Whitney Collins - Big Bad - Stories

Mabel imagined her mother on one of Daddy-o’s cushions. She was using it the wrong way, folded in half under her head while she sprawled in the sun, drunk. “I dunno. Maybe he’s on to something,” Mabel suggested.

“More like on something,” her mother said.

“At least he’s happy,” Mabel dared to say. “At least he’s nice.”

Mabel’s mother crushed out a second cigarette and stood, like Janet Yuri had, nearly nose-to-nose with Mabel. “He’s not happy and he’s not nice. He only seems that way. Deep down, he’s miserable and mean. And he knows just how to string you along.”

Mabel thought of the bowie knife and the felt-tip mustache on her mother’s photo. Then she listened as her mother went outside to swear and smoke, then cry and sob. Mabel closed her eyes until she was back above the pond. This time, by herself, she made it almost up to where the clouds looked like rain.

At school on Friday, Janet Yuri watched Mabel the way the Happy Thicket owner watched Daddy-o, with suspicion and ire. In English, she passed Mabel a note. It was a drawing of two stick figures, a man and a girl smiling, oblivious, while an asteroid hurtled toward them. Ignorance is bliss! was written under it in loopy cursive, complete with i’s dotted with daisies.

“Your dad coming to pick you up today?” Janet asked after class.

“What’s it to you?” Mabel answered.

“I want to meet him, is all,” Janet said. “Who wouldn’t want to meet The World’s Happiest Man?”

Mabel frowned, protective. “I’m walking home alone,” she said. “He won’t be here.”

But he was. There, after school, on the fence—once again a snagged autumn leaf clinging hopeful—was Daddy-o, eating a vanilla soft serve with his left hand and dangling a necklace through the chain-link with his right.

“I made you this, Maybe Baby. Made it for you today.”

Janet Yuri stormed Mabel as Mabel stormed the fence. “Get in the van,” Mabel seethed to her father. “Get in the van now.”

But Daddy-o didn’t flinch. He just kept on with his cone, while Mabel snatched the leather necklace from him. It was a choker sporting a small metal oval, likely cut and sanded from an old beer can, an oval that was stamped with the words CAN DO .

“This your dad?” Janet asked.

“I’m her dad,” Daddy-o replied.

“I hear you’re lots of fun to be around,” Janet said.

“That’s what they tell me.” Daddy-o smiled.

“Then why don’t you take me and Mabel to get some of that ice cream?”

“No,” Mabel cried. “Absolutely not.”

“Now, Mabel,” Daddy-o said. “That’s not how we talk to guests.”

“You two can go,” Mabel said. “I will not.” Daddy-o winked and climbed into the yellow van. Janet Yuri scaled the fence and did as well. Daddy-o’s dogged commitment to friendliness suddenly felt like betrayal. Mabel groaned and climbed the chain-link. “Make it fast,” she said, as she got into the van. “I have work to do.”

At the Dairy Queen, Mabel turned hot and silent when Daddy-o produced his beaded pouch of dimes to buy Janet a cone. She knew her father had likely cleaned three toilets to pay for the ice cream. Janet asked for sprinkles.

“So, Mabel tells me you’re never sad. That nothing, not a person, place, or thing can bring you down.”

“Mabel says that, does she?” Daddy-o smiled at Mabel.

“Sure does.” Janet licked her cone. “How come she doesn’t take after you?”

Mabel clenched her jaw. “Stop it, Janet.”

“What do you mean?” Daddy-o said.

Janet tilted her head in false concern. “I’m worried about Mabel. Mabel passes me notes.” Janet reached into her pocket and produced a wad of folded paper. “Like these.”

Mabel reached across the table, but Daddy-o swiped the notes away with cheer. “My girl’s a writer,” he said. “I love me some Mabel.”

Daddy-o opened the first. It was one Janet had drawn of a stick figure girl in a hangman’s noose. The second was of a stick figure girl in a car careening off a cliff. The third was of a girl with x’s for eyes and a knife in her chest. The caption read: What’s the point? Here’s the point!

Janet licked her cone, around and around, with precision. “I find them troubling.”

Daddy-o stared at the three notes as if he were learning to read. “What,” he said softly. “How?”

Mabel, raw and fuming, said nothing. She did not understand how notes that were not hers could make her feel so exposed. Maybe Janet was right. Maybe Mabel was a liar. And maybe Daddy-o—who sat quiet across the table, his face now drained of its Pensacola brown—was too.

“I thought you should know,” Janet said. “I thought maybe …”

Daddy-o did not stay to hear the rest. He rose from the table as if his body hurt. He walked to the door of the Dairy Queen as if the floor were made of ice. And then he got into his yellow van and drove away.

“He doesn’t seem that happy to me,” Janet said.

Mabel didn’t answer her. She closed her eyes and let herself float. Up over the table where she saw the white part in Janet’s black hair. Up through the red roof of the restaurant. Up over the winding road that led to the Happy Thicket Motor Lodge. She needed to see where Daddy-o was going, where Daddy-o had gone.

Up close, the spotted fawn on the Happy Thicket Motor Lodge sign was much bigger than Mabel had imagined. From the ground, it had looked like the size of a leaping squirrel, but in reality, it was as large as a prancing dairy cow, fashioned of painted metal and surrounded by a mass of neon tubes that flashed the deer’s three-part escape: before, during, after. It was nearly big enough for Mabel and Daddy-o to climb on and pretend to ride, rodeo-style. They’d been up on the sign since the Dairy Queen, standing side by side in silence and watching the sky go from light blue to dark blue.

Mabel finally spoke. “I didn’t write those notes.”

“But you feel that way,” Daddy-o said.

“Sometimes,” Mabel said. “Sometimes not.”

On the edge of the motor lodge’s sign, fifty feet up in the air or more, Daddy-o and Mabel held hands. The lights hummed like a colossal swarm of gnats and turned the two of them red, yellow, green. Red, yellow, green. Stop, think, go. Stop, think, go .

Below, Mabel could see a fire truck, two police cars, and an ambulance. The motel’s proprietor leaned against Daddy-o’s yellow van like he’d been waiting for this. The firefighters brought out a life net—it looked to Mabel like a large, dotted hoop, a giant dreamcatcher—which they hauled to the base of the sign. They squinted up in the night at Daddy-o and Mabel. Mabel thought she saw Janet in the gathering crowd. Daddy-o pointed out who he thought was Mabel’s mother.

“The girl should go first,” a fireman called through a megaphone. “First, the girl!”

Daddy-o winked at Mabel. His teeth shone bright as bathroom tiles. “Can you?” he asked. “Can you go first, Maybe Baby?”

Mabel nodded and beamed. She touched the hollow of her throat where the silver disk of Daddy-o’s necklace rested. “Can,” she said. “Can do!”

“Then show them,” Daddy-o said. “Show them how it’s done.”

Mabel squeezed her eyes shut. Then Mabel opened them wide. Then Mabel leapt off the sign, just like a deer, the deer, and out into the night, in three robotic flashes, scaling the smiling log to land in the night sky. “I can!” she called to Daddy- o . “I did!”

Mabel galloped through the cool black. Above where the trees, now sleeping, blushed with fall. Beneath where the clouds, now hiding, swelled with rain. Below, she could hear the crowd gasp, a fireman shout, a siren cry a single cry. She laughed until her cheeks shone with tears. And at one point, she looked back to see if Daddy-o would join her, out where nothing and no one could bring her down.