by Felice Picano
This is what I know about drowning: some persons can hold their breath longer than others. No one can hold it longer than eight minutes seventeen seconds under water without a special apparatus. Of course there may be someone in the Guiness Book of Records. But I've not met him.
This is what I know about Kevin Mark Orange, age seven and three quarters. He vanished at 2:15 p.m., a Thursday afternoon. As it was late April, it rained twice that evening, obliterating any footprints or tire marks.
That, at least, is what anyone knows who listened to the 6:30 p.m. local ("K-RUF-- We're soft on you!") television news that also showed two photos of Kevin, one taken a month ago, with his chocolate Labrador, named Bre'r Bear, and one taken over a year ago with his little sister Jean-Eartha Orange, no age given.
This is what I called and told to Sheriff Harold ("Hal") B. Longish, one hour after that broadcast. "I know where Kevin Mark Orange is. I don't know the name of the place exactly. I can't take you there, because I'm only a kid and can't drive. I never met that boy in my life. I don't know anyone who does know him. I can't tell you how I know. I just do! . . . But I can draw you a map."
So, of course, after wasting another hour, the sheriff and his deputy arrived. They were naturally doubtful. So I said immediately, "Sheriff Longish, your deputy had a left hand upper molar pulled this morning. And also your mother's cat named Harlequin ran away for the sixth time yesterday night and she called and begged you to look for it."
"How in tarnation!" His deputy, a woman named Sheryl Jamison, asked.
Sheriff Lognish looked at me, and said, "Sher, this lil' critter may actually be the real thing."
I laughed and said, "I am the real thing."
"How old are you?" the deputy asked.
"Nine years, four months and two days yesterday," I replied. "I learned everything I know outta that series of books," pointing to the encyclopedia that Granny-Mama had left to her by a cousin twice removed. "And online my I.Q. is one hundred and fifty-three."
They looked at each other awhile and at that moment I realized she had aborted his male fetus in the second trimester, one year and six months and fourteen days ago up at a clinic up outside Talahassee, even though they never were married and in fact are supposedly happily married to other people.
He sat down, she stood behind him, and he said, "Boy, draw me that map."
I did, with magic markers on the plastic board hanging at my side, and this is what it looked like.
"That wide oval" I explained "Is Lake Pishimere, that lil' pond-like mostly dried-up thing about four miles down the route 208 from where Kevin lives."
"We've got people looking not far from there," Sheryl Jamison said, and picked up her cell phone and speed dialled.
"What are those three exes in a row?" Sheriff Longish asked me.
"Those are beached and wrecked flat boats from ten odd years ago."
"Hugh?" Sheryl spoke into the phone, "You at the dried up lake, right? You see any wrecked boats there?"
"He took Kevin on a path between the last boat, and the blackberry bush in full bloom." I said, drawing a line to show it.
"Go as far as the blackberry bush," Sheryl directed.into the phone, "Then turn north."
"He was assaulted on the flat rock there," I drew it kind of smushed in. "He pulled down Kevin's pants and did it to him three times."
"Oh, Jesus! Be my Savior now," Sheriff Longish said in a plummy kind of praying voice, and Sheryl added, "Amen, Lord."
"He dragged him a little further up and strangled him there," I said, dotting the line now, "Using the elastic from the underwear he took off Kevin. He left him there, where the two old cypress trees are rotting away in still water."
"Lord, hear my prayer," Sheriff Longish chanted.
Sheryl Jamison amened that then repeated my directions into the phone.
Eight minutes and thirteen seconds later, she got a report that they had found the boy -- just like I'd said .
Granny-Mama brought the two of them beers from the icebox and they all gathered around me and kneeled for a prayer holding hands all around and stuff.
"He just knows things!" Granny-Mama explained to Sheryl Jamison over a piece of that morning's fresh baked cheddar corn bread. "You know. Where things is gone missing to. Who's going to ring on the telephone. He predicts all the elections on the TV. He's got A Gift, you see. "
"It's the Lord's compensation," Sheriff Longish said, still using his holy voice. That way he didn't have to say anything pitying about my physical condition, all twisted up as I am, and in a wheelchair and barely able to do the normal stuff for myself that most anyone can do.
It wasn't until three days later, that the Sheriff came to visit again. This time he was alone. He asked, "You see it happen? That kid Kevin being . . . you know, and all? In your mind's eye, I mean?"
"I sorta did. Yes sir. And by the way, Sir, as we are speaking, I'm seeing in my mind's eye your eldest boy, Drew Longish, age sixteen year, four months and twelve days ," I added, "at home, right now, smoking Maryjane and sucking his best friend, Tommy Thorn's, dick."
I thought Sheriff Longish was going to smack me hard, he got so red in the face, almost purple, and his fist just got all stony. But he just stormed off and tore hell out of the dirt in front of our house driving away -- I guess in a hurry to get home and catch a look.
Granny-Mama had been listening behind the door and she came out and we laughed at what I'd told him. We agree, Granny-Mama and me, on most things. All kinds of things we hear, and things I see. We don't care what those folks are doing. But them others do care a lot, don't they?
"Be a while before that Sheriff comes by again," I said.
"I thought you kinda liked him?" Granny-Mama said.
"I did. Kinda." Nice looking man. Big hands. "But he'll be back. Know why?"
"Because he never axed you who simonized and kilt that lil' boy." she answered.
Granny-Mama may not know her words right -- she can barely read -- but she can be smart.
* * * * *
He did come by again, that Sheriff Longish, two weeks later, with this pretty little blondie woman all dressed up tight as she could be in a gray suit for men, except it was specially tailored for her. Right off I knew she was going to be trouble for me. You see, they carry dark spots on them, all those who are going to be trouble. It sorta stains their clothing like moss or something, alive and growing, nasty. Hey, I thought. This is interesting. No's one been trouble for me in a long time. Not since Granny-Mama took me outta that hospital ward in that awful place near Stark. I was kind of excited, you see. It gets kind of boring around here. And she was something new.
"So! You're a Fed-er-al-ay!" I said to the blondie woman. "F.B.I.?"
She looked at the Sheriff and he looked at her. On the drive over here, he'd wondered if his stick is too fat to fit into her pussy thing. He don't much like her attitude toward him and he hoped it would hurt like hell should he ever get the opportunity.
"That's right," she said to me. "So you must know why I'm here."
"You're here onaconna the serial killer. . . . Underwear Man," I added, giving the secret name her unit up in Birmingham, Alabama called him, because of how after he's done sexually molesting his childen of both gender victims he always strangles them with the elastic of their unmentionables, just like he did with Kevin Mark Orange..
"Now, this is a top secret operation," Sheriff Longish said to me. "So everything you hear and say is among only us three. Understand?"
I said I understood. Anyway, he was okay today. He'd calmed himself down before he got home that other day and he'd stopped "to think." Which meant he'd allowed Tommy Thorn some time to get the hell out of the Longish house before he went in himself. The weed smoke was covered over with "Summer Rain" air freshener and Drew Longish was extremely occupied at that time doing his trigonometry homework, at which he only got a C+ and that only because he cheated from Suzanne Hillyer on the last pop exam. His father didn't even notice the dried jizz on his son's hairless chest, visible if he'd carefully looked through the half unbuttoned shirt. I guess he was so relieved not to have caught the two of them in flagrante, as the newspapers write it.
The blondie lady said there had been five others in her state and one up near Pensacola. The time between the crimes was getting shorter, she said. She knew I wanted to keep some other lil' innocent kid from being done in. Would I help? Would I tell her whatever I saw?
I said I would though I didn't give half a crap for any of those lil' kids, in Alabama or Florida for that matter. I did it for Sheriff Longish. Told him what I'd seen was an ordinary feller. Good looking. Very ordinary feller, just like everyone else, except he favored pale blue shirts for everyday use.
I then asked to see blondie's revolver and she showed me as she asked all kinds of questions that I gave her indefinite answers to, whether I knew them or not. Looking at her gun I knew then that a forty-seven year old black woman named Mariah Gregg who took in colored's laundry for food money had been caught in a crossfire and had died two years, one month and nine days ago with this very weapon up in Dunwoody, Mississippi, in an unrelated case.
While she took a call on her cell phone out on the front verandah -- as Granny-Mama grandly calls that lil' porch -- Sheriff Longish stayed with me and told me, "You're not one hundred percent accurate, you know."
"If that's what makes you feel good to believe, you go on ahead, " I told him back.
When blondie stepped back inside the house her suit was even tighter on her than before, and her stains was actually standing up to look at me.
"The Underwear Man has struck again," I told the Sheriff, before she could say a word. "This time it's a girl missing."
He looked almost angry. "Why in hell didn't you say something?"
"Just got the message this minute," I lied. "I guess it come in along that cell phone call."
He looked at me funny. But she took control of the situation. "Is she still alive?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Can you tell where they are?" she asked.
"Where's she been snatched from?" Sheriff Longish asked.
"Lake Geneva Village Mall."
"She'd been left inside a "Cerulean" Chevy Cobalt sedan," I added. And rubbing it in, "I told you he favored light blue."
"You got a map in your mind's eye yet?" he asked me, kinda roughly.
I was going to say maybe I do and maybe I don't and what's it to you, when blondie asked, "What else can you tell us?" Being all nice to me.
"He's gonna let her go," I told blondie; ignoring the Sheriff.
"What? Why would he do that?"
"Onaconna she's peed herself bad. He hates peeing like that," I said.
"Werent there urine traces on the others?" Sheriff Longish asked her.
"Nothing substantial or long standing, no. Maybe at the moment of . . . "
"He hates the smell of it," I repeated.
"You go," Sheriff Longish told blondie. "I'll stay with him. Just in case . . . "
"Hold on!" She called on the phone:. "What make and color is the vehicle?" She asked, and when she was answered, she did something with her lip to show I was right. "Jackson, we think he's ditched the child. Headed south on . . . "
"Southeast," I corrected.
"Headed southeast on. .. ." she looked at me for confirmation, "Is it 207? The road from the Lake Geneva Village Mall?"
I nodded yes.
Twenty minutes later, they found LIza Beth Morgan, aged six years and four months, sitting on the side of the road, unharmed, hysterical, covered from the neck down in her own urine. They didn't find Underwear Man as he was long gone.
"You just earned yourself a government commendation" blondie said to me.
What good is that piece of paper? It aint money, is it? You can't eat it, can you?" Granny-Mama would wonder aloud later on when she saw it arrive by special delivery mail. But blondie already had something else on her mind involving me. I could tell, because the stains were getting bigger and nastier.
* * * * *
Granny-Mama couldn't understand why I would agree to it.
"They'll give you plenty of money, if'n I do, " I explained. "Enough to get that big screen Hi-Def television you been after. And then some."
"The kind they show in the newspaper?" She'd tacked that ad over her bed like it was some movie star.
"I'll make sure they get you that very one," I told her.
She thought a bit and said, "Well, then, all right. What about you?"
"I guess I'll have to take my chances," I told Granny-Mama.
"You're a lucky child. Nothing bad can happen to you, if you will it so," she insisted.
I got doubles of Rocky Road for dessert then, messy as I can be with it, onaconna she was already contemplating watching Wheel of Fortune on that big tv.
Next day they came out in three big white vans with turning tv mesh dishes on top and seven other vehicles, KRUF, KTAK and even the big tv station from Gainsville, this being the biggest story from the area since the student murders a quarter century ago.
I was dressed just like we'd discussed in pale blue shirt, with dark blue pants and even blue running shoes, although I'll never run in them. My hair had been barbered by a pretty woman from the TV station, and blondie and me had rehearsed exactly what I was going to say, like it was a play or something.
"Are you sure about this?" Sheriff Longish kept asking me, every chance he could get me alone, which wasn't too often. So I had to reassure him. He didn't like it one bit, and he was right not to. Not with those stains on even her shoes and fingernails now.
After they'd all gone, they left me a videotape so Granny-Mama could watch as much as she liked. She thought I was as good as a tv actor-person.
"Shouldn't he have protection?" Sheriff Longish asked blondie twice, once all the vans and other TV vehicles had gotten their interview and "statement" from me and were tooling off, up the road.
"You planning on sleepin' over?" I asked him.
Blondie and me laughed at the look on his face..
Nothing happened for two more days and so we moved into what blondie called "phase two" i.e. getting me out in the public, away from here where Underwear Man would think there were sharpshooters behind every copse of red leaf.
This was exhausting but kinda fun. "Phase two" made me a celebrity -- the pyschic kid who knew all about the serial killer. It got me out in a local Wal-Mart, at another, this time higher-end, mall outside of Gainesville, and in a county hall meeting in the Fist Baptist Church on Highway 225 up near Lawley.
It was while driving home from that event that I saw Underwear Man for the first time in person. It was outside Dan Deavens Elementary School, and he was the crossing guard for all the little kids. Wearing a pale blue shirt with the white plastic stripes across his chest and his back and a pale blue cap. And of course his stains were all but three dimensional they were so many and so strong. I almost gave him away then, laughing at how much sense it all made. What better place to find kids? To find out which ones to take? What better way to gain their trust than wearing that uniform? He was even younger looking and better looking than I'd seen in my mind's eye. With big blue eyes to match. The kind of boy who'd model underwear for those Sears flyers that Granny-Mama would keep stuffed in her bathroom drawer and think I didn't know about.
He was very careful in holding back safely all the kiddies as we passed them by. They all knew who I was by then because of the TV and newspapers and they yelled and waved. And so did he. Our eyes locked as we slowly drove by. "Hello Underwear Man," I mouthed the words to him. Then we were gone.
How he finally got me was kind of a surprise. But by then he'd been on the hunt over a year and seven months, so he'd gotten pretty good at it. I'd been left alone less than a minute in the disabilities restroom the following afternoon, when blondie who was guarding me was distracted by what sounded like shots -- actually fireworks he'd planned -- going on outside the back window, and she stepped away briefly.
"Your face is very nice, but otherwise you aint very pretty!" he said to me, just before he applied the chloroform hanky. That had been my fear, of course, because all the others had been so very pretty, head to toe pretty, pretty like he was, pretty like he must have been as a lil' child when he was being sexually molested.
Later on, when we was alone, and he was doing it to me, he kept on saying "So soft! So soft!" about my skin and body, "So soft!" Which was a nice compliment.
It hurt at first a lot, but then I thought about Sheriff Longish and that made it better. Of course I could have just peed myself all over to stop it, but I wanted to see what it felt like. Sex, I mean -- having heard and read so much about it.
He'd read and heard by then too about the name the F.B.I. had given him and why. So even though he had my underwear ripped apart with his teeth when he began biting me to do his molestation and he was really ready to use it around my neck, he restrained himself. Taking a great deal of effort to do so, so he wouldn't be ever caught that way again.
"You'll have to leave, now they know where you are," I told him.
He was crying by then, the fit having passed.. "I know," he said.
"You should go to Mexico," I said. "Unless you don't like dark haired kids."
He looked up at me and smiled. "That was just what I was thinking."
This is what I know about drowning: some persons can hold their breaths longer than others. No one can hold it longer than eight minutes seventeen seconds under water without a special apparatus. With all my conditions, I certainly can't. So when Underwear Man pushes my wheelchair into the pond. I'll just gulp as much water down as I can all at once and hope my body doesn't try to struggle. That'll happen in six minutes. He's cleared the pathway of all debris down to there and is walking back up to come get me. Sheriff Longish will blame himself for a while. But he'll get over it.
Who ever thought it would all turn out to be so interesting for a kid like me? It's just like I was normal.
In the 1970’s, Delacorte Books put out best selling authors like James Clavell, Stephen King, Howard Fast, and Irwin Shaw, and literary authors like Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Yates, Tim O Brien, and Jayne Ann Phillips. In 1979, many of these authors and I too at Delacorte Books had new books being published and our publisher threw a party to celebrate such a galaxy of talent, and so we might also meet the press.