Closer, ever closer the cruiser came—then, as Daddy Love had known it must, the cruiser passed him, at about eighty miles an hour.
Not a glance at
him
. The assholes were hot on the trail of—who?
Daddy Love was sweating, in his armpits and crotch. But Daddy Love had to laugh.
Always you feel a rush of dread, in such situations. Daddy Love had rarely succumbed to panic, but he’d frequently felt dread. But then the dread turned into excitement, as adrenaline rushed through his veins. Better (almost!) than sex.
And the excitement turned into laughter.
It was amusing, listening to the radio. Daddy Love kept the volume low so that the child a few feet behind him could not hear. The latest news: Ypsilanti-child-abduction still laughably touted as “breaking news.”
Daddy Love was curious—coolly curious—if the woman had survived? Or maybe died?
If she survived, she’d (maybe) had a look at him, through the windshield, and (maybe) could describe him. But maybe (he halfway hoped) she’d died, which would ratchet the charges against the unidentified child-abductor up to murder, but make things safer for him.
God would make that decision. If the cigarette-addicted female lived or died—that was up to God to decide.
On the 11
P.M.
news as Daddy Love crossed into Pennsylvania on a mostly deserted interstate he heard that a “suspect” had been taken into custody by Ypsilanti police.
Witnesses had “identified”—who?
Daddy Love laughed, laughed.
In a way, this was the best part of it. This triumph, and this laughter. The child was but the means to
this
.
Slept in the van, upright in the driver’s seat. Often in daylight and never for more than an hour.
In the back of the van, he assumed the child slept, too.
Much of the time, in this early stage, the child slept.
Several times since they’d left Detroit, Michigan, to head east on the interstate Daddy Love had stopped in deserted
rest-areas
to look after the child. He had to clean him, and he had to feed him. These were necessary tasks. Especially the cleaning, the child-piss and watery excrement he wished a female might take care of, but Daddy Love was a responsible daddy and did not shirk his duties. In a Detroit used-clothes shop on Labrosse he’d purchased several articles of clothing for a child including pajamas and socks. The clothes in which the child had been abducted were now very soiled and would be discarded soon.
Always there was the dread—a half-pleasurable shiver of dread!—that, when Daddy Love opened the mask, the child’s
face would be slack, bloodless and lifeless: not a child but a child’s corpse.
For the first time since he’d taken him, Daddy Love removed the duct-tape and the gag inside the child’s mouth.
The gag he would need to replace, for it was soaked with spittle and nasty.
The child gasped for breath. The child’s eyes rolled in his head. Daddy Love leaned above him smiling, speaking in his soft caressing assuring voice.
“Hello, Gideon! I am your new daddy—Daddy Love.”
The child rapidly blinked. His eyes appeared to be all pupil. Though he was of
mixed race
, his skin was chalky white. He did not respond at all to Daddy Love but stared at him with the blank-terror of a trapped and paralyzed animal.
“You are Gideon, son. ‘Gideon’ is an ancient Hebrew name, of the Bible—‘brave warrior.’”
The child’s former name had been
Robbie Whitcomb.
But no more.
Daddy Love brought a morsel of food to the child’s mouth, to feed him. But the child seemed not to know what the food was, and it fell from his mouth, into the space behind his head.
“Gideon. You are hungry, and you are thirsty. You will obey me.”
He’d had to open the larger lid, and pull the child into a sitting position. Powerfully the child stank, and had to be cleaned;
then, with infinite patience, Daddy Love tried again to feed him, morsels of the cheeseburger, and sips of the Coke.
He had mixed a tranquilizer into the Coke, which would help to calm the child, and ease him into sleep once they began their journey again. As if he sensed this, the child refused to drink.
It was as if the child’s mouth had locked. His jaw-muscles had locked. His spinal cord, his limbs had locked. Daddy Love would be required to coax the child out of this panic-paralysis, but not just yet, for they’d stopped at a deserted rest-stop, and intruders might pull into the parking lot at any time.
In such places, people generally mind their own business. A child being disciplined by his daddy would not draw attention. No one would dare come near the minivan with the cross on its roof, to peer inside the tinted windows. Yet, Daddy Love knew better than to take a chance.
A slightly older child, of seven or eight, Daddy Love might have half-walked half-carried into the restroom, and into a toilet-stall and washed him brusquely at the sink. The older child would understand what Daddy Love meant when he said
If someone comes in and you make a peep I will kill you
but the younger child, in his paralysis of horror, would not understand and could not be trusted.
Daddy Love cleaned the child with wetted newspapers, flung then onto the ground. Daddy Love was breathing hard, annoyed, but smiling.
“‘Gideon’ is your new name, son. When we are in our new home, I will baptize you properly. D’you hear?”
Daddy Love stroked the child’s head. The thrillingly curly-kinky hair, like a little bush. Daddy Love leaned over the child to touch his lips to the child’s forehead which was unnaturally cold and at last the child recoiled, and began to pant, and to cry as a wounded little animal might cry.
This at least signaled a response. Resistance is a normal response, initially.
Initially, Nostradamus had
resisted
. But soon, Nostradamus had given in.
Before him, Deuteronomy.
And before him, Prince-of-Peace.
In the Kittatinny Mountains of northwest New Jersey, close by the Delaware River at the Water Gap, their bodies were buried beneath boulders “unmarked” to the ordinary eye.
Only just bones now, scraps of skin, hair, rotted clothing. Their child-brightness had dimmed. They’d become too old. Boys were irresistible, adolescents not. Eleven was the bittersweet age for Daddy Love foresaw, as Nostradamus, Deuteronomy, and Prince-of-Peace had not, that his love for them, which meant his patience with them, his caring-for them, was coming to an end.
Twelve was already too old—thirteen was repellent.
The new child was very young: five years, four months according to the news stories Daddy Love had heard. There were at least six blissful years ahead.
Never had Daddy Love seized a child so young. He’d believed that eight or nine was the optimum age. But in the Holy Roman Catholic Church it was well known by religious orders that if you secure a child before the age of seven, his soul is yours.
He had never fully understood the verse from Psalms:
Out of the mouth of babes and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.
As Gideon was so young, so Gideon would be the more shaped by Daddy Love. His memories of his ordinary life in Ypsilanti, Michigan, would fade like watercolors in pelting rain.
Daddy Love would love this child tenderly. His other sons had coarsened and disappointed him. He would not have any barrier between himself and Gideon. As soon as they arrived safely home in New Jersey, in Kittatinny Falls he would begin his
love-campaign.
There would be not two-ness but only one-ness.
This is my body and this is my blood. Take ye and eat.
There would be little pleasure in no resistance at all, of course. Daddy Love would expect this, to a degree. As, with the older boys, there would have been little pleasure if they hadn’t fought for their lives—and a little beyond.
Gideon? Will you eat? To please your daddy.
Daddy Love pried the child’s jaws open, just slightly. The child shuddered and struggled and his eyes rolled in his head in a paroxysm of panic and at that moment, headlights flooded the van—a vehicle was turning into the rest-area.
The quivering child drew breath to scream. But Daddy Love was quicker clapping his hand over the child’s mouth.
Soon then, that night, crossing the high windy bridge above the Delaware River at the Water Gap, and arriving at the farm, or what remained of the farm, three miles beyond Kittatinny Falls.
Upsie-daisy, son! Climb up out of there,
come on.
Your new home, Gideon.
Daddy Love has got you.
The woman lingered in the doorway. Her eyes moved over Chet Cash like hungry ants.
Anything else you’d be wanting, Chet. Just give a call.
Sure I will, Darlene.
You got my cell number.
I do, Darlene.
It’s looking pretty good here, eh? Just needed a little work.
You did a great job, Darlene. I’ll be calling you.
Next week is OK, Chet. I got lots of free days. At the medical clinic, they’re cutting back the cafeteria hours. So I got more time.
That’s too bad, Darlene. I mean—your work-hours cut.
It’s this God-damn economy. You can’t save a penny. I got “credit card debt”—it’s serious.
I’ll be calling you, Darlene. Maybe not next week, but the next.
She was a big-bodied female of about thirty-five.
Fleshy-muscled
upper arms, muscled (bare) calves, and on her feet flimsy flip-flops. Her streaked-blond hair was long and thick as a horse’s mane and tied up around her head in a way you had to suppose the woman thought might be gypsy-glamorous. Her face was round as a full moon, and pug-nosed. Red lipstick on Darlene Barnhauser was like lipstick on a pig but it gave her a look of sexy-girlish insolence. And she had a smudged-looking rose tattoo on her right shoulder. She lived about three miles away in the village of Kittatinny Falls, on the River Road. Since Chet had last seen Darlene, about nine
months before, she’d put on weight; though she wasn’t fat or in any way soft or flaccid and she was impressively strong—she’d gone to fetch the stepladder in the old barn and carried it into the house by herself.
She’d laughed with good-natured disgust, on her knees cleaning beneath the sink, reaching to pull out, with rubber-gloved hands, a desiccated rodent-corpse.
Oh, man! Like it’s some kind of mauzzo-leum in here!—she’d laughed to draw Chet Cash’s attention. (Chet was sweeping the front hall. Chet wasn’t given to on-your-knees housecleaning.)
Chet didn’t like it, Darlene never properly dressed for housecleaning, or manual labor. Like it was a matter of female pride. A big husky girl in flowery T-shirt and pink stretch-waist slacks, that were now covered in cobwebs and dirt. She’d sweated through her clothes. Her pug-nose shone with grease. But she’d done a good job and Chet would probably call her again.
She was saying now, wistfully: Y’know, Chet—we missed you. Lots of us. Like at church, it really felt sad and kind of empty when you were gone. Rev’nd Prentiss could feel it too. Like, some kind of
spirit had departed
from our midst.
I missed you all too, Darlene. But it couldn’t be helped.
I’d drive out here sometimes, just to check on the house. Make sure nobody’d broke into it, like kids vandalizing places where nobody lives. It’s not a bad place. Even all gone wild like it is, and the apple orchard wrecked from last winter …
Her voice trailed off. Chet Cash was instructing himself
Be patient. She will leave in one minute.
Saying, in a flat not-encouraging voice, OK, Darlene. Good to hear it.
See, it just needs some painting, and the roof repaired. And that stone chimney kind of going to pieces. My brother-in-law Lyle, he’s a real good carpenter. He could help you, if you wanted. You want his cell phone?
Thanks, Darlene. Maybe when I get settled.
This linoleum floor in the kitchen isn’t bad, is it? Once you get the grime out. And the bathtub, and toilet—I got most of the stains out. Looked like some kind of small rodent died in the toilet, the size of the bones … It just takes work, and not getting discouraged.
Chet Cash smiled harder. Saying, Maybe.
Anybody coming to stay with you? Like—family?
Maybe.
Nostradamus?
No. Nostradamus is with his mother.
I never met her! Where’s she takin him?
Upper Peninsula, Michigan. She’s got family there.
That’s too bad! He’s a real polite nice boy.
He was.
You and her—you’re, like, separated? Divorced?
Chet Cash smiled harder. Chet Cash said not a word.
His stone-colored eyes on the woman’s face.
One more minute. You have one more minute, Darlene.
So badly wanting to grab the woman around the neck, squeeze and
squeeze.
He’d bury her with the others. Mile and a half he’d have to drag her, and he’d have to be shoveling a fucking grave for her, and he had no energy for such an ordeal so soon after the long drive from Michigan. And her family in Kittatinny Falls knew where she’d been. And he was needing to tend to the child. So calmly Chet Cash spoke.
You did a great job, Darlene. I’ll call.
Thanks, Chet! Like I say, it just takes work.
Very reluctantly the woman shifted her weight in the doorway. A blush had lifted into her heavy face, you could see that Chet Cash had the ability to make her happy.
You got my cell number?—I guess you do.
Right.
OK, Chet. G’night.
G’night.
A few yards away like an irrepressible child the woman turned, grinned and waved—Good to have you back, Chet. Missed ya!
There is the need for a female. Somehow, it can’t be avoided.
He watched Darlene Barnhauser walk to her car. She had the side-to-side shuffling gait of a fat child. He would not take his eyes off her until he saw her climb into her piece-of-shit Saturn hatchback, with difficulty fitting her stout body behind the steering wheel, and turn on the ignition, and depart.
All these minutes Daddy Love’s excitement had been mounting. Blood like hot lava flooding the pit of his belly, his groin.
In the back bedroom, where the child awaited Daddy Love.