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Alpha
by Cynthia K. Marshall
Ten
The man in the black coat watches Amy again.
Today, it’s during recess.
In her red windbreaker, she swings next to Lisa. Her hood is drawn tight like a wimple. Amy can’t see much peripherally, but at least the hood keeps the wind out. She brushes her skirt to keep it down when she kicks out her legs. The chains squeal rhythmically as she kicks out and back, out and back. The boys try to peek under their skirts while they’re swinging, so the nuns keep a sharp eye on those boys.
The nuns don’t notice the man in the black coat watching from the edge of the asphalt where pavement meets grass. His presence makes Amy shiver. His hair is longer than her father’s, and it blows in the wind. His coat reminds her of a funeral, like the coat her dad wears to church. He stares directly at her, hands stuffed in his pockets. Then, he smiles a feral grin, revealing lots of white teeth. Seeing his expression, she feels less shaky. It’s from the cold, she reasons, the shivering. But then she sees that his eyes aren’t smiling. They’re narrowed and a little mean, and she shivers again.
The nuns don’t seem to mind him being here, if they see him at all. Could be they’re too busy watching the naughty boys. Amy observes Sister Mary Margaret glancing across the playground again, looking right through the man in the black coat.
Amy drags her feet, kicking up dust as she slows, then leaps off the swings. Lisa stops, too.
“Let’s slide,” Lisa yells into the wind.
They run, panting, to the slide. The man in the black coat still watches. Still smiles his mean-happy smile. He takes his big paw of a hand out of his coat pocket, waves to them. Lisa eagerly waves back.
“Is that Mr. Avery from church?” she asks, squinting at him.
“Don’t think so,” Amy mutters, climbing up the ladder. Seeing Lisa and Amy climbing the slide, a few of
the boys run over, trying to glimpse up their skirts. The nuns follow close behind the boys to distract them.
Out of the corner of her eye, Amy sees the man in the black coat.
She slides down, cold metal burning her legs. A fierce wind gust brings tears to her eyes.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
When Amy can see again, the man is gone.
Amy continues to see the man in the black coat. Once, he’s behind the monkey bars in the park when she rides her bike there after school. As always, he spots her first. Grins at her. Although the day is warm, a chill races up her spine. She pedals hard past the park, legs straining and hard breaths scorching her lungs.
Another time, she sees the man in the black coat at the grocery store loitering by the meat counter. He examines each cut closely, licks his lips as if he could devour them all. Amy thinks of a spelling word she has just learned: ravenous.
Amy’s mother doesn’t notice him, and the butcher is eager to wait on Amy’s pretty blond mommy. Grasping her mother’s hand tightly, Amy shivers. She refuses to look at the man’s face, ignoring the brilliant, hard light of his eyes. The silvery black of his longish hair.
When she finally peeks around the folds of her mother’s coat, the man is gone.Sixteen
Sneaking a smoke on the back porch, Amy huddles in her red sweatshirt. Illicit smoke curls around her head. The February snow has melted to bleak gray, no longer the vibrant white of the previous week. She takes another forbidden drag, keeps an eye on her parents’ window. She stands very still so the motion-activated light on the porch won’t come on.
The house next door, Mrs. Schaeffer’s house, now empty, stares silently at her. Mrs. Schaeffer had died the week before. While Amy had known she was old, it seemed incomprehensible that she was gone. Just gone. She had been their neighbor for as long as Amy could remember. Sure, she was eccentric, with her scarecrow in a garden the size of a postage stamp. And nine cats, each with its own cat-sized chair at a miniature table set for “catnip tea,” she’d called it.
Amy glimpses her reflection in Mrs. Schaeffer’s darkened garage window, just a red sweatshirt, face obscured by shadow. A black hole inside the red hood.
The porch light trips on suddenly, and Amy starts, dropping her cigarette.
“Dammit,” she mutters as she retrieves the wet butt from the snow.
The hedges at the rear of the yard rustle. The wind and her empty reflection remind Amy of Lisa. Long skinny legs, tinkling laughter. Then, her disappearance. Everyone demanded Where is Lisa? But Lisa was gone. Just gone. Until they found her body--or what remained of it--in the stream behind the high school.
At the end of the hedgerow, just beyond the floodlight’s glare, Amy makes out the silhouette of a black coat, a man’s hair tousled like a mane.
“Is it you?” she asks into the wind.
But no, just the Japanese maple and the red bud conspiring. No man in the black coat. Then the wind picks up, and the biting cold forces her inside. Her parents’ lights remain off.
Twenty-six
Richard and Amy dress for a colleague’s funeral.
“Poor Ellen,” he mutters. An unexpected death, aneurism.
Amy nods silently as she slips on her burgundy jacket.
Richard pulls his black overcoat from the closet. It’s so formal, he rarely wears it.
Superimposed over Richard’s lanky frame, she can see his shadow. The man in the black coat. His insistent smile. She shudders.
For one dizzying moment, Amy smells the cloying odor of mothballs. She can almost feel prickly wool against her cheek and the decadent velvet lining of the pockets. She drowns in the slippery coolness of the heavy satin lining.
Cynthia K. Marshall lives and teaches English in Dayton, Ohio.
