Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

If Donald is here she will wait till the night after tomorrow-she does not want to have to confront him if she doesn’t have to-but no longer than that. She cannot stand to wait longer than that. She has to get out. She would do it tonight if she could, but can hear Donald upstairs already. She can hear him laughing at something on TV. But that means he’ll almost certainly not come over tomorrow night. It is a rare night when he eats dinner here.

She can do this.

Tomorrow night she will feel her daddy’s arms wrapped around her.

And she will not feel afraid.

Henry pushes his way into the second-floor ladies’ room, leaving the cart in the doorway. He pulls a pair of yellow rubber gloves from the back pocket of his dirty Levis and slips his hands into them. The insides are still wet with sweat from the last time he wore them and slick, so his hands slide right in. He flexes his fingers within them, then pushes into the first toilet stall, its brown-painted metal door swinging open and hitting the inside wall.

Bracketed inside each stall is a stainless steel receptacle for tampons and sanitary napkins. He pulls this one from its bracket and walks it to his cart and turns it upside down over the trash can and shakes. He glances inside. Bloody pads stick to the stainless steel walls. He bangs it against the inside of the trash can. He hates the smell of this part of the job: a musty stink of curdled blood and pussy. He glances inside the receptacle. One blood-streaked pad still sticking to the bottom. He reaches in and pinches it between two gloved fingers, index and middle, and pulls it out and drops it into the trash can.

Then back to the toilet stall and sliding the receptacle into place.

It is strange to him to be doing this. He remembers when this college wasn’t even here. When he was a boy this was just trees and weeds and mustang grapevines and blackberry bushes. He remembers climbing the vines. They grew so thick they weaved themselves into baskets and sagged between the branches of the hickory and oak trees. He would climb in those baskets of vines and lie in them like hammocks.

It is strange how a town can grow up around a person. You’re standing still but all around you the world is moving, and one day you look up from your tiny piece of it and you’re lost: all the landmarks you used to know are gone, replaced by new landmarks that might mean something to someone but mean nothing to you. The woods in which you played as a boy were cut down for cordwood and have been smoke in the wind for decades, replaced by a city college you’re now expected to clean.

And when you look in the mirror you don’t even recognize the face looking back at you. Who is that old man with his fat, fleshy face, with eyes like unpolished wood buttons, with a mouth like an angry scribble? Some stranger, surely. No one you’ve ever met before.

There was a story in the Tonkawa County Democrat this morning about a girl who was kidnapped seven years ago, about a girl who made a single phone call only to vanish once more into the ether, and in that story there was a description of her kidnapper, and that description could easily be of the man you daily see in the mirror. Maybe they’re one and the same. But if they are it can’t possibly be you you see. A small, innocent boy who used to climb in trees pretending he was Tarzan could not possibly grow to be a man who kidnapped a seven-year-old girl from her own bedroom in the dead of night, who did that and worse. So why does that man gaze back at you when you look in the mirror?

Why do his memories hold a place in your mind?

The answer is clear: stop lying to yourself, Henry.

Yes: he is that man. If it weren’t for Beatrice he wouldn’t be. But if it weren’t for Beatrice he wouldn’t be anything. He’d have killed himself long ago. He’d have drowned in his own vomit in the dirt parking lot outside O’Connell’s or the paved one outside Roberta’s. He’d have drunkenly driven himself into a tree. He’d have accidentally shot himself in the face. She is the only person who made him believe he might have something to offer someone. Despite the fact he’s not the sharpest axe in the shed, despite his temper, despite occasional trips to the county jail for public drunkenness or a fight (when drinking or incredibly angry he sometimes forgets his boy-howdy smile and back-patting personality; he forgets to keep what he really is locked in a room in the back of the house). She has stood by him. Unlike his momma who always told him he was just like his daddy, a useless hunk of no good who couldn’t find his ass with both hands free. Probably gonna grow up to be a drunkard whoremonger too.

Beatrice has always stood by him. Always. So how can he be a bad man for standing by her too? He just did what he had to to keep Bee happy.

Newspapers don’t understand those kinds of things. They describe everything as black and white: they have to have a villain. But he just did what any loving husband would do. Newspapers don’t understand that nor mirrors.

Henry sprays the toilet down and then wipes it off with a thick blue paper towel. When he’s done with it he walks to the next stall and gets to work cleaning that one.

Ian does not drive straight home after work. Instead of taking Crouch Avenue down to Crockett, he cuts south at Wallace, drives past the U-Haul rental place, and pulls into the dirt parking lot in front of Paulson’s Feed Store. He could lose his job for doing what he’s about to do, but somehow he doesn’t care. He cannot let Andy continue to hold Genevieve and Thalia hostage in that house. It isn’t right. He has to do something.

He pushes open his car door and walks across the dirt to the front door, and then through it. The feed store is filled with the dusty but not unpleasant smell of feed pellets and hay. Andy is nowhere to be seen. The place seems abandoned. It is silent and still. Then the sound of movement from behind the store.

Ian walks through the place and into the shed area out back.

Andy is there with hooks in his hands, loading three bales of hay into the back of Vicki Dodd’s old Chevy pickup truck. When he is done, he throws the hooks onto a stack of hay bales and slaps the back of the truck two times. ‘See you next week,’ he says.

Vicki’s liver-spotted hand pops out the window, her truck starts, and then she’s gone, leaving Ian and Andy alone.

Andy turns to him and smiles. ‘Ian,’ he says. ‘What can I do you for?’

‘We need to talk.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s about Genevieve.’

‘Aw, hell, Ian, I feel awful sorry about that. I swear it’ll-’

But Ian doesn’t let him finish. He rushes Andy and grabs him by the throat with his left hand, drawing his SIG with his right. He slams Andy against the sheet-metal wall, which sends a noise like thunder through the entire place, and puts the gun to Andy’s temple.

‘You’re goddamn right it’ll never happen again.’

‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘I’m telling you, you dumb son of a bitch, that if you so much as touch a hair on Genevieve’s head again, I’ll kill you. You got me?’

‘She was trying to leave. She was gonna take Thalia. You of all people must understand that. She’s all I got and she was-’

Ian slams the butt of his gun against Andy’s temple. Andy lets out a grunt of pain, and his knees buckle. Ian continues to hold him up by his throat. After a few choking gasps, Andy manages to get his feet back under him.

‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’

‘Listen, Ian-’

‘Shhh. I don’t care. She tries to leave again, you just let her leave. If she stays you’ll ruin that little girl. She’ll end up with some fuck-up like you. You love her, you let her out of your grip. You understand that?’