Libby Day
NOW
“Sorry, Mom,” Crystal was saying. I was semi-blind, could see only a burnt-orange color, an eyes-shut-to-the-sun color. Flashes of the kitchen came back into vision and immediately disappeared. My cheek ached, I could feel it throbbing straight down my spine, into my feet. I was facedown on the floor and Diondra was straddling me. I could smell her—that insect-spray smell— balanced on top of me.
“Oh God, I screwed up.”
“It’s OK, baby, just go get me the gun.”
I could hear Crystal’s feet hit the stairs, and then Diondra was flipping me over, grabbing for my throat. I wanted her to curse at me, scream something, but she was silent, all heavy, calm breathing. Her fingers pressed into my neck. My jugular jumped, then began thumping against her thumb. I still couldn’t see. I was about to be dead. I knew it, my pulse beating faster and then way too slow. She pinned down my arms with her knees, I couldn’t move them, all I could do was kick at the floor, my feet sliding. She was breathing on my face, I could feel the heat, picture her mouth hanging open. Yes, that’s right, I could picture where her mouth was. I gave one big, twisting push beneath her, squirmed my arms free, and rammed my fist into her face.
I connected with something, enough to knock her off me for a second, just a small bone crunch, but enough that my fist stung and then I was pulling myself across the floor, trying to find a chair, trying to goddam see and then her hands grabbed my ankle, Not this time, sweetheart, and she was holding my foot inside my sock, but it was my right foot, the one with the missing toes and so it was harder to hold on to, the socks never fit right and suddenly I was up and left her holding my sock, and still no Crystal yet, no gun and I was running away toward the back of the house, but I couldn’t see, couldn’t keep a straight line, and instead I veered to my right, through that open door and fell face-first down the flight of stairs to the cold of the basement, me going slack like a child, not resisting, the right way to fall, and so by the time I hit the bottom I was back up, in the dank smell. My vision flickered like an old TV—off then on—and then I could just make out the shadow of Diondra lingering in the rectangle of light at the top of the stairs. Then she shut the door on me.
I could hear them upstairs, Crystal coming back, “Are we going to have to—”
“Well—now we are.”
“I can’t believe, I just, it just came out of my mouth, so stupid—”
Me running in loops around the basement, trying to find a way out: three walls of concrete and one wall toward the back, covered to the ceiling in junk. Diondra and Crystal were not worried about me, they were jabbering at each other behind the door upstairs, me pulling away at the pile, looking for a place to hide, trying to find something I could use as a weapon.
“—doesn’t really know what happened, not for sure—”
I opened a trunk I could hide in, and die in.
“—knows, she’s not stupid—”
I started tossing away a hat-rack, two bicycle wheels, the wall of junk shifting with each thing I burrowed past.
“—I’ll do it, it was my fault—”
I hit a mountain of old boxes, sagging like the ones I had under the stairs. Push those away and out falls an old pogo stick, too heavy for me to wield.
“—I’ll do it, it’s fine—”
The voices angry-guilty-angry-guilty-decisive.
The basement was bigger than the house itself, a good Midwest basement made to withstand tornados, made to store vegetables, deep and dirty. I pulled junk out and just kept going, and as I squirmed behind a massive bureau I found an old door. It was a whole nother room, the serious part of the tornado cellar, and yes, a dead end, but no time to think, got to keep going, and now light was illuminating the basement, Diondra and Crystal were coming and I shut the door behind me and stepped into the narrow room, more stuff stored there—old record players, a crib, a mini-fridge, all stacked to the sides, not much more than another twenty feet to run, and behind me I could hear more of the junk pile collapsing in front of the door, but that didn’t help much, they’d be through that in a few seconds.
“Just shoot that way, she’s got to be that way,” Crystal saying and Diondra shushing her, their feet heavy on the last stairs, taking their time, Diondra kicking things out of the way as they moved toward the door, closing me off like I was a rabid animal that needed to be put down, Diondra not even all that focused, saying suddenly: “That pot roast was too salty.” Inside my little room, I noticed the faintest light in the corner. Coming from somewhere in the ceiling.
I pushed toward it, stumbling over a red wagon, the women laughing when they heard me fall, Crystal yelling, “Now you’re going to have a bruise,” Diondra knocking things away, and I was underneath the light, it was the opening of a wind turbine, the ventilation shaft for the tornado shelter and it was too small for most people to fit but not me, and I started piling things to reach it, to get my fingers to the top so I could pull myself up and Diondra and Crystal were almost past the debris. I tried to stand on an old baby buggy, but the bottom gave out, I ripped up my leg, started stacking things: a warped diaper table, and then some encyclopedias, and me on top of the encyclopedias, feeling them want to slide away, but I got my arms up through the shaft, breaking through the slats of the rusty turbine, one big push and I was breathing the cold night air, ready for the next push to get me all the way out and then Crystal was grabbing my foot, trying to pull me back down, me kicking her, scrambling. Screams beneath me, Shoot her! and Crystal screaming I got her, and her weight pulling me down, me losing leverage, half in and out of the ground, and then I gave one good kick with my bad foot and jabbed my heel right in her face, the nose going, a wolf-wail beneath me, and Diondra yelling Oh baby and me free, back up, my arms bearing deep red scratches from the top of the shaft, but up, over and onto the ground and as I was heaving for air, breathing in the mud, I could already hear Diondra going, Get up top, get up top.
My car keys were gone, lost somewhere inside, and so I turned and ran for the woods, a limping trot, like something with three legs, one sock on, one sock off, mucking through the mud, stinking of manure in the moonlight, and then I turned, feeling almost good, and saw they were out of the house, they were behind me, running after me—white pale faces each leaking blood—but I made it to the forest. My head was whirling, my eyes unable to hold on to anything: a tree, the sky, a rabbit spooking away from me. Libby! behind me. I went deeper into the woods, about ready to pass out, and as my eyes started going dark, I found a gargantuan oak. It was balanced on a four-foot drop-off, gnarled roots radiating out like the sun, and I climbed down in the dirt and burrowed my way into an old animal den, under one of the roots as thick as a grown man. I dug into the cold, wet ground, a little thing in a little hollow, shivering but silent, hiding, which was something I could do.
The flashlights came closer, hitting the tree trunk, the women clambering over me, a flash of skirt, a glimpse of one red freckled leg, She has to be here, she can’t have gone that far, and me trying not to breathe, knowing if I did it would be a gulp of air that would get me shot in the face, and so I held my breath as I felt their weight nudge the tree roots and Crystal said, Could she have gone back to the house, and Diondra said, Keep looking, she’s quick, like someone who knew, and they turned and ran deeper into the woods and I breathed into the ground, swallowed earthy air, my face muffled against the dirt. For hours, the woods echoed with their screams of outrage, frustration— this is not good, this is very bad—and at some point the screaming stopped and then I waited more hours, til dawn, before I pulled myself out and hobbled through the trees toward home.
Ben Day
JANUARY 3, 1985
2:12 A.M.
Diondra was still perched on Michelle’s body. Listening. Ben sat in a bundle, rocking himself while from the hallway came sounds of screaming and cursing, the axe hitting flesh, the shotgun and silence and then his mom going again, not hurt, maybe not hurt, but then he knew she was, she was making gibberish sounds, whhllalalala and geeeeee, and she was banging into the walls, and those heavy boots came walking down the hall, toward his mom’s room, and then the horrible sound of small hands trying to gain purchase, Debby’s hands scraping along the wooden floor and then the axe again and a loud release of air, and then came another shotgun blast, Diondra flinching on top of Michelle.
Diondra’s nerves showed only in her hair, which twittered around her head in those thick curls. Otherwise she didn’t move. The steps paused outside the door, the door Ben had shut after the screaming began, the door he was hiding behind while his family lay outside, dying. They heard a wail—goddammmmm it—and then the steps ran, heavy and hard out of the house.
Ben whispered across to Diondra, pointing at Michelle, “Is she OK?” and Diondra frowned like he’d insulted her. “No, she’s dead.”
Ben couldn’t stand up. “Are you sure?”
“I’m totally sure,” Diondra said, and unstraddled her, Michelle’s head lolling to the side, her open eyes on Ben. Her broken glasses lay next to her.
Diondra walked over to Ben, her knees in front of his face. She held out a hand to him. “Come on, get up.”
They opened the door, Diondra’s eyes widening like she was looking at a first snow. Blood was everywhere, Debby and his mom in a pool of it, the axe and shotgun dropped along the hallway, a knife farther down. Diondra walked over to look more closely, her reflection dark in the pond of blood that was still flowing toward him.
“Holy shit,” she whispered. “Maybe we really did fuck with the Devil.”
Ben ran to the kitchen, wanting to vomit in the sink, the heaving feeling comforting, get it up get it all up, the way his mom used to say, holding his forehead over the toilet when he was a kid. Get all that bad stuff out. But nothing happened, so he staggered toward the phone and there was Diondra, stopping him.
“You going to tell on me? For Michelle?”
“We need to call the police,” he said, his eye on his mom’s stained coffee cup, some Folgers still at the bottom.
“Where’s the little one?” Diondra asked. “Where’s the baby?”
“Oh shit! Libby!” He ran back down the hallway, trying not to look at the bodies, pretending they were just obstacles to jump over, and he looked inside his mom’s room and felt the chill, saw the breeze fluttering the curtains and the open window. He came back to the kitchen.
“She’s gone,” he said. “She made it out, she’s gone.”
“Well, go bring her back.”
Ben turned to the door, about to run outside, and then stopped. “Bring her back, why?”
Diondra crossed to him, took his hands and put them on her belly. “Ben, do you not see how all this was meant to be? You think it’s a coincidence that we do the ritual tonight, that we need money, and that—pow!—a man kills your family. You will inherit everything for your mom’s life insurance now, whatever you want to do, you want to go live in California, on the beach, go live in Florida, we can do it.”
Ben had never said he wanted to live in California or Florida. Diondra had said that.
“We are a family now, we can be a real family. But Libby is a problem. If she saw something.”
“What if she didn’t?”
But Diondra was already shaking her head no, “Clean break, baby. It’s too dangerous. Time to be brave.”
“But if we need to get out of town tonight, I can’t wait around for the life insurance.”
“Well, of course we can’t leave tonight. Now we need to stay, it would look suspicious if you left. But you see what a gift this is— people are going to forget all about the Krissi Cates bullshit, because you’re the victim now. People will want to be good to you. I’ll try to hide this,” she fingered her belly, “for another month, somehow. I’ll wear a coat all the time or something. And then we get the money, and we fucking fly. Free. You’ll never have to eat shit again.”
“What about Michelle?”
“I got her diary,” Diondra said, showing him the new journal with the Minnie Mouse cover. “We’re cool.”
“But what do we say about Michelle?”
“You say the crazy man did it, like the rest. Like Libby too.”
“But what about—”
“And Ben, you can never say that you know me, not til we leave. I can’t be linked to this in anyway. Do you understand? You want me to give birth to our baby in prison, you know what happens then, it goes into foster care, you will never see it again. You want that for your baby, for the mother of your child? You still have a chance to be a big boy here, be a man. Now go get me Libby.”
He took the big utility flashlight and went out into the cold calling Libby’s name. She was a quick kid, a good runner, she could have made it all the way down their road and toward the highway by now. Or she could be hiding in her usual place down by the pond. He crunched through the snow, wondering if this was all a bad trip. He’d go back to the house and it would be just like it was earlier, when he heard the snick of the lock and everything was normal, everyone asleep, a regular night.
Then he saw Diondra crouched on top of Michelle like some giant predator bird, them both shaking in the dark, and he knew nothing was going to be OK and he also knew he wasn’t going to bring Libby back to the house. He brushed his flashlight over the tops of the reeds and saw a flash of her red hair amidst the bland yellow and he yelled, “Libby, stay where you are, sweetheart!” and turned and ran back to the house.
Diondra was chopping the walls, chopping the couch, screaming with her teeth bared. She’d smeared the walls with blood, she’d written things. She’d tracked blood in her men’s shoes all over, she’d eaten Rice Krispies in the kitchen and left trails of food behind her, and she was leaving fingerprints everywhere, and she kept yelling, “Make it look good, make it look real good,” but Ben knew what it was, it was the bloodlust, the same feeling he got, that flare of rage and power that made you feel so strong.
He cleaned up the footprints pretty good, he thought, although it was hard to tell which were Diondra’s and which were the man’s— who the fuck was the man? He wiped everything she’d touched—the lightswitches, the axe, the counters, everything in his room, Diondra appearing in the doorway, telling him, “I wiped down Michelle’s neck,” Ben trying not to think, don’t think. He left the words on the walls, didn’t know how to fix that. She’d gotten at his mother with the axe, his mom had strange new gashes, deep, and he wondered how he could be so calm, and when his bones would melt and he’d collapse, and he told himself to pull it fucking together, be a fucking man, do it be a man do what needs to be done be a man, and he ushered Diondra out of the house and the whole place already smelled like earth and death. When he closed his eyes he saw a red sun and he thought again, Annihilation.
*****
Libby Day
NOW
Iwas going to lose toes again. I sat outside a closed gas station for almost an hour, rubbing my ringing feet, waiting for Lyle. Every time a car went by I ducked behind the building in case it was Crystal and Diondra, out searching for me. If they found me now, I couldn’t run. They’d have me and it’d be done. I’d wanted to die for years, but not lately and definitely not by those bitches.
I had called Lyle collect from a phone outside the gas station I was sure wouldn’t work, and he’d started the conversation before the operator even got off the line: Did you hear? Did you hear? I did not hear. I don’t want to hear. Just come get me. I hung up before he started in with his questions.
“What happened?” Lyle said, when he finally pulled up, me in full bone-chatter, the air frosted. I threw myself in the car, my arms in a mummy wrap from the cold.
“Diondra’s definitely not fucking dead. Take me home, I need to get home.”
“You need to get to a hospital, your face is, it’s. Have you seen your face?” He pulled me under the dome light of his car to take a closer look.
“Or the police department? What happened? I knew I should have gone with you. Libby. Libby, what happened?”
I told him. The whole thing, letting him sort it out between my crying jags, ending with, and then they, then they tried to kill me … the words coming out like hurt feelings, a little girl telling her mom that someone was mean to her.
“So Diondra killed Michelle,” Lyle said. “We’re going to the cops.”
“No we’re not. I just need to go home.” My words were curdled with snot and tears.
“We’ve got to go to the cops, Libby.”
I started screaming, nasty things, slamming my hand on the window, yelling til spittle ran out my mouth, and that only made Lyle more sure he was taking me to the police.
“You’ll want to go to the police, Libby. When I tell you what I need to tell you, on top of this, you’ll want to go to the police.”
I knew that’s what I needed to do, but my brain was infected with memories of what happened after my family was murdered: the long, washed-out hours going over and over my story with the police, my legs hanging off oversized chairs, cold hot chocolate in Styrofoam cups, me unable to get warm, just wanting to go to sleep, that total exhaustion, where even your face is numb. And you can say all you want, it doesn’t matter because everyone’s dead anyway.
Lyle turned the heater on full blast, aimed every vent at me.
“OK, Libby, I have some, some news. I think, well, OK I’ll just say it. OK?”
“You’re freaking me out, Lyle. Just say it.” The dome light didn’t cast enough glow, I kept looking around the parking lot to make sure no one was coming.
“Remember the Angel of Debt?” Lyle began. “That the Kill Club was investigating? He’s been caught in a suburb of Chicago. He got nailed in the middle of helping some poor stockmarket sucker stage his death. It was supposed to look like a horseriding accident. The Angel got caught on one of the riding trails, going at the guy with a rock, bashing his head in. His name is Calvin Diehl. Used to be a farmer.”
“OK,” I said, but I knew more was coming.
“OK, so it turns out he’s been helping to kill people since the ’80s. He was smart. He has handwritten notes from everyone he murdered—thirty-two people—swearing they hired him.”
“OK.”
“One of those notes was from your mother.”
I bent over at the waist, but kept looking at Lyle.
“She hired him to kill her. But it was supposed to be just her. To get the life insurance, save the farm. Save you guys, Ben. They have the note.”
“So. What? No, that doesn’t make sense. Diondra killed Michelle. She had her diary. We just said it was Diondra—”
“Well, that’s just the thing. This Calvin Diehl’s playing himself off like a folk hero—I swear, there’s been a crowd outside the jail the past few days, people with signs, like, Diehl’s the Real Deal. They’ll be writing songs about him soon: helping people in debt die so the banks won’t get their property, screwing over the insurance companies to boot. People are eating it up. But, uh, he’s saying he won’t confess to murder on any of the thirty-two people, says they were all assisted suicide. Die with dignity. But he’s taking the rap for Debby. He says he’ll confess to Debby, says she wandered in, got in the middle, things went bad. He says that’s the only one he’s sorry for.”
“What about Michelle?”
“He says he never even saw Michelle. I can’t think why he’d lie.”
“Two killers,” I said. “Two killers the same night. That would be our luck.”
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE time I was hiding in the woods, then whimpering at the gas station, then bawling in Lyle’s car, and finally convincing a sleepy local sheriff’s deputy I wasn’t crazy (You’re who’s sister?), I wasted seven hours. Diondra and Crystal were clean gone by the morning, and I mean clean. They’d doused the place with gas, and it had burnt to the ground before the fire trucks even got out of the station.
I told my story a lot more times, the story taken with a mix of bemusement and doubt, and then finally a dash of credence.
“We’ll just need a little more, you know, to link her to your sister’s murder,” one detective said, pressing a Styrofoam cup of cold coffee in my hand.
Two days later, detectives appeared on my doorstep. They had photocopies of letters from my mom. Wanted to see if I recognized her handwriting, wanted to see if I wanted to see them.
The first was a very simple, one-page note, absolving Calvin Diehl of her murder.
The second was to us.
Dear Ben, Michelle, Debby and Libby,
I don’t think this letter will ever reach you, but Mr. Diehl said he’d hold it for me, and I guess that gives me some comfort. I don’t know. Your grandparents always told me, Make a useful life. I don’t feel I’ve really done that, but I can make a useful death. I hope you all forgive me. Ben, whatever happens, don’t blame yourself. Things got beyond our control, and this is what needed to be done. It seems very clear to me. I’m proud in a way. My life has been determined so much by accidents, it seems nice that now an “accident on purpose” will make things right again. A happy accident. Take good care of each other, I know Diane will do right by you. I’m only sad I won’t get to see what good people you become. Although I don’t need to. That’s how sure I am of my kids.
Love you,
Mom
I felt hollowed out. My mom’s death was not useful. I felt a shot of rage at her, and then imagined those last bloody moments in the house, when she realized it had gone wrong, when Debby lay dying, and it was all over, her unsterling life. My anger gave way to a strange tenderness, what a mother might feel for her child, and I thought, At least she tried. She tried, on that final day, as hard as anyone could have tried.
And I would try to find peace in that.
*****
Calvin Diehl
JANUARY 3, 1985
4:12 A.M.
It was stupid, how wrong it had gone, so quickly. And here he’d been doing her a favor, the redhead farmgirl. Goddam, she didn’t even leave him enough money; they agreed on $2,000, she left an envelope with only $812 and three quarters. It was petty and small and stupid, the whole night. It was disastrous. He’d gotten lax, cocky, indulgent and it had led to … She’d have been so easy, too. Most people were picky about how they died, but all she asked was not to drown. She didn’t want to drown, please. He could have done it so many simple ways, like he’d always done. But then he’d gone to get a drink at the bar, no big deal, truckers went through here all the time, he never stood out. But her husband was there, and he was such a piece of shit peckerhead, such a little worthless rat man, that Calvin found himself listening pretty hard for what this Runner guy’s deal was, and people were telling all sorts of stories, about how the man had ruined the farm, ruined his family, was in debt up to his shirt-collar. And Calvin Diehl, a man of honor, had thought, why not?
Stab the woman through the heart on her doorstep, make this Runner guy sweat some. Let the cops question him, this sorry shit who took no responsibility. Make him take some. Ultimately it’d be written off as a random crime, as believable as the other stuff he’d pulled, car crashes and hopper collapses. Down near Ark City, he’d drowned a man in his own wheat, rigged it to look like a turnover. Calvin’s killings always worked with the seasons: drowning during spring floods, hunting accidents during autumn. January was the season for house robberies and violence. Christmas was over, and the new year just reminded you of how little your life had changed, and man, people got angry in January.
So stab her through the heart, fast, a big Bowie hunting knife. Be over in thirty seconds and the pain wasn’t bad at all, people said. Too much shock. She dies and it’s the sister that finds her, she’d made sure her sister was coming over early. She was a thoughtful lady that way.
Calvin needed to get back to his house, back over the Nebraska border, and clean his hair. He’d wiped himself down with chunks of snow, his head was smoking from the cold. But it was still sticky. He wasn’t supposed to get blood on him, and he needed it out, he could smell it in the car.
He pulled over to the side of the road, his hands sweating inside his gloves. He thought he saw a child, running in the snow up ahead, but realized he was just seeing the little girl he’d killed. Pudgy thing, her hair all still in braids, running, and him panicked, seeing her not as a little girl, not yet, but as prey, something that needed putting down. He didn’t want to do it, but no one got to see his face, he had to protect himself first and he had to get her before she woke the other kids up—he knew there were more, and he knew he didn’t have the heart to kill all of them. That wasn’t his mission, his mission was to help.
He saw the little girl turn to run and he got that axe suddenly in his hand—he saw the shotgun too, and he thought, the axe is more quiet, I can still keep this quiet.
And then, maybe he did go insane, he was so angry at the child—he chopped up a little girl—so angry at the redhead woman, for screwing this all up, for not dying right. He killed a little girl with an axe. He shot off the head of a mother of four instead of giving her the death she deserved. Her last moments were horror, nightmare in her house instead of him just holding her while she bled onto the snow and died with her face against his chest. He chopped up a little girl.
For the first time, Calvin Diehl thought of himself as a murderer. He fell back in his seat and bellowed.
*****
Libby Day
NOW
Thirteen days after Diondra and Crystal went missing, and the police had still not found them, had still not found any physical evidence to link Diondra to Michelle. The hunt was dissolving into an arson case, it was losing steam.
Lyle came over to watch bad TV with me, his new habit. I let him come if he didn’t talk too much, I made a big deal about him not talking too much, but I missed him on the days he didn’t come. We were watching some particularly grotesque reality show when Lyle suddenly sat up straighter. “Hey, that’s my sweater.”
I was wearing one of his too-tight pullovers I’d taken from the back of his car at some point, and it really did look much better on me.
“It really does look better on me,” I said.
“Man, Libby. You could just ask, you know.” He turned back to the TV, where women were going at each other like angry pound dogs. “Libby Sticky Fingers. Too bad you didn’t leave Diondra’s with, like, her hairbrush. We’d have some DNA.”
“Ah, the magic, magic DNA,” I said. I’d stopped believing in DNA.
On the TV, a blond woman had another blond woman by the hair and was pushing her down some steps, and I flipped the channel to a nature show on crocodiles.
“Oh, oh, my God.” I ran from the room.
I came back, slapped Diondra’s lipstick and thermometer on the table.
“Lyle Wirth, you are goddam brilliant,” I said, and then I hugged him.
“Well,” he said, and then laughed. “Wow. Huh, brilliant. Libby Sticky Fingers thinks I’m brilliant.”
“Absolutely.”
DNA FROM BOTH objects matched the blood on Michelle’s bedspread. The manhunt ignited. No wonder Diondra had been so insistent she was never remotely connected to Ben. All those scientific advances, one after another, making it easier and easier to match DNA: she must have felt more endangered each year instead of less. Good.
They nailed Diondra at a money-order dive in Amarillo. Crystal was nowhere to be found, but Diondra was nabbed, although it took four cops to get her in the car. So Diondra was in jail and Calvin Diehl had confessed. Even some skeevy loan agent had been rounded up, his mere name giving me the willies: Len. With all that, you’d think Ben might have been released from prison, but things don’t go that quickly. Diondra wasn’t confessing, and until her trial unfolded, they were going to hold on to my brother, who refused to implicate her. I finally went to visit him at the end of May.
He looked plumper, weary. He smiled weakly at me as I sat down.
“Wasn’t sure if you’d want to see me,” I said.
“Diondra was always sure you’d find her out. She was always sure of it. Guess she was right.”
“Guess she was.”
Neither of us seemed willing to go past that. Ben had protected Diondra for almost twenty-five years, I had undone all that. He seemed chagrined but not sad. Maybe he’d always hoped she’d be exposed. I was willing to believe that, for my own sake. It was easy not to ask the question.
“You’ll be out of here soon, Ben. Can you believe it? You’ll be out of prison.” This was by no means a sure thing—a strip of blood on a dead girl’s sheets is good, but a confession’s better. Still, I was hopeful. Still.
“I wouldn’t mind that,” he said. “It may be time. I think twenty-four years may be enough. It may be enough for … standing by. Letting it happen.”
“I think so.”
Lyle and I had put together pieces of that night from what Diondra had told me: They were at the house, ready to run away, and something happened that unraveled Diondra, she killed Michelle. Ben didn’t stop her. My guess is, Michelle somehow learned of the pregnancy, the secret baby. I would ask Ben one day, ask for the details. But I knew he’d give me nothing now.
The two Days sat looking at each other, thinking things and swallowing them. Ben scratched a pimple on his arm, the Y of the Polly tattoo peeking out from his sleeve.
“So: Crystal. What can you tell me about Crystal, Libby? What happened that night? I’ve heard different versions. Is she, is she wrong. Bad?”
So now it was Ben wondering what happened in a lonely, cold house outside of town. I fingered the two tear-shaped scars on my cheekbone, imprints from the iron’s steam ducts.
“She’s smart enough to duck the police all this time,” I said. “Diondra will never say where she is.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I don’t know, Ben, she was protecting her mother. Diondra said she told Crystal everything, and I think she meant it. Everything: I killed Michelle and no one can know. What does it do to a girl who knows her mother is a murderer? She gets obsessed, she tries to make sense of it, she clips photos of her dead relatives, she reads her dead aunt’s diary until she can quote from it, she knows every angle, she spends her life ready to defend her mom. And then I show up, and it’s Crystal who blows it. And what does she do? She tries to fix it. I kind of understand. I give her a pass. She won’t go to prison because of me.”
I’d been vague with the police about Crystal—they wanted to speak with her about the fire, but they didn’t know she’d tried to kill me. I wasn’t going to snitch on another member of my family, I just wasn’t, even if this one happened to be guilty. I tried to tell myself she wasn’t that disturbed. It could have been momentary madness, born out of love. But then, her mom had had a case of that, and it left my sister dead.
I hope to never see Crystal again, but if I do I’m glad I have a gun, let’s put it that way.
“You really give her a pass?”
“I know a little bit about trying to do the right thing and fucking up completely,” I added.
“You talking about Mom?” Ben said.
“I was talking about me.”
“You could have been talking about all of us.”
Ben pressed his hand against the glass, and my brother and I matched palms.
*****
Ben Day
NOW
Standing out in the prison yard the other day, he smelled smoke. Smoke was floating on a current of air about eight feet above his head, and he pictured the field fires of autumn, back when he was a kid, flames marching across the soil in flickering lines, burning away what’s not useful. He’d hated being a farm kid, but now that’s all he thought about. Outside. At night, when the other men were making their sticky sounds, he’d close his eyes and see acres of sorghum, rattling at his knees with those shiny brown beads, like a girl’s jewelry. He’d see the Flint Hills of Kansas, with their eerie, flattened tops, like each mound was waiting for its own coyote to howl from it. Or he’d close his eyes and picture his foot, slopped deep in mud, the feel of the earth sucking him in, holding on to him.
Once or twice a week, Ben had a giddy moment where he almost laughed. He was in prison. For life. For murdering his family. Could that be right? By now he thought of Ben, fifteen-year-old Ben, almost as his son, an entirely different being, and sometimes he wanted to throttle the kid, the kid who just didn’t have it in him— he’d picture shaking Ben until his face blurred.
Yes, he’d been a whimpering little worthless coward that night, a boy who just let things happen. Scared. But after the murders, something fell in place maybe. He would be quiet to save Diondra, his woman, and the baby. His second family. He couldn’t bring himself to bust out of that room and save Debby and his mom. He couldn’t bring himself to stop Diondra and save Michelle. He couldn’t bring himself to do anything but shut up and take it. Stay still and take it. That he could do.
He’d be that kind of man.
He’d become famous because he was that kind of man. First he was the bad-ass Devil-daddy, everyone twitching to get away from him, even the guards spooked, and then he was the kindly, misunderstood prisoner. Women came all the time, and he tried not to say too much, let them imagine what he was thinking. They usually imagined he was thinking good thoughts. Sometimes he was. And sometimes he was thinking what would’ve happened if that night went different: He and Diondra and a squealing baby somewhere in western Kansas, Diondra crying mean tears in some tiny, food-grimed cell of a motel room they rented by the week. He’d have killed her. At some point, he might have. Or maybe he’d have grabbed the baby and run, and he and Crystal would be happy somewhere, her a college graduate, him running the farm, the coffee maker always on, like home.
Now maybe it was his turn to be out and Diondra’s turn to be in, and he’d get out and find Crystal wherever she was, she was a sheltered kid, she couldn’t disappear for long, he’d find her and take care of her. It’d be nice to take care of her, to actually do something besides shutting up and taking it.
But even as he was thinking this, he knew he’d have to aim smaller. That’s what he learned from his life so far: always aim smaller. He was born to be lonely, that’s what he knew for certain. When he was a kid, when he was a teenager, and definitely now. Sometimes he felt like he’d been gone his whole life—in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he’d never been.
If he got out, he’d go to Libby, maybe. Libby who looked like his mother, who looked like him, who had all those rhythms that he just knew, no-question knew. He could spend the rest of his life begging forgiveness from Libby, looking out for Libby, his little sister, somewhere on the outside. Somewhere small.
That’s all he wanted.
*****
Libby Day
NOW
The curlicues of the prison barbed wire were glowing yellow as I reached my car, and I was busy thinking of all the people that had been harmed: intentionally, accidentally, deservedly, unfairly, slightly, completely. My mom, Michelle, Debby. Ben. Me. Krissi Cates. Her parents. Diondra’s parents. Diane. Trey. Crystal.
I wondered how much of it could be fixed, if anyone could be healed or even comforted.
I stopped at a gas station to get directions, because I’d forgotten how to get to Diane’s mobile park, and goddam it, I was going to see Diane. I fingerbrushed my hair in the station’s bathroom mirror, and applied some chapstick I’d almost stolen and bought instead (still not feeling entirely good about that decision). Then I drove across town, into the white-picket-fenced trailer park where Diane lived, daffodils yellowing up everywhere.
There is such a thing as a pretty trailer park, you know.
Diane’s home was right where I remembered, and I rolled to a stop, giving her three honks, her ritual when she visited us way back when. She was in her small yard, poking around the tulips, her broad rear to me, a big block of woman with wavy steel hair.
She turned around at my honks, blinked wildly as I got out of the car.
“Aunt Diane?” I said.
She strode across the yard in big solid steps, her face tight. When she was right on top of me, she grabbed me and hugged me with such force it pushed the air out of my lungs. Then she patted me hard twice, held me at arm’s length, then pulled me in again.
“I knew you could do it, I knew you could, Libby,” she mumbled into my hair, warm and smoky.
“Do what?”
“Try just a little harder.”
I STAYED AT Diane’s for two hours, til we started running out of things to say, like we always did. She hugged me again gruffly and ordered me to come back out on Saturday. She needed help installing a countertop.
I didn’t get straight on the highway, but slowly rolled toward where our farm had once been, trying to find myself there by accident. It had been a shaky spring, but now I rolled the windows down. I came to the end of the long stretch of road that would lead to the farm, bracing myself for housing developments or strip malls. Instead I came upon an old tin mailbox, “The Muehlers” in cursive paint on the side. Our farm was a farm again. A man was walking the fields. Far down by the pond, a woman and a girl watched a dog splatter in the water, the girl windmilling her arms around her waist, bored.
I studied it all for a few minutes, keeping my brain steady, staying away from Darkplace. No screams, no shotguns, no wild bluejay cries. Just listen to the quiet. The man finally noticed me and gave a wave. I waved back but pulled away as he started to wander over, neighbor-like. I didn’t want to meet him, and I didn’t want to introduce myself. I just wanted to be some woman, heading back home to Over There That Way.
*****
0 Comments