“That’s weird logic, Ben.” I laughed, uncomfortably. “That’s actually illogic.”
In math we’d been learning about “logic”—the deductive logic of theorems. There was another kind of logic—inductive. Yet you could not always trust either, for in life most rules didn’t seem to apply.
“Know what, Krista? I hate them all, I wish they’d die. Krullers.”
Krullers. Ben pronounced the name like an obscenity.
I ran away upstairs to my room. Often it was to my room—that was small, with a slanted ceiling and just a single dormer window Daddy had built overlooking an overgrown pasture beside the barn—that I ran, to hide.
I didn’t want to think that, if what Ben said was true about Aaron Kruller lying to protect his father, Ben’s judgment of the Krullers was more logical than my own.
There were girls in my class whom I might have called that evening, to ask what they’d heard, what was the news of a boy in the high school who’d been arrested that day and taken away by police—a boy whose name I didn’t know; but I didn’t dare, I couldn’t risk anyone guessing that I was in love with Aaron Kruller.
Nor could I risk my mother or my brother overhearing me on the phone, asking such questions.
Downstairs I could hear Ben telling my mother the thrilling news. A half-dozen times Ben must have told and retold all that he knew. His voice and my mother’s voice murmurous and rising together in a single tide of elation, spite. I threw myself onto my bed. I stuck my fingers in my ears. I didn’t want to hear them so united in hatred, maybe I envied them.
At least, they had that to share.
21
NEVER RETURNED TO 349 West Ferry Street except in memory, never saw Jacky DeLucca again in those years of my growing-up in Sparta and my growing-away from Sparta though frequently in moments of weakness—in moments of loneliness—I felt the woman’s warm fleshy arms folding me against her, the foam-rubber resilience of her big breasts, the sweet-stale fragrance of her unwashed body which I’d found repugnant at the time and yet in memory not at all repugnant but pleasurable—the shock of her lips against the top of my head. The gesture had seemed to me utterly spontaneous and unwilled as the sudden kiss of a dog, or a cat—pure instinct, one warm being for another. And there came the breathy childlike plea with its undercurrent of adult coercion Friends now aren’t we Krissie?
Promise you’ll come back to see me.
I had never gone back of course. And very likely, Jacky DeLucca had moved away from West Ferry Street, soon after.
To live, among other addresses perhaps, on a street called Towaga in gritty East Sparta.
My fascination with the run-down row house in which Zoe Kruller had died was a fascination too with a place—forbidden, never acknowledged within the family—to which my father had gone, by his own belated, reluctant admission. Yes he’d visited the murder victim there. Yes he’d had sexual relations with the murder victim there. Yes within hours of her death. Yes he had lied. Yes he insisted he was innocent, he was not lying now.
Abruptly then my fascination with this house ceased for as the weather turned more mild, and I was able to bicycle out to the Quarry Road, it became the Kruller house where Zoe had once lived, and where Aaron and his father Delray still lived, that drew me to it. Here, Aaron lives! He is alive and living and knows nothing of you.
How mysterious it is, to be in love. For you can be in love with one who knows nothing of you. Perhaps our greatest happinesses spring from such longings—being in love with one who is oblivious of you.
Shut my eyes now, years later and yet how vivid to me that long looping bicycle ride along the Huron Pike Road to the cobblestone overpass that carried railroad tracks high above my head—pushing my bike up a steep dirt path to the tracks—pedaling along the bumpy cinder-strewn shoulder of the tracks to the river a quarter-mile away—and there onto the footbridge above the river where in the wake of recent storm damage there was a newly posted warning PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE CLOSED FOR REPAIR CROSS AT YOUR OWN RISK. Below was the fast-rushing Black River which began high in the Adirondacks, a confluence of numberless small creeks and rivers, and would empty into vast Lake Ontario to the west, to which we’d taken some day trips when Daddy had been in a mood for such family trips to the wide sandy beach at (oddly named! Ben and I laughed at this) Mexico Bay, very near the tiny settlement of Texas. Though I knew these facts, I could not imagine how such a wide treacherous-seeming snaky-glittering river could begin anywhere, as I could not imagine how anything so vividly real to me as my own life could begin: for beginning implies a time and a point before which a thing or a being does not yet exist—and how is this possible?
Like my feeling for Aaron Kruller. I could not have said when precisely it began, it seemed to have been with me always.
Rationally I know, and surely I knew then: my feeling for Aaron had only to do with Zoe Kruller, and with my father. A mysterious conjunction of these persons. Yet how could that explain the depth of my feeling, and its obsessiveness?—gripping me tight as in the coils of a massive boa constrictor.
Cautiously I pedaled across the bridge. You were supposed to walk not ride bicycles across such pedestrian bridges but no adult was present to reprimand me. I tried not to glance down—tried not to be distracted by glimpses of the river below—fleetingly visible through cracks between the loosely-fitted planks as a sensation of terrible dizziness rose in me—until I was safely across—and clumsily descending another steep dirt path to a service road beside the Chautauqua & Buffalo railroad yard—past the graffiti-defaced train depot and then to Front Street, and to Chadd, and a mile or so to the two-lane state highway where enormous trucks bearing trailers careened by me in a haze of exhaust and heat and sometimes sounded their horns at me, their sharp terrible braying horns at a lone girl-bicyclist on this dangerous stretch of highway where vehicles routinely sped beyond the fifty-five-mile-per-hour limit into the seventies if not higher and now came the angry adult reprimand Get the hell out of here girl, this is no place for you.
Following the highway into an area of industrial sites, warehouses and small factories, Atlas Van Lines, Herkimer County Animal Control where Daddy had once taken a wounded stray dog we’d found on the Huron Pike Road, no hope for the dog Daddy said No we can’t take him in, that isn’t going to happen so don’t push it you kids. And there beyond Sparta Salvage was the blacktop Quarry Road where heavy dump trucks rattled through the days on their way to and from the gypsum quarry a mile or so beyond a neighborhood of small clapboard and asphalt-sided houses and tin-colored mobile homes decorated with American flags—there was Kruller’s Auto Repair & Cycle Shop
There were two garages, adjoining. In a sprawl of secondhand motorcycles and other vehicles for sale, in a wide mostly grassless front yard. And at the rear of the lot at the end of a long gravel driveway was the Kruller house, a renovated old-style clapboard farmhouse of the kind common to Herkimer County painted a pale peach color with lime-green shutters, you could see Zoe Kruller’s touch in these startling colors now fading. How strange it seemed to me that Zoe Kruller had lived in that house, the smiling freckle-faced woman from Honeystone’s Dairy who had once appeared—unless I’d imagined it—in the kitchen of our house and had spoken to me with a feverish sort of intensity calling me Krissie and smiling at me assuring me there was no need to tell my mother about the visit, she would tell my mother herself; how strange to think that the same woman was the girl-singer up on the stage at Chautauqua Park, for whom people had clapped so wildly; a woman who’d been a man’s wife, a boy’s mother, living out on Quarry Road in the sort of neighborhood my mother called poor white which was a different kind of poor from colored and Indian, maybe worse.
How strange, Zoe who’d been alive was now dead.
More than dead, murdered.
Zoe had been most alive at Chautauqua Park, summer nights singing with Black River Breakdown. Summer nights I’d been allowed to stay up past my usual bedtime of 9:00 P.M. There on the s
tage was Zoe Kruller looking so different from how she’d looked at the dairy, glamorous-sexy like a woman on TV singing “Are You Lonesome Tonight” in her low throaty voice—“Up the Ladder and Through the Roof”—“Footprints in the Snow”—“Little Bird of Heaven.” Circling her head like a quivering deranged halo were gnats and moths, Zoe did her best to ignore. She wore sparkly dresses with very short skirts unless the skirts were long, and slit at the sides to mid-thigh. Her legs shone in pale stockings or were netted in black lace stockings and her shoes were high-heeled unless—I don’t think that I was imagining this—Zoe once performed in her stocking feet, or barefoot. On a very hot Sparta summer night long ago.
Yes: Zoe had kicked off her shoes. Zoe had loosened her wild-streaked hair that had been caught back from her face in some sort of headband, shook her hair free now as the audience whistled and clapped.
You knew it was the end of a performance when the performer bowed. There was Zoe Kruller bowing—smiling her wide glistening hopeful smile—lifting a hand to shade her eyes squinting past the stage lights as a more experienced singer would not have done—thanking the audience for being “the very best audience, ever—I love you—”
The lights went down. With terrible abruptness, like a heavy curtain falling.
That woman.
Yes? What woman?
You know what woman.
Del Kruller’s wife? What?
Is there something between the two of you?
Something—what? Like what, Lucille?
I asked, is there something between the two of you.
Based on—what?
Based on you. And her.
About as much as there’s between you and Del.
I hardly know Delray Kruller! He doesn’t know me.
There you are, Lucille. We’re even.
Damn that’s a low thing to say. Damn you.
In the car, driving home. Daddy driving and Mommy in the passenger’s seat and Ben and me in the backseat drifting into sleep.
Thinking of such things, pedaling past the driveway to the Kruller house. It was a gauzy summer day, overcast sky and white-hot sunlight reflected everywhere. I was fourteen years old lanky-limbed and skinny and looking younger than my age glimpsed at a little distance. By this time Zoe Kruller had been dead—murdered—for three years and four months and her murderer had yet to be identified.
Kruller’s Auto Repair & Cycle Shop was a garage where every kind of vehicle was brought for repair: autos, pickups and small trucks, tractors, motorcycles. The garage resembled a box laid on its side and spilling contents: vehicles, tools and equipment, loud rock music, mechanics in grease-stiffened overalls. The men’s voices were loud. Their laughter was loud, grating. I took care to bicycle on the farther side of the road for I did not want that laughter directed at me, I did not want to attract the notice of anyone at the garage—workers, customers, Aaron Kruller who might be one of the younger mechanics glimpsed in the corner of my eye.
Often there were other bicyclists on Quarry Road but mostly these were teenaged boys. It was not common to see a girl out here, alone. In jeans and a pullover shirt I might have passed for a boy except for my pale-blond hair in a ponytail streaming behind me. If someone at the garage whistled at me, called after me Hey there girl! Hey baby! My heart kicked with alarm—unless it was with excitement—but I never glanced around for I knew that it wouldn’t have been Aaron Kruller who’d called after me—Aaron Kruller wasn’t one to call after girls—and for sure it would not have been his father Delray and whoever it was, one of the mechanics, or a customer, or just some guy hanging out at the garage where lots of guys seemed to hang out, he’d have ceased seeing me in more or less the same instant he’d singled me out for fleeting male attention and he wouldn’t have had a good enough look at my face to realize That girl! Eddy Diehl’s daughter.
22
DIDN’T SEE WHO IT was who’d hurt me. Never knew his name.
This would be my statement. My testimony. There was no way of speaking of what had been done to me that was not a way of acknowledging what I’d wanted done for otherwise why would I have gone with these individuals, why in the battered van that day after school instead of to the yearbook editorial meeting where our advisor Mrs. Finder would be waiting for me, and disappointed in me.
Hoping he’d be there, at the other place. At the depot.
It was where certain individuals hung out after school. Though not all of them went to school any longer. Older guys in their twenties who supplied the dope. Aaron Kruller was known to be among their friends. Druggies Ben would say sneering dopers junkies losers but there can be happiness in such risks. Want to party with us Krissie? Want to get high? You look like you need to get high sweetheart, c’mon I know the way.
And so I went with them. Maybe it was a mistake—maybe all of my life has been a mistake—how’d I have known, unless I took the risk?
Turned out, Aaron Kruller wasn’t there.
But then, Aaron Kruller was there.
…didn’t see who hurt me. Any of them. Didn’t see their faces, don’t know their names.
Where it started to go wrong, can’t remember. Or why. Maybe there’s no why. When it’s your fault. When you invited it. When you know beforehand this is wild, this is risky, this is reckless, these girls are not your friends. Why are you here but there’s no why.
Wet, and cold. Inside the depot, like a cellar. Coughing, and choking. Gagging. Whatever they’d given me—Krissie c’mon! You need to get high sweetheart—was coming back in hot coins of vomit like acid soiling the front of my sweater. Stoned out of her mind who the fuck is she? She’s just a kid Jesus she’s freaking out, crashes and O.D.’s who’s gonna dump her? Not me!
One of the girls caught at my arm digging in her nails. Whose name I didn’t know, or her face except it was a face of fierce concern, impatience. Maybe I’d been crying, her boyfriend was trying to comfort me. Hey Baby: wake up! Open your eyes Baby Girl you’re gonna be O.K.
This girl was tugging at my hair, to wake me. This girl made my head jerk like a puppet’s, the others laughed. We were crowded together. Out of our closeness a frantic heat was generated. Still, in the stone-walled depot it was cold, damp as the farther, unfinished section of our cellar beyond the furnace room. And the other girl—Bernadette. They were high, and they were laughing. Buzzing voices, how many I could not have said and afterward could not recall, overcome by fits of nausea, vomiting hot-acid clots of liquid like rancid milk and the girls who’d been my friends were disgusted and the girls were furious with me Puking on my boots God damn Krista you did that on purpose. The guys were laughing. Laughter like animals shrieking. Girls fighting girls are so funny. I wasn’t to know that Baby Girl was a gift they’d brought, for the guys.
In fact it was Baby Tits, Baby Cunt they called me. To my face Baby Girl.
How the fuck old is she, she looks like a kid. This could be bad.
She’s our age, for Christ’s sake! She’s in our class at school.
These girls I’d thought were my friends. Hot-skinned, eyes glittery as broken glass. One of them tore my sweater. One of them took hold of my head to turn it, to cause me to vomit—if I was still in danger of vomiting—into a corner of the room where there was a pile of refuse already reeking with the stink of urine. Why this was so funny, I didn’t know. Laughter ran like wildfire around the room like blue sparks leaping from one of my tormenters to the other and there was Duncan who’d just arrived demanding to be introduced to Baby Girl/Baby Tits/Baby Cunt who’s some kind of a trade for the dope he’s bringing. Puking, and on my knees, and laughing wanting to think But they like me, too—don’t they? Think I am pretty, and want me with them.
Passing joints, a “joint” burned in my clumsy fingers, one of my friends had to steady my hand. There came hot searing smoke into my mouth, into my lungs, it was a mistake to breathe, I could not help but breathe for otherwise I would have choked, yet now I was choking, there passed before my eyes a q
uick vision of my mother staring at me appalled and disgusted You are not my daughter any longer, you are his. Tears running down my face and I’m gagging but laughing and the girls who’d brought me here—Mira, Bernadette—my friends from school—are shoving me away squealing with laughter Don’t you puke again girl! Jesus unless this has already happened and is somehow happening again, this sour taste in my mouth, the front of my pretty pale yellow sweater embroidered with rosebuds now splotched with vomit, dark-yellow stains like rancid buttermilk, my clothes are smelly and damp and beneath the sweater is my little white cotton brassiere that’s been torn, too.
One of them must’ve reached up inside the sweater. Hard male fingers you might mistake for tickling, or a caress.
Why’s this?—started off they’d been nice to Baby Girl then abruptly there’s a change—like a cold wind picking up from the river—brackish-smelling, evil—can feel the meanness like heat coming off their skins—their ice pick eyes. Duncan Metz is an older guy—in his twenties—long out of Sparta High—thick-muscled neck and straggly hair and a spiky goatee gives him the look of a mean goat, a billy goat that’s got to be boss. Duncan Metz was a friend of Aaron Kruller’s. I had seen the two together on the street. Maybe, Duncan Metz worked at Kruller’s Auto Repair and riding past the garage I’d seen him, or he’d seen me, maybe Duncan wasn’t one of the mechanics but just a guy who hung out at the garage, took his car there to be serviced or purchased a car from Delray Kruller, he’d have wanted work done on, a Chevy Camaro maybe, or a Pontiac Firebird, Daddy would’ve known the names of this class of car not special enough for Eddy Diehl. Seeing Duncan, I thought Now Aaron will be here. Now my life will be changed, all this will become beautiful.
It isn’t true, Krista Diehl is a senior at Sparta High, in the same class with Mira Roche and Bernadette Hedwig. Krista is in tenth grade, a sophomore. Krista is fifteen years old and under-age and Duncan and Jake and R.J., older guys in their twenties, are pondering this fact. Duncan has been admiring Krista’s hair, pale-blond hair that isn’t bleached, asks is her pussy blond, twists her hair in his fist making her whimper with pain, pulls her head down, toward his groin, Duncan means to be funny (doesn’t he?), he’s showing off for his friends, Krista is whimpering like a scared little girl which is always funny. Mean billy-goat Duncan Metz yanking Krista’s head up, now forcing Krista up on her toes like a dancer, Baby Tits on her toes is even funnier and with part of her mind that isn’t doped and dazed she knows that this is a mistake, pleading with one whose pleasure is hurting you displaying you before others is a mistake but Krista can’t help herself begging No don’t please don’t hurt me please and one of the other guys tries to intervene, his objection is practical, common-sense Duncan leave off she’s too young, Baby Tits will get you arrested, man and Duncan says Baby Tits is stoned out of her mind, she’ll be damn lucky her brains ain’t fried when she comes to. Inside the depot the air is fouled by a fire somebody has started, smoldering-garbagey stink of old rotted newspapers, rotted lumber, rotted leaves burning giving off an acrid smoke so the fire has to be stamped out. Still it’s cold and damp inside the abandoned old train depot, you can see where the ticket sellers’ counter used to be, benches for passengers now overturned, wrecked, a smell of urine/excrement in here, for homeless men sometimes sleep here in cold weather on the wrecked benches, or beneath them wrapped in newspapers on the filthy floor. Passing joints, crouching together around the remains of the fire that gives off no heat only this smoldering-garbagey stink you want to think This is like family, sharing except the dope Duncan has brought is hash mixed with speed, so strong it’s like fire, the inside of my mouth is throbbing with heat, my head, my skull, my heart begins to race, there comes then a wave of sudden happiness, warmth, a crazy good feeling making me want to laugh as Daddy could make me laugh tickling his little girl out of a sulky mood, that quick, within seconds squealing with laughter or maybe it’s the start of being smothered, suffocated—they’ve brought me here to suffocate me—too much is being crammed into my skull, my brain is swelling inside my skull like a balloon close to exploding. Girl you must’ve wanted this, why else are you here. God damn stupid Baby Cunt why else you here.