The child’s skin was “white”—yet the child’s hair was very dark, kinky-curly. Daddy Love felt a thrill of discovery: was this a
mixed-race child?
Daddy Love had never appropriated a
mixed-race child.
And Daddy Love was no racist.
He’d trailed them in the mall. He’d been patient, and not-visible.
In JCPenney, in Macy’s, in Sears, and in the atrium at the center of the mall. The Easter-bunny enclosure that drew children like moths to flame.
Daddy Love’s shrewd practiced eye glanced quickly about—in such places, where small children are gathered, laughing, talking shrilly, with (usually) just a single parent nearby, and that parent (usually) the mother, you will often find, indeed Daddy Love invariably found, solitary men of (usually) middle age, standing at a little distance, not too near, not too
visibly near,
observing.
Daddy Love wasn’t one of these. Daddy Love was no
registered sex offender.
Trailing the mother and child outside the mall Daddy Love had known that his mission was just, and necessary, and could not be delayed, when he’d seen the mother pause and fumble in her sweater pocket for—a pack of cigarettes! And quickly light up a cigarette, as the child stood innocently by; several quick deep inhalations, as if the toxic smoke were pure oxygen, and the woman desperate for oxygen; then, with a gesture of disdain, casting the cigarette from her, onto a grassless area abutting the walkway, where other careless and selfish smokers had cast their butts.
A smoker trying to quit. Failing to quit.
A smoker who was ashamed of her weakness. And maybe it was a weakness the child’s father did not know about.
It was God-ordained, Daddy Love must take this child as his own.
Daddy Love hurried to his van. He would trail the mother and the child in the lot. He would not let them out of his sight.
He had but a few seconds to make his move—he knew how precisely such a move had to be timed, from previous experiences. The narrow window of opportunity, as it was called, had to be coordinated with a clear field and no witnesses.
How many times Daddy Love had circled a target, borne in upon a target, but had to withdraw when a random witness appeared on the scene …
Taking the little boy from the mother was more difficult than Daddy Love had calculated. He’d struck her on the head with a claw hammer—hard; enough to crack her skull, he’d thought. She’d fallen to the pavement like a dead weight and yet, in the next instant, like a comatose boxer struggling to his feet, somehow the woman managed to heave herself up from the ground and stagger after him …
By this time he had the boy in the van. How small and light the child was, yet how frantically he struggled, like a terrified little animal! He’d shaken, punched, and struck the boy with his fist on the side of the boy’s head, to calm him.
It was astonishing to Daddy Love, the mother running desperately after the van—that look in her face, and her face streaming blood.
He’d swerved the van around, to run her down. Bitch, daring to defy Daddy Love!
You’re safe with me now, son.
God has sent me to you. Not a moment too soon!
She was an impure woman, the female you were entrusted to. She was your way
in
. But only
in
.
Daddy Love is your destiny. Daddy Love will be both Daddy and Mommy to you.
From this first day and forever. Amen.
At the first exit after the Libertyville Mall he’d driven to his hiding-place. Daddy Love had scoured the area beforehand and knew exactly which hiding-place was optimum. No one would expect—no
ordinary individual
would expect—that the child’s audacious abductor would remain within a few miles of the mall; the assumption was that, in his beige van, he was fleeing. Roadblocks would be set up to deter him, flashing lights, sirens. But shrewd Daddy Love was not one of those who would be stopped by police in the next forty-eight hours to be questioned.
At the hiding-place behind an abandoned Shell station two miles east of the Libertyville Mall he’d parked and secured the terrified child in the Wooden Maiden, as prepared. Again he rejoiced in the child’s
lightness
—the
lightness
of his bones. Nostradamus had not ever been so
light-boned.
As planned Daddy Love spray-painted the van a dark metallic purple. Out of the battered beige van a new and more stately vehicle emerged. He took his time, he would not be hurried. There was no need to hurry. Roadblocks were being set in place, law enforcement officers were running their sirens like foolish children in pursuit of—what? No one had seen Daddy Love head-on. Not even the woman he’d run down, in that moment of utmost clarity when the front fender of the minivan had struck her, cast her down and yet not aside but beneath the vehicle, her body to be dragged across the pavement … It had been a bizarre experience. If he’d known beforehand what was going to happen, he’d have enjoyed it perhaps, as a bizarre incident in Daddy Love’s earthly history. But it had happened so quickly, he hadn’t been prepared.
The higher power had guided him, as usual. He’d managed to swerve, skid, brake and accelerate the van, and the woman’s lifeless body had been cast off, finally.
If she is dead, it is her own responsibility.
He was wearing gloves of course spray-painting the minivan. This was a familiar task—he’d done it several times before, with the Chrysler and with other vans. There was satisfaction here. A
sense of accomplishment. Invariably the new paint dramatically improved the appearance of the van.
Like dyeing his whiskers a dark mahogany hue, darker than the rust-streaked hair. But now powdering the whiskers with a pale-grainy powder, a women’s face-powder, and brushing it well into the bristling hairs.
And so: he’d added twenty years to his age. Not a trim thirty-nine but a trim early-sixties. Should anyone take note.
Waiting for the paint to dry, Daddy Love ate supper: takeout from one of the fast-food restaurants in the Libertyville Mall. He had a weakness for cheeseburgers with hot chili sauce, and French fries no matter how cold.
Inside in the Wooden Maiden the child slept. A rag soaked in chloroform had been sufficient, within a few seconds, for the child was very young, and could not have weighed more than forty pounds.
Such medical supplies, and other drugs to be injected into the bloodstream, Daddy Love kept in the van, in his cache. In numerous cities and in numerous hospitals and medical centers he had contacts, usually females—nurses’ aides, attendants. Sometimes they were church-contacts who worked in public health care and had access to (controlled) substances. They adored Daddy Love each in her unique way. Each thinking
Maybe he is the one! He will love me, protect me.
And where female adoration wasn’t enough, of course Daddy Love knew to pay.
The chloroform he’d acquired from a woman he’d befriended at the Trenton, New Jersey, Church of Abiding Hope who was a worker at a veterinary.
As long as it isn’t fatal. It’s to quiet a temperamental German shepherd.
It might have been twenty years ago, when Daddy Love had not yet been fully
invisible
, and had made some blunders. Those early years and the pilgrimage newly begun.
He hadn’t been Daddy Love then. He’d been Chet Cash who’d been Chester Czechi. He’d been only just released from the Wayne County Facility for Youthful Offenders, at age twenty-one.
The bastards had incarcerated him for nine years! The social-worker woman and her public-defender friend who’d represented him had argued he hadn’t known what he was doing, he’d had no intention of choking to death his own boy-cousin with whom he’d been playing happily, but the bastards, the prosecutor and the Family Court judge had disliked him, and given him the maximum sentence for a juvenile. And he’d learned
You must show remorse. Grief, and remorse. Otherwise—you are the fool. You are to blame for your own fate.
Eight months released from the facility, and he’d seen his parole officer faithfully. By now, he knew. God-damn Chet Czechi knew to play the game.
Be respectful. Be calm. Smile and say Sir!—Ma’am! Let the assholes think that you give a fuck about them.
He’d begun his travels then. His pilgrimages.
Always returning to check with his parole officer. Of course.
The child had been his first
possession
. Others had entered his life transiently, and had passed out of it leaving no memory. It was not so much different from eating a meal, having a drink—the sex-act, its explosive outcome.
But this child, a beautiful little boy of about nine with silky blond hair, long-lashed tawny eyes, had been his first. (For you would not count his little cousin. That had been a true accident.) And his first loss.
The child’s little heart had just—stopped …
It wasn’t clear to Chet Czechi what had happened. He had not
intended
for anything to happen, of this sort. He’d forced the boy to swallow Valium tablets dissolved in Coke and soon after the boy had lapsed into a comatose sleep and soon after he had—died …
Daddy Love still felt the loss. The beautiful blond child had been meant to be
his son.
His techniques in those days had been crude. He’d had no clearly designated plan. He’d been impulsive, reckless. He’d taken the boy from a thick-thighed female with a snout-face and big jiggly breasts—it had been a necessity of justice to take the child from
her
.
This had happened in a roadside rest-area off I-80 west, south of Erie, Pennsylvania. Stopping for a piss Chet Czechi had been ravished with the knowledge that the child in the company of the snout-faced female was meant to be
his
—yet in the possession of a stranger.
In a similar way the Dalai Lama was chosen. He thought it was the Dalai Lama—the “reincarnated” spiritual leader of Tibet.
The Dalai Lama is born to ordinary parents. You might call them surrogate parents. When a reigning Dalai Lama dies, holy Buddhist monks go into the countryside to find the new, reincarnated Dalai Lama. They follow visions, intuition. Or maybe the newly reincarnated Dalai Lama, an infant, or a young child, draws them to him. As the Biblical Mary and Joseph had been surrogate parents, to bring Jesus into the world and to prepare him for his ministry.
The situations were not identical, but similar. In Daddy Love’s case, a child was born of surrogate parents but destined to be
his
son
. Already when he’d been in his early twenties as Chet Czechi he’d known this in the way that, if you add together two and two, you know the answer is four.
Invincible as math or geometry, such reasoning. The inner eye awakened, and
saw
.
What the asshole media called “abduction”—“kidnapping”—“child-snatching” was in fact a courageous act on the part of Daddy Love. The cowardly way would be to pretend he hadn’t
seen
.
He hadn’t intended for either to die. Not the snout-faced female and certainly not the little blond boy with the tawny eyes. Yet, this had happened.
The ways of God are not our ways. Who can comprehend the ways of God!
Since that sultry summer evening in a scrubby roadside reststop in Pennsylvania, thousands of miles. A continuous loop of miles interrupted by durations of
domestic life.
But the pilgrimage
never ceased for the boy, you could call him the
reincarnated son,
inevitably grew older—and less desirable.
Hundreds, thousands of hours. Out of Chet Czechi’s blundering hands had emerged the more steady, practiced hands of Daddy Love.
And the sedatives more reliable.
No harm will befall you now, my son. You are saved.
I am Daddy Love. I am your true daddy and you are my only begotten true son.
It was my mission ordained by God to save you from the fire.
There was a great cataclysm, a fireball fell to earth. What was “Ypsilanti” has now been destroyed. It was a preview of the Rapture. The old life has vanished, my son. There is a new life now
.
Such words Daddy Love uttered, that the child in the Wooden Maiden would hear and, in time, understand. In his tireless and kindly voice he so spoke. In his caressing tender voice. In his stern-Daddy voice. In his wise voice. In his somber voice. In his joyous voice. In his grave voice. He understood that the five-year-old terrified and helpless child was not yet receptive to Daddy Love’s words but Daddy Love’s words would have their effect gradually, in time.
So the most obdurate rock is eroded by a succession of singular, soft raindrops, in time.
He’d opened the Wooden Maiden mask, so that the child could see (if only the roof of the minivan close overhead) and
hear. A gag in his mouth and duct-tape over the gag so that the child could not scream.
The child could not cry. The child could not beg for mercy.
The child could not
plead
.
Daddy Love liked pleading children, to a degree. But beyond that, Daddy Love did not like pleading children.
The Preacher was more tolerant. The Preacher was more forgiving of human weaknesses.
On the whole, Chet Cash, who was Daddy Love in his “ordinary-guy” guise, did not like craven individuals. Chet did admire the brasher boys who resisted, though their resistance brought them punishment.
The Wooden Maiden was an ingenious invention of Daddy Love. As Jesus was a carpenter, so too Daddy Love was good with his hands, and found such “handyman” work soothing. He would make of his sons apprentices in such work. A child was never too young to help his father.
The Wooden Maiden was a more evolved variant of a plainer, less attractive coffin-like box that Daddy Love had utilized years ago. It was still a kind of box, carefully constructed with hinges, locks and bolts for safekeeping, yet made of high-quality cherry-wood. In shape, the Wooden Maiden resembled a casket, child-sized, or rather more it resembled the tomb of a child-pharaoh of ancient Egypt, for its structure was elegant, dignified. In his fantasies Daddy Love enjoyed imagining what law enforcement officers would say, if ever they discovered the Wooden Maiden;
if ever they discovered Daddy Love, and drew from him his life-story.
Daddy Love knew: his life-story was worth millions of dollars. If sold to the highest bidder. A made-for-TV special on one of the fancier cable channels—HBO, Showtime. A best seller simply and tastefully titled
Daddy Love: My Story.
Law enforcement officers would marvel—
Never saw anything like this! This man is an artist.
The Wooden Maiden, designed to contain a child less than twelve years old, was four feet, eight inches long, and twenty-eight inches wide. Daddy Love would not ever have chosen an
obese child,
certainly!
The two parts of the Wooden Maiden were relatively independent of each other: the upper, or mask; the lower, which was most of the Wooden Maiden.
The mask opened and shut on hinges. It was not unlike the design of a casket and inside, as in a casket, Daddy Love had affixed a cushion-like padding. For a child designed as Daddy Love’s son must be treated with care, kindness, love.
The mask would be kept open, so long as the child was good.
The remainder of the Wooden Maiden was more like a casket, with a top lid that opened, and locked, on hinges. The Wooden Maiden was so designed that the subject’s arms were pressed against his sides, and held firm. There was no accommodation for the subject to relieve himself—unfortunately. And so the subject, in time, learned to control his bladder
and his bowel movements, until such time that Daddy Love released him from the Wooden Maiden for the purpose of using the toilet.
But Daddy Love was so perceptive in his design, he’d made the foot of the Wooden Maiden several inches higher than the rest, to accommodate the subject’s feet. No sprained, broken, crippled feet for a son of Daddy Love!
Son, you are safe now. Protected now.
We will be home soon. Your new—your destined—home.
You will begin the game of Forget.
You have already begun the game of Forget.
In Daddy Love’s rearview mirror he saw: rapidly advancing, red light flashing, siren full-blast, a police cruiser.
Ohio state troopers. The red light suddenly appearing out of nowhere, nighttime on I-80 east about ten miles from the Pennsylvania border.
He’d recently made a stop at an interstate filling station/restaurant. He’d filled up the Chrysler’s tank. He’d gone into the restaurant to get a cheeseburger, French fries and coleslaw and giant Diet Coke takeout and was still eating his supper, in the cardboard container in his lap, when the state trooper cruiser appeared. Chewing, Daddy Love yet prayed. He ate, and prayed. Scarcely aware of his silent prayer.
In the back of the van, the child in the Wooden Maiden was utterly still. No muffled weeping, no sounds of struggle. The
Wooden Maiden was a tight embrace and the child would grow into it, in time.