How They Were Found by Matt Bell Page A

refrigerator, that the dry cold of meat and ice is better than the slow rot of lettuce and leftovers and ancient, crust-rimmed condiments. Knows that even after death, there is a safety in the preservation of a body, that 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 needs a drink. By eight, he's already been out to the garage four times, unable to keep from opening the freezer lid. If he doesn't stop, the constant thawing and refreezing will destroy her, skin first.
    It's mid-shift at the factory, so the bar is empty except for the bartender and two men sitting together at the rail, watching the ball game on the television mounted above the liquor shelves. Punter takes a stool at the opposite end, orders a beer and lights a cigarette. He looks at the two men, tries to decide if they're men he knows from the plant. He's bad with names, bad at faces. 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 own late-night newscast, including the latest about the missing girl. Punter stares at the picture of her on the television screen, his tongue growing 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, says, I hope they find the fucker that killed her and cut his balls off.
    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 comes back 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, then puts it down when he realizes they're not offering. He pays his tab and gets up to leave.
    He hasn't thought much about how the girl got into the pond, or who put her there. He too assumed murder, but the who or why or when is not something he's previously considered.
    In juvie, the counselors told him nothing he did or didn't do would have kept his mother alive, which Punter understood fine. Of course he hadn't killed his mother. That wasn't why he was there. It was what he'd done afterward that had locked him away, put him behind bars until he was eighteen.
    This time, he will do better. He won't sit around for months while the police slowly solve the case, while they decide that what he's done is just as bad. This time, Punter will find the murderer himself, and he will make him pay.
     
    He remembers: Missing her. Not knowing where she was, not understanding, just wishing she'd come back. Not believing his father, who told him that she'd left them, that she was gone forever.
    He remembers looking for her all day while his father worked, wandering the road, the fields, the rooms of their small house.
    He remembers descending into the basement one step at a time. Finding the light switch, waiting for the fluorescent tubes to warm up. Stepping off the wood steps, his bare feet aching at the cold of the concrete floor.
    He remembers nothing out of the ordinary, everything in its place.
    He remembers the olive green refrigerator and the hum of the lights being the only two sounds in the world.
    He remembers walking across the concrete and opening the refrigerator door.
    More than anything else, he remembers opening his mouth to scream and not being able to. He remembers that scream getting trapped in his chest, never to emerge.
     
    When the eleven o' clock news comes on, Punter is watching, ready with his small, spiral-bound notebook and his golf pencil stolen