See How Small
A riveting novel about the aftermath of a brutal murder of three teenage girls, written in incantatory prose ‘that's as fine as any being written by an American author today’ (Ben Fountain)One late autumn evening in a Texas town, two strangers walk into an ice cream shop shortly before closing time. They bind up the three teenage girls who are working the counter, set fire to the shop, and disappear. ‘See How Small’ tells the stories of the survivors – family, witnesses, and suspects – who must endure in the wake of atrocity. Justice remains elusive in their world, human connection tenuous.Hovering above the aftermath of their deaths are the three girls. They watch over the town and make occasional visitations, trying to connect with and prod to life those they left behind. «See how small a thing it is that keeps us apart,» they say. A master of compression and lyrical precision, Scott Blackwood has surpassed himself with this haunting, beautiful, and enormously powerful new novel.
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Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.4thestate.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015
Copyright © Scott Blackwood 2015
Scott Blackwood asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover photograph © Martin Wimmer/Getty Images
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Source ISBN: 9780007580934
Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780007580941 Version: 2015-09-16
For Ava, Ellie & Tommi
The first time I heard the voice I was terrified. It was noon, in summer, in my father’s garden…. I seldom heard the voice when it was not accompanied by a light. Usually it was very bright.
— JOAN OF ARC, FROM THE TRANSCRIPT OF HER TRIAL
Thomas Aquinas invented a third order of duration distinct from time and eternity, which he called aevum…. It coexists with temporal events, at the moment of occurrence, being, as was said, like a stick in a river. Aevum, you might say, is the time order of novels.
— FRANK KERMODE, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING
It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream,” because it hath no bottom.
— NICK BOTTOM, IN WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraphs
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part II
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Part III
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Part IV
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Part V
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Acknowledgments
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
WE HAVE ALWAYS lived here, though we pretend we’ve just arrived. That’s the trick, to make forgetful shapes with your mouth so everything feels new and unremembered. But after a while we slip up. A careless word, an uninvited smell, a tip-of-the-tongue taste of something sweet, makes the room suddenly familiar — and we have to begin again. Like startled infants, we look to your face to tell us what comes next. You came into the fire.
Take off your clothes, the men with guns said.
Please, we said.
Now, they said.
Please let us go, we said. We won’t tell anyone.
Not anyone? They smiled with their guns.
Not anyone, we said. Please.
Our jeans and boots and jackets and shirts were piled high in the middle of the floor, like a breaking wave.
The tile was cold under our feet.
Across the room, the stainless-steel ice cream case gleamed. On the floor beside it, the cash register drawer sprawled on its side.
What a shame, our mothers said from somewhere, no time to tidy up.
Before the men with guns bound and gagged us with our own bras and panties right after closing time, a few things happened: one of us hid inside her mouth the opal class ring her boyfriend had given her and remembered her mother singing “Sweet Baby James” and stroking her forehead when she had her migraines. The youngest of us, who always threw up before gym class because she was afraid of being naked, realized that this time she wouldn’t. Another remembered the pride she’d felt the day before, riding a horse no one in her family could ride, a horse that had thrown her older sister. He knows your true heart, her father had said. The horse’s shoulders were lathered with sweat. He had a salty, earthy smell she’d thought of as love.
