Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

Do you identify as a lesbian, Miss Silvernail?

That’s not important. But I’ll tell you what I figured out about fallin in love with this goddamn girl. It wasn’t hardly anythin to do with her. I enjoyed her company and I was attracted to her. For a little while I couldn’t figure if I was like a mother or somethin else. Didn’t know what she thought of me either. And I started to get the urge to squeeze her and kiss her and show her all kinds of affection and protection. I thought that was love.

What was it if not love?

Lewis sighed. Rain traced her face and her hand on the handset. Well, I don’t know, goddamn it. That’s the point. Desperation, maybe. I’ve never been good about carin for people. But I just decided I’m not goin to give names to things I don’t understand. Names like love. The joy of love. The joy of sex. Right or wrong, good or bad. I don’t figure anybody should be doin that anymore.

How should we talk about anything like love if we do not have a word to use to signify it?

We don’t know what it is, Dr. Howe. That’s the point, goddamn it. How’re we ever goin to talk about it no matter what we call it? It’s all the same behind all those goddamn words.

Watch your language if you can, Miss Silvernail.

I just decided I’m goin to live without them. Is that all right with everybody out there? Cause of people like you sayin that shit you’ve been sayin over and over again, usin all those old meaningless words, there’s still goin to be a whole lot of people gettin together just cause it feels good to get to say them to someone else. They’re in love, they’ll say. Then they get all worked up over who they think they are and they don’t have to be alone anymore with all the thoughts about who they aren’t. Goddamn it. We’re not a true goddamn social animal out here, Dr. Howe, much as we try and convince ourselves otherwise.

Perhaps you are simply expressing your own antisocial feelings.

No. Somehow this eighteen-year-old girl understood all that. She might be a genius, even though her goddamn dad thinks she’s retarded. I’d like to figure her generation or the generation after’s goin to do a better job than we ever did with words like love. And Mr. Hopscotch, if you’re still listenin, I’m sorry, but I don’t figure there is love the way you want it, so you’re not goin to find it in anythin but stories. I figure love bein a real thing is just one of those lies we’ll never admit to. Something phony to keep us occupied and entertained and lookin for nothin. Just another stupid goddamn ghost story.

It sounds like you must really be hurting, Miss Silvernail.

Down the street an old woman carrying an umbrella walked alone, stooped and deformed, moving away into the rain made visible by the streetlights. No, not yet, Lewis said. I’m just gettin ready for it.

Lewis hung up the pay phone and went farther into the rain after the old woman. The garbled radio show faded behind her as she made her way down the dark and quiet street: So on that rather disheartening note, we must close our show for this evening, wishing Miss Silvernail all the love in the world…

Excuse me, Lewis called to the old woman. Excuse me, ma’am.

The old woman turned. She had no face that Lewis recognized.

I’m sorry. Goddamn it. I thought you were somebody else.

There are all manner of uncommon perversions. The first and only time I got into that Internet without our dear grandniece there to shepherd me I read an article about a young man, a Daniel Plant, who claims to have had sexual intercourse with 2,367 cats and dogs and 112 even-toed ungulates. Apparently he takes great pride in his efforts, as he had requested inclusion in the Guinness Book of World Records . I understand he was denied. Now, what is a person, let alone a person my age, supposed to make of a thing like that? I have now spent some time reading about the sexual customs of different cultures throughout history, and there are certain practices I have learned about that have upset and confused me tremendously. Those of Ancient Greece, in particular, and how even now on some islands in the Pacific women have more than one husband while on other islands the elderly are known to bed children, all of it acceptable to them. But I suppose we are all for better or worse deviants of one kind or another to someone somewhere in the world. Depending on the way things are at the time, some of us stand out more than the rest.

When you give it any thought, it sure is funny how we decide what ought and ought not to be tolerated in the civilized world as time goes on. I cannot always find the reasoning in it. We all desire one thing or another. I suppose we just have to find the decent way to go about getting it, without causing misery to those who do not want the same things we do. The problem with Mr. Plant is that we do not know whether or not any of these animals consented. I am inclined to think they did not. I do not know Mr. Plant but I have not heard of any man who could talk a pig into having sexual intercourse with him.

However here is the problem with passing judgment on Mr. Plant: we do not give a pig much say about anything else a pig does. I do not believe pigs volunteer themselves up for bacon duty. Yet most people in this country are mighty happy to play a part in that. What I have come to understand now is that judgment is often passed as a matter of convenience. And I am inclined to believe that the savage satisfaction most of us get in casting the first stone will be the eventual undoing of civilization. For this reason I fear there is no remedy to the problems we have understanding one another, and I dare not venture a guess as to how any of it is going to end. The only solace that I can find in any of this is that I do not expect to be around much longer to see how bad it all gets.

An Agent Derek Ellery at the Federal Bureau of Investigation spoke with me in the weeks following my return to civilization. I told him about my friend out in the Bitterroot. After that, I never heard anything more from Agent Ellery. He was a curt and dismissive young man and I do not know that he believed me. Years later, while doing my research for this account, I was directed to a now retired FBI Special Agent named James Polite. He has been mighty gracious to answer the very many questions of a very persistent and very old woman. I have told him my story and he believes the man who came to my aid out in the Bitterroot may have been a man by the name of Benjamin Merbecke.

The FBI hold that on Friday, June 27, 1986, at approximately 1:35 a.m., Merbecke entered the Phoenix home of Michael and Paula Hovett through an unlocked backdoor. They will tell you that Merbecke ascended the stairs to the second story, where he crept into the bedroom of the Hovetts’ only child. He is thought to have rendered ten-year-old Sarah Hovett unconscious with a rag soaked in a fast-acting paralytic and to have removed her from the premises to some unknown location, likely someplace in the Idaho wilderness. As I put down this account in the year 2006, some twenty years later, it is my terrible duty here to include that they have not yet found poor Sarah Hovett. May God keep her wherever she might be. There is little else as cruel as a missing child.

For several months into the investigation of the abduction they could not identify the suspect. Eventually the FBI put Merbecke’s name to the individual they and the newspapers had been calling the Arizona Kisser. His description matched that of an adult male who had been going around kissing young girls, and a man matching his description was also spotted buying girls’ undergarments at various outfitters.

Special Agent Polite lives up to his name and was kind enough to visit me (in an unofficial capacity) here at River Bend Assisted Living in Brattleboro, Vermont. He showed me one of the composite drawings they do at the FBI. It seems it is the only image of Benjamin Merbecke that has turned up. The FBI has not been able to locate any photography of him. There were no images at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and apparently his mother told them that she had lost the family photo album in a flooded basement. The composite drawing was developed from the testimony of a woman who reported that she had seen a suspicious man circling a middle school near the Hovetts’ neighborhood the evening of June 26th. My goodness, I mean to tell you the drawing was the spitting image of my gallant friend. If the drawing had been in color, I imagine it would have had emerald-green eyes. Therefore, I accept that it is likely that this Merbecke and my friend in the Bitterroot are one and the same man.