Damaged Goods (11 page)

“Do you need help?” Hershel called.

“No.”

“Your food is going to get cold.”

“I’m not hungry.”

He appeared in the doorway. “I can’t force you to eat, but if you don’t keep up your energy you’ll never get this thing back from Kyrellis.”

“Do you know him well?”

Hershel went back into the kitchen without answering. Finally Silvie found her way to the table and began to pick gingerly at the soggy sandwich he’d reheated in the microwave. There were more notes pasted around this room, too.

Hershel noticed her looking around at them and seemed embarrassed. “How much did Carl tell you about my accident?”

“Just that it was bad and that it took a long time for you to get back on your feet.”

“Well, I don’t remember everything. Not just from that night but from life before it. So if it seems like I don’t know things that I should, like … names and words, it’s because my memory isn’t the same.”

Silvie pulled a slice of bacon free and nibbled on the end. “I’m sorry.”

He watched her for a long moment, as if trying to divine whether she was being honest or patronizing. “I knew Kyrellis before the wreck, but I don’t remember him.”

She swallowed the greasy meat, trying not to gag. “So you don’t know if he’ll give me back the box?”

“What kind of box was it?”

“A small metal lockbox.”

He rolled his eyes. “What was in it?”

“I don’t have to tell you that. It’s private.”

Hershel crossed the kitchen and sat down at the table. He looked Silvie straight in the eye. “Okay, you don’t have to tell me. But if I don’t know what’s in the box I can’t help you. You leave me no choice but to assume it was something that you shouldn’t have, something illegal probably. Was it drugs?”

She shook her head.

“Look, I can draw all kinds of conclusions about the contents of that box and about you in the absence of honest information. You can pretty much assume that the ideas I come up with will be far worse than the truth.”

“You don’t know that.”

He sighed and sat back in his chair. “Fine, have it your way. When your clothes are washed, I’ll give you a hundred bucks for your car. It’s double the price you’ll get from any wrecking yard—probably more. You can sign the title over to me so I can sell it legally this time, gather your stuff, and I’ll drop you off in Lincoln City or wherever you want to go. I feel really bad about what happened, but I don’t have time to play games. If you want to get your box back from Kyrellis, I guess you can file a police report.”

Sylvia pushed her plate away. “The box has pictures of me … 
naked
pictures.”

“That’s what this is about?” He got up and went to the window, flexing his hands impatiently. “I thought it was something serious.”

She wished Jacob were here. He might understand if she told him she was just scared. He would forgive her, wouldn’t he? She wished he could wrap his arms around her and pull her onto his lap. She needed him now.

“Geez, you had me thinking this was a big deal.”

“It is a big deal.”

“What did you expect would happen? Letting some guy take nude photos of you?”

“You think this was my fault.”

Hershel stared out the window, the muscles of his jaw working back and forth.

“It’s not like I
let
him.”

“What? Did he tear your clothes off?”

Silvie stood and gathered her backpack, slinging it over her shoulder and heading for the door.

“Where are you going? Your things aren’t done.”

“You keep them.”

“Stop it.” He grabbed her arm as she reached the back step, halting her beneath a waxy camellia bush. “Don’t be silly. Where are you going to go? You have no car. You’re leaving everything. C’mon.”

“You just think I’m some kind of slut running away from my boyfriend. I don’t need this shit from you.”

He let go of her arm.

“Those pictures were taken when I was twelve,” she said quietly, staring at her feet.

They stood in silence for a long, awkward moment, neither knowing what to say. Finally, Hershel said, “Come back in the house. I’ll fix you some tea.”

Silvie felt raw inside from having exposed her secret to this near stranger. She was confused and angry and unable to decide what to do. At last she followed him back into the warmth of the kitchen.

Hershel busied himself heating water and searching the cabinets for tea bags. He obviously didn’t drink the stuff himself. Silvie wondered what was going through his mind now that he knew precisely who she was.

“You could go to the police,” he suggested.

She laughed bitterly.

“They might help.”

“Those pictures were taken by the sheriff of Walden County.”

Hershel stood on his front porch, watching a rain squall drift over the valley from the west, backlit by the setting sun. A rainbow arced a quarter of the way up the sky and disappeared into thick lavender clouds. He considered what to do about Silvie, who was upstairs using the shower. What was the price of nude photos? He needed to get rid of this girl. This was no business to be tangled up in. He was not responsible for what had happened to her; he’d simply stopped to help.

He considered how much money was enough for Silvie to get on her feet somewhere else, away from her abusive sheriff. Away from here. But as he worked through the math his gut tightened. He didn’t want to be responsible for her—he
wasn’t
responsible for her.

The door opened behind him and Silvie stepped out onto the porch. Her feet were bare and her hair was wet, hanging in soft curls around her shoulders. She pulled her jacket around her and looked out at the evening. “It’s pretty here.”

“You’ll catch a cold standing out here with wet hair.” He couldn’t help looking at her.

“Colds are viruses. Having wet hair won’t make me catch one.”

“You’ll catch something. It’s not healthy.”

“In Wyoming, on January first, the old people go down to the Hanley reservoir and go swimming. There’s ice all around the edge of the lake, but they just plunge in. They call themselves polar bears.”

“Yeah, we have crazies like that here, too.”

“Their lips are blue when they get out. But they claim it’s good for their health.”

“Good way to hasten a heart attack, if you ask me.”

“Are you from Oregon?” she asked.

“Yeah, I grew up one town over. In Sherwood.”

“Do you have family here?”

Hershel shook his head and started inside, mourning his lost privacy. “Are you hungry?”

“I need your help getting that box from Kyrellis,” she said. “You know him. Maybe you can talk to him. He might listen to you.”

Hershel shrugged. She wasn’t his responsibility. “I don’t know. I’ll see what I can do.”

Silvie ran her fingers over the polished mahogany night table. Its red grain glowed in the soft lamplight. It was part of a set—bed, dresser, nightstand. It was antique, but she didn’t know enough about that sort of thing to calculate how old it was or how valuable. She could tell it was fine, though. Just like the matching bed set she’d dreamed of as a child, only this one didn’t have tall spindly posts at each corner. Everything was polished to a high gloss, and she guessed Hershel had a housekeeper. There wasn’t any way she’d believe he kept it like this himself. Men were mostly slobs, and the ones that weren’t hired women to clean. Either way, he had a little money. Not as much as Jacob, but Hershel also seemed more modest about it, like he had it and it was nobody’s business. Jacob liked to flash wads of cash bundled in his sterling money clip. He ordered the finest bottles of brandy at the bar, or
steak and lobster at Hanley’s only upscale restaurant, and made a loud display of commenting on its superiority. For Silvie, the taste of fine food would always be laced with dreaded anticipation of the coming night with Jacob.

She lay back on the bed and listened to the quiet of Hershel’s house. It was too early to sleep, but her admission about the pictures had left her raw and unable to stand his silence. Hershel was markedly reserved, even nervous, in its wake. She could imagine what he thought. Hanley was a small town, and as soon as word got out that she was Jacob’s girl she only ever got two reactions. The decent people behaved like Hershel. The others … well, the women gossiped and the men leered. One of her schoolmates’ dads tried to trap her in the alley between the bar where her mother worked and the bank next door. If she hadn’t been so skinny he would have succeeded, but she slipped through a gap in the chain-link fence at the other end. As she ran down the back street behind the buildings, her heart thudding in her throat, he shouted, “You’ll be back. I know what kind of girl you are.”

Carl stretched out on his bed and listened to the music blaring across the yard. The lyrics were in Spanish, as always. He worked to make out the words over the rapid picking of guitar strings, but after all these years he didn’t understand much of their language. How could he have lived here so long and not learned more? He craved again, the way he always did at the end of the day, and especially when the people around him were having fun. He scratched at his forearms, a phantom itch that never went away, though he’d been clean for twelve years. He reminded himself of that polarizing moment when he finally sought help. He’d awakened under a freeway overpass in Portland, a stinking wool blanket from the homeless mission wrapped around him. As he’d come to his senses in the wet and icy January morning, struggling
out of a drug haze, a rat gnawed at his leather shoe. He’d shit his pants, and the pavement around his head was wet with vomit. He couldn’t recall if it was his or someone else’s. But since he’d woken up alone he guessed it was his.

Carl closed his eyes against the humiliating memory. His descent into homelessness had happened so rapidly following his discharge from the army after his second tour in Vietnam, and it lasted nearly twenty years. That pathetic morning, he was certain he would die. He’d wished for death many times, but wishing for it and recognizing its imminence are two different things. He didn’t really want to die.

The drug habit he’d picked up in Asia had consumed him in the absence of military structure and some sense of purpose, real or imagined. And now, more than a decade later, to be clean and alive and working still amazed him. So did the daily struggle to remain that way. It confirmed for him that there was a higher power, something greater than himself. He focused on that power, silently reciting the addict’s prayer. When the craving diminished, he said a prayer of thanks, then reminded himself of his purpose here—to provide for those with less.

He was roused from his contemplation by a knock at the door, and he scrambled up and into his jeans. “Just a sec,” he hollered.

When Carl opened the door, he smiled instinctively. Yolanda was standing on his stoop, holding out a plate heaping with small, round powdery cookies.

“Well,” he said, trying not show his delight. “What’s this?”

“Wedding cakes.” She was beaming with pleasure. “Just like I promised.”

“So you found some use for that mixer, huh?” He looked off toward the festivities.

“I made these special for you.”

“You shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t bring it for you to make me treats.”

Her joy vanished into confusion. “You don’t want?”

“Of course I do. You know I love your cooking, Yolanda.”

“Come, join us,” she said, gesturing toward the crowd in the courtyard.

“No.”

“Oh, Carlos.” She shook her head. “They’re harmless.”

“I’m not afraid of them,” he said truthfully. He’d simply grown tired of making friends who would inevitably move on to the next job. Friends he’d likely never see again. People he would hope for and wonder about for years to come. “Where did this group roll in from?”

She pushed the plate at him, her eyes searching his face. “Sacramento. They think you work for Arndt.”

“They always do.”

“If you join them, they will see.”

“No. I have to work in the morning. I need a good night’s sleep. But I’ll enjoy these cookies.” He took the plate from her. It was familiar. He’d given her a box of mismatched dishes the previous summer. “You are a divine baker, Yolanda.”