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“Her mom’s boyfriend at the time was working her over, had already broken her mom’s nose and was putting a good dent in her skull when Beck made the call. They showed up and arrested him, but they also nailed Beck’s mom for truancy. Beck hadn’t been to school in a while because her younger sister had pneumonia and her mom didn’t have sick days to use, so Beck ended up playing nurse. I’d taken her one of those bracelets the officers handed out, and Beck did what she was told was the right thing to do—called the cops.”

“It was the right thing to do,” I say. “He could’ve beaten her mom to death.”

“Maybe.” Bristal shrugs. “But all Beck knew was that she called the cops for help, and she ended up sitting in the back seat of a cruiser, holding her baby sister and being interrogated by CPS. They got put in foster care, and the kids got split up. Beck didn’t even see her little sister for three years, and by the time she started kindergarten, that little girl didn’t even know her last name was Parsons anymore.”

“That’s horrible,” I say.

“Yeah, it is. And that’s one of the reasons why people who live in Ash Park don’t call the cops. We take care of our own shit.”

My eyes go down to her knuckles. The scabs are gone, to be replaced by thin, silver scar tissue. I reach out and hesitantly touch them, the pad of my finger sliding over the sharp edges of her hands.

“Is that why you have these? Taking care of your own?”

“Yep,” Bristal says. “There’s a fire bug in town, and he thinks burning down places that don’t matter is the safe way to get his rocks off. He found out otherwise.”

“Who was it?” I ask.

“If I told you, that’d be straight-up gossip, no different than you believing Beck’s mom would trade her own daughter for crystal,” Bristal says. “Instead, why don’t you put those investigative skills to work and keep your eyes open for someone with a two-week-old broken nose and a thousand-yard stare, because I put a beating on that asshole, and I guarantee you there was at least a grade-two concussion involved.”

“Bristal!” I shriek. “You can’t just go around beating people up—”

“Well, I did,” she says. “And there haven’t been any more fires where I live. But I’m not letting you change the subject—are you ignoring Denise Halverson, or are you going to pony up and stick your tits out for a fellow female?”

I close my eyes and consider. The applications for all my top-tier schools are still stuck on Processing. I need to get solid content on the air, fast. Bristal’s right—Boggs is low-hanging fruit. With a murder already documented, all that’s left to do is turn over old rocks and prod the insects there. Digging for information about Denise Halverson is going to be time-consuming, maybe to the point of never finding answers—a dead end to the otherwise interesting narrative. I think of Beck and her baby bump, her holding her little sister in the back of a cruiser.

“I’m sticking my tits out,” I say, swiping my fingers across my laptop screen to wake it up. I focus on the question that has been haunting me ever since I stood in the graveyard that day, surrounded by the dead while the living went through the motions of honoring them.

“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” I whisper.

“My vagina growing shut,” Bristal says without hesitation.

“That’s not—oh my God, Bristal! That’s not even a thing.”

“I bet it is,” she says, whipping out her phone.

“No, stop. I’m ready to do this, and I can’t lose steam,” I say. Then I hit record, clear my throat, and solemnly intonate the opening line of the first episode of the no-longer nice and fully reloaded season of On the Ground in Flyover Country.

“The worst thing that can happen is being forgotten.”

Sixteen

Excerpt from podcast episode “Faded Away, Forsaken, and Forgotten” of On the Ground in Flyover Country

Welcome to On the Ground in Flyover Country. I’m Lydia Chass, inviting you to join me and my new cohost, Bristal Jamison, as we explore the past and traverse the present of our hometown. This week, I’ll be covering the dedication of the new Civil War monument, located in Fairlawn Cemetery. Tune in next week when Bristal takes the wheel for a tour of the responsibilities of your local ODOT crew.

The worst thing that can happen is being forgotten. . . . This is what I was thinking as I stood with the other participants for the memorial service and dedication of the new Civil War monument last week. Thoughts collided as I marveled at our inability to grapple with our own mortality. We insist on honoring the noble dead—as we should—but what message was I, a local girl, supposed to take away with me from that chilly afternoon?

The name Chass is everywhere in town, and the new monument is just another example. But other names can be spotted in Henley: the St. John’s aid station, which is set up every year at the county fair, isn’t a nod to piousness but rather a remembrance of William St. John, Henley’s sole physician, who did house calls on horseback in the 1800s, and great-great-grandfather to Eva St. John, whose voice will greet you if you call the Henley High School front office.

Childress Lane and Horvath Street stand as markers where those families built the first permanent residences in Henley when it was established in 1827—houses that are gone now, destroyed by the tornado of 1994, one of the first in a series of events locally known as the long stretch of bad days, which we’ll be covering in detail in future episodes.

Mention the name Ballinger and you’ll be treated to the history of a local man who played minor league baseball and famously was called up to pitch for the Yankees for one inning in 1965. Talk of the Whitesides, and you’ll be told that they make the prettiest women and even better apple pie. The Richardsons are known for diligently farming their same family fields for nine generations, the Lytles for signing up and serving, losing a soldier in every American military entanglement since the French and Indian War.

All these names can be spotted on the Civil War monument, on the pavers that surround it commemorating those who donated, and etched even more deeply into the tombstones that sprinkle the green grass of Fairlawn Cemetery.

But there are other names—ones you won’t see posted around town or hear in the mouths of the living. They aren’t on the pavers that surround the monument, either, because there are no descendants in Henley. Mattix, Dovecoat, Fender, and Halverson—these are names that have been forgotten and no longer reside within living memory. Though they may be etched in stone on the new memorial, there are no bones that carry their names in Henley, nor blood to continue their line.

This is what I brought home with me from the dedication and memorial.