Leah has only been missing a week, and we have already memorized her height and weight: 4’11”, 90-100 pounds, the size of some of our middle schoolers. So we search increasingly small places--the mop buckets in her apartment building, the green metal trash cans that dot downtown. We peer into sewer grates, expect to find her looking up at us from the bottom of the drain.
Those of us that don’t participate in the official searches still look in our own way. We take walks to isolated places: the just-mowed pale yellow corn fields, the skinny trees of parks or along the dark edges of our neighborhoods. We never say out loud “This is where I would hide a body.”
#
Families lean over dinners, watching the news. Heads shake. “What a shame.”
By dessert it becomes “She probably just wandered somewhere she shouldn’t have been, like that electrocuted Notre Dame student.”
“Or maybe the guys she was with that night.”
“Or maybe that white truck.”
“Or she hitchhiked somewhere.”
“Or.”
#
I climb the blackgreen slippery rocks of the waterfall, stand above the trails. She wouldn’t be here.
#
I
must have given her one special k too many crushed up and snorted
through the same benjamin as all of the coke and the other pills and
now her head leaned back and forth and back and forth too fast like
what youd think a baby would do if you didnt hold it but shes 20 man
thats not right and she has been throwing up and where did that bruise
come from and now theres blood out her nose fuck we had done lines
together before fuck
#
There
is one possibility rarely discussed, my favorite. Leah had become tired
of this life that felt chosen for her. The expectations of successful
families are always the harshest. In the last security footage of her
walking out of the apartment building to go the bar, she knows how the
night will end. I can see it in her smile. She’ll send off her college
career with a bender at her favorite bar, leave, hit the road. She is
well liked, she is pretty, she is part of the campus community. She
knows she can go far on the kindness of friends, count on them to stay
tightlipped about things.
Where will she go?
Somewhere else. She looks like the type to have a plan. Maybe Europe, maybe somewhere in the Caribbean, work on a cruise ship, one of those horizontal skyscrapers.
This is what I think of when snippets of that night come back.
#
The
family games of “or” become increasingly grim. The theories spill over
into polite conversation. All it takes is the sight of one of the
thousands of fliers--we become private detectives, lawyers,
psychologists, doctors.
The games get especially dark when the last men to see her (also students, also young) all lawyer up and stop talking. Their silence is our opportunity to speak.
“They could’ve just shoved her in a suitcase, dumped her anywhere.”
“How hard would it be to put her in a big duffel bag?”
#
I
kick up a whiff of decay as I trudge away from the waterfall and
towards the sinkholes, looking for clearings ahead. I find holes
punched in the forest floor. Footprints. I follow the imprints
back into the trees, around a thicket of thorns.
#
getting
her into the duffel bag wasnt bad i knew it wouldnt be hard and shes so
small so so small dude help me out here you always know where the
cameras are is there someones car we can take dude im prelaw we are
fucked either way she is gone and full of our drugs dead is dead we
have got to do this or our lives might as well be over and it is prison
either way lets at least try right
#
I
round the thorns well off of the trail, recognize the place. Polyester
sleeping bags litter the ground, grow fungus the color of beer puke. I
find smashed Red Grape Mad Dog 20/20 bottles, plastic bags, a size 14
men’s dress shoe, and a lumpy duffel bag the size of missing college
student. A roaring cougar, my high school mascot, glares at me from the
bag. My initials are on the shoulder strap.
#
As
time goes on the “or” game gradually weeds out any of the idea of her
being alive. Details become more concrete and vivid. Families at dinner
talk about her probable rape and dismemberment with their children. The
kids listen, then ask questions.
“How could you saw an arm off without making a mess?”
#
#
#
After
months of official searches, they are called off. No credible sightings
have been called in, no evidence uncovered. Speculation grows wilder.
We keep going on our walks, discover new routes for evening strolls.
#
Another
girl is found in a cornfield. The crime scene photos are broadcast on
the nightly news, as we sit down to eat. The photos look like the
Pollock in the university art museum. The pale gold of the corn is
washed out to a white canvas, the blood nearly black. The station cut
the same central photo up into several as to remain tasteful. The
tableaus show up as the newscasters speak tensely. Hand with speck of
blood, other drippings weigh down surrounding husks. A fly away clump
of hair, fused by a gout of blood.
She too is a college student. She went missing after going to the same bars.
We automatically assume the same person who did this to Leah is her killer.
Her name is eclipsed by Leah’s. She is another installment in the saga. People transpose Leah’s blonde hair onto this girl, her coke dusted nose, her age, her size.
#
not
a cornfield but what about the one park with all the water in it what
is it called cascades that could be good i got lost chasing my golf
ball from the course there for two hours once no cell reception so it
has to be remote shes not making calls but drop her there and it seems
too close but too far and the homeless sleep there and they dont want
blame they just want left alone easy enough no one hangs out there
right now other than dealers and hobos they wont say shit
#
We
don’t question why the murderer of Leah, who hid her body so carefully
that she hasn’t been found in nearly 4 years, would leave his next kill
somewhere so obvious. Why would he be so careless as to not notice he
left his cellphone at the scene, flecked with her blood.
#
I
look around the woods for someone to help me open the bag. I call out,
and hear nothing. The camp must be abandoned. I am here alone. I
haven’t been able to find my duffel bag at home in months. I don’t want
it to be mine. But.
#
taking
her up the waterfall was some hard shit but shes tiny and theres a few
of us lets just get her up take her so far out people dont think its
possible to get her here well take her well take her over past the
thorns yeah well get stuck but dont worry about that its nothing
compared to murder just take her over there who gives a fuck about the
bag just leave it
#
I
reach for the zipper, but don’t pull. The bag is too big to be her. I
could be the guy who finds her, carrying her out of the woods in my
arms despite the rot, cradling her carefully, like a
baby.
#
She
stands on the bow of a cruise ship. She is no longer Leah, she is
Sarah, or Carly, or Rachel. Nothing that will stand out, but is
familiar enough to her. The cruise line is a budget line that doesn’t
ask too many questions of the employees, so she doesn’t have to provide
any real ID. If she doesn’t leave the ship she won’t have a problem.
She’s fine with just looking at the white sands of the Caribbean
islands for now, and she can go to Florida beaches anytime.
What she loves most is the land receding behind her, as if she can’t get any further from it all. First the beaches turn into a line of white, leaving the pink and white stucco boxes of the hotels. Then they are harder and harder to see, and they are gone. She worries they will be lost, never to be found, but what she cares about is that she is somewhere that isn’t back in the woods.
M. B. Thomas