Walking Through Needles

by Heather Levy

He used to wonder why his father never came back for his clothing. He had left everything at the farmhouse, even his favorite boots.

  Jeri appeared lost in her thoughts for a moment.

  “I didn’t want Sam to see them.”

  “He never tried to come back for them?”

  It was quick, but Eric caught fear flash in Jeri’s eyes.

  “No. He couldn’t have come back anyway.” She released a long exhale. “We got a protective order against him before you were released from the hospital.”

  He never knew this. He wondered if Sam did.

  “Eric, I let the detectives know about something, something I think you should know.”

  His chest tightened. He knew she was going to talk about his pocketknife, how she pretty much put a target on his back.

  “Your father was sending your Aunt Vickie money. I never knew why, and he didn’t know that I knew. It wasn’t a lot, not enough for me to notice at first until he was giving her more, but I thought the detectives should know.”

  His father gave Vickie money? More like Vickie extorting money to keep his secrets. He thought of all the side work his father did in Blanchard, even after Sam’s hospital bills were paid off. More and more, he could see Vickie doing something to his father, although killing him would mean killing her cash cow. Besides, she had loved him, was obsessed with him. All her talk to the detectives, feeding them lies about Eric and what happened in Anadarko, he wasn’t sure if it was to lead them away from herself because of what she and his father did to Meredith or because she killed him. He tried, but he couldn’t get the pieces to fit the narrative of her murdering him.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Jeri said. “I don’t have much money, but you need a better lawyer.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “Just take it.”

  He didn’t understand why she would want to help him. She didn’t owe him anything.

  “Thank you.”

  She gave him a little nod and hung up the phone.

  Chapter 43: Arrow, 1994

  Arrow let Lisa Doss lace her fingers with his as they exited the high school, their backpacks low and heavy against their backs. He didn’t want to hold her hand or watch her glossy pink lips as she talked to him in bursts of giggles at his locker each day, but he needed her attention like it was oxygen allowing him to breathe and move when all he wanted to do sometimes was go to sleep and never wake up.

  “Is that your stepsister?” Lisa asked him as they walked along the road toward downtown.

  The wind blew through him, his coat barely keeping him warm. Sam walked in their direction, some distance off. She wore a long, chunky purple sweater over black leggings with her black combat boots laced up to her mid-calf and her backpack slung over her right shoulder. He didn’t see how she was warm enough with the December weather getting colder by the day. He pictured the baby in her shivering, and irritation at Sam rubbed raw in him.

  “Yeah, that’s her.”

  “She’s pretty.”

  Sam was out of breath when she caught up to them. “Hey. I waited for you by your locker.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “We’re going to the drug store for drinks.”

  Sam glanced at his grip on Lisa’s hand, her jaw tight. “You promised to help me clean the stalls.”

  Arrow looked at Lisa, who squeezed his hand as if to say, “It’s fine.”

  Lisa smiled at him. “I’ll see you later.”

  He didn’t know why Sam suddenly wanted to be around him. He hadn’t promised to help her with her chores.

  The two weeks since she had been back from Dallas, he felt like he had a splinter in his chest and it was slowly festering. She was hanging out with his father more after school, and that’s what confused him the most. She told him she was only talking to his dad so he’d side with her when her mom brought up the issue of school. Sam’s stomach had grown more noticeable but not enough for her to leave school yet. Every time Jeri mentioned it, Sam would fight her on it until his father stepped in, ending any discussion. Sam would stay in school through the rest of the fall semester. Period. The only battle Jeri won was not allowing Sam to come with them to church. Sam seemed fine with this. Maybe she was happy because it gave her all Sunday morning free with his dad while Arrow sat on a pew, imagining, in turns, Sam naked and flushed with pleasure with his father and then her thighs dripping with thick, neon-red blood, like a horror film come to life.

  Sam nudged Arrow’s arm as Lisa walked away from them. “Do you like that girl? You know she’s Pastor Doss’s daughter.” She smirked. “She’d probably fuck a picture of Jesus before she’d do anything with you.”

  Arrow ignored her and hurried into the nearby woods, the shortcut to the house. He heard Sam behind him, rustling the brown needles and dead leaves from the surrounding pine and elm. She made a sudden pained grunt and he turned to see her holding her abdomen. He ran to her.

  “What is it—the baby?”

  She inhaled sharply, her face pale. “Yeah. I think so.” She took a few shallow breaths as he held her arm. “It’s better now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She furrowed her brows, fear still in her eyes. “Yeah.”

  He took her backpack and led her over to a tree stump so she could rest.

  After a few moments, color returned to her face. “Your dad’s been giving me this stuff to chew to help with the nausea.” She laughed a little. “I think it’s making it worse—tastes like shit.”

  Arrow gaped at her, unable to speak.

  “What?” she said.

  He wanted to slap her, but he satisfied himself with kicking the stump she sat on. She jumped up, surprised.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “You!” he screamed. “You’re my problem. You fuck my dad and now you’re letting him poison you so you’ll lose the baby.”

  A sharp laugh escaped Sam as she pulled a plastic sandwich bag from her backpack. She threw it at him, and he caught it. He didn’t know what it was—greenish seeds of some sort.

  “It’s fennel seed, you asshole. You chew it and swallow the juices. You really think I’d take something without knowing what it is first?”

  Arrow held onto the bag of fennel as he sat on the tree stump, his anger subsiding. It didn’t make any sense to him, his father helping Sam. After what happened in Anadarko, he couldn’t see his father protecting Sam or the baby. Why her and not Meredith? His heart sank with his guess; his father never loved Meredith. He used her, but he never loved her.

  “He loves you,” he mumbled.

  “What?”

  He looked up at her as he stretched the plastic baggie with his finger. She gazed down at him, her hardened face faltering, softening the longer she watched him.

  He stood up and handed her the bag of seeds. “Nothing.”

  “Eric.” She took his icy hand, her own so cold it somehow neutralized into odd warmth. “Nothing’s happened with him since…since before Dallas. I promise.”

  Resentment rose in him again. “But you want something to happen. That’s why you’re always around him, flirting with him.”

  Fire lit in Sam’s eyes. “So, I can’t talk without it being flirting?”

  Had he been wrong? Hadn’t he seen her smiling with his dad as if nothing had happened? He knew he had. Yet, he wanted to believe her.

  “You’re the one who’s been avoiding me,” she said. “Do you like that Lisa girl now?”

  “No.”

  “You were holding her hand. Do you want to kiss her?”

  How many times had Sam kissed his dad? The thought made him want to throw Sam down on the leaf-strewn ground and tear off all her clothes.

  He roughly pulled her to him and kissed her. He tried to block the thought of her kissing his father on the couch those weeks ago, her cries of pleasure, her hand moving on him under the blanket, but he couldn’t, and he found himself grabbing her hair and pulli
ng hard, wanting to hurt her for hurting him. He thought he saw a flicker of a grin from Sam, and something deep in him held in place by the thinnest thread snapped.

  Using his full weight, he pushed Sam to the ground. She gave him no struggle as he lifted her long sweater up and over her face, locking her arms above her head in the heavy knit fabric. She looked curious, maybe a little excited, until he bit her as hard as he could on the side of her neck. He didn’t know why he did it, but it felt good, right even.

  Her mouth parted in panic. Her fear drugged him, made him feel powerful and outside of his body as he loosened his jeans and tugged down her leggings, felt her air-chilled thighs as he kept her arms pinned with his other hand.

  She didn’t say “no” or he didn’t want to hear her if she did, but he saw her face, the terrible calm acceptance on it. Her face—it was Meredith’s face with his father, and it said, “Go ahead. I can’t stop you.”

  He released Sam’s arms and scooted away from her, the fog in his brain lifted, leaving a chunk of lead in his stomach in its absence. He slowly stood and pulled up his jeans, his hands shaking as he did it. Sam remained on the ground, unable or unwilling to move, he wasn’t sure which. He tugged her sweater back down and helped her to stand. She drew her leggings up and brushed the dead leaves and pine needles from her backside, not making eye contact with him.

  “Why did you stop?” she finally asked.

  Because for a moment he was his father, and he could never take it back. Sam even asking the question made his stomach hurt further. Right then, he felt like he didn’t know her at all. He wasn’t sure if he knew himself.

  Hands still shaking, he grazed Sam’s neck near the place where he had bitten her. Blood had dried some, but he saw the skin around the bite was turning purplish-red. He needed to clean it for her before it became infected.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded, but her face was flushed crimson and she kept nodding. He watched as sobs consumed her body with terrifying swiftness. He had never seen her cry like this.

  He held her tight, stroking her hair. His fingers snagged on a frail leaf and he slid it from her chestnut strands.

  He didn’t know what to say to her to make it better. There was nothing, and he wanted more than anything to be normal like Lisa Doss and for Sam to be a normal girl, but he knew it would never be that way for them.

  He hugged Sam tighter and felt her bump press into his lower stomach and a surge of apprehension speared through him. He placed his hand on the front of her belly and let the vibrations of her crying transfer into him, thinking maybe if he held her close enough he could extract some of her pain. Then he remembered he had tried the same thing with his mom when she was in the hospital for the last time, her gaunt body in a fetal position, and she had told him, smiling, “I’m ready to go home.”

  So that’s where he took Sam.

  Chapter 44: Sam, 1994

  Sam stared and squinted at her reflection in the bathroom mirror until her vision blurred and the bite Arrow had made on her neck turned into a fuzzy dark spot that could’ve been a bug bite or a birthmark instead. He had cleaned it for her once they made it home, his hands trembling as he soaked a cotton ball in iodine and dabbed it to her broken skin.

  Her face was still puffy from crying, something she couldn’t hide from Isaac or her mama. Arrow had apologized several times on the way home until she wanted to punch him. He didn’t understand at all. She didn’t cry because of what he almost did. She cried because he stopped, just like Isaac had stopped coming to her since she got back from Dallas. When Arrow bit her, it was like he was accepting what she liked, what she needed. She felt overcome by him but loved at the same time. Something she never experienced with Isaac.

  But, she had been wrong. Arrow wasn’t accepting her; she saw it on his face. Now, she didn’t feel anything but shame. Maybe Arrow and Isaac were tired of her since she was pregnant, or maybe it didn’t matter that she was pregnant. Maybe everyone would leave her, like her daddy did, and she’d be alone for the rest of her life.

  In between commercial breaks for The Tonight Show that evening, Sam told Isaac she didn’t want to put her baby up for adoption. She wanted to keep her baby, to raise her on her own. She didn’t tell her mama this because she was tired of fighting with her. She was scared of what Isaac would say or do as he turned quiet and thoughtful on the couch. Her mama was already asleep in the master bedroom, but Sam imagined her listening in. Isaac gently kissed Sam’s cheek, not her mouth.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” he said.

  Those might be her least favorite words ever, and he used them often now. Over the last two weeks, it made her sick to think how she had practically begged him to give her pain, but he held back from doing anything outside of the occasional chaste kiss or a placid squeeze of her thigh. She didn’t know if he was still punishing her for running away to Dallas, and when she came out and asked him, he ignored her question, told her she needed to focus on school. But she couldn’t focus on school, on anything, with Arrow keeping his distance from her and having no outlet for the pleasure and pain she craved through Isaac.

  Three days later, Isaac told Sam he’d pick her up after school, and trepidation and excitement pulsed through her. Something in his eyes had seemed as anxious and pent-up as she felt.

  She walked over to his pickup as soon as she saw him pull up to the high school. Chrissy shot her a worried look as Sam sped past her, but she tried to ease her friend with a smile.

  “Where’re we going?” she asked Isaac after they drove a ways.

  His eyes briefly left the road to look at her and she saw uncertainty in them.

  “Thought we’d just drive for a while.”

  Sam wiggled out of her coat, the truck’s heat blasting her face and making her sweat. She prayed she didn’t sweat enough to make the Band-Aid on her neck fall off.

  “I brought you a drink.” He motioned to the middle console.

  Red Gatorade—one of her favorite drinks. She reached for it, but Isaac snatched it up first and took a tiny sip.

  “I don’t know how you like this stuff,” he said.

  He held the bottle a long moment before handing it to her. She gulped down two-thirds of it before pausing to catch her breath. She finished it off and set the empty bottle back into the cup holder.

  They drove around for a while until Isaac turned onto a dirt road. Sam didn’t recognize the area, but they were about twenty minutes away from their farm. She tried to turn her head to ask Isaac where they were heading but she found it took too much effort to move her body, like she had slipped into a mold of Jell-O. She attempted to raise her hands from her lap and was barely able to move them a few inches. What the hell was happening to her?

  What was supposed to be Isaac’s name came out of her mouth in a strangled moan.

  He reached over and squeezed her thigh. “If you feel tired, go on and close your eyes.”

  She did feel tired, so tired she couldn’t move her mouth to form words, but sleep was the furthest from her mind. She was scared. For a second, she thought she was having a brain hemorrhage like Grandma Haylin had the year before, but then it hit her.

  The drink. He put something in it.

  Fear raced through her at the realization. She forced another weak moan from her lips, and Isaac stopped the truck.

  “We’re here. Let’s get you inside to rest.”

  She closed her eyes, powerless to keep them open. She heard the passenger door open and felt the cold air whip in. With her coat off, the wind cut through to her bones.

  “Come on, girlie,” Isaac said. He unbuckled her seatbelt and took ahold of her under her neck and knees, lifting her like she was a child.

  “Goddamn, thought you’d never get here,” a woman’s voice said nearby.

  Sam’s eyes fluttered open long enough to see a blur of fiery red ahead of Isaac.

  “She drink it?”

  “Ye
ah,” Isaac said.

  “Well, get her ass inside.”

  So many questions fought to form in her mind, but all Sam could focus on now was her own shallow breathing, in and out, and that spicy, earthy scent of Isaac pressed to her face.

  “Put her down there,” she heard the woman say.

  A pause.

  “It’s clean enough.” There was another long pause. “What—you changing your mind again?”

  “Maybe,” Isaac said.

  “Maybe I’ll change mine too.”

  She felt Isaac’s grip on her tighten. “If this goes bad, you know what I’ll do to you.”

  The woman’s sharp laughter cut into Sam.

  “Don’t worry, baby. Your precious girl will be fine.”

  Isaac carefully laid Sam down on what felt like a pallet of old, lumpy blankets. The sudden smell of cigarette smoke choked what little air she was able to inhale with her shallow breaths. It was like her brain was shutting down, and her body shuddered hard when she thought of her baby’s brain turning off too.

  Another moan seeped out of her, a sad, croaking sound she didn’t recognize as her own voice.

  “How long is that shit supposed to take?” Isaac said.

  “Not long. Look at her. She’s about out.”

  Within a few moments, Sam was.

  Chapter 45: Sam, 2009

  The first thing Sam wanted to do after Meredith told her story was drive to Anadarko, find whatever shithole Vickie lived in, and beat her face in with whatever she could find.

  She glanced up at Meredith’s apartment unit and saw Caleb watching them from the front window. Caleb, who wouldn’t be alive if not for Eric trying to shoot at Vickie as she attempted a forced abortion on her own daughter. Jesus Christ, it was too messed up. Almost as messed up as what happened to Sam.

  She walked over to the stairs and sat, her mind fumbling in the dark, grasping for yet wanting to reject the memory of that horrific day with Isaac. Her recollections from that day were wispy at best, but she had replayed them enough over the last fifteen years until they were dense enough to bite.