Dark Places

Chapter 23
Libby Day NOW

Krissi ended up sleeping on my couch. I'd walked her to the door and realized she wasn't OK to drive, she was slip-slopping in her shoes, a web of mascara down one cheek. As she swayed out onto my porch, she turned around suddenly and asked about her mother, if I knew where her mother was or how to find her, and it was then that I pulled Krissi back inside, made her a Velveeta sandwich, parked her on the sofa, and wrapped a blanket over her. As she rolled into sleep, setting the last quarter of the sandwich carefully on the floor beside her, three of my lotion bottles fell out of her jacket. Once she passed out I tucked them back in.

She was gone when I woke up, the blanket folded with a note scrawled on the back of an envelope: Thanks. Sorry.

So Lou Cates didn't kill my family, if Krissi was to be believed. I believed her. On that count at least.

I decided to drive down to see Runner, ignore the two messages from Lyle and the zero messages from Diane. Drive down to see Runner, get some answers. I didn't think he had anything to do with the murders, whatever his girlfriend might say, but I wondered if he knew something, with his debts and his drinking and his gutter-friends. If he knew something or heard something, or if maybe his debts had triggered some horrible vengeance. Maybe I could believe in Ben again, which is what I wanted to do. I knew now why I'd never gone to visit him. It was too tempting, too easy to ignore the prison walls, and just see my brother, hear the Ben-specific cadence of his voice, that downward slope at the end of every sentence, like it might be the last thing he was ever going to say. Just seeing him, I remembered things, nice things, or not even nice. Just regular things. I could get a whiff of home. Way back when everyone was alive. Man, I wanted that.

I stopped at the 7-Eleven on the way out of town, bought a map and some cheese-flavored crackers that I discovered were diet when I bit into them. I ate them anyway, heading south, the orange powder floating through the car. I should have stopped for a meal on the way to Oklahoma. The air on the highway was thick with tempting smell-pockets: french fries, fast-food fish, fried chicken. But I was in an unnatural panic, worried for no good reason I would miss Runner if I stopped, and so I ate the diet crackers and a mealy apple I'd found on the corner of my kitchen counter.

Why was the note, that dirty note that wasn't addressed to Ben, mixed up in a box of Michelle's stuff? If Michelle had found out Ben had a girlfriend, she'd have lorded it over him, all the more if he tried to keep it a secret. Ben hated Michelle. Ben had tolerated me, had dismissed Debby, but he'd hated Michelle actively. I remembered him pulling her out of his room by an arm, her whole body almost sideways, Michelle up on tiptoes, moving with him to keep from being dragged. He tossed her out and she fell against the wall, and he told her if she ever came in his room again, he'd kill her. His teeth flared whenever he talked to her. He screamed at her for always being underfoot - she'd hover outside his door day and night, listening. Michelle always knew everyone's secrets, she never had a conversation that didn't have an angle. I remembered that more vividly since discovering her bizarre notes. If you don't have money, gossip isn't bad leverage. Even inside one's own family.

"Ben talks to himself a lot," Michelle announced at breakfast one morning, and Ben reached across the table, knocking her plate into her lap, and grabbed her by the shirt collar.

"Leave me the f*ck alone," he screamed. And then my mom calmed him down, got him to go back to his room, lectured us, as always. Later we found bits of egg that had catapulted up onto the plastic chandelier over the table, the chandelier that looked like it came from a pizza parlor.

So what did that mean? Ben wouldn't kill his family because his little sister found out he had a girlfriend.

I passed a field of cows, standing immobile, and thought about growing up, all the rumors of cattle mutilation, and people swearing it was Devil worshipers. The Devil lurked nearby in our Kansas town, an evil that was as natural and physical as a hillside. Our church hadn't been too brimstoney, but the preacher had certainly nurtured the idea: The Devil, goat-eyed and bloody, could take over your heart just as easily as Jesus, if you weren't careful. In every town I lived in, there were always the "Devil kids," and the "Devil houses," just like there was always a killer clown driving around in a white van. Everyone knew of some old, vacant warehouse on the edge of town where a stained mattress sat on the floor, bloody from sacrifice. Everyone had a friend of a cousin who had actually seen a sacrifice but was too scared to give details.

I was ten minutes into Oklahoma, a good three hours to go, and I started smelling something overpoweringly sweet but rotten. It stang my eyes, made them water. I had a ridiculous quiver of fear that my Devil-think had summoned the beast. Then in the distance, the churning sky turned the color of a bruise, I saw it. Paper plant.

I turned the radio on scan - station 1, station 2, station 3 -  blasts of unpleasant noise, static, and ads for cars and more static, so I flipped it right back off.

Just past a sign with a picture of a cowboy - Welcome to Lidger-wood, Oklahoma, Pardner! - I pulled off the ramp and headed into the town, which turned out to be a busted-down tourist trap of a city. It had once fashioned itself as an Old West locale: The main street was all frosted glass and faux-saloons and shoppes. One storefront called itself The Olde Photo Stoppe, a place where families could commission sepia photos of themselves in frontier garb. In the window hung a poster-sized print: the father holding a lasso, trying to look menacing under a hat too big for him; the little girl in a calico dress and bonnet, too young to get the joke; the mother, dressed as a whore, giving an uncomfortable smile, her arms crossed in front of her thighs where her petticoat was slit. Next to the photo hung a For Sale sign. Another matching sign next door at Daphne's Daffy Taffy, more For Sales at Buffalo Bill's Amazing Arcade and a storefront with the ridiculous stretch of a name, Wyatt Earp's Slurpies. The whole place seemed dusty. Even the defunct waterslide loop-de-looping in the distance was plugged with dirt.

Bert Nolan's Group Home for Men was just three blocks off the downtown drag, a square, low building with a tiny front yard infested with foxtail weeds. I'd always liked foxtail as a kid, it appealed to my literal brain, because it looked like it sounded: a long, thin stem with a length of fuzz at the top, just like a fox's tail, but green. They grew all over our farm - entire meadows were given over to the stuff. Michelle and Debby and I would break off the tops and tickle each other under our wrists. My mom taught us the colloquial names for everything: lamb's ear, coxcomb, all those plants that lived up to their titles. A lamb's ear is as soft as a lamb's ear. Coxcomb actually looks like a rooster's red comb. I got out of the car and fluttered my hands across the tops of the foxtail. Maybe I'd grow a garden of weeds. Windmillgrass actually fans out at the top like windmill blades. Queen Ann's lace is white and frilly. Witchgrass would be appropriate for me. Some devil's claw.

The door to Bert Nolan's Group Home was made of metal, painted dark gray like a submarine. It reminded me of the doors in Ben's prison. I rang the bell and waited. Across the street two teenage boys rode their bikes in lazy, wide circles, interested. I rang the bell again and gave the metal a bang that failed to reverberate inside. I debated asking the guys across the way if anyone was home, just to break the silence. As they were looping closer to me - watcha doing there, lady? - the door opened onto a pixie-sized man in bright white sneakers, ironed jeans, a Western shirt. He jiggled the toothpick in his mouth, not looking at me, flipping through a copy of Cat Fancy magazine.

"Don't open for the night til ..." he trailed off when he saw me. "Oh, sorry honey. We're a men's hostel, you have to be a man and over eighteen."

"I'm looking for my dad," I said, leaning into my drawl. "Runner Day. Are you the manager?"

"Ha! Manager, accountant, priest, cleaning boy," he said opening the door. "Recovering alcoholic. Recovering gambler. Recovering deadbeat. Bert Nolan. This is my place. Come in, sweetheart, n're-mind me of your name."

He opened the door onto a room full of cots, the strong odor of bleach rising up from the floor. The elfin Bert led me through the rows of thin beds, each one still indented from the night, to an office just his size, just my size, which held one small desk, a file cabinet, and two foldout chairs we sat down on. The fluorescent light was not flattering to his face, which was pocked with dark, dimpled pores.

"I'm not a weirdo, by the way," he said, flapping the Cat Fancy at me. "I just got a cat, never had one before. Don't really like her much so far. She was supposed to be good for morale, but so far she just pisses in the beds."

"I have a cat," I volunteered, surprising myself with my sudden, intense fondness for Buck. "If they go outside their litter box, it's usually because they're angry."

"That right?"

"Yeah, otherwise, they're pretty easy pets."

"Huh," Bert Nolan said. "Huh. So you're looking for your daddy? Yeah I remember, we spoke. Day. He's like most men here -  should be happy someone's looking for them, after the crap they've pulled at home. Usually money stuff. Or lack-of-money stuff. No money, too much booze. Does not bring out the best. Runner. Huh."

"He wrote me a letter, said he was back here."

"You want to take him home, take care of him?" Bert said. His eyes were black and shiny, like he'd told himself a joke.

"Well, I'm not sure about that. I just want to check in."

"Ha, good. That was a trick question - people who say they want to find one of my men to take care of them, never do." Nolan smelled his fingertips. "I don't smoke anymore, but sometimes my damn fingers still smell like tobacco."

"Is he here?"

"He's not. He's gone again. I don't allow drinkers here. He just had his third strike."

"He say where he went?"

"Ah sweetheart, I just don't give out addresses. Just don't. Found that was the smartest way to handle all inquiries. But I'll tell you what, because you seem like a nice lady ..."

"Berrrrrt!" came a howl from outside the building.

"Ah, ignore that, just one of my men trying to get in early. That's another thing you learn to never do: never let anyone in early, ever. And never let anyone in late."

He had lost his train of thought, he stared at me expectantly.

"So you said you'd tell me what?" I prompted.

"What?"

"How you might help me find my dad?"

"Oh, right. You can leave a letter here with me."

"Mr. Nolan, I've already done that. That's why I'm here. I really, really need to find him." I caught myself in the Runner stance, palms on the edge of the table, ready to vault myself up if I got mad.

Nolan picked up a plaster figurine of an old, balding man throwing his arms out in some expression of exasperation, but I couldn't read the words on the base. Bert seemed to find some consolation in the thing. He let out a sharp sigh between barely parted lips.

"Well, sweetheart, I'll tell you what, he may not be here, but I know he's still in Lidgerwood. One of my men saw him just last night outside-a Cooney's. He's laying low somewhere, but he's around. Just prepare yourself for some disappointment."

"Disappointment about what?"

"Oh, you name it."

WHEN BERT NOLAN got up to lead me out of his office, he turned his back to me, and I immediately made a grab for his little figurine. But I made myself set it back down, and took his bag of CornNuts and a pencil instead. Progress. They sat in the car seat next to me as I drove to the nearest bar. Cooney's.

Cooney's had not given in to the Old West theme. Cooney's was proudly crappy in the present day. Three wrinkled faces glared at me as I opened the door. This included the bartender. I ordered a beer, the man snapping that he'd need to see my driver's license, holding it up to the light and then down near his belly, giving a hmmph, when he couldn't prove it was fake. I sipped and sat, letting them get used to me being there. Then I spoke. As soon as I hit the word Runner, the place lit up.

"That jackass stole three cases of beer from me," the bartender said. "Went around back in broad daylight and just took them off the truck. And I'd stood him for a lot of drinks, believe me."

The middle-aged man two stools down grabbed my arm too hard and said, "Your goddam daddy owes me two hundred bucks. And I want my lawn mower back. You tell him I'm looking for him."

"I know where you can find him," said an old guy with a Hemingway beard and the build of a girl.

"Where?" everyone else said at once.

"Bet anything he's living with the rest of them squatters, camped out over at the Superfund site. You should see it," he added more to the bartender than me, "it's like a old-time Hooverville, bonfires and shanties."

"Why the hell would anyone live at the Superfund site?" the bartender snapped.

"Well, you know no one from the government will show up."

They all laughed angrily.

"Is it even safe to go there?" I asked. I pictured toxic waste barrels and lime-green sludge.

"Sure, if you don't drink the well water and you're not a grasshopper."

I raised my eyebrows.

"That's what it's from: the whole site is soaked with arsenic. It's an old dumping spot for grasshopper bait."

"And shitheads," said the bartender.