The Drowning Game (3 page)

 

Chapter 3

Thursday

I
ANSWERED THE
phone before I was totally awake.

“Dekker?”

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

“You know I wouldn't be calling you if it wasn't absolutely necessary.”

I sat up. “Chad?” I must still have been asleep, because there was no way the lead singer from my ex-­band would be calling me, not after how things had ended five months ago.

“Here's the deal. We're going to give you one last chance, and we wouldn't do it if we weren't absolutely desperate. I want you to acknowledge that.”

“Okay,” I said, cautious. I lit a cigarette. Oma would be pissed, but these were special circumstances. No way I could take this call without tar and nicotine.

“Tell me you acknowledge what I said.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep the eye roll out of my voice. “I acknowledge.”

“Acknowledge what?”

“That you wouldn't be calling if you weren't desperate. Right. Go on. What were you saying about a second chance?”

Chad snorted. “We're way past second. I don't think I can count high enough to figure out how many chances we've given you. This is your
last
chance. I want you to acknowledge that I've told—­”

“All right, all right, I get it. Just get on with it, will you?”

Chad's voice changed, excitement leaking through the cracks of his hardline pose. “Disregard the 9 is going to open for Autopsyturvy at the Uptown in Kansas City eleven days from today on Monday the twenty-­seventh.”

I stopped breathing. Was this a dream?

“Hello?” Chad said.

“I'm here,” I said. “I'm just not sure I heard you right.”

“You heard me. See, our new, better, more dependable drummer who doesn't steal shit from bandmates broke his wrist skiing, and we don't have time to teach the whole set to some new guy.”

New. Better. More dependable. Doesn't steal shit. Each descriptor hit me like a two-­by-­four with a rusty nail in it. Especially since it was all true.

“So it's up to you,” Chad continued. “This is your very last chance. Ever. This is it. You either get it together and get up to Kansas City eight days from today for rehearsals, or that's it. We're done.”

“I'll be there,” I said.

Chad clicked off.

This changed everything.

Because just four months before, the administration at Kansas State University had strenuously encouraged me to leave and never come back after just one semester on campus. Good thing my dad had taken off when I was in elementary school, or I'd never have heard the end of it, though the old man was a high school dropout himself. Here I'd spent three years commuting to Brown Mackie College in Salina so I could transfer to K-­State for junior and senior year, and I'd blown it. I'd been delivering groceries to pay for tuition for five long years, and until thirty seconds ago I'd thought delivery boy would be my permanent vocation.

But suddenly I was the drummer for Disregard the 9 again. Good thing I hadn't sold my drum kit after all. But I needed to set it up in the shed and get practicing. I lay back, set my shitty flip phone down, and smoked with my eyes closed, glad to be alive for the first time in months.

The door banged open and my grandma Oma cycloned into the room.

I opened one eye just as she snatched the cigarette from between my lips. She dropped it into a soda can and threw the whole mess into my wastebasket.

“Aus dem Bett holen,”
she said, dashing aside the heavy curtains to reveal the anemic spring sunshine.

“Nein,”
I said.

“
Ja
. We've got somewhere to go.” She slapped my blanket-­covered butt. I was still a six-­year-­old to her, and ever would be. My face flared.

“I've asked you not to do that,” I said, rolling away from her. “It's weird.”

“What, waking you up at two o'clock in the afternoon? I told you. If you're not going to go back to college, if you're going to live here, you're going to live by my rules. Which doesn't include sleeping the
verflucht
day away.”

She didn't know the details of my departure from K-­State. She assumed I'd dropped out, and I let her.

“It's my day off,” I said, stretching. “I was up late last night. And anyway, I just got some amazing news. I'm going to—­”

Oma yanked the sheets up, threatening to make the bed with me in it, and I knew she'd do it. Her massive, floppy upper arms swayed as she extracted the pillow from under my head.

“Don't be a
Waschlappen
,” she said. “I need you to go with me.”

She would not be interested in my good news. She would be unimpressed, so I didn't bother telling her. I sat up and dropped my feet to the floor, scratching my head with both hands.

“We've got to get that washing machine out to the dump by four o'clock.”

“You mean the one that's sat in your backyard since the Ford administration?” I stood and pulled on the jeans and Gangstagrass T-­shirt I'd left on the floor the night before.

She didn't answer, just continued to bustle about the room.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll bite. Why do we have to get the washing machine to the dump by four o'clock?”

Oma turned to me with a delighted smile on her face beneath the gray Berber carpet of her permed hair. “Charlie Moshen passed yesterday.”

“And this makes you happy because . . .”

She moved to slap my scalp but I ducked her.

“I made his girl a ham and spaetzle casserole and a Jell-­O salad. We need to take them to the dump.”

She needed to say no more. I knew, like everyone else in Niobe County, you didn't drop by the Moshen place unless you wanted to be plugged full of buckshot or shredded by their legendary attack dogs. Rumor had it their property was booby-­trapped with punji sticks and trip wires.

“Can I eat something first?” I said.

“Hurry.”

I used the toilet, then headed into the kitchen and poured myself a bowl of Lucky Charms. Oma put her casserole and salad into a grocery bag and stood by the counter, waiting.

“I hate it when you stand and watch me eat. For God's sake, Oma, would you sit down?”

She didn't, of course, so I ignored her. When I was finished, I put my bowl and spoon in the sink.

“Would it be that hard to put them in the dishwasher?” Oma said.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “I never know if the stuff in there is clean or dirty.”

“I'll let you in on the secret: if there's food on the dishes, they're dirty.”

I went into the bathroom and ran a comb through my hair, washed my face and brushed my teeth.

I'd need to figure out what I was going to wear for the gig. Go back to torn jeans and a profane T-­shirt, or maybe a skinny tie and suspenders? I wished I'd thought to ask Chad.

As I followed Oma out the door to my yellow Toyota pickup truck, my thoughts turned toward the girl I'd heard about but never actually met or even seen. I knew from talking to ­people at K-­State that every community has a weird family. The Moshens do the job not just for Saw Pole but the whole of Niobe County. They're the Satan worshipers. The cannibal family. The Radleys. Take your pick. It's all bullshit. Probably.

Charlie did odd jobs around the county but mostly kept to himself. He wore his shoulder-­length graying hair back in a ponytail, and his face displayed the furrows and grooves usually seen on men decades older. His blue eyes were deep-­set and haunted, and when I was little, if I saw Charlie Moshen on the street in Saw Pole, I'd cross to the other side.

Everyone spread rumors about the Moshens. Charlie was a white supremacist, a fundamentalist, a separatist. He had a concrete bunker beneath the house, he hunted humans for sport, and worse things than that.

Mostly, I felt sorry for the girl—­stuck in Saw Pole, no friends, no contact at all with the outside world.

I went around to the backyard to grapple with the washing machine. I secured it in the truck bed with bungee cords, then we headed toward the county dump.

Driving the dirt road out there, my nerves got the better of me and I lit up a Camel. Oma waved a hand through the air and wrinkled her nose but said nothing. She turned the radio to KYEZ, one of Salina's country stations, and sang the whole way. I was glad for the irritation because it canceled out my case of jitters, right up until I caught sight of the little guard shack to the left of the dump's entrance. Petty Moshen was in there, along with her guns and knives.

As I slowed the truck, I watched a hand appear, palm up, from the shack window. When I pulled up to it, I saw the hand was attached to a sinewy and finely muscled arm with a gnarly scar from elbow to wrist. Then I saw her profile. She was reading a book and didn't bother to look at us or my vehicle. I sat gawking at her, this legend, this rumor, this cautionary tale. It was kind of like seeing the Aurora Borealis. You couldn't stop staring, even if you wanted to. Which I didn't. Because one of the things never mentioned in the wealth of information and rumors and stories that had circulated for years was that this girl was beautiful.

She was one of those girls you couldn't look directly at for fear of burning your retinas. You needed one of those cards used to view a solar eclipse with a hole poked through it.

Petty's neck was long and slender, and her caramel-­colored hair hung carelessly to her shoulders. Her eyes were large and round and sparkling hazel, surrounded by more eyelashes than I had ever seen on a person, and I briefly wondered if she was wearing false eyelashes, then realized how ridiculous that was. When she licked her full lips, I saw a hint of dimples, which would deepen if she ever smiled.

I stared so long her head rotated toward me, shriveling my guts. I gulped.

“Five dollars,” she said, looking just to the right of my face.

“Hi,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry. “You're Petty Moshen, right?”

“Of course she is,” said Oma, annoyed. She leaned forward and talked around me. “I'm Lena Sachs, and this here's my college-­dropout grandson Dekker.”

I turned to glare at her.

“Oh,” Petty said. “That'll be five dollars.”

“Hon,” Oma said, “we were so sorry to hear about your daddy.”

“Okay,” Petty said, deadpan.

Okay?
The correct response to this platitude was of course “Thanks,” but clearly Petty hadn't been schooled in the small-­town small talk like the rest of us. Which I found both exotic and slightly titillating.

Oma chattered on at my side. “We brought you a casserole and some Jell-­O. Normally I'd bring it to your house, but I wasn't sure . . . what I mean is . . . I didn't know if . . .” She trailed off, waiting for this backward girl to finish a sentence she'd have no idea how to finish.

“ . . . I like casseroles?” Petty said.

I couldn't help laughing.

“I never knew you were funny, hon,” Oma said.

I now felt Oma and me were the inappropriate ones. This girl's dad died less than twenty-­four hours ago, and here we were giggling at her social awkwardness, or so it seemed to me. I cleared my throat.

“Sorry for your loss,” I said to her.

Oma nudged me. I turned as she handed me the grocery bag with the food. I passed it through the window to Petty.

“Heat that casserole on three fifty for thirty minutes or so,” Oma said. “And put the Jell-­O in the fridge soon's you get home, all right?”

Petty took the bag and disappeared as she set it on the floor, reminding me of the tollbooth scene in
The Godfather
where Sonny gets machine-­gunned in spectacular fashion. But unlike the movie tollbooth attendant, Petty reappeared and no gunfire erupted.

A moment went by where the only sound was the idling of the old pickup's engine.

“You gonna dump that washing machine,” Petty said, “I need five dollars.”

I had momentarily forgotten why we'd come.

“Right,” I said. I stretched out my legs and dug in my pants pocket, pulled out a folded bill and handed it to Petty. “There you go.”

“Just pull on through.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Oma leaned forward again and said, “You let us know if we can do anything, Petty.”

Her eyebrows came together. “Anything?”

“Right?” I blurted. “Everybody says that when someone passes away. ‘Let me know if I can do anything.' Sure.”

Petty's direct, demanding gaze and no-­nonsense responses threw me into a mini-­panic, and I couldn't seem to stop talking.

“Because the only thing you want is for that person not to be dead. ‘Can you do anything about that? No? Okay, how about you give me some of your IQ points, because you obviously have way more than you need.' ”

Oma slapped me in the head, effectively silencing me. I was almost grateful. Almost.

“Lass den Quatsch,”
Oma said. “Petty doesn't need any of your lip.” Then Oma addressed Petty: “He's a real smartass sometimes.”

I rubbed my head.

“Sorry,” I said, my embarrassment so intense it took near physical form, like a parasitic twin growing out of my side. “I really am sorry about your dad.”

“Okay,” Petty said, turning back to her book. “You can pull on through.”

When we were out of earshot, Oma said, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I was trying to treat her like she was anybody else,” I said. “And is there any way I can talk you out of smacking me around in front of other ­people?”

Oma made a sound like
Psh.

 

Chapter 4

I
SAT WITH
my eyes on my book, but I wasn't reading. I was watching Dekker Sachs and his grandma wrestle the washing machine out of the bed of their yellow Toyota pickup from my peripheral vision so they wouldn't know I was observing them.

The sniping between them seemed like an act, like the banter in a sitcom. I allowed myself a silly daydream, of being around other ­people like this, of talking and laughing with them. Maybe this daydream was on the verge of coming true.

After they drove away, thinking of the Sachses' easy conversation—­nothing like the two-­word communications between my dad and me—­filled me with an unfamiliar but not unpleasant feeling. It was an expansion, pushing up through my chest and warming my face, making me want to smile. In fact I caught myself smiling, staring at nothing as a red Dodge Ram pickup pulled up next to the booth.

This made me jump off my stool. I was so deep in thought about the conversation with Dekker and the old lady, I hadn't heard Randy coming. I had violated the first OODA Loop rule: Observe. Dad and I had drilled on this endlessly. When I was eight or nine, he'd started leaving me alone in public places to help me learn to be vigilant and ready to act. The first time, he didn't warn me beforehand. We were at Fort Hays, and he vanished from sight. I was scared at first, but then I found a place to get my back against a wall. As soon as I did that, he reappeared and explained to me that I'd done the right thing.

OODA Loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Dad had taught me to always be alert. Always be in a defensive position. Always be cataloging your options. Always be ready and willing to act. If you blow any one of the rules, you've blown them all. And I'd blown them big-­time just then.

I swept thoughts of the Sachses out of my head and focused.

From my observation of Randy the previous day, I knew he didn't carry a handgun, but wore a sheathed hunting knife clipped to his belt. I'd have no trouble blasting his head off if he decided to attack me. I slung the shotgun over my shoulder.

Randy cleared his throat through the truck's open window. “I got everything all arranged.”

I didn't respond.

He waited a beat before he said, “Did you want to hear about it?”

“About what?”

“We'll have the funeral at the mortuary in Niobe tomorrow at two.” He paused to see if I'd have any reaction. When I didn't say anything, he went on. “Nothing fancy, short and sweet. Everything's already paid for. It'll be a closed-­casket ser­vice, but after the ser­vice you'll have a chance to say goodbye.”

I didn't say anything.

“I'll pick you up tomorrow at one,” he said.

That meant I'd have to ride in a vehicle with this guy, which was against Dad's rules.

“I'll ride my bike,” I said, though I'd never actually ridden it out of sight of my dad.

“It's twenty miles to Niobe,” Randy said.

“That's all right,” I said.

“Your dad wouldn't like that,” he said, tipping his head back so I could see his eyes.

“Dad's dead.”

He lowered his head again. “You ever use that shotgun?”

“I know how to,” I said.

“Of course you do,” he said. “I mean, have you ever
had
to use it?”

“Only had to show it,” I said.

That dumb mustache twitched. “Your dad trained you good, didn't he?”

I shrugged.

“Your dad asked me to see after you, and I aim to do it. I'm the one he told you to call, so you know you can trust me because your dad did. So I'm going to pick you up for the funeral at one tomorrow. And then after that, I'll drive you to your dad's will reading in town.”

Maybe I just wasn't used to talking to other ­people, but Randy seemed really pushy to me. He didn't ask me, he told me what he was going to do, and it raised my hackles. But twenty miles was too far to bike, and how else would I get to the funeral? My desire to make my own decisions almost made me want to skip the funeral altogether, but I'd go. This would be the last time anyone told me what to do, because I was going to learn to drive. Thinking of that made me feel a little better. I nodded at Randy.

“Good girl. I'll see you tomorrow at one.” He revved the Ram, backed up in an arc, then put it in first and drove off down the dirt road. Once he was out of sight, I put the zippered cash bag in the lockbox for my boss to pick up, locked the shack, and walked home.

I didn't know why we had to have a funeral. Who would come? Dad didn't have any friends. For the last two years he hadn't gone anywhere or done anything but sit in front of the TV.

Another, more terrifying thought struck me. What if ­people showed up? The funerals I'd seen on TV shows were always crowded and stuffy. The thought of being in a place with strangers surrounding me on all sides made my stomach flip. I didn't know if I could do it, although I'd fantasized about leading a normal life since I was old enough to realize I didn't have one.

On TV shows the bereaved always have to shake hands with visitors and even hug some of them. After everything my dad had taught me, how was I supposed to be in an unfamiliar place surrounded by strangers without wondering if they wanted to kill me or rape me? Women didn't bother me too much; when I was little, Dad had said in the event of an emergency to find a woman with small children and ask her for help. But of course, he said, there were plenty of women who'd helped their men kidnap girls like Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard and the girl who was in a box under some psycho ­couple's bed for seven years.

Back at home, I had to coax the dogs inside again, but it didn't take as long as it had the previous day. I switched on the TV and went upstairs to my bedroom. Mine was the master bedroom of the house since it had its own bathroom. Dad had given it to me so he wouldn't have to get up in the middle the night to let me out to use the toilet. I reached under my mattress and pulled out a spiral notebook I hadn't cracked open in quite a few years, but it had a list in it I wanted to read. I carried the notebook downstairs and sat at the kitchen table.

I paged to the list and read it out loud. Now that Dad was gone, I wasn't afraid he'd find out. I could say things out loud that I never dared to when he was alive. The dogs sat next to my chair and listened, cocking their heads every now and then.

“What I would do if I had a normal life,” I said. “One. Move away from Saw Pole. Two. Learn to drive. Three. Go to college. Four. Eat in restaurants. Five. Have friends. Six. Go to a movie in a theater.”

I pictured these things, savored them in my mind, and for the first time almost believed they could happen. The thrill of this thought shot me through with adrenaline, which made me want to run down the road past our house—­my house, now—­but I wasn't quite ready for that. I read on instead, anticipation and excitement making my voice sound higher.

The next item on my list made my face hot just seeing it, but I soldiered on. “Seven. Fall in love. Eight. Go to New York City.” Number eight also embarrassed me, because I knew Detective Deirdre Walsh and the 51st Precinct weren't real. But I wanted to go to the place where I'd spent much of my life on TV.

“Nine. Eat junk food.” I took a big breath and let it out. “Ten. Learn to be normal.”