Even if
they suspected that something was off about him long beforehand, which they did
due to behaviors no one wanted to discuss but which generally left Kenneth with
a blistered backside by his father for his reproachable actions, the moment he
entered high school, it became clear to Kenneth’s family that something was
very wrong with him.
Increasingly,
he started to verbally assault his female classmates, which caused him to get
expelled twice from two different schools, and which landed him in a
therapist’s chair because his parents were as bewildered as they were
concerned.
When the therapist tried
to question Kenneth about his behavior, he refused to answer her.
When she ultimately gave up on him, his
parting words to her was that an apocalypse was coming and that he was the
lightning bolt at the center of it.
At
sixteen, he started to buy pornography online.
When his mother came upon the magazines
while cleaning his bedroom, she was repelled to find that her son had written
in black marker “words I didn’t even know existed” throughout the
magazines.
She showed them to her
husband, who took them to Kenneth and asked for an explanation.
“Do you
disagree with what I wrote?” Kenneth asked his father.
“I
disagree with the language you used.”
“Then
I’ll need to pray for you,” Kenneth said.
“Because if you don’t see what I see in those magazines, you never had
any right to be a preacher in the first place.
You were a sham.
You obviously only did it for the money
and for the glory of the pulpit.
But you couldn’t even sustain that because He saw through you and
allowed you to fail.”
On his
eighteenth birthday, he joined a fringe anti-abortion group in Bangor and stood
on street corners with massive photographs depicting either grisly late-term
abortions or those that had gone horribly wrong in the early stages of
pregnancy.
He was instructed by the
group’s leader to say nothing to those who heckled them as they drove by.
They were just to lower their heads in
prayer and have their peaceful display of free speech.
That way, the police couldn’t touch
them.
When his father learned what
his son was doing, Kenneth was asked to either change his ways or to leave the
house and thus the family forever.
“You’ve
got something wrong with you, boy.
You need help.”
“Sorry,
but I have nothing wrong with me.
What I have is a point of view.
Oh, and I also have Jesus.
Remember Him?
Is there
something wrong with honoring Him?”
“There
is where your interpretation of His beliefs are wrong.”
Kenneth
cocked his head at his father.
“So,
you believe in abortions, then?
And
you believe in prostituting yourself for a magazine?
And you believe that the whores in my
former high schools should just be allowed to be whores with no correctional
measures?”
“I never
said that.”
“But
you’re telling me to leave the house and never to return to it because I have
strong beliefs against all of that.
Isn’t that right?”
“I want
to take you to a doctor, Kenneth.”
“I’ve
been to a therapist.”
“A
therapist isn’t a doctor.
I want
you to see a psychiatrist.”
“But I
don’t believe in science.”
“I’m
telling you that something is wrong with you.”
“What if
I was to suggest that something is wrong with you?”
Before
his father could answer, Kenneth lowered his head, clasped his hands and
started to pray for him.
By the end
of the day, his father gave him five hundred dollars and asked Kenneth to
leave.
Without
emotion, Kenneth threw his clothes and other items into a bag, took his Bible,
held it close to his chest, and met his father and mother at the door before he
left.
His mother’s eyes were red
and damp, as if she had been crying for him when she should have spent her
tears on herself and his father.
He
looked sadly at them, as if he knew that when they died, they’d burn in
hell.
“’Whoever believes in the Son
has eternal life,’” he said to them, quoting the Bible.
“‘But whoever rejects the Son will not
see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.’
This will be true for each of you.
You must know that.
You must
know that the sinful mind is hostile to God.
It’s in the Book.
You two are hostile to God.
You will pay with your souls for
that.
You’ll burn in hell for
that.”
And
Kenneth Berkowitz, whose mind already was gone, was now physically gone from
their home as well as their lives.
*
*
*
Ahead of
him, in the middle of the damp path, Kenneth could see the impression of a body
on the bed of leaves and needles.
He stopped beside it, got on his knees to smell the area, and in spite
of the heady scent of earth and rotting foliage, he could smell her.
He could detect a hint of her cheap
perfume.
He stood
up, looked around him and saw blood spattered on the forest floor.
There were signs of a struggle.
He looked to his right and saw footsteps
leading into the woods.
To his
left, a few small trees were mashed to the ground, which is where Ted said he’d
be hiding until he goaded her into action.
He was
chasing her now.
The hunt was
underway.
Ted said it wouldn’t be
long before he reached her.
Kenneth
wanted to be there―
needed
to be there to witness the
end of
her―and so he crashed through the thick of woods to his right and started
to rush through them.
Covered by
his heavy jacket, his forearms were raised to protect his face, and parted just
slightly so he could see.
Their
tracks led straight ahead and then curved to the left.
It wouldn’t be difficult to find them,
especially since she’d decided to run toward the wetlands, which would be the
end of her.
It was so thick with
mud there, she’d sink into it and eventually would be unable to move.
Charged
by the kill at hand, he continued to follow the footsteps and ran as fast as he
could, only stopping for a puzzled instant when he heard the distinct sound of
someone shrieking.
CHAP
TER FOURTEEN
When
Cheryl Dunning saw the moose grazing at the edge of the wetlands in front of
her, she initially felt a sense of dread before she realized that its presence
might offer her an opportunity for escape.
It was a
male bull, it stood about seven feet at its shoulders, and it had a massive
rack of palmate antlers on its head that suggested it was probably around ten
years old if she counted the points correctly and also took into consideration
the regression of the palmate.
As a child
and into her early teens, she hunted moose and deer with her father and her
grandfather, who were master huntsmen and who taught her everything she knew
about them, from how to hunt them to how to gut them.
Hunting was a family tradition,
something they did in the fall in an effort to put food on the table throughout
the tough winter months.
She
herself had bagged three moose.
She
knew how to take one down and she knew how dangerous they could be during the
rutting season, which it was now.
In September
and October, going anywhere near a bull was akin to poking a grizzly bear with
a stick.
You just didn’t do it
unless you were armed with a rifle to take it down, like the Remington M700
Mountain Rifle in .280 caliber, which her father and grandfather favored.
Behind
her, she could hear her attacker closing in.
She took a quick glance around, couldn’t
see him and stepped behind a large pine tree so he couldn’t see her when he
arrived.
She
pressed her back against the bark.
In the near distance, she heard branches snap and the sound of him
running toward her.
She looked at
th
e
moose, who was looking back at her, and she saw the last thing she wanted to
see―the hair on his back was raised and his ears were lowered.
Worse, he was licking his lips, all sure
signs that he was about to charge.
She
remained perfectly still, keeping her eyes fixed on the moose, which had
stopped chewing whatever it was eating and let out the sort of loud, furious
snort that would break bones if bones could shatter from fear alone.
If he
charged her, she wouldn’t run.
Too
risky.
Instead, she’d wait until he
was just upon her and then turn quickly to the other side of the tree in an
effort to protect herself from being struck.
The
problem with this is that her plan would only protect her from the moose.
If she turned to the other side of the
tree, she’d expose herself to her attacker, who was growing closer with each
step.
She
looked at the moose and willed it to wait.
But it
didn’t.
It took
a step toward her, its tall legs sloshing in the murky water.
She watched the hair prick up higher on
his back and she saw him lick his lips again.
He was twenty yards away and his eyes
were absolutely steady with hers.
She gripped the base of the tree trunk and prepared herself for the
worst when the bull suddenly charged.
She felt a start, watched it close the distance between them, its head
lowered, antlers poised, its coat of muscle and fat shaking right along with
the ground beneath her feet, and then she prayed that her attacker would appear
now and distract the moose.
But he
didn’t.
With
only seconds left, she scooted down, swung her body to the right, pressed her
back as low as possible against the trunk and felt the tree shake when the
moose’s antlers connected with it.
She shrieked from the impact, which was so hard, she bounced off the
trunk and landed on her stomach in a pool of standing water.
She
could hear the moose behind her, stumbling backward, likely hurt and more
enraged now than before.
She tried
to get to her feet, but her hands and feet were lodged and sinking in mud.
She heard a man say, “Hey!”
She heard the moose shift its body
around.
A gunshot sounded and
Cheryl Dunning knew she was finished.
Only she
wasn’t.
The
earth began to tremble beneath her feet.
With an
effort, she flipped over and spun away from the water and the mud.
She landed on a piece of reasonably dry
ground, and turned to watch the bull charge toward the man who was hunting her.
He shot
again, but he missed because he didn’t get it.
To kill a moose―especially a bull
moose rushing toward you at full throttle―you didn’t aim at the head when
you’d likely hit an antler instead of the animal’s considerably smaller
forehead, as he just did.
Instead,
you aimed for the heart, the liver or the lungs.
That’s how you brought down a moose, but
generally only if you
had a powerful rifle, and not the Glock he possessed.
That’s
what she was raised to know.
That’s
the knowledge her father and grandfather instilled her with because they knew
that when you chose to live in Maine, it was a trade-off.
Maine offered a beautiful coast and only
a trace of crime, but finding a good job with a working wage was difficult, if
not impossible.
Because
of the latter, families came together, as hers had for generations.
To survive, you learned things.
You learned how to grow your food in the
summer and you learned how to kill a deer or a moose or both in the fall so you
had meat to eat in the winter, a skill this man, thank God, lacked.
She
watched him fire his gun again, but with the moose nearly upon him, he was so
rattled, he
missed it entirely and instead turned around and started to run
away from it―and her.
It was
like a scene from some bad dinosaur movie, only the dinosaur was a moose and it
was hurtling forward to take the man down.