Consumption (11 page)

No one, neither the hunters nor the children, could have known about the men who came off their reservation, just south of Cavus, and buried the body of the thing that had once been a woman. They'd hunted her for two moons before killing her with an ash-tipped arrow. Then they put her under the earth and said a prayer over the community that was left there, a prayer that they would leave the ground unbroken, the blood unspilt. But humans are rarely so smart. It was only a matter of time.

By the time they reached it, the Black Squirrel Festival was already in full swing.

The group had gotten off to a rocky start with Maxie sending Bunny into hysterics, after which the woman had, to her credit, apologized profusely.

“I think I overreacted a little, don't you?” Bunny said, after the men hustled Maxie out of the house and to a new spot in the garage. “It's just that I'm allergic,” Bunny'd said. “Terribly, terribly allergic. I break out in hives.”

No one pressed the point, and they'd set off for the Festival with assurances from all around that everything was fine. Now that they'd arrived, Erma felt all awkwardness from earlier disappearing with the first enticing smells of the Festival food.

A teenage boy with an eager smile and enough acne to keep a slew of late night infomercials in business met them at the entrance. He collected five dollars from each of them and then pinned a bright green button with the black silhouette of a squirrel to their shirts. “You can come in or out with these,” the kid said. “Just don't lose them.”

Along with the button, Erma accepted a Festival map, and immediately opened it, trying to get her bearings. They'd come from the south, she saw, walking from Bunny's house on the outskirts of downtown to here, where, less than a mile away, the entire Festival took up three city streets.

The entrance where they now stood was marked with two large poles, white squirrel banners flying above them. From there, one could enter Main Street, where the majority of craft tents were set up. On a list of vendors for these, Erma saw blown glass, candles, local art, and handmade jewelry.

One street to the east of the crafts, according to the map, was Chester Street, where the food tents were housed. The street to the west was Wilder Avenue, which boasted a mixture of food and cultural events, including a kids' petting zoo with a solitary goat and a sad-looking bunch of manhandled chickens.

The pamphlet also informed Erma that the esteemed Cavus Festival Committee supplied the tents to each vendor, and it was the proprietor's responsibility to embellish and distinguish them with signs, artwork, etc.

Erma flipped the pamphlet over to its last page. At the far north end of Main Street was the Festival's end, and this was marked with an enormous beer tent. A few hundred feet beyond it, rendered in an artist's highly stylized etching, stood the large Lutheran church, its tall spires and clock marking both the bounds of the Festival and Cavus proper. This, Bunny informed Erma, peeking over her shoulder to point it out on the map, was where the evening's Service and Feast would be held.

“It goes like this,” Bunny said, clearly relishing her role as the group's Festival hostess. “The Festival events will last until this evening, then, around five o'clock, everybody will head to the church for service. And after that,” she grinned widely, “is the best part. The Feast!”

“What, exactly, is the Feast?” John asked.

“A goddamned shit-show,” Riley said.

“Patrick!” Bunny swatted at him, pretending offense. “It's a community potluck. Everyone brings something, and there's always a band, too. Why, some Festival years, we've celebrated till midnight!”

“I do hope we'll be able to keep up,” John said, wrapping his arm around Erma's waist. “Where do we begin?”

They started with lunch, Riley and John opting for large bratwurst sausages with a plateful of sauerkraut served up by a man in green tights and a squirrel mask. Bunny and Erma went with “Squirrel Paws,” large meat pies full of deliciously greasy ground beef and fried onions.

Erma was really getting into the swing of things, debating which food tent she'd hit up for dessert, when she started to notice Riley acting strangely.

At first she thought he was just visiting with people. Acquaintances from the town. He'd see someone, pull them to the side, and start to talk. Once, when he was speaking with an older man, Erma made her way a little closer, smiling, thinking Riley would introduce them, but when he saw her, he hurried the man away.

She tried not to feel hurt. She didn't need to meet everyone in Cavus to have a good time. And if Riley didn't want to introduce her—well, that was his problem.

She had just made her way back from a lemonade stand, ice sweat dripping off the Styrofoam cup and onto the heat of her fingers, when the commotion began. Bunny had spirited John away to one of the booths down the line, so only Erma was there to see it.

“Now, calm down, Fran,” Riley was saying, trying to pat the arm of a middle-aged woman with permed red hair and a yellow sundress. She yanked her arm away.

“How can you say that? What if something happened to her? My God, Riley, she's just a little kid.”

“Everything okay?” This time, Erma was not dissuaded by Riley's obvious attempt to exclude her as he turned his back.

“We're fine,” he said. Erma sidled in beside him.

“We are not fine,” the woman, Fran, said.

People had started to look at the scene she was creating, a few passersby slowing.

“Goddammit,” Erma heard Riley say under his breath. Then to Fran, “Will you calm down, please.” He sounded panicked, which only contributed to Fran's hysteria.

“She could be dead.” Her voice rose even louder.

If somebody didn't do something soon, they'd become the Festival's next attraction.

“Hey,” Erma said gently, keeping her voice low and soothing. “It sounds like you're really upset.”

“Gosh darn right I'm upset,” Fran said. Her voice was still raised, but some of the intensity had gone out of it. People began to move past them again.

“She was my student,” Fran said, almost
apologetically.
“A lot of people thought she was a little wild, but not me. She always read the homework assignments. Always. And she was smart, too.”

“Who?” Erma asked.

“Star Williams. She was a lovely girl.” Tears filled the woman's eyes.

“There isn't any need to talk about her in the past tense, Fran,” Riley said. “I'm sure she's fine. I just wanted to check in with you because I know teachers often have a bead on what's happened in the classroom. I thought maybe you'd have heard of something.”

Fran seemed to brighten at this and wiped at the edge of her eyes. “Oh, well, she did have a little tiff with her friend Debbie Malkowski.”

“You see,” Riley said, patting her hand. “That's probably it. Gone off to sulk. Girls get in a fight, takes them a while to work things out, doesn't it?”

“Yes,” Fran said, eagerly nodding her head. “It certainly does.”

“Now, why don't you go on and enjoy the Festival, okay?”

Erma could sense the hesitation in the woman's body. She laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You seem like the sort of woman who is always taking care of everybody else,” Erma said.

“I…I guess I am,” Fran said, her shoulders slumping.

Erma smiled. “But you know, you deserve a little time for yourself, too. Sometimes, the most important thing to do is take care of yourself.”

“You know, I really don't do that enough,” Fran said, giving Erma a grateful look.

“No,” Erma said. “But you deserve to. Take care of yourself, Fran. Go enjoy the Festival. Riley's got this under control.”

Riley nodded.

“But you'll tell me the minute you find something out,” Fran said, clutching at Riley's forearm.

“I promise.”

“All right, then.” She gave Erma a little pat on her hand. “Thank you, dear.”

They watched together as Fran toddled off into the crowd, her pink nose quivering.

“Christ. I guess I didn't handle that one very well.” Riley let out a loud, disgusted sigh.

She felt almost guilty adding to his stress, but asked the question, anyway. “So, who's this Star?”

Riley hesitated before answering. “Hell, I guess it's not going to be a secret for much longer. Star Williams is a teenager from town. She's missing.”

“Sounds serious.”

Riley nodded, his face glum. “Say,” he said, “thanks for helping out with Fran.”

“No problem. I'm used to it. I work with women coming from high-stress situations all the time.”

Riley waited, raising an eyebrow.

“I did, anyway,” Erma said. “I worked at a women's shelter in Portland. Most women who came in, they've never been listened to in their lives, let alone had their experiences validated. I got the sense that that Fran woman might have felt that way, too. It happens a lot with women, not just ones who are abused.”

Riley's face became businesslike, and Erma heard the cop, not the man, ask the next question.

“So, working in a shelter, you've worked with addicts before?”

“Addicts? What kind?”

“I don't know. Drugs. Meth, probably.”

“Sure. Meth is becoming a pretty heavy problem in Portland.”

She saw him struggling again with how much to tell her.

“Maybe we should just go find Aunt Bunny and your husband.”

“For Christ's sake, Riley. If there's something you want to ask me, just do!” She hadn't meant to explode, but her mind kept returning to the teacher's face as she spoke the missing girl's name.

Star Williams. There had been such a sense of loss when Fran spoke. Loss of a child.

“Okay,” Riley said. “But this is strictly confidential.”

“Obviously.”

“Like I said, the girl is missing.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Erma saw John and Bunny making their way through the crowd, toward them.

“I haven't got a lot of professional backup out here,” Riley continued, “especially with the Festival going on. With a case like this, with a kid, time is of the utmost importance. The problem is, she's a teenager, so most everybody is just going to think she's run away.”

“You don't?”

“I don't know.” He frowned, and she could see that he was struggling with how much to tell her. Patrick Riley did not strike her as a man who spoke often to civilians about the confidential details of a case, and Erma guessed that considering to do so now was costing him dearly.

Finally, he cleared his throat and continued. “Her dad's disappeared, is wanted for what might be a murder, and we haven't got a clue where the kid is. We also think one or both of them might have been mixed up with some drug abuse.”

“What do you need?” Erma said, providing the opening for him.

“Fuck.” He wiped the sweat away with the back of his hand. “This is not something I'd normally do. But, if you're willing—that is, if you don't mind—I guess I could maybe use your professional opinion. Strictly off the record.”

“All right,” she said, a slew of women's faces from what now felt like another life immediately rushing past her. “I'll help any way I can.”

She meant it. She only hoped that this detour in the day wouldn't sour the night, or ruin the thing she wanted to tell John.

“Thank you.”

“It won't take long, will it?” Erma asked, ashamed to even be asking. But she wouldn't let anything stand between her decision, between her and John starting over.

“I promise I won't keep you for more than an hour,” Riley said. “Two, tops.”

“Okay, then.”

John and Bunny had finally elbowed their way back to them, and Bunny pounced on Riley, triumphantly waving a stick with what looked like a donut on it in his face. “You have got to try this. It's a fried Twinkie. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

John leaned over to give Erma a peck on her cheek and she let the feel of his lips, cool from the icy Coke he'd just sipped, linger.

“Listen,” she said. “Would you mind terribly if we split up for an hour or so?”

John raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to explain. She did, keeping her voice low.

She had thought that if anything would spoil the day and bring John back to his dark mood, this might be it, but he agreed to the separation readily enough.

“I'll see you soon,” he said, squeezing Erma's hand.

She squeezed back. “Tonight,” she said. “I want to talk. To really, really talk about all of this.”

She could not read his look, but she thought there was an understanding there.

“Of course,” John said. “Anything you want.” She saw his hand travel to his pocket, working at something there. She was just about to ask him what it was when he turned away.

“Tonight,” she said again, but he was already lost to the Festival crowd, Bunny clutching tightly to his arm.

“The thing is,” Riley said after he'd given Erma a rudimentary outline of the Williams case, “the state cops, they think they've got it all figured out.”

They made their way through the remaining food tents, and the smells of hot dogs and roasted peanuts laced his words.

“Their guess is just that Thad got into drugs. Which makes a kind of sense. Meth is heavy around here. Getting heavier all the time. What doesn't make sense to me is that getting on meth would make Thad kill anybody.”

“So you don't think it was drugs?” Erma asked.

“No,” Riley said. “Frankly, I don't. I mean, can meth really make a person change that much? Do those things? I worked homicide back in Missoula, but I never saw anything like this. Most of those, there was a motive and drugs both. Not just this sudden violence with no history of abuse.”

The two of them had stopped walking, and a woman in a Betsey Johnson champagne-colored dress and Italian leather sandals elbowed past, a strand of pearls around her neck. Erma couldn't help but note the woman, as well as many of the other people at the Festival who were dressed and groomed impeccably, like they belonged at a showroom in New York instead of the middle of Montana.

“What do you think?” Riley asked, and Erma's mind snapped back to their task, to the girl who may or may not be dead.

“Riley,” she said, “you do know I'm not a psychologist or anything. My degree was in education. I just helped these women and their kids settle in, find jobs, deal with what they were going through in as practical a way as I could.”

“Which is why I'm asking you,” Riley said. “I never saw the other side of those police cases, not really. Just what happened after the drugs. I want somebody's opinion who actually lived with it, not somebody who read a textbook.”

“Okay,” said Erma. “I will say that a lot of the mothers told me some pretty terrible things they did while they were using. Working the streets, leaving their kids at home while they went out, not remembering to feed them, things like that. They told me about a lot of shit their husbands or boyfriends or pimps did, too. And much of it was violent, yeah. But most was about doing things to get more drugs, or not doing things because they were too busy being high.”

“You've never heard of anybody just turning, the way Thad did? Being a stand-up citizen all his life and then one day killing someone?”

“No,” said Erma. “I can't say that I have.” She hesitated, wondering how much to tell him, then thought of the girl. She drew in a deep breath. “My own father was an addict. An alcoholic.”

Riley stopped walking. “Oh. Hey, Erma, you don't have to—”

She held her hand up. “No. I want to, really I do. If there's anything I can do to help that girl, I want to do it.”

“Okay.”

“My dad was an alcoholic,” Erma went on. “I say ‘was' because he's dead now. Otherwise, as I'm sure you know if you've ever known an alcoholic, it would be ‘is.' Because death is the only way out. I think that's true with all drugs.”

“I'd say so.”

“Well, my dad, he wasn't ever what you'd call a man of great character, and when he drank…” Her voice softened. “When he drank he was mean. Just for the fun of it. There was one time I remember especially. My mom came home from the grocery store. She'd promised to make him something special. I can't remember why. Maybe it was his birthday. Yes, I think that was it. His birthday. Anyway, she was unloading all the stuff out of the bags, all these different cans of things, and my dad came up behind her, just watching.”

Erma could feel her breathing become more rapid, but she shut her eyes and hurried on. “There were five or six cans on the edge of the counter. It was a small counter, a small kitchen in this shitty little trailer, and my mom had to stack them to make room for the other groceries she was taking out. Anyway, as she kept taking more stuff out of the grocery sack, those cans kept sliding closer to the edge. I watched them. I was just a little thing, maybe three or four, but I knew what was gonna happen, even then. Because I watched him watch them, too. I watched him wait.

“And then they fell. My mom pulled the last thing out of the bag, something big, like a chicken, and set it down, and those cans got pushed over and slid right onto the floor. All of them. They made a big bang when they hit. And on the way down, they hit a jar full of pickles. And that didn't just fall, it broke. Pickles and pickle juice and glass spilled all over the floor.”

Riley wiped away a bead of sweat on his brow, and Erma gave him a chance to stop her there, to tell her he didn't want to hear anymore, but he didn't, only pulled what looked like an empty packet of candy out of his pocket and started playing with its wrapper, waiting for her to go on.

“I've never seen my dad move so fast,” Erma said. “He was on my mom like a snake on a rat. ‘Goddammit, woman!' Screaming and screaming. ‘Look at the fucking mess you made. You cunt. You fucking whore!' And she was crying and apologizing, and I was hiding under the counter, trying to keep the pickle juice off my shorts. Isn't that a funny detail to remember? They were striped shorts, red and white, and I remember thinking if I could just keep the pickle juice off of them, they'd both see what a good girl I'd been and everything would be all right. Maybe I was paying attention to that so I wouldn't see what he was doing to her. But I saw enough. He'd picked up one of those cans and he was using it like a hammer. Bringing it down on her head over and over. Her face. Blood all over his hand.”

Erma paused, shuddering, and then forced herself to go on.

“The next day her eye was swollen up so bad she couldn't open it. My dad brought her home a box of chocolates, and she couldn't hardly lift them to her mouth.”

“Christ, Erma. I'm sorry.”

Around them, the Festival churned, busy with activity. The sun was rising and the air had gotten hotter, all of the people acting as conductors, soaking it up and passing it back and forth between one another. Erma felt a sticky sweat beginning beneath her own arms.

“I'm telling you this for a reason,” she said.

“What is it?”

“The girl. What's her name?”

“Star.”

“Star,” Erma said, and she felt the strain of her mouth as it cupped the word. “Beautiful.”

“Yes.”

“I don't know if she's dead or not,” Erma said. “But what I'm saying is that I don't think any of this just happened. I'm saying that maybe, probably, it's been going on for a long time.”

“I don't think so,” Riley interjected. “I really don't, Erma. Thad's a stand-up guy.”

“To you. And maybe to everybody else. So was my dad. But there's always a seed of something dark in people when something like this happens. A seed and a cycle. They do what's been done to them and it continues over and over again, world without end, amen.”

“I just don't know, Erma.”

“No,” she said simply. “And neither do I, Riley. But I can only hope that if it's like I think, then maybe she got tired of it. Maybe Star got tired of it all and ran away before he could do to her what he did to those other women. What, it sounds like, he probably did to his wife.”

“What a fucking mess,” Riley said, shoving the torn wrapper back into his pocket.

“It is, isn't it?” Erma said. “But at least if it's this way, there's a chance for her. For Star. They leave sometimes, these women. More often than you might think.”

“Then I'll hope you're right. I'll keep asking around today, see what I can find out.”

“And I'll keep my eyes open, too,” Erma said. “Do you have a picture of her?”

“No,” Riley said. “They're sending out an APB with one if she doesn't turn up by this
afternoon—fuckers
still don't really believe she's missing. Also, she's a cop's kid, which makes things messy. But I know her, at least enough to identify her. Teenage girl, sixteen, slight of build, dark hair. Shoulder-length.”

“Anything more specific?”

“According to her gym teacher, she also had a tattoo. Apparently she was caught swiping some wrap from the sports supply closet to hide it with. He wasn't too pleased.”

“I bet,” Erma said. “What's the tattoo?”

“A bear,” Riley said. “Star Williams has a tattoo of a bear inside a star on the inner side of her right arm.” He swiped again at his brow.

They'd begun walking again without either of them thinking about it and now they stood in front of a long line of green porta-potties. “I really want you and your husband to have a good time today,” he said. “It means a lot to me that you do—helps me remember the good in Cavus. I don't want this to ruin it.”

“I promise we will,” Erma said. “And you?”

“I'll do my best,” Riley said. “No matter how dark the circumstances, there's always something about the Festival that brings me back to being a kid here. I don't suppose even the Williams case can completely take that from me.”

“I hope not,” Erma said.

“Hey, how about we take a break from all this for a second and get ourselves a slice of pie. How does that sound?”

“It sounds great,” she said.

As she followed Riley through the crowd, she found herself looking at each teenage girl more closely, trying to identify the lost girl. She thought again of her excitement to tell John about her decision to try again for a child.

We'll have a good child,
she tried to convince herself.
A good, healthy child. There's not a thing at all to worry about.

But she could not stop thinking of her father. Of his eyes as he watched Twila Brown stack those cans one by one on the countertop, and the eagerness in his smile as he saw them edge closer and closer to falling.