Matt Bell - How They Were Found

It’s nothing to ignore the words, to keep pushing the clerk toward the back of the gas station, to the hallway leading behind the coolers. Punter pushes the clerk down to his knees, feels his own feet slipping on the cool tile. He keeps one hand on the knife while the other grips the clerk’s shoulder, his fingers digging into the hollows left between muscle and bone.

The clerk says, Why are you doing this?

Punter lets go of the clerk’s shoulder and smacks him across the face with the blunt edge of his hand. He chokes the words out.

The girl. I’m here about the girl.

What girl?

Punter smacks him again, and the clerk swallows hard, blood or teeth.

Punter says, You know. You saw her. You told me.

The clerk’s lips split, begin to leak. He says, Her? I never did anything to that girl. I swear.

Punter thinks of the clerk’s bragging, about how excited he was to be the center of attention. He growls, grabs a fistful of greasy hair, then yanks hard, exposing the clerk’s stubbled throat, turning his face sideways until one eye faces Punter’s.

The clerk’s glasses fall off, clatter to the tile.

The clerk says, Punter.

He says, I know you. Your name is Punter. You come in here all the time.

The clerk’s visible eye is wide, terrified with hope, and for one second Punter sees his mother’s eyes, sees the girl’s, sees his hand closing both their eyelids for the last time.

OSWALD, Punter reads again, then shakes the name clear of his head.

The clerk says, I never hurt her, man. I was just the last person to see her alive.

Punter puts the knife to flesh. It’s nothing. We’re all the last person to see someone. He snaps his wrist inward, pushes through. That’s nothing either. Or, if it is something, it’s nothing worse than all the rest.

And then dragging the body into the tiny freezer. And then shoving the body between stacks of hot dogs and soft pretzels. And then trying not to step in the cooling puddles of blood. And then picking up the knife and putting it back in its sheath, tucking it into his waistband again. And then the walk home with a bag of ice in each hand. And then realizing the ice doesn’t matter, that it will never be enough. And then the walk turning into a run, his heart pounding and his lungs heaving. And then the feeling he might die. And then the not caring what happens next.

By the time Punter gets back to the garage, the ice is already melting, the girl’s face jutting from between the cubes. Her eyelids are covered with frost, cheeks slick with thawing pond water. He reaches in and lifts, her face and breasts and thighs giving to his fingers but her back still frozen to the wrapped venison below. He pulls, trying to ignore the peeling sound her skin makes as it rips away from the paper.

Punter speaks, his voice barely audible. He doesn’t have to speak loud for her to hear him. They’re so close. Something falls off, but he doesn’t look, doesn’t need to dissect the girl into parts, into flesh and bone, into brains and blood. He kisses her forehead, her skin scaly like a fish, like a mermaid. He says it again: You’re safe now.

He sits down with the girl in his arms and his back to the freezer. He rocks her, feels himself getting wet as she continues to thaw all over him. He shivers, then puts his mouth to hers, breathes deep from the icy blast still frozen in her lungs, lets the air cool the burning in his own throat, the horror of his guts. When he’s ready, he picks her up, cradles her close, and carries her into the house. Takes her into the bedroom and lays her down.

He lies beside her, and then, in a loud, clear voice, he speaks. He tries not to cough, tries to ignore the scratchy catch at the back of his throat. He knows what will happen next, but he also knows all this will be over by the time they break down his door, by the time they come in with guns drawn and voices raised. He talks until his voice disappears, until his trapped scream becomes a whisper. He talks until he gets all of it out of him and into her, where none of these people will ever be able to find it.

IT BEGINS WITH A MAN WALKING TOWARD YOU from the far end of a long hallway, from the end of a courtyard between two symmetrical buildings, from the doorway of a country home and down a packed dirt driveway. You are stationary and he is moving, and though the distances between you are great they are not infinite. Two objects in motion moving down the length of a line cannot remain separated forever. Sooner or later, they must crash into each other and afterward whatever happens next will happen.

A little girl in a sundress pirouettes on a coffee table, her curly red hair encircled in a costume tiara. Her expression is concentration, the grimly pressed lips of a trapeze artist. She spins round and round, and when she stops she is so dizzy she doesn’t notice the shadow moving closer, a human form with some sharp darkness clenched in its left hand. The light coming through the window suggests sunrise, sunset, the dusk or the dawn. It suggests choices and borders and the parting of veils between one world and another. When the girl sees the shadow’s owner, she begins to scream, a one-note blast as the scene cuts to black.

Forever will not be solved with algebra but with geometry, not with ideas but with things. Even an infinity symbol can be traversed by a single line drawn right. Even the scratchiest record can’t skip forever, even the moldiest peach can only decay for so long. Eventually, there is an end to discord, a return to either harmony or silence. After the end credits, there is still the clatter of film against reel, of a machine waiting to be turned off. There is still the need for agency, for someone to help bring everything to a satisfying finale before the lights can come back on.

No one is holding her under the water, not anymore, but still she lies there on the river bottom. She blinks her eyes but does not shut them. The faces of fishes are the last sights she will ever see, their shiny eyes reflective as they float by her. Their lips purse and un-purse wordlessly. She wonders what it would be like to have gills, but not for long. She curls onto her side, turning away from the sunshine slicing uselessly through the surface of the river. Underwater, everything is the same color, and what looked like a riverbed of pebbles from the shore appears here as layers of baby teeth, their cavities worn white again by the flow of water unceasing.

The man again, in a series of jump cuts. The man halfway down the hall. The man halfway across the courtyard. The man halfway down the driveway. The human eye perceives thirty frames a second, so the one frame close-up of his face is too fast to register anywhere conscious. When you immediately start sweating, you will not be able to tell yourself why. Goosebumps spread. These theatres are always so cold.

A fork, a knife, a spoon on a white linen tablecloth. An apple on a fine china plate. A bite missing, the meat of the apple turned brown in the indent. The voice of a waitress or a mother, asking, Are you done with that? Repeating herself repeatedly: Are you done with that? Are you? Are you done? When you’re done with it, you have to throw it away.

Off camera, pray for editing, for the rearrangement of film. The director could take the first scene and throw it away. With a pair of scissors, he could let the second scene tumble to the cutting room floor in a clatter of 8mm frames. Cellulose nitrate is highly flammable, so pray for the fourth scene to be cut short by fire. Pray to keep her safe from the person who wants to hurt her. Take the next scene, throw it away. Resist denouement, resist the solving of mysteries and the revealing of truths, because it is only through these that you may be judged.