Three Years, Three Months Before

Grass Fed and Pasture Raised

Elizabeth Spaneker, Ellie to her friend and Lizzie to most everyone else, sat on the bus stop bench at 41st and Hawthorne, August something, Year of Our Lord ... Year One, as far as she was concerned. Day One. Her head rested against the blank brick wall at her back, her eyes on the building across the street. She didn’t feel like herself. A spattering rain fell, off and on, but she hardly noticed. She was thinking backto a day at Givern Valley Regional High School. Sixth period health class, ninth grade. A different Ellie sat next to little Stuart Spaneker—the boy from whom she would later get both her last name and the stiffness in her neck on cold, damp days. At the front of the room, the teacher gestured with smooth, long-fingered hands. “Listen to me, people. Are you listening? This is serious stuff here, information that could save your lives.” No one was listening. Whispered conversations hissed on all sides. Ellie was more interested in the rain outside, hoping it would stop before school let out. At the front of the room the teacher frowned, lips tight, as if to say, “Please don’t make this any harder than it already is.” The skin of her face seemed dry and brittle. She was giving the condom lecture, a breathless flood of information she offered every April in a bid to mitigate the impact of hormones and spring fever, for all the good it did. In time, the lecture would get her fired as the increasingly lurid presentation collided with community standards, but Ellie would be graduated by then.

Stuart had leaned over to Ellie’s desk and dropped a half-sheet of folded notebook paper. She opened the note, face front as though she was listening to the condom lecture. Hey, Ellie. Do you prefer smooth, or ribbed for her pleasure? He’d signed it, Stu Baby.

Ellie crumpled the note. “Pervert.” She focused on the anxious teacher—Ellie, sitting at the bus stop, could no longer remember the woman’s name—but out of the corner of her eye she saw Stuart wink and make a smoochy face. He’d claim later it was in that health class that he’d set his sights on her, and Stuart had inherited the relentless drive and sense of entitlement that made the Spanekers first family of Givern Valley, Oregon.

“Everyone is talking about you and Stuart,” Luellen told her later. “They’re saying you two make a cute couple.”

Ellie thought about Stuart’s short, stocky form and ragged chestnut hair. “I don’t mate outside my species.”

“I think he’s kinda cute.” Luellen’s eyes gleamed. “He’ll spend money on you. His dad is rich.” She’d been Stuart’s target before Ellie, and seemed to enjoy the attention—and Stuart’s willingness to spend Hiram Spaneker’s money. Ellie gave her a look.

“Lu, please don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

“I’m just saying you might as well enjoy it.”

“Forget it. He’s a troll doll.”

Years later, a different Ellie would make excuses for abandoning her instinctive loathing of Stuart. She’d tell herself she’d been dazzled by the Spaneker money, which flowed like snowmelt when Stuart wanted to impress, or by the shaggy bangs that hung loose on his forehead, by the excess of confidence in his round, shiny eyes. Or maybe it was his sudden charm whenever she seemed primed to tell him to kiss off. But by the time she began to question her capitulation, it was too late; they were married and Stuart had knocked a baby from her womb.

A woman appeared out of the rain and dropped heavily onto the bus stop bench. She shook her umbrella, spraying Ellie with fine droplets. “Goodness! It’s been so rainy lately.” The woman looked away as she spoke, as if the comment was meant for someone else. There was no else. Half a block up Hawthorne a boy wheeled around on a skateboard, his t-shirt pasted to his shoulders by rain. Back in Givern, rainfall like this so late in August could make the difference between bankruptcy and a solvent winter for many families.

Ellie slid to the side to make room for the woman’s spongy hips and overstuffed canvas tote.

“It’s been wet this year, don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t know.” The sky hung dark and heavy. The weathered blue awning above the bench offered little in the way of shelter. She’d lost the umbrella Pastor Sanders had given her. Yet one more small thing left behind, like so much else.

“You’re not from around here?”

Ellie brushed her hair off her face. The woman looked at her. Ellie stared back, her eyes tracing the caked and flaking boundary of foundation makeup that ran along the woman’s chin and up the back edge of her cheek. Her grey, wiry hair seemed to want to fly off in all directions, a well-used scrub brush. The woman leaned back on the bench and clasped her hands across her bosom. Her fingers were long and thin, the skin smooth on the backs of her hands, younger than the crazy hair and pancake makeup suggested. Suddenly, Ellie could almost smell her health teacher’s perfume. Miss Layton, that had been her name. Lady Latex behind her back.

“Are you going downtown?”

“Just getting out of the rain.”

“Ah.” The woman hesitated. “There’s a nice café up the way.”

Ellie fixed her gaze across the street at the white lap-sided building hugging the opposite corner, the wide glass windows adorned with posters advertising color copies for 79¢, overnight shipping with FedEx, UPS, or DHL, and private mail boxes for rent. The Ship Shop. Not the destination she’d imagined when she fled Givern two days before. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

The woman stiffened. “I just thought you might be more comfortable.”

Ellie had seen the café earlier. Hot tea would be nice, but she hesitated to spend the money until she knew how things would work out. And in any case, she needed to keep an eye on the Ship Shop, needed to see if Luellen arrived to pick up her mail.

“I’m fine right here.” None of the previous Ellies would have been so blunt to a stranger. Not Givern Ellie, no. But now she was different. Not herself—a new self. Bus Stop Ellie. Ship Shop Ellie. Waiting and Watching Ellie.

Hard to believe a week before she’d been someone’s wife.

The bus arrived, groaned to a stop. The woman threw Ellie a sour look and climbed aboard. Ellie pressed herself against the bench as the rain began to fall harder. She’d sent a letter to Luellen from Klamath Falls, but she had no way of knowing if Luellen had received it and no other way of getting in touch with her. There was no Luellen Granger in the phone book.

Earlier, when she’d first arrived at the Ship Shop, the boy behind the counter had cleared his throat and fiddled with a silver hoop that hung from his eyebrow. “I dunno ... I’m not supposed to ... you know.”

Ellie didn’t know. “I’m just trying to get in touch with my friend. Can’t you tell me how to reach her?”

The kid seemed to be only a teenager. He wore a green polyester vest over a wrinkled white dress shirt, his name DYMO-taped to a tag on his chest. RAAJIT. Ellie didn’t want to guess how to pronounce that. His dull brown hair, matted into long ropes, hung down past his shoulders and tattoos snaked up his neck from under his shirt collar. Shecaught a whiff of nutmeg and cedar shavings.

“You see, the thing is ...” He looked past her, eyes blank as if he’d just awakened from a long sleep inside the shop. Rip Van Raajit. “That’s the thing, you see.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

“My manager will be here soon.”

Yet when the manager arrived, he was even less helpful. “We don’t give out personal information about our customers.” His manner was as focused as Raajit’s was vague. He fixed Ellie with a hard stare from behind metal-framed glasses and adjusted his tie. No green vest or name tag for him. Ellie felt self-conscious about her own appearance. She’d arrived in Portland the previous evening after a long, anxious day on the bus. Armed with a Tri-Met transit map, she’d made her way across the river, found a cheap motel on East Burnside. She might have done better to sleep under a bridge. The motel, a decaying concrete and pressboard box called the Travel-Inn, tended to noisy shouting matches in the parking lot and frequent sex broadcast through the thin walls. She got almost no sleep, and the lukewarm shower in the morning did little to refresh her. Someone had stolen her duffel bag when she dozed off on the bus. This made the third day running in the same clothes. Luellen, she hoped, would have something clean she could wear.

“Maybe you could call her and let her know her friend Ellie is here from out of town.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that your friend has a personal mailbox here. Customer information is private.”

“I don’t have to know what number you call.”

“I can’t help you.”

“Would you at least put a note in her box?”

“Only regular mail or deliveries from shipping services go in the rental boxes.”

“I’ll buy a stamp.”

“And you can put your note in the mail pickup bin. It’ll get back here tomorrow or the next day, when it can be properly sorted and delivered.”

Ellie looked away. There were no benches. Just a row of self-service copy machines and a couple of counters. Staplers and paper cutters. The rental mailboxes lined the side wall. Nowhere to sit, but Ellie could stand until Luellen showed up. She’d stand all day if necessary. She moved toward the corner, took up a position next to a rack of office supplies.

The manager turned to the kid. “I’m going to get a latte.”

“Okay, Mister Blount.”

“I want her gone by the time I get back.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Ellie saw the boy squirm. The manager glowered at her as he pushed through the door. Ellie turned to Raajit, pressure building in her chest.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry—” Ma’am. She was only a few years older than he was.

“It’s been over a year since I’ve seen her.”

“You can’t stay here.”

“I don’t know how else to reach her.”

The boy looked out the window, watched until his boss was out of sight. “Okay. Give me the note. But you can’t wait around here. Most folks don’t come in every day to check their mail.” And so Ellie made her way out to the bench, to sit in the rain, to dodge offhand conversation, to wait and to watch.

The bus pulled away, carrying off the woman and her thick makeup. Across the street, Ellie saw a man in front the Ship Shop. He looked back at her, hands at his sides, a settled quality to his stance as though he’d been there all along. Big fellow with a round head propped atop his barrel trunk, sun-bleached crew cut capping his wide face. He wore jeans and a canvas jacket, stood tall and indifferent to the rain. Grass fed and pasture raised, so the stolid, pious folks back home might say of him, seeing the devout and steadfast in his obvious resolve. Ellie knew better. As she met his stare, she felt her face go slack with fear. The man belonged to Hiram Spaneker.