Farewell Francis

“True! -nervous -very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why                                will you say that I am mad?” - Edgar Allen Poe

The plastic accordion curtain slid back, and he could see into the bathroom. Would it have killed them to install an actual door? Mobile home manufactures in the 1970s needed to get their shit together. Bathrooms need doors, real doors, end of story. When he’d moved into this heap, he’d swore he was going to salvage a door from the dump and install it. That had been 12 years ago. There were two florescent tubes alongside the mirror above the avocado sink. The light they cast was bluish, painting the room in what he had always thought of as a haunted hospital light. Laying on the carpet (gaudy green and yellow and brown carpet! In the bathroom! Another blunder by the seemingly malicious manufacturer) was a girl with red hair. She was laying on her side. There was a needle in her arm, below a leather belt that had come loose. Perfect. Fucking perfect.

He grabbed her shoulder and shook her. Hard.

“Hey! Hey wake up! Frances!”

She rolled around, limp. He was bothered by the way the needle swung around like a cock but remained firmly in her vein. He noticed the skin around her lips was bluish grey. He noticed the tips of her fingers were the same color, but darker. He let go of her shoulder and jumped back.

“FUCK!”

He slammed the accordion curtain shut, a deeply unsatisfying maneuver, and stormed into the living room. There was a huge, framed mirror that cover the entire back wall of the trailer. He caught his reflection in it. Thin man, dark hair, dirty Metallica t-shirt, sinewy arms, clenched fists, blank stare.

“I never should have let her in,” he said to the reflection.

She had left her bag, a big cloth hippie sack, on a chair by the door. Claude grabbed it and dumped it on the kitchen table. He kept looking out the little window above the sink expecting to see headlights flooding his driveway, but it was dark and quiet out there. It was late, after midnight. But still. He’d had shit luck his entire life, why would this be any different? His eyes scanned the dirt yard. Her little blue Camry sat next to his red Subaru. He needed to get her car out of his fucking driveway. Fast.

The contents of her purse were coated in some kind of beige powder that was slightly greasy to the touch. Makeup. Fucking women. He snatched up a set of car keys and stuffed them in his pocket. There was a big bulky blue wallet, with a bulging coin purse attached. He nearly choked when he found 800 dollars in cash inside. Then he found two more twenties hidden in a rip in the lining. Not worth what would need to happen next, but fuck, it was five times what he’d been hoping for. Added to the 80 she’d given him for the bags he’d actually make out alright here. He pocketed the cash and swept everything else back into the bag, which would be leaving. With her.

He looked towards the hall, the accordion door. Fuck. He’d been doing her a favor, he hardly knew her. She’d been hanging around various dope houses since her shithead boyfriend ended up in prison. Zeke. And she’d knocked on his door and flashed that big smile. Did anyone know she was here? Fuck. Were people waiting for her? All that cash. But she only bought 5 bags. But maybe…he felt his chest tighten. He needed a blast, just a little one, to get his head straight and prop him up for what he needed to do tonight. Just his miserable luck. He pulled his kit out.

He’d done more than he intended, but it was helping. He felt loose and disconnected, and that was good. He’d managed to go through her pockets. Nothing. No phone. Five empty bags of heroin sat on the sink. Jesus, she’d booted them all. Why would she…doesn’t matter. He plucked the needle from her arm and grabbed the belt, pocked with her little teeth marks and the empty bags, and her works, and shoved everything in her purse. No phone in the purse either. He grabbed a sheet from the spare room, something he’d used as a drop cloth, and wrapped her in it. He actually stopped and checked for a pulse then. Nothing. Her body was cool to the touch, and no longer loose limbed. He’d never touched a dead person before. It bothered him less than he’d imagined, but then again, he was very high. He felt like he was watching a movie. The man lifts the tiny runt (so light!) onto the sheet. The man holds his finger against her pale neck. The man stares into space as he wraps her up burrito style. The man rummages through the blue car in the dark driveway, cigarette smoke blasting his eyes from the lit knob in his gob. No phone. The man puts something wrapped in a sheet in the trunk of the blue car.

He swept the trailer. There was nothing of her in his home now. He had no neighbors to speak of and not a single car had gone by while he’d been loading her in the trunk. This was going so well! He felt calm and in control. He’d been panicking before. Stupid. That’s how people fuck up. But now his insides felt like stainless steel, cool, smooth. All he had to do was get rid of her. And get that car out of his driveway. She was never here. Who could say otherwise? Junkies disappear all the time. This was going to work.

He was sleepy and not in the mood to do this. It was a risky thing, driving her car, with her in the trunk, but there was no other way. He’d thought of a few different plans, and none of them were great, but he’d settled on Frenchman’s Trail. There was a little dirt parking lot at the head of the trail set back from the road. Reasonable place for a little junkie to pull off and get high. It was seven or eight miles from his house, and over the town line to Rome, but there was a snowmobile trail on the other side of the road that cut back towards the North Road. He’d be able to walk back, and it’d only be like two miles. Maybe a bit more. But whatever. He’d brought a backpack and a flashlight. He had thought about taking her further away, wanted, honestly, to get her and the car a hundred miles from his trailer, but it wasn’t logistical. He couldn’t hitch or call for a ride. He couldn’t get other people involved or be seen.

“I’m at home right now,” he mumbled, as thunder rumbled, and the headlights of the blue car swept across a barren field.

The turn off wasn’t marked and he nearly missed it. A narrow, rough little drive led to the lot. Empty, of course. It was even better than he remembered, completely hidden from the road. It really was a good place to get high. And it was off season. The car could sit here for days, even weeks. He parked and cut the lights as the first few drops of rain hit the windshield.

Sitting in the car as the sky opened up and the rain poured down, he went through her wallet. Her license disturbed him. Deeply. She was 17. She might still be in high school. She might live with her parents. They would notice pretty quick if she was missing. But could she live at home? He’d seen her at dope houses all over. And that boyfriend, Zeke, didn’t they have a place? Now he wasn’t sure. He thought she’d been, oh maybe 24. This complicated things. There was an Augusta address on the license. No idea. The car was now a good 40 miles from her house, if that’s where she actually lived. How soon would someone be looking for her? Impossible to know.

He needed to get moving, get this over with, get the fuck out of here. The rain was actually a good thing, despite its meaning a wet walk home. But he continued to sit, smoking, and looking at her license. Frances Myrtle MacFarland. An old fashioned name. That shock of frizzy red hair. Green eyes. She looked 12 and haunted in her picture. Why had she come to his place? She barely knew him. He looked around the car and found ten empty and rinsed dope bags. She had a pretty serious heroin problem for a 17 year old. But then again, he’d started young too. He remembered his brother showing him how to boot when he was what…15? The year he’d dropped out of school and gone to work for his uncle. A kid, hanging sheet rock 10 hours a day. A kid hanging out with his brother at dope houses and making runs to Mass. His brother in prison now, almost a decade. He caught his reflection in the rearview mirror. 

“You waiting for a state trooper to pull in? Get the fuck out of here.”

He put his smoked butts in his pocket and put all her shit in her bag along with the keys to the car. He popped the trunk, grabbed the purse, and went out into the rain. He was immediately soaked, and the water was ice cold, but it woke him up. He hauled her out of the trunk. She seemed…heavier. Awkward to carry. He stumbled over, with her sort of hung up on his shoulder, to a little picnic table by the trail head sign. It was already muddy. It was hard to keep his balance and a muscle in his lower back ached. Everything was soaked and heavy and he could hardly see. He wanted another blast and realized he’d left all his dope at home. Stupid. He banged his shin on the bench and dumped her onto the table. He unwrapped her and sat her on the ground, near the table, in the mud, with buckets of water pouring down. It was dark but her pale skin glowed. He dumped the contents of her purse around her, heard the syringe and the spoon clink, threw the bag down too.

“Please Lord, let a fucking coyote eat her.”

Back at the car he used the sopping wet sheet to wipe down the steering wheel, door, anything he’d touched. Would this work, or matter? No idea, but he did it anyway. He jammed the sheet into his backpack, turned on his flashlight and swept the scene. You couldn’t see her from here, the table was tucked in the woods. He bumped the door closed with his hip. Good as it was going to get. There were rivers of water and mud flowing down off the mountain into the lot. This rain was doing him all kinds of favors, washing away any tracks. He darted across the road and into the woods on the other side. He found the snowmobile trail a few hundred yards up the paved road, just as he’d remembered it. Not a single car had gone by. Not surprising given it was now 2 or 3 in the morning and this was a back road to a back road. He walked down the wide trail with ease and a spring in his step despite being miserable wet and shivering. This was working! Whenever and whatever was found back there, by whomever, it was going to be a mess. No ties to him. All he had to do was get home, take a hot shower, get high as fuck, and let the forgetting begin.

“Ok, it’s ok. You’re ok. It’s ok. Ok,” he moaned as he wrenched open his backdoor and leapt in, slamming the door and bolting the lock.

He peered out at his backyard. It was dawn. He crouched there, shivering uncontrollably, scanning the narrow strip of mud, surrounded on all sides by woods. Nothing. A perfectly still scene.

He stripped off his pack and shoes and darted to the front door. Bolted, just as he’d left it. The front yard looked completely normal. His car sat parked in his spot. There were no signs of any tire tracks. It was in fact still drizzling and his dooryard was a pond of mud. He went to the backdoor and checked the bolt again. Locked. He scanned the backyard again. Nothing. He was still shaking.

The walk home had been, simply, a nightmare. Hours. Hours. How long had he been out there? He darted to his phone, charging in the bedroom. No calls, no messages, and it was 4:55am. He laughed but it came out sounding like something else. He started to cough. A wet sound that tore at his chest. What had happened out there?

He took a hot shower. He was still trembling as he dried off though. The cold was in his bones, seeping out of his flesh from within. His heart was beating too hard. He paused, hand on the avocado sink, head down, nude, and listened. Was there somebody there? His bare feet stood on the carpet, right where she had lain. He poked his head out the accordion curtain. Silence. The space was entirely still. It had stopped raining, and golden morning light streamed in the windows. He checked the doors again and then dressed. He started a fire in his little Jotel stove, lighting the kindling with his zippo, hand trembling. He wanted to burn that sheet. Maybe his shoes. He felt a strange raspy moan escape him, put his hand to his chest in surprise.