me. For a second I thought it might be all right. But she didn’t say anything. And then she stopped smiling. She put her finger to her lips to be quiet. And then she was gone into the woods. With Natalie.” He shrugged again. “I’ve already told all this before.”
“To the police?”
“First to my mom, then the police. My mom made me. But the police didn’t care.”
“Why not?”
“They thought I was lying. But I wouldn’t make that up. It’s stupid.”
“Did Natalie do anything while this was happening?”
“No. She just stood there. I don’t think she knew what to do.”
“Did the woman look like anyone you’d seen before?”
“No. I told you.” He stepped away from the screen then, began looking over his shoulder into the living room.
“Well, I’m sorry to bother you. Maybe you should have a friend come by. Keep you company.” He shrugged again, chewed on a fingernail. “You might feel better if you get outside.”
“I don’t want to. Anyway, we have a gun.” He pointed back over his shoulder at a pistol balanced on the arm of a couch, next to a half-eaten ham sandwich. Jesus.
“You sure you should have that out, James? You don’t want to use that. Guns are very dangerous.”
“Not so dangerous. My mom doesn’t care.” He looked at me straight on for the first time. “You’re pretty. You have pretty hair.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ve got to go.”
“Okay. Be careful, James.”
“That’s what I’m doing.” He sighed purposefully and walked away from the window. A second later I heard the TV squabble on again.