Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(69)

My dad met me there, took over the scene like he always has to. I drove his car home, and he took mine to the carwash, fed quarters through the pressure-sprayer until all the evidence was gone, gone, gone.

All I could think about was Ben Rogers, down in the culvert with the trash.

I kept picturing him crawling into the open mouth of one of the washing machines. Using it like a cocoon, like a chrysalis.

I know from Mr. Simonson’s psych course that what’s really growing in the belly of that machine is my guilt, of course. I knew right away, I mean, the first time I thought it.

It doesn’t help. Especially at night.

But I never went back. That’s rule number one, pretty much: Do Not Return to the Scene of the Crime, Young Woman.

For all I knew, the cops had found Ben Rogers right away, that first night. They’d found him and were letting him decompose there now, shifts and shifts of them pulling overtime to sit in some close-by attic, their spotting scope set up behind the rose window up there. Waiting for me—no, waiting for whoever would be stupid enough to confess by showing back up.

Instead, I go find Kara for her parents, when they call. And they call a lot. They think she’s still out there looking for Ben.

I tell them everything will be okay, it’ll all be all right, I’m there for her.

It’s not completely a lie.

The first few times, I did follow her flashlight out into the trees. But then I watched from those trees before moving in.

It was the panties. Those guilty crotchless panties.

I’m pretty sure what Kara was actually burying and reburying—what she was literally still carrying around like psychic baggage, Mr. Simonson—was the memory of her strutting around that bedroom, playacting like she was Kim Rogers, making steamy eyes at her husband.

Doing all that while her son was . . . what? Not drowning, not electrifying himself with a light socket, not falling into the sharp corner of the bed frame with the delicate bones of his still-growing head.

Not anything, really.

She tried to talk to me about it once or twice, what could have happened. To get me spitballing with her. What the police and neighborhood and the whole town was somehow missing. Had some demon-monster oiled up through the bathtub drain, spirited Ben Rogers back down to hell with it? That, really and truly, was Kara’s best and most rational guess.

A demon-monster.

What it was, she explained to me out in the woods, crying, her shovel fallen over beside us, what it was was the world, calling in its marker. Ben Rogers wasn’t supposed to have happened, he was a cheat, one the church had slipped past the guard gate. And so the world was reeling that life back in, to keep things balanced.

Translation: Ben Rogers died for all of us. He was still the star of that live-action nativity from four years ago.

Translation of that? Kara was the hero of this story, for letting that happen. For enabling it. For taking on the guilt of it.

It’s what she wanted me to say.

Except—well.

She couldn’t see it, but that demon-monster she was so sure of, it already had her in its embrace. It was patting her back, its chin on her shoulder, its dead eyes looking out into the darkness.

The darkness stared back, just as empty.


Fast-forward past the awkward parts now. Move past Kara, staking out Tad and Kim Rogers’s house, waiting for Kim Rogers to step out. Don’t watch her pathetic attempt to stand in (lay in) for Kim Rogers, there on the porch, Tad Rogers all the way up to jeans and sandals now, in the grief-cycle. She was trying to trade herself. She was trying to say she was sorry. She was fumbling at the buttons of his jeans. It was inappropriate, but I could hardly call it an attempt at seduction.

I know because I had that house staked out as well.

When you see the part where Kara slashes at her wrists in the bathroom later that day, just keep moving. She doesn’t really mean it. She means something, definitely—she means that she hates that Tad Rogers had no choice but to call her parents, and then Preacher Dan. She hates that Kim Rogers knows what happened. She hates that she ever took a stupid babysitting certification course.

But mostly she’s still just saying sorry.

Has she finally started wearing those surely rotten panties by now? I honestly don’t know. In the Dark Ages, they had hairshirts, I understand. It was how you did penance. These are different Dark Ages, though. Maybe in these, you slither into your guilt both legs at once, lying on your back on your queen bed, and then you hide it under your hip-huggers.

Nobody would know, right?

I hope she is wearing them, really. Serves her right. She should have been watching Ben Rogers every single second, like that course had told us to. If she had, then none of this would have ever happened.

I wouldn’t keep finding myself in the garage, I mean, staring at our washing machine. Waiting for the lid to crack open.

More important, that stupid pigeon would be dead by now. Instead of whatever it is.

Don’t misunderstand—I’m not claiming to be able to tell one pigeon from another pigeon.

But I don’t have to, either.

This pigeon, it can tell me from all the other people on the street.

I know because, maybe nine weeks into it, maybe ten—you lose track—there I am sitting in my Buick, no headlights, no parking light, no dome light. What I’m doing is kind of idly watching Kara’s flashlight cut through the trees out there.