Where I'm Calling From

They took down their tents, rolled their sleeping bags, gathered their pans, pots, fish, and fishing gear, and hiked out. They didn’t look at the girl again before they left. When they reached the car they drove the highway in silence until they came to a telephone. Stuart made the call to the sheriff’s office while the others stood around in the hot sun and listened. He gave the man on the other end of the line all of their names—they had nothing to hide, they weren’t ashamed of anything—and agreed to wait at the service station until someone could come for more detailed directions and individual statements.
    He came home at eleven o’clock that night. I was asleep but woke when I heard him in the kitchen. I found him leaning against the refrigerator drinking a can of beer. He put his heavy arms around me and rubbed his hands up and down my back, the same hands he’d left with two days before, I thought.
    In bed he put his hands on me again and then waited, as if thinking of something else. I turned slightly and then moved my legs. Afterward, I know he stayed awake for a long time, for he was awake when I fell asleep; and later, when I stirred for a minute, opening my eyes at a slight noise, a rustle of sheets, it was almost daylight outside, birds were singing, and he was on his back smoking and looking at the curtained window. Half-asleep I said his name, but he didn’t answer. I fell asleep again.
    He was up this morning before I could get out of bed—to see if there was anything about it in the paper, I suppose. The telephone began to ring shortly after eight o’clock.
    “Go to hell,” I heard him shout into the receiver. The telephone rang again a minute later, and I hurried into the kitchen. “I have nothing else to add to what I’ve already said to the sheriff. That’s right!” He slammed down the receiver.
    “What is going on?” I said, alarmed.
    “Sit down,” he said slowly. His fingers scraped, scraped against his stubble of whiskers. “I have to tell you something. Something happened while we were fishing.” We sat across from each other at the table, and then he told me.
    I drank coffee and stared at him as he spoke. Then I read the account in the newspaper that he shoved across the table: “… unidentified girl eighteen to twenty-four years of age… body three to five days in the water… rape a possible motive… preliminary results show death by strangulation… cuts and bruises on her breas’ts and pelvic area… autopsy… rape, pending further investigation.”
    “You’ve got to understand,” he said. “Don’t look at me like that. Be careful now, I mean it. Take it easy, Claire.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me last night?” I asked.
    “I just… didn’t. What do you mean?” he said.
    “You know what I mean,” I said. I looked at his hands, the broad fingers, knuckles covered with hair, moving, lighting a cigarette now, fingers that had moved over me, into me last night.
    He shrugged. “What difference does it make, last night, this morning? It was late. You were sleepy, I thought I’d wait until this morning to tell you.” He looked out to the patio: a robin flew from the lawn to the picnic table and preened its feathers.
    “It isn’t true,” I said. “You didn’t leave her there like that?”
    He turned quickly and said, “What’d I do? Listen to me carefully now, once and for all. Nothing happened. I have nothing to be sorry for or feel guilty about. Do you hear me?”
    I got up from the table and went to Dean’s room. He was awake and in his pajamas, putting together a puzzle. I helped him find his clothes and then went back to the kitchen and put his breakfast on the table.
    The telephone rang two or three more times and each time Stuart was abrupt while he talked and angry when he hung up. He called Mel Dorn and Gordon Johnson and spoke with them, slowly, seriously, and then he opened a beer and smoked a cigarette while Dean ate, asked him about school, his friends, etc., exactly as if nothing had happened.
    Dean wanted to know what he’d done while he was gone, and Stuart took some fish out of the freezer to show him.
    “I’m taking him to your mother’s for the day,” I said.
    “Sure,” Stuart said and looked at Dean who was holding one of the frozen trout If you want to and he wants to, that is. You don’t have to, you know. There’s nothing wrong.”
    “I’d like to anyway,” I said.
    “Can I go swimming there?” Dean