At this time of year, late summer, Main Street lines up with the rising sun’s rays. Through the gold air walks ten-year-old Lisa. Her red hair hangs in front of her face. She has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She would seem rude if you asked her the time. There is a smile on her small red lips. She turns at a sculpture of a Victorian man and woman. It is the Horticulture Society’s Memorial to Innocent Victims of Abortion. She has a parasol and he, a tall hat. Some of the stones in the base garden have been loosened deliberately and lie on the path. Lisa steps through them and across Elm to Hickory. Hickory has a sidewalk and is shaded at this time of day and she continues along, even though Elm would be more sensible. Russian sunflowers are lawn monsters in late August. None of the crisp lighter green or sharp citrus colours of spring. Gardens and lawns are plant-gory from protracted sexual wars. Lisa comes to the end of the sidewalk and walks along the edge of sodden ditches that foot properties. She sees something out of the edge of her view. A sleeping dog on bare ground. A policeman sitting on the steps of a side porch. Lisa slows to look. This is Mrs. Stanley’s house. She cannot resist the impulse to march up the driveway. If her mother hadn’t drank continuously throughout the pregnancy then Lisa could have minded her own business. Instead, she approaches the officer.
Officer Shelley turns his rock face to the girl. She is reflected in his mirror shades as an older, thinner woman who bows through the middle.
Lisa stops, puts a hand over her eyes and settles all her weight on her left side. She stares down at Shelley. The officer grows uncomfortable, which is something Lisa intends or is entirely oblivious to—either way, her mother should not have kept drinking.
“Something I can help you with?”
Lisa balances her weight for a moment, suggesting that she might make a turn, but brings herself down on the right.
“Somethin’ smells off. What’s that shitty smell?”
Shelley lowers his head and points his heavy boot under a stick.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Lisa sees something. A little pattern of wretch sinking into the dirt.
“What that? That what stinks?”
“Nope. That, little lady, is where I just had a puke.”
“How come?”
“Isn’t there somewhere you need to be?”
“How come you sicked up?”
“Dead bodies.”
Shelley gestures with a thrown thumb.
“In there.”
Lisa looks at the closed door and makes a thinking sneer.
“So. Haven’t you ever smelled dead bodies before? You’re a cop.”
“Yes, Miss. I have. But what’s in there is …”
Shelley stops. His sinuses are filling up. He sniffs hard.
“Are you crying?”
“No. I’m not crying.”
“Shouldn’t you be catching out whoever did this, instead of crying all over?”
“I ain’t cryin’, I got … my nose is bothered.”
“So what’s in there?”
Shelley is annoyed now and wants to scare her. He pulls his glasses down his nose so she can see his big honest eyes.
“There’s a man in there all cut open by a knife.”
“So.”
“Yeah, so. And his wiener cut clean off.”
“His wiener?”
“That’s what I said.”
“So. I know somebody who needs to have that done.”
“By his own mom?”
“His mom cut off his wiener?”
“She’s dead, too. Lying right beside him with his dead wiener in her hand. And it’s cut in two right down the middle like a goddamn hot dog.”
“Is that what smells?”
“Yes, ma’am. That and seeing as to the fact that they shit themselves.”
“How come?”
“How come what?”
“How come they shit themselves?”
Shelley runs a pen down the blue piping on the side of his knee. He clicks it, retracting the ballpoint.
“Because, that is what you do.”