Jackal, page 12
I reply to Chris: I’d love a beer.
* * *
★ ★ ★
“If you see the Cannizzaros’ place, you’ve gone too far,” I whisper into my phone. From my position at the end of the driveway, it’s unclear why I’m whispering at all.
“Like I could miss it. The place is a fortress,” Chris replies, distracted by house numbers. “Okay, I see the yellow house with the columns.”
I felt strange getting a drink at his place of employment. I asked if he was okay with my backyard. Thankfully, he agreed.
“You just make a sharp left, up the hill,” I say.
“Got it.”
I hear him coming. I wave. When he makes the last turn, I direct his truck into the driveway like a plane. Oh no. I’m giddy. I don’t like this. I quickly knock myself down a peg.
“Hi,” I mumble.
“Hey.” He flashes me a smile and produces a six-pack. I don’t recognize the label.
“What is that?”
“It’s from a local brewery—” Another voice cuts in.
“Who is that?” It is my mother, Marie. Mortified, I motion for him to hide the beer. I whirl around to see her standing in the doorway, arms crossed.
“Mom! This is Chris, from high school.” She gives Chris a vacant smile. I can tell she has no idea who he is, but she wants to save face.
“Oh, hello, Chris.”
She’s thinking. My mother prides herself on remembering her patients; she’d never let herself forget a name. So, instead of asking for a reminder, she smiles and thinks. Like she can hide behind the flash of her teeth. I don’t know if I inherited my awkwardness from my mother or if it is something all my own.
“Hi, Dr. Rocher. How are you doing?” Chris sounds well versed in speaking to mothers.
“Oh, call me Marie.” My mother is suddenly ready to be flirty. I roll my eyes. Her stance on men drastically changed the day I turned twenty-five. It went from No boys allowed to Where are my grandchildren? overnight. “You two can come in—”
“Mom, Chris and I are gonna sit on the back patio and catch up. Okay?” I am willing her to read the room.
“Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will.” After a moment, my mother finally leaves. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. She’s cute.”
We walk around to the back. The yard sprawls out from the house. Trees trickle between each of the properties. I pull out two chairs and a table from the set of patio furniture. I motion for Chris to sit, then duck back inside. Once inside, I grab Chris’s jacket and flip-flops from the night of the wedding. The wedding that feels like it happened years ago.
Before heading back out, I look at myself in the mirror. My reflection surprises me. The dark circles under my eyes remind me of how my mother used to look after a night of rounds in the hospital. I delicately trace the sockets. There isn’t much to do about them now, and it’s dark outside, anyway. I try to coax some curls into my hair and head out the back door.
“Here’s your stuff.”
“Thank you. Here’s your beer.” He offers me one of the glass bottles.
“I forgot an opener.” I turn to go back in. He stops me.
“No worries.” He grabs one of the flip-flops I brought out and turns it over. On the underside, there is a bottle opener. He cracks a beer open and hands it back to me, then opens one for himself. We sit.
The moment the beer hits my tongue, I notice it tastes different. With the first sip, I taste the story of the drink. Bitter hops, grapefruit, and something else. There’s care; nothing manufactured or pumped or produced. I want to bring it up, but I can’t. I’d sound like a fool if I told Chris I could taste the love in the beer.
The way he slouches in the chair next to me lets me know that it’s been a long day for him too. Dusk rolls in, casting everything in stunning oranges and reds. I think I can see purple brewing on the horizon.
“How’s everything?” Chris asks. We both know that as the hours stretch on, the odds of finding Caroline alive are dwindling.
“It’s been two days,” I say. “I don’t know how to feel.” That’s true because right now I’m on edge. Painfully aware of everything about Chris, I have something else to focus on and my mind is all too eager to obsess. On the ground, his left foot is a little farther ahead of his right. He’s leaning toward me in his chair. He smells…Oh God, he smells like I remembered, like wet and heat. Like a boy, in the unbridled, intoxicating way boys are allowed to smell. As a man, he’s covered this scent with musk and sandalwood. The same part of me that has been engaging with death craves the opposite. However, I know how to temper my feelings. I let any desires I have simmer in my stomach. One beer becomes two. I tap my phone for light every time it falls asleep. The dark out here still unnerves me, but it helps that I’m not alone.
We talk about everything that happened to the town between high school and our thirties. A few years after I graduated, he “got it together” and went to the local community college. His dad refused to let him inherit the Hearth unless he had a degree. Once he did, he started up the catering part of the business. We revisited places that had long closed or gained new ownership. This strange reacquaintance that should have been happening under different circumstances is going well. Then I remember why I don’t drink beer. I feel my stomach expand. I shift in my chair and let out a huge burp.
“I am,” I try to backtrack, “I am so sorry.”
“That was awesome.” Chris laughs. Nervously, I join him. I know he’s doing it to make me feel better. “You can take the girl out of the mountains, but you can’t take the mountains out of the girl.”
The deep darkness of the night washes over us. “I’m still surprised by how dark it gets out here. I’ve missed the stars.” More than lights in the dark, the constellations were my first comfort. Before Mel and I became attached at the hip, I spent my time learning their stories during my frequent visits to the school library. The North Star. The Big Dipper. Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The She-bear and her mirror, Ursa Minor. In Greek myths, the bears are a mother and her child. When a god loved a mortal, his jealous goddess-wife transformed the tempting young woman into a beast to stop her husband’s lust. Then the young woman’s son, mistaking his mother for a true beast, hunted and tried to kill her. The goddess transformed the mother and her child into Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, so they could live together in the night sky. I found an Iroquois story about the three hunters who eternally chase the Great Bear through the summer skies. They catch their prey by the end of the season. The animal’s blood stains the leaves of the trees red, beckoning the fall. Its bones rest all winter long. By the end of the spring, another bear rises, starting the chase anew. I like a story I found from South Korea the best. A widow with seven sons began dating a widower. To get to his house, she had to cross a stream, so her sons built a bridge for her made of seven stones. Their mother, not knowing who put the stones in place, blessed them, and then those stones became Ursa Minor. There’s another version I like less. It says that the mother and her sons ended up living with the widower. However, the widower didn’t like her sons, so he pretended to be sick. He said the only cure was a piece of each of the sons’ livers. The boys decided to sacrifice themselves and went deep into the forest. Once they were there, a great beast stopped them and gave them its liver cut in seven parts. That great beast became the seven stars of Ursa Minor. Each story has a beast. Some are chased and others are welcomed in.
For years, when I looked up, I imagined my way out. I had no map. The stories gave me something better. An escape. Grounding in the sky. Who finds solidity in the stars?
“If you ever get lost, you can always find your way home,” Chris says, breaking me out of the reverie. This is the most we’ve said to each other since Keisha disappeared. We spoke frequently before that night. When he was a senior and I was a freshman, I managed to test into the same English class as him. I was far ahead, and he’d been held behind. We debated all of our reading, especially A Tale of Two Cities. Standing up to him was one of the first times I recall freely speaking my mind.
“Do you remember helping me on Bonfire Night?” I ask. “When the cops came, everyone was running. It’d be easy to forget—”
“I remember.” Chris rolls his beer bottle in his hands. “You were nervous at that party.”
“It was my first real party.”
“You were off by yourself. Looking at the stars. You showed me the Summer Triangle.” He turns to me and smiles. “I’m still out there.”
“At your dad’s place?”
“Kinda. I have a trailer on the land—out near The Rounds. Never thought that would be me. But it’s…great.” He laughs. “You’ll think this is funny. I search for that triangle whenever I look up. Took me two years to realize that it’s only in that position in the summer.”
I join him with a small chuckle. Soon we both fall silent.
He continues, “The cops showed up and started arresting kids. I drove you out on my ATV, back to near my house. I told you to hide in this huge hollow tree.” Chris stops rolling the bottle and grips it tight. “I left you there because I wanted to put the ATV back without waking my dad. Had to do the walk in the dark. I was so afraid of him getting mad. He was a clerk for the department for years. Always said it was only a matter of time before they started to break up those parties. I wasn’t a kid anymore. Underage drinking was one thing. If you were the one buying the beer, that was something else. He wasn’t gonna save my ass. When I got home, he was up, waiting for me. Someone tipped him off. He wouldn’t let me go back out. I went to look for you in the morning and you weren’t there. I figured you got out. Got home.”
I wish I had spent the night in that tree. “I did.”
“How?”
Time to plumb the darkness of my memory. “I hid in that tree until Keisha found me—or I saw her—we found each other.” I see her face. I see the teeth in my arm. That’s it. My brain skips over the rest like it always does. “We got…separated. When things were quiet I got out of the tree. Then Mel found me. Mel got me home.” Again, not fully a lie, but not the entire truth. I press my scar and it hurts. I can’t tell if it does because of my nerves or because I’m brushing over the memory of how I got it.
I can see stars in the city sometimes, but I never stop to look at them. I wonder if Caroline is looking at the same stars. I wonder if Caroline is looking at all. She stays with me like a wound. The throb of missing her had momentarily gone away. It’s back. This is foolish. I need to go to bed. Get up early to meet the mothers and rejoin the search in the morning. That is why I stayed. Not to sit here, in my backyard, thinking about a man I haven’t seen in years.
“Where’s the bathroom?” Chris asks. Happy to be out of my thoughts, I direct him to the guest room on the first floor. I stay outside with the stars.
“What are you doing, Liz?” I whisper to myself. Slowly, I undo the knot Chris made in my stomach. This gradual de-escalation of hope is comforting. Even though he’s here, he isn’t interested. Don’t pervert his kindness. Remember, he’d never even consider a girl like you. I repeat these truths to myself, lounging in their rhythm, like a poem learned by rote. By the time he makes it back to the yard, whatever feelings had built between us tonight, I’ve pulled them apart.
“Your bathroom is fancy,” he announces.
“It’s my mom’s house.”
“Still, it’s…nice.” He doesn’t take his seat again. Instead, he stands there waiting for me to dismiss him.
“Okay.” I’m unsure of what to do. I wonder if my mother cornered him.
“I should go.”
“You okay to drive? You need a water or something?”
“No, I’m good.” Chris shoves his hands into his pockets, ending the debate. “This was nice.”
“Yeah.”
“We should do this again,” he adds. I give him a noncommittal nod, confused as to if he’s offering out of interest or pity. I can never tell. Chris gets into his truck and pulls out of the driveway.
I turn to go back inside, but before I do, I look back up and find the Summer Triangle. Deneb, Vega, and Altair. The same stars I showed Chris and Caroline. In the winter, they’ll be replaced by Sirius, Betelgeuse, and Procyon.
Girls who go missing like this? They always taken in the summer. I assumed Denise was talking about the seasons. But what if it’s the stars? No, both. The spread of dates Denise gave me contains the solstice. The first day of summer. Tomorrow.
KAYLA
June 2003
“What colors you want?” Kayla asked. Her little sister, Kylie, ran her fingers through the bag of beads like they were jewels. Rainbows shifted through her palms as she picked out the pink and white beads and yellow stars she wanted. Kayla could tell her sister was impressed by how many options there were. Kylie had no idea that beads were cheap, that’s why they had so many. She was too young to be aware of class. Kayla understood. But she knew there was nothing she could do to change it at her age. She wasn’t going to rob her little sister of simple joys: the satisfying sound of beads in her hair and the sting of hard plastic on her nose when she swung her braids. With a dollop of gel and a comb, Kayla started her sister’s hair.
A man and his shadow live in the trees.
When they walk in time, both are pleased.
If one calls your name, or the other tempts you off the path,
You must ignore both, or face their wrath.
Kayla knew this rhyme was far from anything sweet. It was a warning. It birthed stories of a crazed man in the woods, or was the man inspired by the rhyme? Either way, true or not, that was reason enough to stay out of the trees no matter how many pretty flowers and berries and mushroom caps drew her in. Living on the edge of Johnstown meant she had knowledge of the woods. When it came to her traditional education, her family was changing things for the better.
It meant sometimes they got flyers in little bags weighted with unpopped popcorn. Her mother told her to grab them before anyone saw. Kayla read one once. It was recruiting for the KKK. Or, as her mother said, white folks in search of their own mythology. A dismissive frown covered her mother’s fear as she tossed them into the trash. If a group like that was this far north, what did that mean for all their nice white neighbors? That proximity to danger didn’t sit well with Kayla’s mother. Kayla could tell because of how tight her mother did her pigtails in the mornings. She calmed her nerves in her child’s hair. Kayla would undo them at school and the barrettes would crack her knuckles when they released.
Snap!
Myths are as much a part of the slipstream of Black life as joy. Yes, Black folks are masters of joy. Trauma isn’t the only thing carried in DNA. Blackness, like any Golden Fleece, is both a birthright and what lies at the end of a quest. What myth lay just beyond Kayla’s fingers?
The woods.
Every summer, she faced them for hours as she braided her sister’s hair. She didn’t need to know the symbolism of making plaits while looking north. She could tell by the feeling in her gut. Woods were to be respected. They had life, in every sense of the word. Freedom could be found in the woods, just as easily as chains. The trees held both healers and hunters.
Summer heat curled little Kylie’s hair faster than Kayla could braid it. Kayla wiped her face. When she finished the gesture, she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Like any close sibling, she predicted her sister’s movement before she did it. Kayla gripped Kylie’s ears and kept her looking straight ahead.
“I saw—?”
“You didn’t see shit.” Kayla hadn’t yet been seduced by swearing and only did so when she absolutely meant it.
The shadow moved again. A sinister presence.
“Don’t look at it.” Kylie held her sister’s face hard. “If you do, he’ll get you.”
“Who?”
“Why you asking that, big head? Don’t give it a name.” She sucked her teeth. The head comment was both a nickname and an observation. Kylie had a big head; it took a long time to braid her hair, and she never stopped asking questions. “It’s a trick,” Kayla said. “If you look, it becomes real. If you don’t, it will go away.”
Kayla rested Kylie’s head against her knee, far away from the shadow, as it continued to flicker.
“That thing wants to take you into the woods and kill you. Eat your heart. You want that?”
The lore had started with Alice. Rumors about her parents. Rumors about the woods. Rumors about her friends. With time, personal details got dismissed. Lost. Only the horrible ones remained.
Kayla reached the bottom of a braid and started to wrap it with a rubber band. “Kylie, if a stranger offered you candy, you take it?”
“No?”
The question in Kylie’s answer irked her sister. Still she braided. Her fingertips started to go numb by the end, so she worked from memory.
Kayla reached behind her to grab more beads.
“Kayla?” a voice said. “Kayla!”
Sure enough, her younger sister turned at the sound of her elder sister’s name. She looked at the trees. Just as Kayla said, the insubstantial shadow became a man. Before the girls could scream, before they could focus on his face, they ran.
Beads scattered across the yard.
Many things hunt in the woods. Not just men and dogs. Some things just watch. This particular hunter was a man, but he strained the definition. He liked to remind me about his family. His wife. His child. Every time, I’d meet his eyes with understanding. That life, that tale he wove for me, was the dream. The way he was in the woods was his true nature. So, being a man, he was indeed a Fellow. That’s what I’d named him, long before he named me. I am the shadow and he is my flesh. The Fellow. My Fellow.
