The Dispatcher Read online

  But then she saw it on the floor. It lay half-buried in the thick carpet. She hopped from her bed and picked it up. She brushed off the dirt specks it had collected and held it up in the morning sunlight shining through her bedroom’s open window and looked at it, amazed at how big it was, at how much of it had been buried in her face. It was kind of gross and kind of neat at the same time. She tongued the gap between her teeth. There was a strange flap of skin there that she could flip back and forth. It felt weird. She ran to the mirror on her dresser and looked at herself and smiled. Then she ran into Mommy and Daddy’s room to show them.

  ‘Look it,’ she shouted as she shot into the room like a human bullet, door swinging open as she pushed it aside and banging against the wall. The curtains were drawn, daylight held temporarily and ineffectively at bay, and there was a strange grown-up smell in the room. It made the air feel heavy and close, like being in a zipped-up sleeping bag.

  Daddy groaned and sat up. He cleared his throat. It was a funny sound. Like a monster in a Saturday morning cartoon. He rubbed his red eyes and wiped his mouth and twisted his neck left and right, sending out little hollow-sounding pops, and looked in her direction. But for a moment his face was blank.

  ‘Look it,’ she said again and held up the tooth for him to examine.

  ‘Wow,’ Daddy said after a moment. He coughed into his hand and yawned. ‘Is that a grown-up tooth? It’s huge. Have you been out stealing teeth? You know the tooth fairy doesn’t buy stolen teeth, Mags. It’s a felony.’

  ‘It’s not stolen. Look.’ She gripped her tooth in her right palm, folding three fingers over the top of it, and with index fingers stretched her mouth open wide so Daddy could see where the tooth used to be.

  ‘My God,’ Daddy said, ‘you could park a car in there.’

  ‘Could you two chatterboxes take it to the living room?’ Barely a mumble. ‘Mommy needs her beauty sleep.’

  ‘Sounds like someone’s got a case of the crankies,’ Daddy said, then winked at Maggie and got to his feet. A pair of pants lay in a pile on the floor. He picked them up and slipped into them, hiding his red boxers.

  ‘Come on, Mags,’ Daddy said. ‘Let’s get some breakfast.’ He looked over his shoulder at Mommy with a smirk in the corner of his mouth and said, ‘Cereal. With lots of sugar.’

  They headed to the kitchen. Maggie climbed onto one of the barstools lined up before the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room. She spun around left, catching herself on the edge of the counter, and then spun herself around right, back and forth, back and forth. She liked to go round and round in one direction, she liked the dizziness it brought, it was fun, but once she accidentally unscrewed the stool all the way and the seat fell to the floor and she sprained her wrist catching herself, so she didn’t do that anymore. While she played on the stool Daddy went digging through the cupboards.

  Maggie caught herself on the counter one last time and said, ‘What does the tooth fairy need teeth for, anyway? It’s kind of a weird thing to collect.’

  ‘He turns them into stars.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Really?’

  Daddy nodded, then put two bowls on the counter and poured Froot Loops into them. He put away the box and got out a half gallon of milk and poured that over the cereal. He pushed a bowl across the counter to Maggie.

  ‘Eat up.’

  ‘What about a spoon, silly?’

  Daddy picked at his bellybutton and flicked a wad of gray at her.

  ‘What about some lint?’

  Maggie dodged it, dipping her head to the left.

  ‘Gross. Don’t. I don’t want your smelly lint.’

  ‘It’s not smelly.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You almost got it in my cereal.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Get me a spoon before it gets soggy.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Daddy grabbed two spoons from the silverware drawer and handed her one. Then he dipped his into his bowl and shoveled a mouthful of pink and green and orange into his face. He scratched at his blond stubble. Scooped another bite into his mouth and milk dripped down his chin and he wiped at it with his hand.

  ‘What do you want to do today?’

  ‘Petting zoo!’

  ‘What if they mistake you for one of the goats and fence you in?’

  Maggie rolled her eyes. ‘They won’t.’

  ‘How do you know? You’re stubborn as a goat.’

  ‘I don’t even know what that means.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait till Jeffrey wakes up and weighs in?’

  ‘He loves the petting zoo.’

  ‘He’s never been.’

  ‘Then we should definitely go. He’s only here another two days and he needs to go before he leaves town.’

  ‘You have a point.’

  ‘See?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay?’

  Daddy nodded.

  ‘Okay what?’

  ‘Okay okay.’

  ‘Okay petting zoo?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really really.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise. Now eat your cereal before it gets soggy.’

  ‘You’re the best daddy ev-’

  ‘Wake up.’

  A familiar voice gurgling up from swampy depths. The stench of onion on a wave of breath. The sound of swallowing.

  Something small shatters in a sharp pop. A moment later the stink of ammonia fills her nostrils. Her eyes flutter open. Warm water runs down her cheeks.

  Everything is dark and without form. A shadow, like a vaguely human-shaped hole scissored out of reality, before her. Behind it, bright white light making it impossible for her to see anything more than shadow. She closes her eyes and opens them again. Her pupils shrink, adjusting to the room. The shadow grows features, taking on detail and color and a third dimension. It is a man. The man has a name and she knows what it is. Henry. She blinks again and sees him clearly for the first time since waking. He simply stands before her with his arms at his sides, fists opening and closing.

  Then he reaches into his shirt pocket, pulls out a roll of something, small white disks, and thumbs one into his mouth. He chews it, swallows.

  There’s an intense pain in her wrists. She can feel blood warm and thick rolling down her arms. She looks up and sees her wrists tied together with coarse yellow rope. The rope is slung over a large metal hook which has been screwed into a wooden ceiling beam. Her hands above the rope are purple and numb, bloated fingers curled slightly, fingertips touching. She has been here before: the punishment hook. You’ve been very bad, Sarah. Very bad indeed. Looking at her fingers she thinks of a rhyme she learned in Sunday school. Here is the church and here is the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.

  Her feet dangle far above the cracked gray surface of the concrete floor.

  Henry stands and stares. Fists opening and closing, opening and closing. He tongues at a molar. His breathing sounds funny. It gets heavier and thicker and faster.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry.’

  His breathing stops. There is silence.

  Then: ‘But you’re really not, are you?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘What are you sorry for?’

  One two three four five six seven eight.

  She looks around for Borden, just to know that she isn’t alone down here. Just to know that she isn’t alone with Henry. Maybe he’s standing in the shadows somewhere. She knows he cannot save her from whatever punishment Henry will be delivering, but seeing him would be a comfort still. She does not see him.

  A hand across her face so hard it makes her eyes water and a bruise above her ear begins to throb. She had forgotten about it, that place where Henry punched her earlier, but now it is throbbing wi
th the beat of her heart.

  ‘I said what are you sorry for?’

  She looks down at her feet once more. They are filthy, black with dirt, and if she ignores the pain she can pretend she is simply floating above the floor. A crack in the concrete moves left and right beneath her as she swings by her wrists. Just pretend you’re floating: above the ground without a care in the world.

  He reaches toward her. She instinctively recoils. He slaps at her cheek, a quick whip-crack of his fingertips, then grabs her chin and tilts her head up so that she is looking him in the eyes. An uncaring cruelty floats in them and nothing more: pools of bad water. She hates them.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re sorry for?’

  ‘I’m. .’ she says, and licks her lips. They are dry and cracked. ‘I’m sorry for running.’

  ‘You’re sorry for getting caught.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, you wanted to get caught?’

  She turns her head and looks away. She can feel fresh tears welling in her eyes. She tries to blink them away. She doesn’t want to cry in front of him. She doesn’t want to be weak in front of him. He is a cruel man and weakness makes him angrier, more likely to attack.

  ‘You didn’t want to get caught.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That is why you’re sorry.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well I do.’

  With the last word he puts a fist into her stomach, punching all the air out of her. It leaves her in a single rush. If she weren’t strung up by the wrists she would curl into a fetal ball. Instead she swings and gasps for air like a fish on the end of a line.

  Henry stands and watches her swing. Fists opening and closing.

  ‘You’ve made me very angry, Sarah.’

  He has always called her Sarah. Both he and Beatrice. Another way of torturing her. Another way of confusing her. Of making her confused about who and what she is.

  She is just getting her breath back when Henry grabs her by the hips and stills her swinging. He looks at her in silence.

  Then: ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’

  She breathes in and out, chest heaving. Her stomach is a tight, cramped knot.

  ‘My daddy’s coming,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I called my daddy and told him everything. You better just let me go. If you don’t he’s going to, he’s going to get you and he’s going to-’

  ‘Lies!’ Violence like a large wave crashing upon a beach. She flinches away but does not break eye contact. ‘You’re lying,’ he says. ‘Tell me you’re lying.’

  She shakes her head. ‘He’s going to get you,’ she says.

  ‘Henry?’ Beatrice’s voice stumbling down the stairs.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re gonna be late for work.’

  He looks at his watch and curses under his breath. ‘I’ll be right up,’ he says.

  He grabs Maggie by the waist and lifts her off the hook and sets her down on the cold concrete floor. Then he unties her wrists and makes four loose loops of the bloody rope.

  She looks down at her wrists and sees the shape of the rope imbedded in her skin. She pushes herself backwards until she is up against the wall. She looks up at him, awaiting some final act of violence. It does not come.

  He nods to the rusty sink in the corner and says, ‘Wash up before Bee brings you supper.’ Then trudges halfway up the stairs before turning around again. ‘You’ve broken Bee’s heart with your behavior. All she wants is a daughter. She loves you, you know. Even though you’re a failure as a daughter, she loves you.’ Then he heads the rest of the way up the stairs, turns off the overhead light, and closes the door. A moment later, the sound of a deadbolt sliding into place.

  The only light left in the basement is the laundry-water gray of late afternoon coming in through the basement’s sole window.

  Her hands begin to throb with sharp pain as the circulation returns to them. She cries silently, trying to bend her fingers. It hurts too much, and she knows from experience that it will take several minutes for the pain to recede. And she knows, too, that the tide of pain hasn’t yet even fully come in.

  But she knows something else as well: she almost got away.

  After years in captivity she managed to get out. Hope which she’d long thought dead throbs hot in her chest. Even now, back here in the Nightmare World, there is a new sense of possibility. The world on the other side of the window is not unreachable. She has walked upon its ground. She has run through its woods. She has heard her daddy speak into her ear.

  Getting out today was a fluke, she knows that, but if she plans it she can get out again. And this time she will not be brought back.

  Henry walks to the fridge and pulls it open. On the top shelf, a brown-bag meal Bee has packed for him. He grabs it and looks inside. A Tupperware bowl with a chunk of corned beef in it and a soup of cabbage and water. Every day he gets the leftovers from the day before. He’s already looking forward to tomorrow’s meatloaf sandwich. In addition to the corned beef there are two pre-packaged chocolate cupcakes. He folds the bag, grabs the five beers left in a six pack he broke into at lunch, and lets it dangle from a finger by its one empty plastic ring.

  He walks out the front door and into the late afternoon daylight. Long shadows stretch out on the ground. He walks down the steps and across the gravel driveway and out to his truck, sliding onto the seat, tossing his lunch next to him, and popping one of his beers from its ring. He opens it and it foams up and spills down the side of the can before he can get the can to his mouth and suck at it. It drips down his chin and the front of his shirt and into his lap. He takes two good swallows before looking down at his Levis.

  ‘Goddamn it.’

  Looks like he sat here and pissed hisself.

  Then another swallow before resting the can between his legs. It’s a hot day and the cold feels good. The heat also means the beer he spilled will be dry by the time he arrives at work. Good thing: one of the office administrators has already complained once about him smelling of alcohol. But he supposes right now that is the least of his worries.

  He feels sick about what Sarah said in the basement. That she called her daddy. That she told him everything. If she was telling the truth he will end up in prison. Not jail, where, in his youth, he spent more than one drunken night, but prison, where bad men go.

  He starts the truck, puts it into gear, and gasses his way up the driveway to the street.

  The first Sarah was born thirteen years ago in Mencken Regional Medical Center. They had not planned on having children. Beatrice was forty-four, and in the twenty-eight years she and Henry had been together they had never used contraceptives, so Henry didn’t even think they could have children if they wanted any. But Beatrice got pregnant and when Henry saw how it affected her he was glad. She was happier than he had ever seen her before. Henry had never heard someone sing so much in his life.

  When the baby came they named her Sarah. Sarah Jasmine Dean. Weight: seven pounds three ounces. She had a cute oval face and thin blond hair that wisped up from her head in a silken hook. She smiled constantly with her mouth open and her green eyes shining. She kicked her feet and laughed and laughed and laughed.

  But then she stopped laughing.

  Beatrice put Sarah into the bathtub and left the room to get toys for her-a plastic duck, a ball-and when she came back Sarah was under water. Beatrice told Henry that she was only gone a second or two, but he knew it wasn’t true. She had gotten distracted looking for toys and lost track of time.

  After the funeral, after they lowered that tiny coffin into the ground at Hillside Cemetery, Beatrice did nothing but sit on the couch and cry. Henry wanted to fix it, to make her happy again, but didn’t know how. Sarah was gone and she was never coming back.

  But then he got an idea.

  He wasn’t sure how Beatrice would react, so he held off
for a long time, hoping she would manage to pull herself out of the hole in which she was wallowing. She had stood by him for twenty-eight years, through drunken arrests and holes punched in walls, through fist fights with her brother, through slaps and punches that were the cause of the fist fights with her brother, but he didn’t know if she would stand by him if he went through with this, and if he went through with it it would be for her.

  Beatrice only got worse. She stopped bathing. Sometimes she would urinate or defecate without getting up from the couch. She did nothing but watch TV and eat and cry. The dishes piled up in the sink and on the counter. The house started to smell bad. He took off her clothes as she sat passively, neither assisting him nor trying to stop him, and wiped her down with washcloths, but it didn’t help much, and soon she began to develop sores-small round scabrous holes in her flesh like cigarette burns. Some of them got infected. But still she would not move.

  It was horrible. He knew he had to act.

  So he spent several days driving around, looking for potential Sarahs. He sat in front of a couple daycare centers in Mencken, but all the kids there were too old to be proper replacements. He tried the Mencken Regional Medical Center, but couldn’t manage to get past the front desk. Finally he got lucky at an Albertsons. He wasn’t even looking for a Sarah at the time. He was there simply to get groceries for the week. But when he saw his opportunity, a baby sitting unsupervised in a shopping cart while her mother fought with groceries in the back of a station wagon, he took it. He walked by and scooped the baby up, walked around a gray Nissan, and made his way back to his truck. He walked briskly but did not run. Running, he knew, would give him away. He glanced down at the baby as he walked. She had an oval face and blue eyes, not green, and a pink ribbon in her hair. Her eyes weren’t the right color, but they were close. He slid the baby into the seat and buckled her in and was sticking the key into the ignition when the woman started to scream. He looked up at her through his bug-spattered windshield.