Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, Beth. Anything that… I mean she left under her own power, right?” He looked around the place. For broken glass or something, a sign of something. “No one busted in and carried her off, right?”

She drank. There was something she didn’t want to say.

“Beth.”

“There’d been a party. The night before. Supposed to be just a few people from work.”

“What work?”

“The bar.”

“What happened?”

“It just got to be a lot of people. Like some of the afterparties we’d have back home. Nothing out of hand. Just some people from the neighborhood.”

“And…?”

“Girls her age…”

“She’s thirteen.”

“She’s fourteen now.”

“Shit. That’s right.”

She set the bottle on the floor and rubbed her face all over.

“Tell me what happened.”

She enfolded herself within her arms, and girded up to tell him.

“This fucking guy went into her room and he…”

“He what ?”

“He just kinda scared her.”

“Jesus, Beth.”

“Nothing happened! I heard her yelling and I went back there—”

“Why was she yelling? What was he doing?”

“Look, I couldn’t get a straight story out of her — she said he was on her bed.”

“Jesus! Did he hurt her or touch her or…?”

He couldn’t finish the question. His mind couldn’t complete the idea.

“I think she was just surprised. She didn’t say he did anything.”

“I can’t believe you.”

“He didn’t hurt her, Pete. She was fine—”

“I’m supposed to be all right with this? It’s just no big deal because you say so?”

“You weren’t here! You do not know what happened.”

“I sure as shit know enough. I know you put our daughter in a situation — in her own house, in her own bed —where she was afraid for her safety. Fuck, Beth! I can only imagine what this guy was like. The kinds of people you like to party with—”

“People I party with? How about people we party with? Like that thug, Shane? Or Spoils ?”

“Fuck you. Shane and Spoils wouldn’t lay a finger—”

“I’m telling you, she was fine. Nothing happened!”

“I’ve heard this before.”

“Heard what?”

“That nothing happened.”

“You’re hilarious.” She shook out a cigarette from one of the several packs nearby. “I never said nothing happened. I could not wait to tell you I fucked him.”

He threw the beer bottle at the wall behind her, as astonished at the act as she was. He’d never touched her roughly in all their time together, and now a bottle flew centimeters from her ear and exploded against the molding. Did he aim for her or not, he didn’t know. Did he miss on purpose.

She opened her squinched eyes, turned and looked at the suds running down the wall. The glass.

“Who’s this shithead that was in my daughter’s room? Give me a fucking name.”

Pete went to the police station and was a long time trying to get with a detective because every idle officer was watching the news. Cops in cowboy hats gathered around the small black-and-white television set out on a folding table, forearms crossed, smoking, mashing out cigarettes on the floor.

He was finally escorted to a desk. A fat plainclothes officer came over with a file folder and a missing person’s report. The detective read and then told Pete everything was in order. He explained that the Texas Department of Public Safety had his daughter’s description and last known whereabouts. He asked did Pete have any new information.

“She was assaulted in her bed the night before.”

The cop looked at the paper to confirm what Pete had said. Pete told him it wasn’t in the report because his wife didn’t file charges. For what, the cop asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t trust my wife to tell me what happened. A man broke into my daughter’s room and scared her.”

“You weren’t at the domicile?”

“No. I was in Montana. We’re separated. Divorcing.”

“I see.”

The cop sat there, his neck like a roll of dough over his shirt collar.

“So I want this guy checked out.”

“The guy who is supposed to have scared your daughter.”

“Yes. Are you gonna write any of this down?”

“Write what down?”

“The man’s name is Booth.”

He gave Pete a curt scowl and clicked open a pen from his shirt pocket.

“That a last name?”

“All my wife knows is he goes by Booth.”

“Like phone booth?”

“Yes. B-O-O-T— ”

“I can spell. That a last name?”

“Like I said, I don’t know.”

“So it’s just a nickname?”

“No, I don’t… I don’t know that. It could be a last name. I don’t know .”

The cop wrote down the name and underlined it.

“Booth. Got it. Anything else?” he asked.

“I thought maybe he’d be known around here.”

“Known around where?”

“That you’d have him in one of those books with the mug shots.”

The cop fidgeted in his seat and underlined the name again.

“I can see if we got any Booths with priors.”

“Okay.”

“You leave me your number and I’ll—”

“I can wait.”

The cop constrained his irritation. Took Pete in entirely, his clothes, his hair, as though deciding whether to help him at all. At last he stood, and headed off into a back room.

Cops coming and going stopped by the television asking was there any news. Asked how the president was doing and where they were keeping this Hinckley piece of shit. Could they somehow finagle him into the basement of the Dallas Police Department and put a Jack Ruby on him.

The plainclothes detective came back. There were no Booths in the book.

Pete checked into his motel. He’d been wasting time with the cops. If Rachel was still in Austin, she didn’t run to the guy who’d busted into her room. More than likely the guy was just a drunk. Pete had let his anger at Beth muddy his thinking. He wondered what else he was fucking up. What crucial thing he wasn’t doing this very minute.

He contacted Child Protective Services and Austin Children’s Shelter, explained who he was, who he was looking for, and asked where the runaways congregated. With the overnight lows in the sixties, he was told, she could be anywhere. Hanging around downtown or in any number of uninhabited lots overrun with bamboo. She could be sleeping in Pease Park down along Shoal Creek or staying in one of the run-down Victorian houses in West Campus. They said to bring a picture. They said to ask around. The kids on the picnic tables in the park. The bums in the bamboo.

He didn’t have a car so he took a cab back to Beth’s and let himself in. A man with long braids and aviator glasses sitting on the couch stood up and asked him what the fuck he was doing barging in like this.

“I’m Beth’s husband.”

She stepped in from the kitchen. She swallowed in advance of saying something. He grabbed her car keys off the table.

“I need your car.”

“I called around to some of her friends from school again,” she said. “No one’s seen her, Pete. No one.”

Her chin creased like a ball of paper and her eyes sank to the floor.

“Give me their numbers. I’ll go see if I can find out anything.”

When he told the woman who he was, that he was looking for his daughter, Rachel, and he’d like to ask the woman’s daughter a few questions, a quiet worry flitted across her face and then she stiffened and let him in. Her daughter was due back from track practice in a little bit. She asked did he want some sun tea.