A Killing in the Hills

22


The trailer was small and dirty. The two girls, Shirley and Belfa, tried to keep it clean, but they didn’t know what to do. They’d never been taught. Their father didn’t care about how the place looked or smelled, and their mother, who might have cared – it was a good bet, because that’s what mothers did, wasn’t it? – had been gone a long time.

This was 1981. She’d left in 1976. They weren’t sure what the word ‘left’ meant, exactly; it was their father’s word. ‘Goddamned bitch left,’ was what he said, when her name came up. Left. It could mean anything.

Their mother was a blur. A faint smell. A good smell. It was the soap she used, Shirley always said, because Shirley remembered. Shirley was sixteen, six years older than Belfa, and she could remember things like that.

Shirley took care of Belfa. Kept her clean. She made sure that Belfa washed her face and her neck, especially after they’d been playing in the mud down by Comer Creek, and when there wasn’t any more soap in the house, Shirley rummaged around and found other things. She made do.

One day, Shirley kneeled down and reached way back in the gross, junked-up cabinet under the kitchen sink and she pulled out an old container of dish soap, long forgotten, a plastic bottle with an inch of blue gunk congealed in the bottom. The soap wouldn’t pour. It wouldn’t come out. The spout was crusted over with dried-up soap, hard as a rock. How could they get it out? Then Shirley found a small paring knife under a pile of newspapers and a smelly old pizza box on the countertop and she started to cut off the top half of the plastic bottle, sawing and sawing – Be careful! Belfa had said, nervous, watchful, trembling, because Shirley’s hands were small, even though she was a lot older than Belfa, and the knife was really, really sharp and it kept slipping out of Shirley’s hands. Belfa knew how sharp that knife was. Belfa had seen their daddy use it to carve the plantar warts off the bottom of his horrible gnarled feet, grunting as he did it, and she knew how well it could cut, that cold gray blade – but Shirley did fine. It worked. She cut through enough of the plastic so that she could twist off the top half of the bottle. They scooped out the gunk and added some hot water to soften it and they used that to wash themselves that day. Their face and their hands and their necks and their hair. Then Shirley said they could brush their teeth with plain water. That would work, Shirley said. That would work just fine.

They didn’t know, from day to day, whether their daddy would be home or not. Sometimes he was there all the time. Sometimes he would leave for weeks, with no warning, and when he came back, there was also no warning, and no explanation. Shirley used to go to school, but she didn’t anymore. Belfa did go to school, but it wasn’t real to her; the days at school were like a dream, sliding right past her. Never really touching her.

They slept on an old couch in the living room. There was only one bedroom and that was his. It belonged to him. Everything belonged to him. Especially them.

‘You girls eat yet?’ he said.

They’d been asleep and he’d come home. Out of the blue. They didn’t know what time it was, but it was late. They knew that much. He’d flung open the front door and when he came into the trailer the whole thing bounced and shook. It was a small, flimsy trailer and he was a very big man, heavy, with a stomach that stuck out in front of him as if he’d stuffed a big hard ball under his shirt, and shoulders like a rock ledge, thick and spread out. When he stepped into the trailer in his big boots there was a cracking sound, and the whole place shimmied.

The good part was that he could never sneak up on them. They always heard him coming. Heard it, and felt it.

‘Yeah,’ Shirley said. ‘We ate.’ Instantly, she was sitting up on the couch. She’d been asleep but now she wasn’t.

She always answered him. Once she’d tried not answering him, ignoring him, and that was worse.

Much worse.

‘Okay,’ he said.

Belfa sat up, too. He hadn’t turned on any lights. He was crashing around the living room, knocking things over. Each time an object fell, he’d say, ‘F*ck.’ Said the way he said it, flatly, with no emotion, it didn’t sound like a bad word. Belfa knew it was a bad word but it was hard to think of it that way, hearing him say it over and over again. No emotion. F*ck F*ck F*ck F*ck F*ck. A word was just a word. It couldn’t be bad or good.

Belfa felt her sister’s arm go around her shoulders, holding her. Keeping her still and safe. Her sister’s body was hot. The couch was small, so they had to sleep on their sides, but Belfa didn’t mind; Shirley’s body kept her warm. It was the one thing Belfa knew for sure: If you were cold, then having another person beside you could keep you warm.

‘Whaddja have?’ he said. His voice was low and gravelly, like he’d swallowed a handful of rocks and they were still stuck in his throat, wadded there, refusing to move.

Belfa understood. He wasn’t asking if they’d eaten because he wanted to make sure they’d had dinner. He was asking because he wanted some of it, too. Whatever it was.

‘Peaches,’ Shirley said.

‘The f*ck,’ he said, ‘is that all about? Peaches? F*ck.’

It was true. Shirley had found some peaches in the alley behind Lymon’s, a grocery store in Acker’s Gap, a two-mile walk from Comer Creek. Shirley always checked there. Stores had to throw out stuff that wasn’t exactly right. You had to know when to look, though. You had to figure out what time of day to go, because if they caught you, they got mad. Nobody wanted to have a kid rooting through the jumbo black plastic trash bins in the alley, fishing out boxes and upending crates, sorting through slimy stuff, ruined things. Shirley knew exactly when to go and what to do. She had a system.

‘That’s what it was,’ Shirley said. There was a flicker of belligerence in her tone. A small spike of stubbornness. Belfa was afraid. When Shirley sounded that way, their father got extra-mad.

He wasn’t moving anymore. He was standing still in the middle of the room. Breathing. Belfa wished he’d move again, bump into something, knock something over. That would be a relief, she thought. Belfa could see the shape of him in the dark living room – her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by now – and his stillness unnerved her. He just stood there, a big, hunched-over shape, hands quiet at his sides. His breathing had the same roughed-up, gravelly edge that his voice had. In and out. He breathed hard and slow. He couldn’t help it. Monster-breathing. That was what Belfa had called it once – not to his face, of course, she only told Shirley, and Shirley nodded, yeah, that’s it – because it had that quality. It had that big, scary sound, like a huge sea monster rising up, dripping, breathing in and out through gigantic fire-red nostrils, a strangled, wheezy, dangerous breathing.

And then he turned around and lumbered out of the living room. Just like that. He didn’t say anything else. The bedroom door slammed shut behind him with a tinny rattle, making the trailer shake again. Belfa felt Shirley’s arm fall away from her narrow shoulders. Crisis over.

‘Go back to sleep,’ Shirley said. She lay down on the couch, leaving space for Belfa behind her. She patted the space. Two quick pats. ‘Come on. It’s okay now.’

Belfa remembered that night and always would, even though nothing had happened. Their father didn’t bother them that night. Not like he usually did. Maybe he was taking the night off. Resting up.

He didn’t bother them every night. That was what made it so bad. Because you never knew. So you always had to be ready.

Belfa remembered it, however, because of the peaches – she loved peaches, and when Shirley had found a couple of them rolling around in the bottom of the big trash bin behind Lymon’s, not crushed or stale, but juicy and perfect, and brought them home, Belfa was so happy, Peaches for dinner! – and because it was exactly three nights before the night that Shirley, using the same small paring knife with which she had cut off the top of the bottle of Dawn dishwashing detergent, slit their father’s throat and then set the trailer on fire.