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“Hey Trey, so what’s BFE then?” I called.
“Butt Fucked Egypt, Libby. That’s our hometown.”
LYLE WAS GALLOPING ahead of me, leaping off the steps. He reached the car in three big strides, jiggling the handle to be let in, comeoncomeoncomeon. I dropped in next to him, pre-annoyed. “What?” I said. Thunder crackled. A gust of air kicked up a wet gravel smell.
“Just drive first, let’s get out of here, hurry.”
“Yessir.”
I swung out of the parking lot, back toward Kansas City, the rain turning frantic. I’d driven about five minutes when Lyle told me to pull over, aimed himself at me, and said, “Oh my God.”
Ben DayJANUARY 3, 1985
12:02 A.M.
They pulled up outside Diondra’s, the dogs barking frantically as usual, as if they’d never seen a truck, or a person, or Diondra even. They all three went through the back gate, then Diondra told Ben and Trey to stand in front of the sliding door and to take their clothes off so they wouldn’t drip blood everywhere. Just peel ’em off, put ’em all in a pile, and we’ll burn them.
The dogs were frightened of Trey. They barked but they didn’t come near him—he’d beaten the shit out of the white one once, and they all walked carefully around him ever since. Trey pulled his shirt off from the back, the way guys in movies did, the hard way, and then he unbuttoned his jeans, his eyes on Diondra, as if they were about to screw. Like this was some crazy foreplay. Ben pulled his shirt off the same way, and unpeeled his pants, those leather pants he’d sweat through already, and then the dogs were on him, sniffing at his crotch, licking at his arms, like they might devour him. He pushed one away, his palm on its snout, pushing hard, and it just came right back, slobbery, aggressive.
“It wants to suck your dick, man.” Trey laughed. “Get it where you can, right?”
“He ain’t getting any from me, so he might as well,” Diondra snapped, doing her pissy, loop-de-loop head twist. She stepped out of her jeans, tan lines marking where her panties should have been, where no panties were, just white flesh and black fur, sticking up like a wet cat. Then she took off her sweater and stood there in just her bra, her breasts swollen, white stretch marks trailing along the tops of them.
“What?” she said at Ben.
“Nothing, you should go inside.”
“Thanks, genius.” She kicked her clothes over to a pile and told Trey—somehow she made it clear that it was just Trey—that she’d go get some lighter fluid.
Trey kicked his jeans into the center, stood in blue boxers, told Ben that he’d failed to prove himself.
“I don’t see it that way,” Ben muttered, but when Trey said what? he just shook his head. One dog was fully on him now, his paws on Ben’s thighs, trying to lick around his stomach, where the blood had pooled. “Get off me,” Ben snapped, and when the dog just leapt right back up, he backhanded it. The dog snarled, then so did the second, the third barking, its teeth bared. Ben shimmied naked back toward the house yelling, “Go’way,” to the dogs, the dogs backing off only when Diondra returned.
“Dogs respect strength,” Trey said, a slightly upturned lip aimed at Ben’s nakedness. “Nice fire bush.”
Trey grabbed the lighter fluid from Diondra, still nude from her big stomach on down, her belly button poking out like a thumb. Trey sprayed it over the clothes, holding the can near his dick like he was pissing. He flicked his lighter to one side, and WHOOMP! the clothes fired up, making Trey stumble back two big steps, almost fall. It was the first time Ben had seen him look foolish. Diondra turned away, not wanting to embarrass Trey by seeing it. That made Ben more sad than anything else tonight: the woman he wanted to be his wife, the woman who’d have his child, she’d give this bit of grace to another man, but never, ever to Ben.
He needed to make her respect him.
HE WAS STUCK there, at Diondra’s, watching them smoke more dope. He couldn’t get home without his bike—it was just too cold, dead man’s cold, snowing hard again, the wind blowing down the chimney. If it turned into a blizzard, the rest of those cows would freeze to death by morning, if the lazy-ass farmer didn’t do something. Good. Teach him a lesson. Ben felt the anger in him coming up again, tight.
Teach everyone a fucking lesson. All those fuckers who never seemed to have any trouble, who seemed to just glide by—hell, even Runner, shitty drunk that he was, seemed to get less hassle than Ben. There were a lot of people who deserved a lesson, deserved to really understand, like Ben did, that nothing came easy, that most things were going to go sour.
Diondra accidentally burned his jeans along with the leather pants. So he was wearing a pair of Diondra’s purple sweats, a big sweatshirt, and thick white Polo socks she had already mentioned twice she wanted returned. They were at that aimless time of night, the big event over, Ben still wondering what it meant, if he really did pray to the Devil, if he really would start feeling power. Or if it was all some hoax, or one of those things you talked yourself into believing—like a Ouija board or a killer clown in a white van. Were they all three agreeing silently to believe that they’d really sacrificed for Satan, or was it just an excuse to get really high and fuck stuff up?
They should have stopped early on with the drugs. It was cheap stuff, he could tell by how much it all hurt, even the weed went down fighting, like it was out to damage. It was the cheap stuff that made people mean.
Trey passed out, slowly, watching TV, his eyes blinking first, then his head looping around, up then down, then back up. Then he slumped to his side and was gone.
Diondra said she had to pee, and so Ben just sat there in the living room, wishing he were home. He was picturing his flannel sheets, picturing himself in bed, talking to Diondra on the phone. She never phoned from home, and he wasn’t allowed to call her because her parents were so crazy. So she got cigarettes and sat in a phone booth near the gas station or in the mall. It was the one thing she did for him, made him feel good, her making that effort, he really liked it. Maybe he liked the idea of talking to Diondra better than he liked actually talking to her, lately she was so fucking mean to him when they were together. He was thinking again about the bleeding bull and wishing he had the gun back, that’s what he wanted, and then Diondra was yelling his name from her bedroom.
He turned the corner and she was standing by her glittery red answering machine, with her head cocked to the side, and she just said, “You’re fucked,” and hit the button.
“Hey Dio, it’s Megan. I’m totally freaked out about Ben Day, did you hear about it, that he molested all these girls? My sister is in sixth grade. She’s fine, thank God, but god what a sicko. I guess the cops have arrested him. Anyway, call me.”
And then a click and a whir and another girl’s voice deep and nasal: “Hey Diondra, it’s Jenny. I told you Ben Day was a Devil-dude, did you hear about this shit? I guess he’s, like, on the run from the cops. I guess there’s going to be some big conference about it at school tomorrow. I don’t know, I wanted to see if you want to go.”
Diondra was standing over the machine like she wanted to crush it, like it was an animal she could do something to. She turned to Ben and screamed, “What the fuck?” turning pink and spitty and Ben immediately said the wrong thing: “I better go home.”
“You better go home? What the fuck is this Ben, what is going on?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I should go home.”
“No no no no no, momma’s boy. You fucking worthless fucking momma’s boy. What, you going to go home, wait for the police and leave me here while you go to jail? Leave me just sitting here waiting for my fucking dad to get home? With your fucking baby I can’t get rid of?”
“What do you want me to do, Diondra?” Home. That’s what he kept thinking.
“We’re leaving town tonight. I have about $200 cash left over from my parents. How much can you get at your place?” When Ben didn’t say right away, his brain on Krissi Cates and whether the kiss was something to be arrested for and how much was true and whether the cops were really after him, Diondra walked over to him and slapped his face, hard. “How much do you have at your place?”
“I don’t know. I have some money I’ve been saving, and my mom usually has a hundred bucks, two hundred, hidden around. But I don’t know where.”
Diondra swayed, closed one eye and looked at her alarm clock. “Does your mom stay up late, would she be awake?”
“If the police are there, yeah.” If they weren’t, she was asleep, even if she was scared out of her mind. It was the big joke in the family that his mom had never celebrated New Year’s Eve, she was always asleep before midnight.
“We’ll go there, and if we don’t see a cop car, we’ll go in. You can get money, pack some clothes, and then we’ll get the fuck out of here.”
“And then what?”
Diondra crossed over to him, petted him where his cheek still stung. Her eye makeup was halfway down her cheek, but he still felt a surge of, what, love? Power? Something. A surge, a feeling, something good.
“Ben baby, I am the mother of your child, right?” He nodded, just a bit. “OK, so get me out of town. Get us all out of town. I can’t do this without you. We need to go. Head west. We can camp out somewhere, sleep in the car, whatever. Otherwise you’re in jail, and I’m dead from my daddy. He’d make me have the baby and then kill me. And you don’t want our kid to be an orphan, right? Not when we can help it? So let’s go.”
“I didn’t do what they said, with those girls, I didn’t,” Ben finally whispered, Diondra leaning on his shoulder, wisps of her hair curling up, vining into his mouth.
“Who cares if you did?” she said into his chest.
Libby DayNOW
Lyle was bouncing in his seat. “Libby, did you notice? Holy crud, did you notice?”
“What?”
“Diondra’s porn name, the one she used all the time, did you notice?”
“Polly Palm, what?”
Lyle was grinning, his long teeth glowing brighter than the rest of him in the dark car.
“Libby, what was the name your brother had tattooed on his arm? Remember the names we went through? Molly, Sally, and the one I said sounded like a dog’s name?”
“Oh God.”
“Polly, right?”
“Oh God,” I said again.
“I mean, that’s not a coincidence, right?”
Of course it wasn’t. Everyone who keeps a secret itches to tell it. This was Ben’s way of telling. His homage to his secret girlfriend. But he couldn’t use her real name on the tattoo, Miss Disappearing Diondra. So he used the name she used when she was playing. I pictured him running his fingers over the swollen lines, his skin still stinging, proud. Polly. Maybe a romantic gesture. Maybe a memoriam.
“I wonder how old the tattoo is,” Lyle said.
“It actually didn’t look that old,” I said. “It was still, I don’t know, bright, not faded at all.”
Lyle whipped out his laptop, balanced it on tight knees.
“Come on, come on, gimme a signal.”
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t think Diondra’s dead. I think she’s in exile. And if you were going into exile, and you had to pick a name, wouldn’t you be tempted to use a name you’d used before, one that only a few friends knew, a joke for yourself, and a bit of … home? Something your boyfriend could tattoo on his arm and it would mean something to him, something permanent he could look at. Come on,” he snapped at the laptop.
We drove another twenty minutes, trolling the highways until Lyle got a signal, and began tap-tap-typing in time to the rain, me trying to get a look at the screen without killing us.
He finally looked up, a crazy beam-smile on his face: “Libby,” he said, “you might want to pull over again.”
I swerved onto the side of the road, just short of Kansas City, a semi blaring its horn at my recklessness, shuddering my car as it sped past.
Her name sat there on the screen: Polly Fucking Palm in Kearney, Missouri. Address and phone number, right there, the only Polly Palm listing in the whole country, except for a nail boutique in Shreveport.
“I really need to get the Internet,” I said.
“You think it’s her?” Lyle said, staring at the name as if it might disappear. “It’s gotta be her right?”
“Let’s see.” I pulled out my cell.
She answered on the fourth ring, just as I was taking a big gulp of air to leave her a message.
“Is this Polly Palm?”
“Yes.” The voice was lovely, all cigarettes and milk.
“Is this Diondra Wertzner?”
Pause. Click.
“Would you find me some directions to that house, Lyle?”
LYLE WANTED TO come, wanted to come, really, really thought he should come, but I just couldn’t see it working, and I just didn’t want him there, so I dropped him off at Sarah’s Pub, him trying not to look sulky as I pulled away, me promising to phone the second I left Diondra’s.
“I’m serious, don’t forget,” he called after me. “Seriously!” I gave him a honk and drove off. He was still yelling something after me as I turned the corner.
My fingers were tight from gripping the steering wheel; Kearney was a good forty-five minutes northeast of Kansas City, and Diondra’s address, according to Lyle’s very specific directions, was another fifteen minutes from the town proper. I knew I was close when I started hitting all the signs for the Jesse James Farm and Jesse James’ Grave. I wondered why Diondra had chosen to live in the hometown of an outlaw. Seems like something I would do. I drove past the turnoff for the James farm—been there in grade school, a tiny, cold place where, during a surprise attack, Jesse’s little half brother was killed—and I remember thinking, “Just like our house.” I went farther on a looping, skinny road, up and down hills and then out back into country, where dusty clapboard houses sat on big, flat lots, dogs barking on chains in each yard. Not a single person appeared; the area seemed entirely vacant. Just dogs and a few horses, and farther away, a lush line of forest that had been allowed to remain between the homes and the highway.
Diondra’s house came another ten minutes later. It was ugly, it had an attitude, leaning to one side like a pissed-off, hip-jutted woman. It needed the attitude, because it didn’t have much else going for it. It was set far back from the street, looked like the sharecroppers’ quarters for a larger farmhouse, but there was no other house, just a few acres of mud on all sides, rolling and bumpy like the ground had acne. That sad remainder of woods in the distance.
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