Authors: Cynthia Thayer
“
The Bible tells me so.
”
“Jess. My Jess. Don't.”
“See the pretty flower, Ralphie,” I say.
And then I pull the trigger.
Jonah rises from me as if jerked by heaven with a great hook. When he slumps back down he shudders everywhere. His arm falls open onto my lap. His fingers curl. At the end of his great sigh, his body relaxes on mine, heavy and limp. It is done.
Sylvie slices the air with her racket, begs Charlie for another game. Charlie's too tired and backs off, places his racket on the picnic table, shakes his head. I can't watch Sylvie hit him with her racket, hit him hard in the face. I can't watch Charlie wrest the racket from her and hold her tight while she bites at his shoulder. I press the power button on the remote and the room is still. The scent of almonds charges the air, covers the stink of fresh blood. I feel it, very warm, leaking from his heart onto my thigh. When I search for a hole in his back where the bullet went, my fingers touch the orange sweatshirt, the part covering his heart, find a small hole, like a cigarette burn. There is no blood there. No blood on his back. It comes from his front,
dripping damp on my jeans. Sticky and still warm. I think Carl says my name over and over, gives me time in between to answer.
How could he be dead? His bare arm touches mine, flung across me after the shot. His fingers are open now, no longer clenched. Dampness weeps from his mouth onto my clothes. Blood? No. I don't think so. Is it over? No. It isn't over. I lay my head on the back of the couch, close my eyes. Carl won't stop calling me. He calls and calls. He breaks the silence each time.
Stop it. Stop it.
“Jessie. Please. Answer me.”
Do I answer? How? What do I say? The handle fills my palm. There are more bullets in there. I don't know where the first one is. I touch the sweatshirt on his front. Sticky. I slide my fingers up toward his heart. It has exploded. I hesitate at the edge of the crater. Too horrible. Such damage a bullet can cause. I had to do it. I had to.
I think about love. I don't think he felt anything at all. I don't know what to do now. Carl's pleas become louder. He asks me to look at him, to cut the tape around his ankles. But I hum a child's tune, a simple ditty, something about a gray goose, telling someone the goose is dead. It's a nice tune. The words come to me. I sing the words through my own weeping. I think Carl believes that I have lost my mind. Have I? Have I lost my mind?
I can't seem to move. Jonah is heavy against me. I'm not sure I can get up. I lift the gun. It feels heavy now, and cold. Where did the warmth go? Shot in the back. I shouldn't have shot him in the back. I'll have to do something with the
gun. I hold my hand at the edge of the couch and release the thing. It falls to the floor. Thud.
“Sylvie, I had to,” I say. “Don't you see?”
“Jessie. Push him off and come here. I'll help you.”
“Oh, Carl. I . . .”
“Just push. You can do it. Just get out from under him.”
“I can't. He's too heavy.”
“Jess, Hans is out there. Come here. Now.”
Carl never yells. Why does he yell at me now? Hans? Oh. Hans. Yes. He's in the driveway. Oh, God, he's in the driveway. When I push Jonah away from me, the dampness of the blood cools my skin. He's heavy. His hand slides off onto the couch cushion.
I am drenched in his blood. When I stand, I can see stains on the couch and seeping across Jonah's chest, as if the heart continued to push all the blood from his body after it was hit.
“Come on, my darling,” Carl says. “Walk over here. Bring the scissors.”
I walk across the room toward the scissors. They lift off the hook easily. What did I expect? I don't know. They are sharp. Points. Blades. They're expensive scissors. Stainless steel. Fine honed. Perhaps they're ruined from cutting the duct tape, adhesive covering the blades.
“The scissors,” he says. “Bring the scissors.”
I pluck the loose end of my braid by the ribbon. “Look, Carl. It's all gray now. Did you know that?”
“Yes, my pet.”
I look over at the boy on the couch. He hasn't moved. I
am surprised. But how silly. Of course he hasn't moved. I killed him. Red covers the hunter's orange on his chest. An explosion. His heart. Is the day over? I expect to hear police sirens coming down the drive, but why would they? I detour toward the telephone cord, see that it is intact, plug it into the jack. When I lift the receiver, a dial tone throbs into my ear. I lower it back onto its cradle.
“Jessie?”
“I'm coming, Carl.”
And Carl. Where has he been? Has he been here all this time, still taped to the chair?
I place my palm over the blue fish and slide the sharp points of the scissors between the tape and the chair, close the blades over the thick wad. I have to cut again and again, like a child with plastic scissors. The other arm's tape cuts easier. When I free his hands, Carl reaches up to my face, very slowly as if the pain is almost too much, touches the corner of my mouth, runs his finger down my chin, touches my collarbone.
I bend my head. He holds his mouth at the nape of my neck and speaks but I don't understand the words. He speaks softly onto my skin. What does he say? I bend farther, away from his lips, toward his feet. The tape is loose and the scissor blade slips in easily, cuts through the layers. I cut slowly. What after this? What do we do after this?
J
ESSIE LOWERS HER HAND
onto my arm. Her fingers, flecked with his blood, steady my wrist while she slides the scissor blade underneath the tape. She frees my hands. I raise them to her sad lips. She doesn't open them for me, keeps her mouth tight, closed. I feel the corner of her mouth quiver as she lowers her head so that I can touch the back of her neck.
“I love you so, my pet.”
“Do you, Carl? Do you really?”
“He would have killed us,
n'est-ce pas?
”
She moves away from me to cut the tape from my ankles, slowly, deliberately, not Jessie's usually quick way.
Blood seeps from the boy, continues to bleed onto his clothes, the couch, pools on the wood floor by the discarded gun. Such things that mothers do to save their children.
The last night in the Gypsy camp, my mother held me while I told her of my planned escape. I leaned my head on her breast and whispered about the brown truck, about Marcel, whose girlfriend danced to the gas to the sounds of my violin, and about how he had rigged up the underneath of the truck so a boy could hide. I pretended she wore her red blouse with the silver threads and bracelets around her wrists and smelled like rosemary and olive oil. She pretended that my hair was clean and that my face was freshly shaven and that I wore shoes on my feet.
“When you see the brown truck just outside the camp, I will be underneath,” I whispered to her. “Watch the truck leave the camp. Then you'll know I've escaped.”
“You will do it. Run as fast as you can away from this place. Don't eat the green nuts. Wait until they dry. Keep your violin close to you. It will be your salvation. Don't drink creek water. Make nettle soup.”
“I will, Mama.”
“And Veshi. Don't look back. You'll trip on a root.”
“The brown truck, Mama.”
“The brown truck. Yes. I'll watch for it.” She pulled a chunk of dark bread, spotted here and there with bits of mold but still soft, from her bosom. “Tuck it into your pocket. Don't eat it all tomorrow.”
“The man, Marcel. The guard. Don't tell anyone. Not Daddy. No one. He'd be killed.”
“I don't know anything,” she said. “How do I know where my boy is? Perhaps killed. Perhaps gone into your
âbakery.'” She laughed, then, about the bakery. That's what we called the ovens. I laughed, too. How could I laugh?
And I knew she wouldn't tell. And I knew while I was hanging under that brown truck and she took the revolver in her mouth that she wouldn't tell anyone where I was.
“Carl, I shot him.”
“Yes, my pet. You did.”
“What will we tell Sylvie?”
“We'll think of something.”
“Stand up, my darling. Can you stand up?”
I struggle to my feet, using my hands on the arms of the chair for leverage. My hips ache. My first step is tentative, unsteady. Jessie takes my arm as we walk away from the chair toward the window. When I raise the window, the cold night air surrounds us, chills the room, softens the smells of blood, of urine, of unwashed dishes.
Jessie turns toward me. It is then that I see the streak of blood on her cheek. I moisten my finger and scrub it away, wipe until her skin is red from the rubbing. I have to spit twice to remove it. My arms encircle her. She's small. I sing to her a song from my mother in the Romany language, a song about a little bluebird. The words come from a long-forgotten place, verses and verses. When I finish, Jessie leans still against me.
“Sing again. About the bird.”
“How do you. . .”
“What, Carl?”
“Nothing, my pet.”
While I sing, her body presses hard against mine as if she wants to become part of me. She opens the collar of my shirt, presses her face against my bare chest. When I finish the song, she continues to hum the tune. I run my hand down her hair, linger at the end of her braid.
“Should we get another dog? A retriever?”
“Oh, Jess. Sure. We can.”
“I miss Reba. I miss the wet-dog smell. Remember when she used to run on the mudflats and then jump on the couch? And now. Look what's on the couch. Look, Carl. Look.”
“I know, my pet. I see him.”
“We'll have to do something.”
“Yes.”
“And Hans.”
Jessie gets her jacket from the hook on the wall, puts it on, zips it, pulls her braid to the outside. She tries the flashlights on the windowsill, one after the other, until she finds a strong beam. But she does not look at the boy on the couch again.
Noises from the shore filter through the open window. Rustlings. Dry leaves. Splashes in water. The night creatures. Jessie's gulls have left the boulder, but they will come back.
I reach for my sweatshirt on the hook by the door before I realize where it is. Jessie opens the back door and steps out into the night, and I follow. Each step is painful. My stiff legs feel weak. Jessie shines the flashlight ahead of us,
sweeping the beam around the front of the garage, at the edge of the driveway, underneath the rosebushes. Has she changed? She's still small. But her actions are now slow, deliberate, old. When did that happen? Today? No. I think a long time ago. I have only just noticed.
An owl screeches in the distance. I reach for her hand, but in the dark I miss it, grasp at air. For a moment I panic. Where is she? But of course she is there, just ahead of me, kicking at sticks, looking for Hans.
I see him first, mutter to Jess. She directs the beam toward the dark heap by the edge of the rosebushes. It doesn't move.
“Hans?” Her voice is shrill, loud. Too loud. “Hans.”
He's curled up like a sleeping baby. Across his shoulders is Jonah's jacket with the wool stripes, warm, tucked tight at the neck. His head rests on his sleeve. One of his arms is flung to the side as if searching for something to hang on to. It's not his fault, all the killing and the hatred. What if he hadn't run? What if I hadn't called out? Did he think I was a Nazi? And was he? Was his father?
Jessie bends down to him, pulls the jacket away to look. She brushes his hair back, closes his eyes. Why do we close the eyes of the dead? Before she stands, she pulls Jonah's jacket up loosely over his face, straightens his arm. And what of Marte?
I follow Jessie into the house in the near dark. The flashlight beam is almost gone and the light from the garage doesn't shine very far. We don't speak. What is there to say?
This time she holds her hand back for me to take. It's warm. I don't squeeze hard, just hold her fingers loosely until we are through the door.
Jonah's head leans on his own shoulder and he would seem to be asleep if not for the blood. Jessie picks up the blanket she dropped when she dressed and covers him completely with it. Sticking out from underneath the blanket, his feet rest, one on the other, as if he is napping or reading a book.
I glance around the room. Evidence is everywhere yet nowhere. Jessie's underwear is balled up in the corner by the bathroom. Discarded drawings litter the floor around my chair. A ghastly nude of Jessie dangles from a tack beside the clock. A stoneware plate speckled with potato and bits of chicken lies on a placemat at the end of our yellow pine table, a splintered bullet hole as a centerpiece. Jessie's wadded-up tissue balances against her glasses on the side table. My tooth is in there. But the hum of the refrigerator and the sounds of a sudden evening shower pinging on the tin roof are familiar. Is it all right to leave Hans out in the rain?
“What are you doing?” I ask. Jessie tugs at the back of Jonah's pants. The body moves. She is too close to it. Too close.
“His wallet. Here. I have it.”
She reaches for her glasses and puts them on, turns away from the body. The brown leather wallet is almost empty. Just a driver's license belonging to Ralph Johnston, and an
old photo. It's a woman, young, beautiful, holding the hand of a small child.
“There's no article.”
“There was no boy in the well,” I say.
“Yes. There must have been,” she says.
She pulls out the photo and hands it to me. Behind it, folded and refolded, is a yellowed newspaper article. Before she opens it up, she places the wallet on the side table. One edge of the paper rips. Inside is that same picture, a mother and child holding hands. The article is short. She reads it aloud.
“Local boy and mother survive fall into well. Ralph Johnston, five years old, receives minor lacerations. Marion Johnston sustains compound leg fracture. Both have been released from the hospital and are in good condition despite the ordeal. The two spent nearly twenty-four hours before they were found by a local schoolboy.”