Citrus County (20 page)

The light was thickening. Toby knew Kaley hadn’t found her way to the road. She hadn’t gotten close enough to hear the cars whizzing past on 19. She was still in these woods. Toby was nowhere near stopping. He weaved around thickets and ducked low branches, his mask already sopping with sweat. Colors were showing now, the green leaves and white bay flowers and red azaleas. The kidnapping was, for the first time, just between Toby and Kaley. It had nothing to do with Toby’s evil destiny, nothing to do with Shelby or her father, nothing to do with Uncle Neal, Toby’s mother. It was just a crime, a violation of certain laws. The authorities couldn’t punish Toby, but there were other punishments.

Toby was slowing. He’d thought he could run forever but he couldn’t. His next lap would take him almost onto Uncle Neal’s property, almost out to the swamp that extended back and blended into the springs. Toby thought he could hear the cars on 19, all rushing to get someplace important. He slowed to a walk. He had no bearing on the speed of the minutes. The minutes were not aware of his situation. He recognized every scent on the morning air, each of them full and slow. He pressed his palm against the rough bark of an oak tree as he stepped past it.

When he saw Kaley’s stubbly orange hair reflecting the first honest morning rays, it took him a moment to believe it. He saw her skin and her scuffed white shoes. She was standing still. She was standing. She didn’t see Toby yet. He watched her. She kept looking this way and that, deciding which way to go, her head full of her own thoughts. She couldn’t move. She seemed not to want to. The cars could be heard, faintly, and their noise came from every direction.

Toby walked up and Kaley didn’t run. Her face lost its alertness. She wasn’t scared or defiant. Toby didn’t know what to do. He felt he had no right to drag her, to pick her up or manhandle her. He felt unwilling. He felt like pointing Kaley in the direction of the road and nudging her into motion. He wanted someone to step in now, someone who knew what he was doing.

Toby made a noise and Kaley moved toward him. She wasn’t serene or panicked. She may have felt just like Toby. He knew to begin walking and she walked next to him and he led her back to the bunker. They were far away from it, maybe half a mile. Toby felt like a tyrant. It wasn’t merely a violation of laws.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. It was the first time he’d ever spoken to her.

She didn’t look up. She kept dragging her feet through swaths of weeds, knocking the frail flowers onto the floor of the woods.

At school, Toby was feverish. He walked to class after class and then he walked to the lunchroom. The screeching of the other students, the reek of the county pizzas under the heat lamps, the fluorescent light glaring off the linoleum. He sidled back out against a current of bodies and found a quiet hallway. He walked as slowly as he could, perusing the tacked signs. Most of the classrooms were empty. Toby strolled down near the band room and back.

He went up the eighth-grade liberal arts wing, ducking under an ornate banner. He approached the teachers’ lounge and could hear them inside—Mrs. Conner and the lady who taught Spanish. He hugged the opposite wall so he wouldn’t be seen out the little window. Here was Mr. Hibma’s door, open a crack. The lights were off but Toby heard a noise, a crunching sound. He nudged the door open and stepped inside, feeling like he was trespassing but also like he’d found an oasis. He couldn’t remember being here just an hour before, sitting in this room for class. He recognized the noise now, a pencil being sharpened. He saw Mr. Hibma’s desk. Mr. Hibma slouched in his chair, his back to Toby, turning the crank on the sharpener, which was bolted onto a big steel cabinet. The microwave beeped, startling Toby, and he looked over and saw a burrito in it. It smelled as bad as the county pizzas.

“Mr. Hibma,” Toby said, not wanting to be loud but wanting to be heard.

Mr. Hibma’s head moved slightly and his cranking let up. He didn’t answer Toby, though. He began cranking faster, before stopping and sighing and holding the pencil in the air. The pencil was a nub, just the eraser and a point. Mr. Hibma dropped it in the trash.

“I’m supposed to be in lunch,” Toby offered.

Mr. Hibma looked at the clock without curiosity. “What can I do for you, Toby?”

Toby had never seen Mr. Hibma humorless. He was like a dying plant.

“I need to talk to you,” Toby said.

Toby had departed the lunchroom and had made his way to the liberal arts wing, had come into Mr. Hibma’s classroom and was now standing here staring at his geography teacher. His stomach was a stone. Mr. Hibma was the only adult who could help or hurt him. Toby cleared his throat.

“I’m not really the problem guy,” Mr. Hibma said.

“You are for me,” said Toby.

“I wanted to be the problem guy, but I can’t. At this point, I’m getting by hour by hour, class by class.”

“That’s how I get by,” Toby told him.

Mr. Hibma splayed his fingers on the desk. “You’ve still got a chance, but it’s too late for me.”

“I came here to say something,” Toby said. “Not to listen.”

“Do you think you’re my favorite or something? I gave you all those detentions because that’s what teachers do and I was trying to be a teacher. I don’t have a favorite. If you want to be somebody’s favorite, start kissing ass. Definitely
don’t
bother people during lunch.”

Toby used the sound of Mr. Hibma’s voice to brace himself. “You have to fix something for me,” he said. “I don’t want detention. I want to be in
real
trouble.”

“You’re not going to be young much longer.” Mr. Hibma did something drastic with his mouth, some kind of smile. “Don’t waste time trying to tell people about your problems. Do things that are youthful until you’re not allowed to do them anymore.”

The microwave beeped again. This time Mr. Hibma rose and pulled the burrito out with a paper towel and set it on a counter. He didn’t return to his chair.

“That girlfriend of yours, I’d concentrate on her and quit going around seeking advice. It doesn’t become you.”

“I’ve never asked advice. You’re thinking of someone else. Advice can’t help me.”

“You stole something or you broke something. That’s all any of you kids can do.”

“And what can
you
do?” said Toby. “I bet I can do worse things than you can.”

Mr. Hibma glowered at Toby. Whatever he was feeling toward Toby, it was pure. Toby was catching up with the moment. Mr. Hibma was blowing him off, and he was allowing Mr. Hibma to do so. “You’re not tough,” Toby said. “Whatever other problems you have, another is that you’re not a tough person.”

Mr. Hibma pressed his thumb into his jaw. “That hasn’t been decided yet,” he said.

Toby had gone against his own closely held wisdom, had gone and tried to bring something important to an adult, and he was getting what he deserved. He felt he could breathe again. Mr. Hibma didn’t seem to have anything else to say.

“I better go,” Toby said. “Before the pizza’s all gone.”

“None of this is personal,” Mr. Hibma told him. “Nothing, you’ll find, is personal.”

Mr. Hibma taxied past several pawnshops, a barber, a new chain restaurant that had decided to give Citrus County a whirl. He passed a sign warning drivers to watch for bears. stor. There it was, the mini-storage complex owned by Mrs. Conner and her husband. Mr. Hibma parked and went into the office, where he was greeted by a woman about his age who wore a ball cap. The Conners weren’t around, the woman told Mr. Hibma. “Just you and me,” she said. She smiled and jutted her hip. It seemed to Mr. Hibma that this woman liked him, and he combated this by acting businesslike. He asked for a price list and chose a 13 x 9 unit that went for $51 a month. Mr. Hibma picked out a heavy lock. He wrote the woman in the ball cap a check, waited for the code to the gate, then went into the storage area and drove around until he located C-63. It was cool, and taller than it was wide. Mr. Hibma fetched a lawn chair from his trunk, a pad and pen, and a tall can of iced tea. He pulled the door of his storage unit down, sequestering himself inside.

Renting this place was the next phase in Mr. Hibma’s campaign of friendliness toward Mrs. Conner. He’d begun bringing her coffee each morning, delivering it right to her classroom, and she was more or less eating out of his hand. When Mr. Hibma told Mrs. Conner about his acquisition of one of her storage units, he would gain her absolute trust. She would say nice things about him behind his back, stick up for him if other teachers gossiped about him.

Mr. Hibma had unfettered himself from the delusional project to mold himself into a standard-issue teacher, and he’d come to realize that all the energy he’d expended winning his victim over had not been in vain. It had been necessary. Everyone knew Mrs. Conner and Mr. Hibma were getting along now. When she turned up dead, Mr. Hibma could cry and express outrage like everyone else. He could say, “Why
now
, when I’d just realized what an inspirational, dynamic person she was?” He would mourn with the passion of the convert that everyone believed him to be. Everything was setting up for Mr. Hibma. He had to grit his teeth and weather the home stretch of the school year. It would take forever but it would also go by in a blink. If he couldn’t bring himself to do what needed to be done, it would be because of his weakness and nothing else. Mr. Hibma didn’t especially feel like a murderer, but maybe you didn’t until you murdered. He had never felt, particularly, like a non-murderer. Someone had to commit all these murders that were always being committed. Why not him? Why couldn’t his story be the story of a killer?

Mr. Hibma placed his lawn chair near the back wall and stayed quiet, the only noise the air conditioner, which was humping to keep the place at 78 degrees. He wondered what secrets were hidden in this place. What darkness had West Citrus U-Stor witnessed before Mr. Hibma happened along? What damning evidence was tucked away in these shadowy alcoves? None, maybe. Maybe it was all disassembled futons and china sets.

Mr. Hibma knew what the place smelled like. It smelled like his childhood attic—not a unique odor, just cardboard and mothballs. He wished he could remember more about his childhood, the period before adolescence, before his harrowing navigation of puberty. Those years when Mr. Hibma was a simple little fellow, wanting only to play and be fed and kept warm, looking up at the world without suspicion, were blurry. He recalled them in unsatisfying flashes.

He looked at the ceiling. He felt like he could hear his organs working, the muffled swishing of his heart. He felt the weight of his body pressing down on the chair. Mr. Hibma wondered what would have happened to him had he not been rescued from that nurse as an infant. She must’ve wanted a child badly, to give up her profession and commit a felony. Maybe she didn’t want just
any
child; maybe she’d fallen head-over-heels for Mr. Hibma, she who’d seen thousands of newborns. It was plausible that the love the nurse had for Mr. Hibma was the strongest anyone would ever have for him. On the other hand, maybe Mr. Hibma would’ve died had his parents not reclaimed him. On the
other
other hand, maybe he was
supposed
to have died. Maybe he was only supposed to have been in the world for several days, not several decades.

Mr. Hibma put his pen down. He opened his can of iced tea and drank from it. He’d figured out what to do about his lost grade book. He would institute an unfathomable system of extra credit. The system would be applied retroactively, muddying the waters of quiz averages and presentation scores to the point where even the most fastidious kiss-ass could not question her grade. Mr. Hibma’s new grade book would be a tornado of asterisks, checks, plus signs, plus signs within circles, smiley faces, and all in different colors, all blown about the columns at random. Under this system, the rich would get richer and the poor would also get some help.

Mr. Hibma heard a woman in clackety shoes enter the building. She walked past his unit and stopped a ways down the hall. There was the sound of a sliding door, what sounded like a huge deck of playing cards getting shuffled, and then the door sliding shut. The click of a lock. When the woman walked back by, her steps made a cushiony sound. She was wearing sneakers now. When the woman had exited and the door had closed behind her, Mr. Hibma took up his pad and pen. He had waited a few days so he wouldn’t seem anxious. So he wouldn’t say more than he wanted to say.

D,

My victim is tiny-minded and big-footed. There are several million like her but she is the one who matters to me. It is meant to be my plight to be tortured by her and women like her my entire life, and to never do anything about it except grow bitter, but I will shape the story of my life the way I want it shaped. I am no one’s sad sack character.

Mr. H

Toby walked onto the school grounds and went into the common area and sat on some carpeted steps until the warning bell sounded, then he rose and trudged toward the library to return his pole-vaulting manual and pay his fine. He sat through math and biology, skipped Mr. Hibma’s class, then, during lunch, went outside near the portables. He’d avoided Shelby all day. He didn’t want to be at school at all, but he didn’t want to be at home either. The pole vault season was ending that evening and if he hadn’t shown up at school then he wouldn’t be allowed to participate. For some reason, he cared about finishing the season. He wanted to do something the way it was meant to be done. One thing. Toby had been the first alternate for this final county meet and the kid ahead of him had come down with bronchitis. Toby was going to face the Asian kid.

That afternoon, at the meet, Toby felt an odd lack of pressure. Shelby, sitting in the stands with her knees together and her lips pursed, did not make him nervous. Coach Scolle did not make him uneasy with his disdainful looks. Toby knew that it was all busywork. You were supposed to be cheerful about the busywork and worry about the busywork, but Toby could do neither at the moment. All he could do was succumb to it. This track meet was busywork. Dreaming was busywork. Coin flips were busywork. The Asian kid called tails. The coin broke the peak of its arch and began zipping toward the ground and Toby shot his hand out and caught it.