Real Bad Things
Kelly J. Ford
For Sarah, who would bury the bodies.
And for Jesse, who would not (but who did ruin his favorite metal Hulk lunch box over the head of my kindergarten bully).
Prologue
Away from the bridge, the river smells of the cottonwoods that grow along the banks. Cattails brush your calves and ankles. A lone whippoorwill calls out. The distant water sounds of white noise, a lullaby for sleep.
Closer to the dam, the song turns.
Closer. Tires thump when they hit different sections of the bridge. The water churns. Closer, closer. The concrete and steel structure sucks the water into its mouth, makes it scream.
Leaves the words, the world that came before, behind.
Oar plunges into the water. Your teeth chatter. Your arms ache. Wind hits the skin. The night warm, the water cold. You navigate the boat past the faded sign warning of danger. Cut across the half-sunken string of red buoys that span from one side of the river to the other like holiday lights.
The current tickles the bottom of the boat, eases it toward the locks. The boat lurches forward. The oar, gone. The roar, loud. Louder.
Jump.
Jump.
Leave the boat behind. Before it’s too late. Before the turbulent water catches and curls its fingers into the boat, onto your limbs. Yanks you with him, sucks you to the bottom, under the dam gates. Legs and arms kick. Water wants inside your lungs. Terrorizes and tatters your light summer shirt.
Then.
Relief, at the top. Light lets you know it’s there. Your fingers scrape the surface. Your heart fills with hope. Your lungs beg for air. But the light tells a lie. The water pulls you down. Covers your nose. Whispers to sleep as it drowns you with him in the deep, deep, deep.
One
JANE
It wasn’t wise or polite to wish ill of once-loved ones, but there Jane Mooney sat, entertaining violent scenarios in her mind and thinking that oft-thought phrase: I wish y’all were dead too.
At first, the thought had horrified her. But thoughts weren’t actions. They were only words. If he were dead, Jane wouldn’t be on a plane. And she wouldn’t be waiting for Jane in the Maud Regional Airport with words like justice and I told you so spitting out of her mouth like knives.
Those people probably wished Jane dead too.
The single runway lights flickered blue and white. In Boston, there were lights everywhere, except for the edge of land that broke into the ocean. Jane liked living on the edge of the continent. She liked knowing that at any moment she could hop a plane, head east over the Atlantic, and disappear. In Maud, there were scattered lights, like pebbles thrown onto a riverbank. The littlest plane, the littlest airport, the littlest she’d felt in her life, wrapped up in this one place.
When the pilot asked the flight attendants to prepare for landing, she squeezed her eyes and braced for impact. The calm of the night flight gone, along with the soothing baritone of Luke Bryan on the Hot Country playlist she’d put on repeat because nothing really bad happened in a country song. Just tears and beers. Easy enough to switch the pronouns, and she did. He rhymed with she, and them worked just as well as him. Those songs also gave her an education on a standard-issue southern upbringing. Homemade rolls prepared with bacon grease, rope swings launching people into swimming holes, tailgate drinks and dalliances—little details she peppered into conversation with fellow southerners when she felt homesick for a life she’d been denied.
Bits of rain streaked the window. She wound her headphone wires and tucked them into their carrying case. She’d need to be fully present and on guard given who awaited her. As she neared the exit, heat crept inside and nipped at her bare ankles. One step back onto Arkansas soil and she’d be back in this life.
She descended the wobbly plane stairs onto the tarmac. Below the smell of stale airplane coffee and fuel and concrete: rain, grass, wildflowers, and freshness. Country living had its appeal if you could afford the land and no one minded that you were different. Almost instantly, the humidity stole her breath and energy. As soon as she left the tarmac, she peeled off her hoodie and shoved it into her backpack.
She’d seen bodegas bigger than the boarding area. Gate agents yawned. The gestures of talking heads from muted ceiling-mounted TVs screamed. A swarm of belt-buckled and decked-out-in-Razorback-red passengers waited for their long-delayed flight on the plane she’d departed. Panic bloomed in her bloodstream, as it had when she’d received those texts from Diane a few days prior, a hot blur of a barely remembered exchange. As always, her mind wandered back to the blood. The body. The headlines. The nickname.
Jane hoped it had been forgotten by now.
Guess who.
They found him.
I TOLD YOU THEY WOULD.
Time to come home.
Time to pay for what YOU DONE.
Let me know when you’re here.
What’s your flight number?
What time you getting in?
And then the last one: And don’t think about running!
A normal person would get back on that plane. Disembark in Dallas or take off to a new destination. Maybe Idaho, Montana, somewhere desolate and boring. Change her hair. Change her name. Even if she had it in her to run away once more, the math would show it wasn’t an option. The highest balance in her accounts belonged to credit cards, not savings or checking. Over the past month she’d lost her job and her girlfriend, which also meant she’d lost her home. Bad things came in threes. She hoped the lost home would count as the third strike in the equation and that her new home wouldn’t be a cell in McPherson Unit. But then again, that was why she had returned to Arkansas.