The Corn Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates

Author:Joyce Carol Oates [The Corn Maiden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-05-14T19:26:24+00:00

Wild! On Friday 7 P.M. news came BULLETIN-BREAKING NEWS SKATSKILL SUSPECT IN CUSTODY. It was Mr. Zallman!

We shrieked with laughter. Had to press our hands over our mouths so old Mrs. Trahern would not hear.

Jude is flicking through the channels and there suddenly is Mr. Z. on TV! And some broadcaster saying in an excited voice that this man had been apprehended in Bear Mountain State Park and brought back to Skatskill to be questioned in the disappearance of Marissa Bantry and the shocker is: Mikal Zallman, thirty-one, is on the faculty of the Skatskill Day School.

Mr. Zallman’s jaws were scruffy like he had not shaved in a while. His eyes were scared and guilty-seeming. He was wearing a T-shirt and khaki shorts like we would never see him at school and this was funny, too. Between two plainclothes detectives being led up the steps into police headquarters and at the top they must’ve jerked him under the arms, he almost turned his ankle.

We were laughing like hyenas. Jude crouched in front of the TV rocking back and forth, staring.

“Zallman claims to know nothing of Marissa Bantry. Police and rescue workers are searching the Bear Mountain area and will search through the night if necessary.”

There was a cut to our school again, and 15th Street traffic at night. “… unidentified witness, believed to be a classmate of Marissa Bantry, has told authorities that she witnessed Marissa being pulled into a Honda CR-V at this corner, Thursday after school. This vehicle has been tentatively identified as … “

Unidentified witness. That’s me! Anita cried.

And a second “student witness” had come forward to tell the school principal that she had seen “the suspect Zallman” fondling Manssa Bantry, stroking her hair and whispering to her in the computer lab when he thought no one was around, only last week.

That’s me! Denise cried.

And police had found a mother-of-pearl butterfly barrette on the ground near Zallman’s parking space, behind his condominium residence.

This barrette had been “absolutely identified” by Marissa Bantry’s mother as a barrette Marissa had been wearing on Thursday.

We turned to Jude who was grinning.

We had not known that Jude had planned this. On her bicycle she must’ve gone, to drop the barrette where it would be found.

We laughed so, we almost wet ourselves. Jude was just so cool.

But even Jude seemed surprised, kind of. That you could make the wildest truth your own and every asshole would rush to believe.

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