Chapter 4
I felt like it was the end of summer. Not that there was a hint of green or the creeping red-oranges of leaves turning. In Iraq, everything was brownish. Not even a good, earthy brown. Instead, everything within my view was a uniform, wasted, dun color. It was easy to imagine the creator ending up here on the seventh day, out of energy and out of ideas after spending his palate in the joy of painting the rest of the world. This spit of earth, the dirty asshole of creation we called the Triangle of Death, didn’t even rate a decent brown.
I had been in country for eight months. I had been First Lieutenant Katrina Williams, Military Police, attached to the 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division for a little over a year. Pride and love had brought me here. Proud to be American and just as proud to have come from a military family, I was in love with what the ROTC at Southwest Missouri State University had shown me about my country’s military. I fell in love with the thought of the woman I would become serving my nation. I wanted to echo the men my father and my uncle were and add my own tone to the family history. Iraq bled that all out of me. Just like it was bleeding my color out into the dust. Bright red draining into shit brown.
It was the impending weight of change that made me feel like the end of summer. As a girl, back home in the Ozarks, the summers seemed to last forever. It wasn’t until the final days, carried over even into a new school year, when the air cooled and the oaks rusted, that I could feel them ending. Their endings were like the descent of ice ages, the shifting of epochs. That was exactly how I felt bleeding into the dirt. The difference was that I felt an impending death rather than transition. The terminus of an epoch. In Iraq though, nothing was as clear as that. It was death; but it wasn’t.
Lying on my back, I wished I could see blue sky, but not here. The air was hazed with dust so used up it became a part of the atmosphere. There was no more of the earth in it. Grit, like bad memories and regret, hanging over an entire nation. I coughed hard and it hurt. A bubbly thickness slithered up my throat. Using my tongue and what breath I had, I got the slimy mass up to my lips. I just didn’t have it in me to spit. Instead, I turned my head to the side and let the bloody phlegm slide down my cheek.
Dying is hard.
Wind, hot and cradling the homeland sand so many factions were willing to kill for, ran over the wall I was hidden behind. It eddied there, slowing and swirling and then dumping the dirt on my naked skin. A slow-motion burial. Even the land here hated naked women.
I stayed there without moving, but slipping in and out of consciousness for a long time. It seemed long, anyway. I dreamed. Dreamed or remembered so well they seemed like perfect dreams of—everything.
Green.
We played baseball. Just like in old movies with kids turning a lot into a diamond. No one does that anymore, but we did. My grandfather played minor league ball years ago and I had a cousin who was a Cardinals fan. Everyone was a Cardinals fan, so I loved the Royals. When the games were over and it was hotter than the batter’s box when I was pitching—I had a wild arm—my father would take me to the river. Later when we had cars, I was drawn there every summer to swim and swing from the ropes. We floated on old, patched inner tubes and teased boys. That was where I learned to drink beer. My father would take me fishing on the river. My grandfather would take me on the lakes. I used the same cane pole my father had when Granddad taught him about fishing. Both of the men used to say to the girl who complained about not catching anything, “It’s not about the catching, it’s about the fishing.” I don’t think I ever understood until a good portion of my blood was spilled on the dirt of a world that hated me.
My head spun back to the moment and back to Iraq. If I was going to die, I would have done it already, I figured. At least my body. That physical part of me would live on. That other part of me, the girl who loved summer . . . I think she was already dead. Death and transition.
It was a huge effort to roll to my side and when I did, I saw the stain of my blood. It was already mixed with the dirt, surrendering its color. Everything becoming something less than brown. I wondered about the rest of my color: the auburn of my hair, turned redder in the sunlight; the pale green of my eyes; and the almost-peach–toned spray of freckles that trickled from my nose to the tops of my breasts. Was it going too? All that color, all that life—wasted here.
The worst wound was in my back, below the shoulder blade. The knife had been thrust straight down and hard. There was no telling how bad it was, but it was bad. I had been left for dead, after all. Or at least to die. And I’d been left with no weapons. My uniform had been cut and stripped away. If soldiers had found me dead, they would assume I was abducted and raped by insurgents. If insurgents found me, they would assume another faction was responsible. If I was found alive by any insurgent, I would be raped some more and condemned to die for the sins of being female and American.
The men who had raped me first, who had killed the girl that loved summer, were Americans too. Hating women crosses all borders and faiths. Something all the boys could agree on. They thought they were careful, but I knew who they were. I had seen their hands.
Another gust rippled over the wall, dumping a handful of grave dirt over me.
It took a while, but I finally rolled completely over and rose to my hands and knees. Every part of me was shaking with the effort. My head throbbed a golden flash of spinning pain and then I vomited.
Concussion.
The word was part of the catalogue I began writing in my mind. An inventory was needed to assess chances and options. Concussion. Hole in my back. My rib might be broken.
When my gut seemed ready, I opened my eyes again. The puddle of puke under my face had lost its color to the Iraqi dust, making a mottled mud. Careful not to put my hands in the mess, I backed away. That was when I felt the cuts in my backside. I remembered the captain slapping and cutting my ass with the knife as he sodomized me. When he bucked up against me, moaning with his release, he had stabbed, thrusting the blade deep into my right buttock.
The effort of turning my head back to look only made the world spin again. I let my head sag so I could look down the length of my body. More blood and more cuts. Both of my breasts were tracked with bruises, black finger marks on pale skin. The right one, though, had a long gash starting high on my chest and running under the soft flesh, causing it to hang lower and at an impossible angle. On my left, the nipple was sliced and twisted.
Scars. So many scars.
The freckles that had been a part of my identity since I knew to think of myself as separate from my mother were faded out.
I’m becoming the color of bone.
There was another laceration in the pubic hair, a violent, jagged gash, and a bare strip where the darker red curls had been stripped away.
The lieutenant’s souvenir.
Blood was flowing, a fresh rush over the sticky, semidry coating between my legs. The fresh fluid cut a new path that trickled right down dead-white thighs with dark galaxies of bruising. Most of the blood seemed to be coming from my vagina. I recalled the lieutenant punching between my legs several times before he shoved his fist inside. That ring raking me. Afterward, he said he wanted a lock of hair, like a lover might. He used the Ka-Bar to cut away the strip. With one hand he pulled the hairs tight. With the other, the one with the ring, he cut.
Both of the men had rings. Different years and different designs, but the rings came from the same school. They had the good sense not to wear them during patrols, but around base the rings were always on display. Everyone knew those rings.
Everything hurts.
I cried. For a short time or a long one, I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was a short time that only seemed equal to all the time I had lived so far. I stayed there on my hands and knees because it hurt too much to move, and I cried. It poured from my frothy lungs, a quiet, keening wail that sounded almost like a meadowlark, but there was no answering call.
They were supposed to be on my side. My people. I’ll never know how anyone can survive feeling as alone as I did then. When the tears and the pitiful wailing dried up, I was left with just the silence. Eventually even the silence was too great a weight to bear. I started gathering clothes and doing what I could to cover myself. The only thing worse than being raped and left naked behind some mud wall and shack in Iraq, was being found naked in any condition by the local faithful. A naked woman in this part of the world was a whore and whores got no sympathy.
My bra was cut in two and my uniform shirt was just gone. The T-shirt was there. More brown. I found my panties down by my feet, but someone—the lieutenant, I assumed—had ejaculated in them. I wouldn’t put those on for anything. I could reach my pants, but only found one boot. It didn’t matter; I had to get moving.
The clothes went on slowly. When I pulled the shirt over my head I almost screamed. Fresh blood streaked the cotton.
More color stolen.
It took another five minutes to get pants on.
When I stood, my head lurched again and the guts followed. There was no fighting it. I draped my body over the low wall and puked in hard spasms. Gold starbursts patterned my vision. I smelled bile and copper.
I didn’t remember rising again. Nor did I remember walking from the wall. There is a gap in time and place that left me staggering toward a road, but away from the village in the distance. If I was anywhere near where I thought I was, there would be a traffic checkpoint in about three kilometers. It could just as well have been a million. Before I made it a hundred yards down the road, a white dot appeared on the horizon. A vehicle.
If it wasn’t green it wasn’t safe.
There was a depression in the dirt alongside the road that was almost deep enough to pass for a ditch. It was mostly bare dirt but here and there were bits of trash. No cover.
No choice. I dropped into the dirt. When I hit, something popped in my chest. It was physical and audible and started a cascade of wrenching pain. A doctor told me later a nick in my lung must have torn through. Air was escaping into the chest cavity at the same time that blood was running into the lung. Each breath was a loud, gasping rattle that brought in little air and almost as much dust.
The white pickup truck slowed on shrieking brakes, and then wheeled around after passing. They had seen me. I had seen them. It was a small truck, but it carried three men up front and six in the back. All were armed.
Even over the old engine and bad brakes, even over my own ragged breathing, I could hear the excited shouts of the men.
Summer’s over.
I said good-bye, in quiet thoughts, to my mother and father. All thoughts had become prayers. Everyone who had ever done me harm, I forgave, except the men who had put me where I was. Then I waited for the real death.
One man jumped down from the truck bed and the others stayed behind, shouting. I couldn’t tell if the shouts were instruction or encouragement. The bolt on an AK-47 was pulled. All the shouting stopped.
I’m not ready.
The shouting started up again, but it was different in tone and urgency. The man with the AK ran back to the truck. He sprayed a wash of rounds at me without aiming as the truck left the road and took off across open ground.
A moment later, I watched as a column of Humvees stopped short of my position. A squad of men piled out and formed a perimeter. A sergeant I had never seen before stalked up to me with his weapon at the ready. He looked close and long before calling back, “We need a medic and a litter up here.”
* * *
I rose early in the damp chill of sunrise on the lake. Every breath captured the full life smell of watery fecundity and the slow decay of deadwood. Carried across the width of deep liquid green was the sound of a woodpecker hammering his way into the carcass of a standing, dead cedar. I noticed all of it, but appreciated nothing as I skulked from the houseboat to my truck. The beauty of the world around me felt like something to hide from after a night spent reliving what I had come to think of as my first death. Closing the truck door shut it all out. It failed to shut out the shame I felt. It might have helped if I hadn’t carried the jar of whiskey with me.
At home I cleaned up and caffeinated. I did it all like someone trying to ignore a camera in their bedroom. I kept all my thoughts behind a veil of normalcy. Then I caught myself looking out from the mirror. So much of me was gone from what I was.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said to myself. I looked back with sad eyes and scars that seemed to disagree. It was an odd sort of shame that I felt; I was ashamed of what others had done to me. I was ashamed of the flashbacks that made me relive it. Both seemed like a kind of weakness. I kept staring at myself, the short hair with the red summer cooked into a burnished penny color, the scars that tracked my skin, the pale skin and faded freckles that spoke of hiding under mannish clothing for so long. All those things carried an accusation that I had been facing for a decade.
While I stared I saw the girl, Angela Briscoe. Finding her, seeing her body in the woods, had pulled the hammer back on me, then pulled a slow-motion trigger. The thought and self-knowledge that came with it did nothing to lessen any of the effects of the flashback. But they did serve to make me mad. It was the anger about her that got me out of the bathroom.
Powder fresh and dressed for work, I carried a thermos full of hot, black coffee out into the world, resolved—once again—to keep my ghosts behind me. When I climbed into the truck, I saw myself in the mirror again. This time I tried something the therapist had told me. I tried to visualize what others saw rather than my own judgment. What I visualized was Nelson Solomon looking at me, more than what I imagined he saw. But it made me smile. Smiling changed the image and I brushed the hair back from the scar beside my eye. That was the woman I wanted him to see.
I felt a little hope and then I felt a little shame. Story of my life, really. Suddenly I thought of the night before, with my uncle, and regretted telling him about Nelson. It was a mixture of wishful thinking on my part and the desire to seem normal to my family. Uncle Orson would tell my father. For a while Dad would be hopeful that his daughter had finally walked away from the damage in her life. I looked away from the rearview mirror and tucked it all away. I had work to do.
My official day began when I called in and let Darlene know I would take my own vehicle to make a couple of calls following up on the murder of Angela Briscoe.
First, I went to the murder scene. I stopped at the convenience store for a soda. Thirty-two ounces was 99 cents and twice that much was $1.19. I got the giant size. It was an offering of thanks for a long, boring job. I passed it through the window on the cruiser posted on the road where I had first met Clare. The deputy was William Blevins by his nameplate, but everyone called him Billy. It wasn’t just an affectionate nickname; it was because he looked to be twelve years old. He was short and pudgy with wire glasses and a kid’s haircut. The hair came courtesy of a barber named Finas Gold who was half blind and, it’s said, learned his trade snipping hair under bowls before sending boys off to Korea. Billy was one of those people who you never imagined in uniform. Funny and nerdy looking, it was easy to imagine him being bully bait in school until you met him. After knowing him for a few minutes everyone liked him. Even bullies. I don’t know how he became a deputy, but he was always doing the work no one else wanted. Honestly, I think it was to be sure he was kept safe and out of harm’s way. But he did his jobs well and without complaint.
“How’d you know?” he asked me with a grateful smile as he took the soda. He took a big drink with his eyes closed. “Thanks. I really needed that.”
“Your vices are open secrets, Billy. They aren’t really vices, either.”
“Caffeine.”
I watched him take another long drink. “Anything happen overnight?”
“News trucks all left by eleven. I heard some noise out that way.” He pointed north with the soda cup. “And probably a truck driving around. It was up the road a ways. I called it in, then went to keep an eye on the scene just in case someone was trying to get around me.”
I was impressed. Any other deputy would have been bored and happy to go check on the noise. When I said that to Billy, he shrugged and said, “I wasn’t told to check out noises or cars. I was told to make sure no one went past that tape.”
It was good to know there was still someone who did his job, even a small one, with respect and pride. Someday he’d probably be the sheriff, and I would be working for him.
“Did they find anything?”
“It was quiet by the time anyone got here. I called it in at . . .” he checked a notebook even though it should have been recorded at the station. “Four-twenty-eight.”
“Okay. I’m going to have a look around. What time are you being relieved?”
“Don’t know that I am.” He read the look on my face. “Something wrong?”
“Probably nothing,” I told him. “This killing is going to get a lot of attention. I’m afraid our scene will get a lot as well.”
“Kind you want it to get or the kind you don’t want it to get?”
“What are you asking, Billy?”
“If you just want the scene kept clean, I can hang around and make myself obvious. Looky-loos won’t stop if cops are here. If you want to see who comes in for a closer look . . . well, I can bring a pole and a book. There’s a nice spot close by.”
I never said I was above taking advantage of someone’s good nature. Billy had to return the cruiser and pick up his truck, but he’d be back within the hour to set up his off-the-clock surveillance. Until he was back I planned to stick around and check some things out.
The field and trail showed new wear from all the activity of the previous day. In the wooded area the ground was pinned in places by wires with little plastic flags. They marked where evidence had been taken. In a wide, rough circle crime-scene tape was strung from tree to tree centered on a blank spot where Angela had died. The only remaining evidence of her presence was blood spatter that haloed a void where her face had been crushed.
There was no new evidence and no startling revelations waiting. That was for television. Real police work was based on logging hours of repetitive tasks and questions. Very often the job isn’t finding out who did the crime. It’s more about proving the case against the person you already know to be guilty. Most murders are committed by someone known to the victim. That only holds truer with the murder of a child.
Along the stream bank there were a few more flags where rocks had been moved and the one marking where a roundish stone had been found with blood and hair on it. Beyond that I headed north, the opposite direction I had taken with Clare the day before.
Everything yesterday had been about the girl and my supposition that Clare and his whiskey were only coincidentally involved. The biker—make it bikers now—had taken a run right up to the top of the suspect ladder. That meant their interests had to be examined. One was seen here near the murder scene. The day of or day after the murder, he was kicking an artist around. That same day, another one was seen close to the dead girl’s home.
Connections.
Upstream and on a bend where the bank was shallow I found what I was looking for. Across the water, around a black burn mark, was a pile of cinder blocks, a pile of firewood, and a few old pallets tucked within a copse of trees. I crossed the stream for a closer look. The ground was clean, surprisingly so. There were parallel lines where a rake had been dragged through the grass and bare dirt. Even so, whomever had tidied up had left behind several bits of broken glass from canning jars and tatters of brown paper. The paper was the same tough, thick stuff feed sacks are made from. It wasn’t until I saw the paper that I noticed the kernels of corn scattered around.
There was still a surprise waiting and I found it by smell, not by sight. It was a rich, yeasty smell but sweet as well, like a bakery gone bad. I followed my nose outside the main circle and, under an old hedge apple tree, found a compost bin cobbled from the wood of more pallets. It looked like Clarence Bolin was a green bootlegger. Inside the bin were the solid sediment of the missing still along with food scraps, hedge apples dropped from the tree, and a dead armadillo. I had no idea if you could compost the leavings of your still, but I had to give the guy points for trying.
For a while I poked around, partially just killing time. I found fresh tire tracks in a rutted path where the still had been carried out the night before. How long did it take to set up in a new spot and begin a new batch? How long did a batch take from start to finish? I didn’t know anything about moonshine. I decided to make Clare my personal mentor on the subject as soon as I got hold of him.
Billy came back in less than an hour. Even at that he’d already drained and refilled his soda cup.