Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

The man seemed to be listening, his wild eye moving side to side.

“Okay?” Jim said.

“You didn’t let me finish,” Herman said. There was a whine in his voice, something no grown man should resort to. It turned Jim’s stomach.

“Go on, then,” Jim said. “But mind yourself.”

“I asked after your daughter for a reason,” Herman said. “And it wasn’t ’cause I wanted to scare you, or have something to think about at night. I’m a changed man now that I have a personal relationship with Jesus.”

A personal relationship. The prison chaplain, a lady with short bushy hair, always talking to the men about becoming buddies with God. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes the men tried it on and took it off like a pair of pants. Jim started to feel impatient.

“Go on, then,” he said again.

“One of the men used to be in here knows your daughter. Been talking to her. Working on her. You know what I mean?”

“Perry?” Jim hadn’t meant to say her name out loud. Didn’t want none of the men knowing it. But there it was. Saying it then felt like a conjuring, like he’d whispered her name right into a demon’s ear and then pointed the way.

“I don’t know her name,” Herman said, rubbing his wild eye till it squished. “All’s I know is Jamey been talking to someone he claims is your daughter. Got himself online and found her there.”

“Jamey?” Saying that name aloud pricked his heart with fear.

“You remember Jamey,” Herman said. “Looked like nothing, said nothing, was nothing?” Herman laughed. “He got out some months ago. Been writing to me now and again. Lives with his momma.”

Jim didn’t remember a Jamey but knew he could find out who he was easy enough. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked the man. “What are you trying to get in return?”

“Nothing,” Herman said. “Jesus Christ told me I gotta dump all the trash, clear the land and start over. I know I got a affliction that’s out of my control, so I got to give it to God.”

“Jamey,” Jim said again. A carousel was starting up in his mind, real slow but gaining speed. Music and lights. Perry as a girl, Perry now, Perry on the computer, a black shadow creeping up behind her.

“Yeah,” Herman said. “He was in here ’cause that high school girl stabbed him with his own knife and got away. He told me they found him with his finger in the wound like a stopper, claiming a raccoon got him. And since there wasn’t no penetration on his part, excuse me for saying the word penetration , it’s a trigger word for me that I am to avoid, but anyway since there wasn’t none of that he got a kiddie sentence and left here with most of his life still before him. But you need to know he’s got intentions on your daughter. Perry. ”

Now the carousel was deafening, the lights flashing wildly, Jim’s heart like a tennis ball against the side of a house. He knew he should feel afraid for her. But all he felt was rage. Stupid, so fucking stupid. A man should look forward to going home. When he got there he’d make her delete her Facebook, change her phone number. Maybe he and Myra would look into a new school for her as well. And he’d find this Jamey and destroy him.

But first he unlocked the cell door, stood over Herman with his nightstick raised. Even in his blindness the man recurled, protecting himself. “Thank you for telling me,” Jim said. “If I ever hear you saying her name again, you’ll wish for the day I got you in the eye.” Jim hit the side of his bed, over and over, at first to scare the man, and later he felt ridiculous for doing it, it seemed like something a bad actor would do in some TV show Myra might watch, but right then it had just felt so good.

A COUPLE ON THEIR WAY to a dark spot on the far side of the quarry, vibrating with desire like two tines of a tuning fork, the condom in the boy’s pocket like a brand on his leg, didn’t even look down. A stray dog saw but didn’t know what to make of it. Barked once, got spooked by its echo, moved on. A boy who’d just made a slingshot, knew where he could get some real mean rocks, asked his daddy later that night did he know there was a mannequin all twisted up at the bottom of the quarry? “Ain’t that something,” his daddy answered. Cars drove in, parked, couples argued and kissed and swatted at each other. Four airplanes and a helicopter flew over. Then there were days of rain. Days and days. No one went to the quarry, hardly anyone went out long enough to make a difference. When the sun returned so did the boy, something about that mannequin kept occurring to him. (Did mannequins have gray skin sometimes? It niggled at him, a splinter in his brain.) But when he looked down all he saw was a shoe, and he couldn’t even be sure it was the same kind of shoe the mannequin wore. Someone had already got the mannequin, the boy decided, took it home to live in the basement or took it to the dump to be tossed in a pile. He felt sad about that, but only for a moment, because then his eye fell on the perfect rock, round but jagged, just heavy enough to sail through the air but still cause some real damage. His mouth watered, thinking of a broken window, a crack in a windshield, or maybe, if he felt mean enough, a bruise. He forgot about the mannequin, never thought about it in his waking moments ever again.

THE DOORBELL RANG, something Myra hadn’t heard in ages. No one ever came by, and when they did they knocked or just looked in through the screen door and asked whatever it was they’d come to ask. Or came and sat down on the stoop with her, like Pete had. For a moment Myra thought it might be coming from the television, was The Price Is Right on? But no, the TV sat dark. She’d turned it off as a challenge to herself: she’d do something constructive, she’d do anything else aside from watch TV or drink. That had lasted a solid hour, an hour she spent bargaining with herself. Okay, I’ll only do one . But which one? The beer had won out. It was room temperature, almost flat. It had lived under her and Jim’s bed for quite some time.

And then DING ding DING ding . Myra saw through the screen door that it was an enormous woman, heaving for breath, wearing a sleeveless housedress, her arms like dough on dough. The woman leaned on a cane that looked like it might snap under her weight, her other hand gripping the rail. Which hand had she used to ring the doorbell? How had she stayed upright?

“Help you?” Myra asked, coming to the door.

“I’m asking have you seen my son,” the woman wheezed.

“Your son?” Myra said. “I don’t know you or your son.”

“His name’s Jameson,” the woman said. Her chins trembled.

“Don’t know him,” Myra said.

“He ain’t come home,” the woman said, and Myra saw that what she had taken for sweat was actually tears. Her whole face was wet, her eyes positively burbling over.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Myra said. “How old?”

“Jamey’s thirty-three,” the woman said, and Myra nearly laughed.

“Your son’s in his thirties? And you wondering where he’s at?” As she often did, she felt her throat swell with pride that she didn’t baby Perry like some parents babied their children. “He’s probably at some girlfriend’s house,” she said to the woman, “or sleeping off a bender!” She had meant to calm the woman with these possibilities, but she saw that they’d landed wrong, saw fat new tears pushing every which way out the woman’s eyes.

“Jamey don’t have no girlfriend,” the woman said. She let go of the rail to paw at her face, wipe the tears away, but they kept coming. “And he ain’t got nowhere else to sleep.”

“Well,” Myra said, and let it hang there. She wanted this woman to move on, limp over to the next trailer, quit crying helpless and sloppy on her steps. “Well,” Myra said again. “You got a picture?”