He doesn’t want to.
In the garage, he lifts the lid of the chest freezer that sits against the far wall. He stares at the open space above the paper-wrapped bundles of venison, tries to guess if there’s enough room, then stacks the meat on the floor, makes piles of burger and steak and sausage until he’s sure. He goes out to the car and opens the back door. He lifts the girl, grunting as he gathers her into his arms like a child. He’s not as strong as he used to be, and she’s heavier than she looks, with all the water filling her lungs and stomach and intestinal tract. Even through her tank top he can see the way it bloats her belly like she’s pregnant. He’s careful with her as he lays her down in the freezer, careful as he brushes the hair out of her eyes again, as he holds her eyelids closed until he’s sure they’ll stay that way.
The freezer will give him time to decide, time to figure out what lie wants. What he needs. What he and she are capable of together.
Punter wakes up in the middle of the night and puts his boots on in a panic, rushes out to the freezer. The girl’s covered in a thin layer of frost, and immediately he realizes he shouldn’t have put her away wet. He considers taking her out, thawing her, toweling her off, but doesn’t do it. It’s too risky. One thing Punter knows about himself is that he is not good at saying when.
He closes the freezer lid, goes back to the house, back to bed but not to sleep. Even wide awake, he can see the curve of her neck, the interrupted line of her collarbones intersecting the thin straps of her tank top. He reaches under his pajama bottoms, under the elastic of his underwear. He squeezes himself as hard as he can, until the pain takes the erection away.
On the news the next morning, there’s a story about the drowned girl. Only the anchorman calls her missing instead and then says her name, says who she was. Punter winces. He knows just how hurtful that final word can be.
The girl is younger than Punter had guessed, a high school senior at the all-girls school across town. Her car was found yesterday, parked behind a nearby gas station, somewhere Punter occasionally fills up his car, buys cigarettes and candy bars.
The anchorman says the police are currently investigating but haven’t released any leads to the public. The anchorman looks straight into the camera and says it’s too early to presume the worst, that the girl could still show up at any time. Punter shuts off the television, stubbing out his cigarette. He takes a shower, shaves, combs his black hair straight back. Dresses himself in the same outfit he wears every day, a white T-shirt, blue jeans, black motorcycle boots.
On the way to his car, he stops by the garage and opens the freezer lid. Her body is obscured behind ice like frosted glass. He puts a finger to her lips, but all he feels is cold.
The gas station is on a wooded stretch of gravel road between Punter’s house and the outskirts of town. Although Punter has been here before, he’s never seen it so crowded. While he waits in line, he realizes these people are here for the same reason he is, to be near the site of the tragedy, to see the last place this girl was seen.
The checkout line crawls while the clerk runs his mouth, ruining his future testimony by telling his story over and over, transforming his eyewitness account into just another harmless story.
The clerk says, I was the only one working that night. Of course I remember her.
In juvie, the therapists had called this narrative therapy, constructing a preferred reality.
The clerk says, Long blond hair, tight-ass jeans, all that tan skin — I’m not saying she brought it on herself, but you can be sure she knew people would be looking.
The therapists had said, You were all just kids. You didn’t know what you were doing.
When it’s Punter’s turn, the clerk says, I didn’t see who took her, but I wish I had.
The clerk, he has black glasses and halitosis and fingernails chewed to keratin pulp, teeth stained with cigarettes or chewing tobacco or coffee. Or all of the above. He reminds Punter of himself, and he wonders if the clerk feels the same, if there is a mutual recognition between them. Punter reads the clerk’s name tag: OSWALD. The clerk stares at him and says, If I knew who took that girl, I’d kill him myself.
Punter shivers as he slides his bills across the counter, as he takes his carton of cigarettes and his candy bar. He doesn’t stop shivering until he gets out of the air-conditioned store, until he gets back inside his sun-struck car.
The therapists had told Punter that what he’d done was a mistake, that there was nothing wrong with him. They made him repeat their words back to them, to absolve himself of the guilt they were so sure he was feeling. Punter said the words they wanted, but doing so changed nothing. He’d never felt the guilt they told him he should. Even now, he has only the remembered accusations of cops and judges to convince him that what he did was wrong.
Punter cooks two venison steaks in a frying pan with salt and butter. He sits down to eat, cuts big mouthfuls, then chews and chews, the meat tough from overcooking. He eats past the point of satiation, to discomfort, until his stomach presses against the tight skin of his abdomen. He never knows how much food to cook. He always clears his plate.
When he’s done eating, he smokes and thinks about the girl in the freezer, how when walking her out of the pond, she had threatened to slip out of his arms and back into the water. He’d held on, carrying her up and out into the starlight. He hadn’t saved her — couldn’t have — but he had preserved her, kept her safe from the wet decay, from the mouths of fish and worse.
He knows the freezer is better than the refrigerator, that the dry cold of meat and ice is better than the slow rot of lettuce and leftovers and ancient, crust-rimmed condiments. He knows that even after death, there is a safety in the preservation of a body; there is a second kind of life to be had.
Punter hasn’t been to the bar near the factory since he got fired, but tonight he feels the need for a drink. He needs to get away from the house and the freezer. By eight, he’s already been out to the garage four times, and he knows he can’t keep opening the freezer lid, that if he doesn’t stop staring at her, the constant thawing and refreezing will destroy her, skin first.
It’s midshift at the factory, so the bar is empty except for the bartender and two guys sitting together at the rail, watching the ball game on the television mounted above the liquor shelves. Punter lakes a stool at the opposite end, orders a beer, and lights a cigarette. He looks at the two men, trying to decide if they’re men he knows from the plant. He’s bad with names, bad at recognizing most people. One of the men catches him looking and gives him a glare that Punter immediately looks away from. He knows that he stares too long at people, that it makes them uncomfortable, but he can’t help himself. He moves his eyes to his hands to his glass to the game, which he also can’t make any sense of. Sports move too fast, are full of rules and behaviors he finds incomprehensible.
During commercials, the station plugs its late night newscast, including the latest news about the missing girl. Punter stares at the picture of her on the television screen, his tongue glowing thick and dry for the five seconds the image is displayed. One of the other men drains the last gulp of his beer and shakes his head. I hope they find the fucker that did that and cut his balls off, he says.
So you think she’s dead then?
Of course she’s dead. You don’t go missing like that and not end up dead.
The men motion for another round as the baseball game returns from the break. Punter realizes he’s been holding his breath, lets it go in a loud, hacking gasp. The bartender and two men turn to look, so he holds a hand up, trying to signal he doesn’t need any help but puts it down when he realizes they’re not offering. He pays his tab and gets up to leave.