He poked his head into the first room on the right, and flipped the light switch on. It was a small bathroom, lime green porcelain tub and toilet accented by a mauve shower curtain. There were dark spots dotting the edges of the snot-green sink. Talman thought they might be blood.
“Jimmy?” he called again, and pushed open the door of the next room, this time on the left of the hall. Again he flipped on a light, and saw posters of Batman on the walls, and a small desk littered with comic books and a catcher’s mitt next to the unmade bed. A child’s room, but no child.
He moved to the last room, on the right. This time he didn’t need to turn on the light, or call for the boy.
Jimmy was there. He knelt on the floor in the middle of the room. He was crying, holding his hands to his eyes. Talman could see the boy’s arms were slick with blood.
His mother’s.
She lay on the floor in front of Jimmy. Talman guessed that she had been dead for a while already. There were bloody footsteps fading across the carpet that led towards the hall, and the murder weapon was missing. But Talman had no doubt of what it had been. Jimmy’s mother looked as if she had been torn open by a hacksaw. Her t-shirt, which once might have been white, was slitted and slashed with a dozen tears, and blood had streamed out of each to pool on her belly, darkening the brown shag carpet beneath her.
Mrs. Jenkins had been stabbed. Over and over again.
“Dad, no,” Jimmy cried.
Talman turned just in time to catch a glimpse of silver in the air. He started to dodge, but the blade caught him on the arm, and he screamed as he rolled to the floor.
“Shoulda minded your own business,” James Jenkins said. “Now I’ll have to do you, too. Can’t letcha just walk outta here, can I?”
“Whoa,” Talman said, crabwalking backwards, hands and feet treading through the blood of Jimmy’s mom, until he was trapped against the bedroom wall. The older man followed, calmly, as if he had all the time in the world.
Jimmy still sat next to his mother’s body. “Dad please,” he cried. “No more. I’ll be good, I promise.”
Talman could see the blue of a fresh bruise covering the boy’s right cheek.
“Shut up, boy, or you’ll get more of the same,” the man spat, then moved in on Talman. One corner of his lip raised in a sneer. “Stay still and I’ll make this quick for ya. I got enough mess to clean up as it is.”
He leaned closer and aimed the butcher knife at Talman’s throat.
“I remember you,” he grinned. “Shoulda stayed at the circus, freak.”
Then he struck.
Talman struck at the same moment, bringing an arm up to shield his face while kicking out at the man’s stomach with his feet. Something hot sheared his forearm, but the other man fell back, and Talman leapt up from the floor. Before he could take a step, Jimmy’s father was on him again, knocking him back to the ground with a tackle. Talman’s face slammed into the carpet, and he felt something sticky on his forehead. He lifted his face off the ground and found himself at eye level with the glazed eyes of the dead woman.
Her husband straddled him from behind and yanked both of his wrists together, holding them with a steel grip to the small of Talman’s back.
This is it,
a voice in the back of his mind said.
You escaped from this kind of shit, found a nice girl, made a baby…and you had to come back for more.
“Why did you do it?” Talman found himself asking, still staring at the quiet glaze of the dead woman’s eyes.
“She didn’t know when to mind her own business either,” James Jenkins answered, pressing cold steel to the back of Talman’s neck. Suddenly the voice got closer, and hot, sour breath whispered in his ear.
“I give the boy a little discipline and she can’t keep her trap shut. Boy needs discipline to be a man, you know. Or didn’t your father teach ya that?”
Suddenly Talman was 10 years old again, and in his old bedroom, in the dark. He smelled stale cigarettes and beer, and felt the sting of leather crack across his rear end. His father had pulled his pants down and bent him over the mattress for a whuppin’.
“You need discipline, Talman,” his father said, voice slurring ever so slightly. “I’ll teach ya.” The belt cracked down again, and Talman’s whole body screamed.
“No more,” the older Talman whispered, a tear forming in his eye. It rolled to the carpet, slipping into the blood of a dead woman, and the fight seemed to leak out of him with the saltwater. His whole body relaxed, and he waited for the last stroke of the knife.
“I’ll take care of you,” James Jenkins promised, still leaning in close. “And then I’ll teach the boy a thing or two about listening to his father.”
“Leave him alone,” Jimmy yelled. The boy shoved his father, trying to dislodge him from Talman, but the man only laughed. With a backhanded slap, he pushed the boy away. Talman heard a thump as Jimmy lost his balance and hit the floor behind them.
Talman felt the ghosts of cigarette butts burning his bare arms, and saw the purple of bruises on the face and back of poor Jimmy Jenkins.
Are you going to just lie down and die?
He let out a fierce scream and put all of his heart into flipping the bigger man off him. Twisting around, he caught James off balance, and punched the man in the jaw.
“Ugh,” the older man gulped in surprise, and then his eyes lit with anger.
“Shoulda let me do you easy,” James said, and belted Talman in the face with a fist that left the buzz of bees singing in his ears.
But Talman didn’t slow. He’d always been fast and nimble, and now he twisted and shimmied his way loose from the knees of the other man, punching at him again, this time in the gut.
James yelled in fury and raised the knife to plunge it into Talman’s chest. But just as its blade nicked the skin, Talman was sliding sideways. The blade slit his shirt, and caught with a
thunk
in the floor. As the other man wrestled it out of the wood beneath the carpet, Talman grabbed the haft with both hands, and wrested it away from the other man.
“No ya don’t,” Jimmy’s father grinned, and backhanded the younger man with his free palm. But Talman didn’t let go. His grip held James’ hand to the knife, and they strained against each other in a deadly game of arm wrestling. Talman was quickly on the losing end.
“Yes I do,” he whispered, and threw all his weight against the knife. He prayed it would be enough, because if it wasn’t, he would be lying on the floor beneath the blade again in a heartbeat, and this time, there wouldn’t be a reprieve.
It was enough.
The older man fell sideways at Talman’s attack, and before James could regain his balance, Talman screamed a whoop of fury and thrust both hands forward, still holding tight to the knife.
“Ugh,” James said again, and this time, his surprise was terminal.
A wash of white-hot heat burned Talman’s chest as the knife sunk deep into James Jenkins’ heart.
The older man slumped backwards, falling to the floor next to his wife, holding the haft of the knife with both hands. He stared in surprise at the wooden stub for just a moment. And then he lay down, eyes blinking as he gasped for air.
“Fucker,” he hissed.
And was still.
“Oh my god,” Talman murmured, staring at the blood quickly soaking James’ shirt. “What have I done?”
He staggered to his feet, and stepped back from the bodies. All of a sudden, he could see the whole room at once, as if from the air. A brutally butchered woman. A murdered man clutching in death at the knife in his chest. A young, beat-up boy, cowering and crying in the corner, head between his knees. And his own hands, smeared with the blood of both of the dead. Talman started moving towards the door. “Shit, shit, shit,” he said aloud.
For a split second, as he looked at Jimmy, he saw the father’s heavy, dark-haired hand balling into a fist and connecting hard with that small, freckled face. And then he just saw the boy, alone now, and scared, rocking back and forth.
Talman took a deep breath, shivered, and moved back into the room, stepping carefully around the bodies to put his arm around the hysterical child.
“Shhh,” he whispered in the boy’s ear. “You’re going to hyperventilate that way. C’mon, and let’s get out of here, okay?”
The boy nodded, and Talman guided him out of the room and back to the toy-strewn bedroom.
“I just wanted to watch cartoons,” Jimmy said finally. “Dad said no but mom said okay.”
Talman nodded. It was always something simple. Something stupid. He’d lived through it himself. And escaped.
“I know,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”
The boy hugged him, then looked up, tears streaming down his face.
“Can I go with you?”
“I don’t know,” Talman said. “We need to find your grandma… or your aunt or uncle.”
Jimmy shook his head. “Don’t have a grandma. Or aunt. Don’t have anyone now.”
That brought a fresh bout of tears, and Talman pulled the boy close.
“Don’t worry,” he promised. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“Then you’ll take me with you?”
Talman thought for a second. If he went to the police, the kid would end up in an orphanage, and he himself might end up behind bars. If Jimmy really didn’t have any other family…
««—»»
Skyy grinned at him from behind the ticket booth.
“’Bout time you got back,” she said. “You missed all your afternoon shows!”
“I know,” Talman answered. “Couldn’t help it.”
“And who’s this?” she asked, smiling at the pale, red-haired boy clenching Talman’s hand.
“This is Jimmy,” Talman said. “He’s going to be staying with us awhile.”
A frown crossed her brow, and Skyy looked at him suspiciously. “Talman, what did you do?”
He ruffled a hand through Jimmy’s hair, and then patted it to her tummy. His heart instantly burned. But it felt good.
…In the field behind the elephant’s pen, a toddler struggled to throw a baseball. He pushed the ball out into the air with his hands, but instead of flying across the field, the ball fell to the ground, just a couple feet away. An older boy with a thatch of sun-red hair reached down and picked it from the dirt. “How bout
you
try to catch instead?” the red-haired boy said, and the younger child grinned and held out his hands…
“I think I just found our baby an older brother.”
He knelt down next to the boy. “Welcome to the circus, Jimmy Jenkins.”
A grin spread across the Jimmy’s face for the first time that day. Talman felt his own emptiness melt away as he spread his hand out towards the chaos of the big top, the animal trailers and the mobs of people laughing and talking and clutching stuffed animal prizes under their arms.
“Welcome home.”
— | — | —
I shot the zebra right between the eyes. It didn’t die quickly. Its feet bucked, and the mouth shuddered, shivering open and closed, open and closed as it fell. Didn’t make much sound though. It lay on the floor kicking for a minute or two, one drop of blood greasing the way across its white and black stripes for more. Soon there was a pool of it on the hay-strewn floor beneath the zebra’s head, and after a while its eyes stopped accusing me. All its life, I had brought it carrots and a pat on the head. Now, I made it hurt. And die. I had gone from its saint to its anathema. Anathzebra, I thought, in a crazed moment of foolish mindplay. My chest, which over the past weeks had grown strangely cold and numb, suddenly burned in scorching pain.
Have you ever killed someone that you loved?
It could drive you more than a little crazy, I thought.
My eyes misted as I stared at that beautiful animal, resplendent and grand even in defeated death. Its stillness screamed injustice. I looked at the empty iron cages to the left of me and shrugged. The lions were performing right now, so I’d have to come back for them. Instead, I turned toward the chimpanzees. They screamed and threw themselves away from the cage door when I approached; they’d seen what I had done to Angla.
In a minute, though, the animal tent was quiet.
Quiet, but filled with the scents of metal and gunpowder. Blood and shit. The elements always win over the flesh.
Slipping out the front flap of the tent, I confirmed that nobody was around to hear the sounds; barely anyone had come to opening night besides the circus performers, and they were all at the Big Top. Which was my next destination.
Skyy watched the ringmaster announce the lion act with a rising surge of panic. You could count the audience by the handclaps. You could be blind and figure out attendance, but she had three eyes; so it was especially hard not to notice. Her stomach twisted and threatened to upchuck right there. She put a hand to her mouth and turned from the words she had heard ten thousand times.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention please. These lions are some of the fiercest beasts to ever inhabit the earth. With one snap, those jaws can take off your arm or your leg, or…if someone was so foolish as to put it near them, your head. And that’s just what the lovely Ms. Katrina is about to do. Please be absolutely quiet now, as she lowers her head into the mouth of our lion king…”