Walking Through Needles

by Heather Levy

  She thought about that February night again all those years ago, the night Eric came home without his coat and that odd grin on his face.

  “Sammy?”

  Sam looked at her mom and then to the server offering her more coffee.

  “No, thank you,” Sam said.

  “You okay, honey?”

  “I’m fine, Mama.”

  Chapter 27: Eric, 2009

  Eric left Vickie’s apartment, the wallet-sized photo of Caleb clutched in his right hand. When he got inside his truck and blasted his air conditioner, he glanced at her upstairs unit. She stared out at him from a small window that had a long crack stretched across it. After all these years, he knew one thing about Vickie: she still loved his father. He would never understand why.

  He turned up his car’s stereo, the gyrating guitar and lacerating vocals of The Walkmen blaring, trying to drown out his next thoughts. No matter what Sam said, he knew she had loved his father too. What Eric never knew was if she loved his father more.

  He needed a drink. Seemed like since he’d been around Sam again, he’d been drinking every day. He’d end up like his father if he didn’t watch it, chasing ghosts away with drink and drugs.

  Eric held up the photo of Caleb and looked at himself in his rearview mirror. Same wistful eyes, same straight nose and full mouth, but Caleb wasn’t made out of love. He and Sam had made something out of love—his love anyway. Any time he glimpsed a child with chestnut hair and dark eyes or sturdy tan limbs made for climbing trees and digging in dirt, a hand gripped his heart and held on tight, crushed until every breath left his body.

  He pulled out of the gravel parking lot of the apartment complex and vowed never to see Vickie again. Her daughter was another story.

  By the time Eric made it back to Oklahoma City, the August heat peaked, and the sun teased the horizon. Sam’s silver Subaru sat in front of his house, and he cussed under his breath. He wanted to see her, but he didn’t have the energy to do anything but have a beer, microwave something to eat, and crash out on his couch.

  Sam got out of her car and came over to his truck once he parked.

  He had dressed in a button-down blue shirt and nice jeans for his visit with Vickie, something he couldn’t explain to himself, but he was glad he didn’t look like shit now. Sam stood near the back of his truck, her arms crossed but with a calm face.

  “You look nice,” she said with no hint of a smile.

  “You too.”

  She did, her blue tank top draping just right over her breasts.

  “Let’s get a drink. There’s a bar down the way, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Something about her energy worried him. She looked ready to attack, but he started walking and she followed next to him.

  The bar was less than a block from his house, and they didn’t talk the entire way. He was close enough to her that he could breathe in her scent—the true scent of her, hiding under her spicy perfume. He reached for her hand, but she avoided his touch and pretended to dig in her purse for something.

  Inside the bar, people were enjoying happy hour, laughing and talking loudly over the indie music pumping through the overhead speakers. Sam spotted a couple leaving a two-top near the windowed front of the place. She waited at the table while he ordered them two draft beers.

  He set the beers down on the tiny round table and sat across from Sam. She took a long pull of the beer and carefully put the glass down like it was a porcelain teacup. He noticed that about her now, her odd deliberate movements as if she were hyperaware of how she appeared to others. She was never like that when she was younger. She didn’t care what people thought about her. She was free. The only time he’d seen her close to being free now was when his hand had closed around her throat.

  “So?” he prodded when she remained a silent force across from him.

  “So, you have a son,” she said. “Or should I say second cousin? By marriage, right? I guess that makes it a little less fucked up.”

  Eric picked up his beer and drained it.

  “It’s true then?” she said. “That Vickie person you were so afraid to talk about is Meredith’s mother? She’s your Uncle Jobe’s widow?”

  Either Meredith said something or Sam found out on her own. He took the picture of Caleb from his wallet and placed it in front of Sam.

  “Was this the boy you saw when you talked to Meredith?”

  Sam touched the edge of the photo, but she didn’t pick it up. “Yes. That’s him.”

  He didn’t know why, but Sam’s confirmation evaporated some doubt he had felt since his meeting with Detective Eastman at the police station. He hadn’t told Sam about any of it because he didn’t want to see her reaction.

  “So, is he yours?”

  Eric reached for his pint glass and remembered he had emptied it.

  “I don’t know.”

  Sam caressed the top of her glass in careful, measured strokes, her eyes boring into him. “Why did you lie to me about him? You let me believe the rumors, what people said about Meredith’s baby, and you knew he was alive all along, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t lie to you. Until this week, I had no idea about him.”He could tell Sam didn’t believe him. She lifted her glass and finished her beer. A server came by and asked if they wanted another round. Eric nodded.

  He watched Sam look out the window at people walking on the sidewalk. A couple, holding hands, kissed outside of the bar. Eric reached across the table and tried to take Sam’s hands, but she pulled them back and onto her lap.

  She had that familiar ozone surrounding her, the dense apprehensiveness of it he could almost taste.

  “Did you rape Meredith?” she asked.

  Eric would’ve been less stunned if she punched him in the face.

  “You’re really asking me that?”

  “It makes sense, you not wanting me to see her.” She paused when the server dropped off their beers. “Did you hope Caleb would disappear like Isaac?”

  “Oh, so now you believe I killed my father?”

  Sam looked lost on that question, but her scowl returned.

  “That night you said you were at the Stewart farm, the night you came home late covered in dirt with no coat, you said you were hunting feral hogs. Were you?”

  Eric swallowed over the lump in his throat.

  “I was.”

  Sam looked down at her lap and shook her head. “No, you weren’t. I contacted both of Stewart’s sons through Facebook the other day. Neither remembers ever shooting hogs with you that night.”

  He leaned back in the chair, arms crossed. “So, that automatically means I killed him?”

  “It means you lied to me.”

  “I lied because I didn’t want you to worry.”

  Sam shook her head again. “Then what did you really do that night?”

  He dug his fingers into his crossed arms, trying to keep the memory of that night buried.

  “I just went for a walk. I needed a break from your mom. From everything.”

  Sam let out a long exhale. “It was so easy for you, wasn’t it?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “To get over everything that happened, to go mess around with your friends, go for a walk, leaving me behind.”

  The thing he regretted the most back then was not knowing how to help her. At least Sam had Jeri and Grandma Haylin to help her work through what happened.

  “I wish it had been easy for me like it was for you,” she said.

  “Nothing was easy for me, Sam. Nothing.”

  She looked up at him, eyes steady and drilling.

  “Tell me then, what exactly did you lose? An older girl willing to fuck you? Someone to distract you from your sad life while you knew—the whole time you knew what he was like and you let it happen.”

  Eric pushed his chair back until it slammed into the faux brick wall. He stood up, pulled a twenty from
his wallet, and threw it down before leaving the bar.

  A moment later, Sam ran up next to him on the sidewalk. She shoved the photo of Caleb in his face. “Don’t forget this.”

  Eric stopped and grabbed the hand Sam was holding up. He snatched the photo from her fingers but held onto her wrist.

  “You don’t know a goddamn thing about what I’ve been through these years. You spew shit like it doesn’t hurt, like you can take it back, but you can’t, Sam.”

  She attempted to jerk her wrist free, but he held on. “Let me go!”

  “What—isn’t this what you like? Or was my father the only one who could do it for you?”

  He released her and she backed away from him. He saw tears form in her eyes, but her mouth was tight with anger.

  The fire in her eyes speared through him. “He understood me in ways you’ll never know because you don’t want to know.”

  “Right.”

  He turned from her and headed back to his house.

  Sam yanked on his forearm.

  “Yes, Eric, if you wouldn’t have been drunk off your ass, I would’ve let you, okay? But, you were, and it wasn’t safe for either of us. Does that make you feel all better?”

  He didn’t like the taunting in her voice, as if he were a little boy whining about some toy he wanted and not about something real and meaningful.

  “You wanted to fuck my father the other night, not me. But it’s all about what you want, right? So you can feel all better?”

  Sam opened her mouth but quickly closed it again, tears falling down her cheeks. Her tears pooled inside his chest until he felt like he was drowning in them.

  He pulled her to him, caressing her hair.

  “I was just a kid,” he said. “If I could go back and do things differently, I would, but I can’t and neither can you. You can’t keep blaming me for something I can’t change.”

  Sam drew back from him, tears still streaming down her face. “Who should I blame? Myself? I should’ve dressed differently? I asked for it, right? I asked for all of it and got exactly what I wanted. Is that it?”

  “No.” Eric held her face, ran his thumb along her jawline. “My father is the one who hurt you, who made you like those sick things. Not me.”

  She backed away from him. She half-smiled as if she pitied him. “I used to suffocate myself when I masturbated, did you know that? I was probably twelve, thirteen the first time. And I’d do other things to cause pain, long before Isaac. So, I’ve always been like this. I don’t know why.”

  She had never told him this, and he didn’t know what to say.

  “But for everything Isaac did…” She paused, looking down and shaking her head like she was trying to shake loose a bad memory, a painful memory Eric knew he could never fully understand. She looked back up at him. “He never made me feel ashamed of it like you do.”

  He tried to hold her again, but she pushed away from him. She ran back toward his house, Eric right behind her, wanting to run after her but the pain in his left leg stopped him.

  Sam dug through her purse for her car keys, glancing back at him like he was a monster coming at her. He didn’t want her to leave this way after what she revealed to him. He tried to pry the keys from her hand, but she held on to them.

  “I don’t know what you want, Sam. You want me to be like him? Is that what you want from me?”

  She stared at him and he saw her thoughts turning inward, away from him. He pressed her against her car and kissed her hard to bring her back to him and away from the anguish on her face.

  “I can’t do this, Eric.” She twisted in his arms.

  All he wanted was to take her inside his house, push her to the wood floor, and sink himself as far as he could in her. He would hurt her if that was what she wanted. He would be whatever she wanted or needed, he didn’t care. He just wanted to make her feel something, anything, other than the torment he saw on her face.

  “I can’t,” she repeated louder.

  Sam slid out of his arms and unlocked her car.

  She pushed him aside and got into her vehicle. Eric watched her taillights disappear down the street before entering his house.

  He didn’t know what to think, what to do. He wanted to reverse time, to tell Sam he didn’t mean to make her feel ashamed for her desires, but he couldn’t be like his father. If he admitted liking it, hurting her, what else would that make him?

  He lay on his couch for a good two hours, his blanket pulled up to his waist. He thought about the Edmond job he had delayed, how long it’d take him and how it had pushed his other jobs back two days. He tried to think about everything else, anything but Sam. Then he imagined seeing Caleb for the first time, whether the boy would be happy to see Eric—brother, father?—and a pain in his stomach grew and he remembered he hadn’t eaten dinner.

  He was microwaving a burrito when his cellphone vibrated on the kitchen counter. He didn’t recognize the number, but it was local. Maybe a potential client?

  “Arrow Contracting.”

  “Eric, listen to me.”

  It was Sam and she sounded panicked.

  “I’m at the downtown police station. I need you to do something for me.”

  Chapter 28: Arrow, 1994

  Arrow rushed through his after-school chores, cleaning the chicken coop and running fresh water for the animals. He was eager to spend time with Sam since she was finally home. His dad probably would’ve noticed his half-assed completion of chores if he weren’t doing side work at the Mabel farm. Sam’s hospital bills kept rolling in, and even Jeri was working longer hours at the feed shop to pay them down.

  The November afternoon was in that in-between state Arrow hated—too much chill in the air to go without a jacket but not cold enough not to sweat through his T-shirt. He ran toward the back of the house to the kitchen, thoughts of drinking a gallon of water making him forget how terrible he smelled. He saw the back door to the kitchen was open, the screen door letting the smell of something burnt mixed with the intoxicating scent of bacon drift to him. As he got closer, murmuring voices joined the smells. He stopped at hearing his name, his heart banging in his chest from the amount of venom in the voice saying it.

  “It’s the truth, Mama,” Jeri said. “You don’t know the whole story.”

  “What—the story Isaac told you? Any fool could see it for what it is.”

  Arrow moved to the side of the screen door to listen without Jeri or Grandma Haylin seeing him.

  “He has no reason to lie. And now this with Sam. She has bruises all up and down her back, Mama, and it wasn’t from any fall from a ladder. And, Lord help me, she has other wounds—down there— I can’t even think about without wanting to kill that boy.”

  “That boy wouldn’t do anything to hurt Sammy. I’d stake my life on it.”

  “But you heard what happened with that Anadarko girl and Eric.”

  “You always believe every bit of gossip?” Gandma Haylin said. “‘Sides, I heard some mighty nasty rumors about Isaac and that girl. Maybe those are true, and here you are letting him spend so much time with Sam.”

  Arrow’s chest pinched until he could barely breathe.

  He heard Jeri let out a grunt of frustration. “Don’t even mention those lies to me. God’ll strike this house.”

  “I’ve yet to see God strike anything down, truth or not.”

  Arrow smiled a little.

  “How can you talk like that, Mama?” There was a pause. “When I’m not here, he’s not to be left alone with her, you hear me?”

  He heard Grandma Haylin answer with a grumble that sounded like “foolish woman.”

  Arrow thought about entering the house from the front and getting a drink from the bathroom faucet to avoid Jeri, but her words had stoked a fire in him. He entered the kitchen, and Jeri did a little jump at seeing him before turning to the stove where she was frying cabbage with bacon. He looked over to the Formica table where Grandma Ha
ylin sat staring at a loaf of burnt bread as if it were a holiday centerpiece she couldn’t quite get right.

  He went straight for a glass and poured some water from the tap, drank it down, and smiled at the women.

  “Something smells good,” he said.

  Grandma Haylin shook her head at him. “Since when does bread blackened to nothin’ smell good, boy?”

  Arrow saw Jeri shoot Grandma Haylin a look he couldn’t interpret, but it made him feel queasy, like he was something Jeri wanted to scrape off the bottom of her shoe and Grandma Haylin wasn’t helping her.

  “You do your chores?”

  Jeri had to know he did by the smell and look of him, but he said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  She pushed a loose strand of her blond hair from her face, her blue eyes worrying a hole through him. “Well…don’t be going up to Sam’s room and bothering her. She’s still recovering.”

  Sam wasn’t in her room. Arrow had seen her walk to the barn while he was scooping out old poop-covered hay from the chicken coop. He delayed taking his shower and left the kitchen to see her.

  He entered the barn, zipping his jacket up to his neck. The evening was coming in fast with icy fingers tickling down his back.

  He found Sam sitting in one of the goats’ stalls, gazing at Antigone, a new dam that’d given birth to her first offspring two days before. Sam watched Antigone lick the kid, which was black and white like his father.

  “Whatcha gonna name him?”

  Sam looked up at Arrow, her smile the saddest one he’d ever seen. She wasn’t wearing much of anything—a baggy short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s just a goat.”

  No animal on the farm was just an animal to Sam. Outside of Maddie, she had named all the goats on the farm after Greek gods and goddesses, sometimes making up elaborate backstories for them as if they were human. It was one of the weird things he loved about her.

  Arrow tried to remember some of the unsolicited Greek tragedy lessons Sam used to give him.