Chevy Stevens - Still Missing

“Was your dad hitting her?”

I’d noticed before that when he talked about his mom his voice would flatten, and when he answered this time it sounded almost robotic.

“I was gentle…I was always gentle when I touched her. I didn’t make her cry. It wasn’t right.”

“He was hurting her?”

Staring hard at the center of my chest, his eyes vacant, he shook his head back and forth and repeated, “It wasn’t right.”

He caressed the base of his neck. “She saw me…in the mirror. She saw me.” The flesh around his fingers reddened as he tightened his grip on his throat for a second, then he pulled his hand down to rub at his thigh like he was trying to wipe something off his palm.

In a raspy voice he said, “Then she smiled. ” The Freak’s mouth lifted up into a beatific smile, then widened until it was almost a grimace. He held it so long it had to be painful. My heart lurched in my chest.

Finally meeting my eyes, he said, “After that she always left the door open. For years she left the door open.”

His voice flattened again. “When I was fifteen she started shaving me too, so I was smooth all over like her, and if I held her too hard in the night she got mad. Sometimes when I had dreams, the sheets…she made me burn them. She was changing.”

Careful to keep my voice tender and soft, I said, “Changing?”

“I came home early from school one day. There were sounds from the bedroom. I thought he was on a trip. So I went to the door.” He was rubbing at his chest now, like he was having a hard time getting air.

“He was behind her. And another man, a stranger…. I left before she could see me. Waited outside, under the porch—”

He stopped abruptly and after a few beats I said, “Under the porch?”

“With my books. That’s where I hid them. I was only allowed to read inside if he was home. When he was gone she said they interfered with our time. If she caught me with one, she ripped the pages out.” Now I knew why he was so careful with books.

“An hour later when the men passed over me, I could still smell her on them. They were going for a beer. She was inside— humming .” He shook his head. “She shouldn’t have let them do those things to her. She was sick. She couldn’t see it was wrong. She needed my help.”

“So did you? Help her?”

“I had to save her, to save us, before she changed so much I couldn’t help her anymore, you see?”

I saw. I nodded.

Satisfied, he continued. “A week later when she was at the store, I asked him to take me for a drive so I could show him an old mine up in the woods.” He stared down at the knife in the deer’s neck. “When she got home I told her he’d packed all his belongings and left, he’d found someone else. She cried, but I took care of her, just like in the beginning, but this time it was even better because I didn’t have to share her. Then she got sick and I did everything for her that she liked, everything she asked. Everything. So when she got sicker and asked me to kill her she thought I would just do it. But I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. She begged, she said I wasn’t a real man, that a real man could have done it. She said he would have done it, but I just couldn’t.”

While he’d been talking the sun had disappeared and it began to snow—a light dusting of white frosted us and the deer. One of The Freak’s blond waves had fallen over his forehead in a curl, and his eyelashes spiked together and sparkled. I wasn’t sure if it was from the snow or tears, but he looked angelic.

My thighs ached from holding a crouched position for too long, but there was no way I was asking him if I could stretch. My body may have been motionless, but my mind reeled.

He shook his head, then looked up from the knife.

“So to answer your question, Annie, it can feel great. But we’d better get a move on, or some wild animal is going to smell the fresh blood and come hunting us.” His tone of voice was now cheerful.

For a minute I didn’t get what question he was talking about. Then I remembered. I’d asked him what it felt like to kill someone.

While I continued to hold the deer’s legs, he reached into the slit and gently rolled the stomach sack, about the size of a beach ball, out onto the snow. It was still attached at one end, by something that looked like an umbilical cord, from under the rib cage. He pulled his knife out of the neck—it stuck for a second, then released with a pop. Then he reached back in with the knife and cut out what looked like the deer’s heart and organs. He dropped them near the sack like they were garbage. The smell of raw meat churned up bile at the back of my throat, but I choked it down.

He said, “Stay here,” and disappeared into a large shed at the side of the cabin. He returned in seconds carrying a small chain saw and some rope. My breath caught in my chest when he knelt at the deer’s head. The pristine silence of winter wilderness was shattered by the sound of the saw cutting through the deer’s neck. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. He put the saw down, picked up the knife, and walked to the rear of the deer. I flinched as he reached toward me, which made him laugh, but he was only taking the legs from me. Then he used his knife to slice a hole through the ankle, right behind the Achilles tendon on both legs, and threaded the rope through.

We dragged the carcass to the shed, each holding one of its front legs. I glanced back. The deer’s body had left a trail of blood behind us and a bloody indentation in the snow. I’ll never forget the sight of that poor deer’s head, heart, and guts lying out in the cold.

The shed was solid metal—no wild animals welcome—and a big freezer stood against one wall inside. Some sort of machinery that I think was a generator hummed noisily at the back, beside it a pump that must have been for the well. Six big red barrels labeled diesel lined the opposite wall. Next to them was a propane tank. I didn’t see any firewood, so I figured it was stored somewhere else. The air smelled like a mixture of oil, gas, and deer blood.

He threw the rope attached to the deer’s back legs up over a crossbeam in the ceiling, then we both pulled on it until the carcass was hung. Would my body be hanging up there one day?

I thought that was the end of it, but he started to sharpen the knife on a stone, and I began to tremble violently. Meeting my eyes, he scraped the knife back and forth in a rhythmic motion with a smile playing about his lips. After a minute or so, he held it up.

“What do you think? Sharp enough?”

“For… for what?”

He began to walk toward me. I threw my hands in front of my belly. Awkward in the rubber boots, I stumbled backward.

He stopped, and with a confused expression said, “What’s wrong with you? We have to skin it.” He cut around each ankle, then took a leg. “Don’t just stand there, grab the other one.” We rolled the hide down—he had to use his knife to nick at the tissue once in a while to help it along, but mostly just down the legs, and when we reached the main part, it peeled off like dead skin after a sunburn.

When it was off, he rolled it up and put it in the freezer. Then he made me stand outside where he could see me while he collected the saw, put it back in the shed, and locked it up. I asked him what he was going to do with the innards and its head—he said he’d deal with them later.

Back inside, he noticed I was shivering and told me to sit by the fire to warm up. Our talk didn’t seem to have upset him. I considered asking if he’d killed anyone else, but my stomach clenched at the thought of hearing his answer. Instead I said, “Can I wash off, please?”

“Is it time for your bath?”