Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

And where had Pomeroy been?

California again.

Yo and Rose went to get him at the bus station. When they asked if he had anything on the bus — meaning bags — he said, “Just that” and pointed at a blond girl so tall she seemed a rebuke of Rose and Yo. Her name was Brenda. She had bruises on her legs and seemed half crazy to listen to, chattering ohmigod choke me out already totally they were all insane and I was like whatever and they were so totally pissed but I was out of there it was like goddamn cannibals in Sacramento know what I mean everybody out for themselves thank God for Pomeroy. You know? Smacking her gum.

She was a whore too. She hoped the guys she was with didn’t come after her. They didn’t give up any girls down in Sacramento. They’d fuck up her face if they found her.

Really? Rose asked. What would they do?

Cut me up probably, totally, they would. No shit. So I couldn’t work for nobody.

Did Rose decide then to get the hell out?

Yes.

She told Yo she was going to quit. Going to move out of the Golden Arms.

Pom’s not gonna let you.

I’ll talk to him.

Sure. You do that.

When she tried to leave — had her few things packed up in a green rucksack and ready on the bed, and sat waiting for Pomeroy to come home so she could tell him — did he walk in and say, Take off your clothes?

Yes.

And did she?

She never saw him move so fast: he knocked her upside the head with an open palm that set her jaw funny in her head for a few days and had a wire hanger stretched out on the hot plate when she could see straight.

You still in your clothes , he said plainly.

She just looked at him, wondering did he think he would break her this way. Did he think she would stay. Did he realize what a stupid thing it was to do. How all he had to do was talk her out of it, that he could talk her out of it if he wanted. How he could simply say she was a beautiful woman, so many men wanted her. Even that might’ve switched her.

But instead he came over with a red-hot hanger and stood so close to her face she could feel the heat of him through her closed eyelids the whole time she unbuttoned her shirt. He told her she better not ever charge more than he says and pocket the difference. Told her she wasn’t going anywhere.

Did he have to burn her?

Nah. She said just get through this and then you’ll go.

So she ran?

She was going to, but something happened and she didn’t need to.

What?

Sacramento came for Brenda.

A van pulled up, and three guys jumped out. Rose didn’t even know what she was seeing until they grabbed Brenda and hit her in the mouth and dragged her into the van with startling expertise, the back doors swinging shut as it sped around the block.

What did she do, standing there on the street?

She ran to the Golden Arms, stuffed her things into a garbage bag, and left before Pomeroy and Yo could get there.

Why?

She saw how to make Pomeroy pay.

How?

Sacramento.

Word of Rachel came in a letter from the Seattle Department of Social and Health Services, which had languished on his desk in the stack of pamphlets and newsletters and official correspondence he’d all but ceased even leafing through. He’d knocked over a stack of mail and his eyes lit on the Seattle DSHS seal on the envelope, and realizing what it might contain, ripped it open. The words swept by, he comprehended in bursts.

Dear Mr. Snow… not sure, but I believe we have your daughter, a girl by the name of Rose… Rose! … matches her description… in our Bremerton facility… would like you to reunite. .. please feel free to contact me directly… Norman Butler, DSHS…

The letter was dated in August, a few days after the raid. Pete couldn’t understand why the guy bothered to type up a letter when he could have called. For a moment, he was too furious to read it again. Maybe he’d tried to call. Fuck. He probably did call and couldn’t get him. He should’ve left a Missoula number, the main office.

Rose .

The girl in Indianapolis had said she went by Rose. This was her.

He picked up his phone and dialed Butler at Seattle DSHS. It rang and rang and no one answered. He hung up, tried again. He listened until the ring tone through the speaker turned into a babble of water. He grabbed his keys, and drove ten hours to Seattle.

It was deep in the night when he arrived. He drove through downtown, got turned around, then properly lost. He stopped at a light, rubbed his temples and eyes.

Several blocks away, someone in a wheelchair hurtled down the paved hill. A figment of his quaking sleep-deprived vision. Or not. The chair and its occupant cut a long swath through the street, down and down like a suicidal star, and homed in on the judge’s car. The blinking streetlights lit the man amber as he continued on his trajectory through the intersection. He braked with fingerless gloves and knocked into the wheel well of Pete’s car, skidding alongside and coming to a rude stop at Pete’s window. A ribald assemblage of crooked, parted teeth, and cracked lips under a cankerous thin-haired skull. Pete tingled with inchoate terror. Was this motherfucker even real. The man put a gloved palm on Pete’s window and moaned out a few sentiments.

Pete gunned his car through the empty red light. The image of the lunatic was a long time leaving his mind. A revenant, a bad omen.

He caught a ferry to Bremerton. The DSHS offices were in an old marble building and caseworkers streamed in with the morning traffic and the lot soon filled. It began to rain, the sunrise overcome by gray slabs of stormwork, ominous thunder.

Pete ran inside. Clients already sat banked on the benches by the door, watching him shake water off his coat. The glass rattled in the panes at the rumbling outside like the concussions of a besieged city. Phones rang out unanswered it seemed. Pete slipped by the empty front desk with his lanyard badge around his neck and paced the floor, scanning cubicles and office nameplates for Butler’s desk. He found the cubicle and waited in a chair near it until the man himself approached, stirring a Styrofoam cup of coffee. A mustache like bowed longhorns, a doleful exaggeration of the expression produced by his jowls and chins, his sagged hangdog eyes, as though in some fundamental way the man were melting.

“Norman Butler?”

The man nodded.

“I’m Pete Snow. You sent me a letter about my daughter.”

Even Butler’s smile when he shook Pete’s hand had a somnolent quality, a kind of surrender to it, as if a handshake and greeting were a formality he’d rather not observe, but would be far too much trouble to rid from his human routine.

Pete explained who he was. Butler listened with narrow nods, his head tucked down as though it might turtle back into his chest cavity.

“So have you seen her?”

“Personally?”

“I mean is she here.”

“Hard saying.”

Pete waited for more explanation that was not immediately forthcoming. The man sat down at his desk almost as if they’d completed their business.

“Look, I just drove all the way from Montana. Waited all night for your office to open. I want to go wherever she is. Can you find out what facility she’s in?”

“When did you say you got my letter?”

“Yesterday. But you sent it in August. I didn’t realize what it was until yesterday.”

Butler leaned back, his chair cracking like a pair of knuckles.