Sacrifice

by Farris, John

  There was a bulge of tension in his throat, a look of savage hatred in his eyes. My executioner. He shook his head slowly, giving me a few moments to recant, to admit it was just a desperate lie to save her.

  I shuddered; then I smiled at him.

  "She has a . . . small birth-mole in an unusual place. A place . . . only a lover would know about. You might say it's like a second clitoris. Look for yourself. . . if you don't believe me."

  "No!"

  The room seemed to be vibrating from the force of his denial. That was ridiculous, of course. But there was a powerful noise of thunder outside the temple. I thought, the gods must be angry. I tried to keep him in focus. He had turned to the altar, where the circle of light from the sky blazed at the edges of Sharissa's spread hair. With his back to me he put his hands on her, and, in a couple of moments, knew that I was no liar. Then he lifted and shook her.

  "Sharissa! Sharissa!"

  Kneeling, hearing the reverberating thunder fade slowly, I touched with my right hand the lance in my side. "Sharisssssaaaa!"

  Her head was flying back and forth. Her eyes were open, but blank. I was afraid he might break her neck, he was shaking her so hard.

  "Tell me! Tell me! Did you? With him? Don't you understand what you've done to me?"

  Put her down, I thought. You can't treat her that way! Put her down or I'll—

  I don't know how tightly the blade of the lance was seated between my ribs. I only know that all of my rage at him was concentrated on the wound in my side, and when I put both hands on it the broken lance slid out very easily, like Excalibur from the stone. There was a fresh welling of blood from the hole it left, but I paid no attention. I was on my feet and moving toward Greg, stumbling a little across the uneven floor, Greg oblivious as he continued trying to arouse the daughter he had drugged. He heard nothing. He saw no one but her. I don't think he felt anything but his own rage and terror, even when I raised the bloody lance with the honeycomb blade the size of my palm and brought it down on the back of his neck.

  The blade looked fragile, but it didn't break. It split cleanly the spine at the nape of his neck, cut almost all the way through to the carotid artery.

  He lost his hold on Sharissa and crumpled at the base of the altar. His eyes looked frozen and dazzled in the beam of light from the port in the ceiling of the temple room. Then so much blood came out of his open mouth I couldn't bear to look at him anymore, even as I hacked and hacked at what was left of the muscles that held his head to his body.

  When that was done I found a little more strength and crawled up onto the altar with Sharissa and put a protective arm around her, my face against her throat. I kept track of the strong steady pulse with my lips, until they were too numb to feel anything.

  Love you.

  Somebody was calling my name. But I couldn't open my eyes, much less answer him. It didn't seem important anyway.

  I will love you forever.

  Forever . . .

  BUTTERBAUGH'S NOTEBOOKSKS, CONCLUDED

  EPILOGUE

  November, 200-

  I was never able to tell Sharissa that I was the one who had killed her father or, in fact, tell her that he was officially dead.

  Years after the bloody business in the Guatemalan biosphere, in the place later identified by Glen Hazen as Kaxtún, a business trip took me from Florida to Nashville, and I wondered if I had the nerve to see her again.

  Sharissa was, by then, in her last year of law school at Vanderbilt. I phoned Adrienne Crowder, who, after we had chatted for a minute or two about everyone's health, asked me if I thought it was such a good idea to revive "provocative memories."

  "What has she remembered?" I said. When I was whole again, after five months of persistent infections and operations performed in three hospitals, Sharissa's grandmother had demanded a full account of what went on down there. It hadn't seemed necessary to me; Sharissa had been returned, safe and almost sound, to her grandmother's home in Sky Valley, and was taking summer courses in college. She'd had psychological counseling. "Is it something about her father?" I persisted, when Adrienne was slow to answer.

  "Nothing that I know of. Sharissa seldom mentions him anymore. I believe she's accepted the fact that his body will never be found." She paused then, to clear her throat. Her voice had coarsened since the last time we'd talked; still a hearty whiskey drinker. "When I spoke of reviving memories, I was thinking more of the . . . obsession that inspired you to take such costly risks for Sharissa's sake. Or is it merely a memory?"

  "I haven't seen or spoken to her for almost—"

  "That doesn't address my concern. How do you see yourself nowadays? As the unappreciated hero of a drama that still lacks a happy ending?"

  She was beginning to irritate me; but I had to wonder if it was a grit of truth in her assumption that rubbed me the wrong way.

  "I'm no hero, Mrs. Crowder. I have trouble keeping my weight down. I still get twinges when I go up a flight of steps too fast. I don't have any adolescent urges to involve myself in new and bigger adventures. All of my memories of Sharissa are good memories. I just want to know how she is. And I want to get it from her, if that's all right."

  "You will give nothing away. Say nothing that could harm her."

  Adrienne Crowder was old. She had lost a daughter and her husband, and Sharissa was all she had left; all the more dear to her because of it. I promised to be on my best behavior. She gave me the unlisted number of the apartment that Sharissa shared with another law school student, a woman.

  When I called I got an answering machine, the unfamiliar voice of Sharissa's roommate. I left my message, telling her where I'd meet her, if she was able, and when.

  I flew to Atlanta, changed planes for the short hop up to Tennessee, checked into the hotel which the company I worked for already owned in Nashville. No messages waiting. I had a leaden feeling of disappointment. I thought about calling her number again, but it was nearly one o'clock. She knew I was coming; she'd be there, or she wouldn't. I looked up the university on the map provided by the rental car agency and drove out West End to the Parthenon. The campus was across the street.

  It was a warm day for November, but windy. Most of the leaves had been stripped from the trees. Occasionally the sun broke through fast-moving clouds as I walked from the parking structure to the student center.

  I waited outside near the entrance, feeling strangely uncomfortable and alienated from the crowd of college kids coming and going with their bookbags, satchels, and Walkmans, a cultural clique I had once devoted four years to and which now seemed quaint, without much relevance to the world in which we grade ourselves, and from which almost nobody graduates cum laude.

  Out of the context of this free-flowing crowd—on foot, on skates, on bicycles—I might have known her right away. But she was different, I had to stare to be sure, and by then she had looked up and noticed me; her recognition was instant. She left the side of an academic stork balder than I was and hurried up the wide flight of steps, a well-stuffed briefcase in one hand, calling to me.

  Then we met, and embraced, a little awkwardly, with her kiss grazing my cheek.

  "Your hair," I said. She was wearing it very short, except for a comber of cowlick in front like a fiddlehead fern. Full makeup, the clear, watered-amber eyes highlighted. Diamond-stud earrings, a rust wool suit, a floppy cream-colored bowtie, she looked even older than twenty-four. Then, reaching up, brushing at the stylish cowlick with the back of one wrist, her grin released all constraint; it was an unabashed and sunny grin of late adolescence, a look that I hadn't realized till then I still cherished.

  "Oh, yeah, I'm not used to it, myself. Just had it cut last week. You don't like it?"

  "Well, sure, it's—a new you, isn't it?"

  "But you're the same. Haven't changed. Not getting a little pudgy, though, are we?"

  "The hell we're not. Hey, how've you been?"

  "Oh—" She gestured. "Busy."

  "All dressed up;
not on my account?"

  "Oh, no. I'm working part time at Beekman, Roberts—that's one of the big law firms in town. Probably the biggest in entertainment law. My boss handles Denny Mahaffey, Sylvia Burns—" I shrugged. "Two of the hottest country acts right now. So, how long are you here for?"

  "Just today. I'm interviewing applicants for Security at the resort we're building over by Opryland,"

  "Darn. Well, that gives us—I don't go to work until four today—"

  "Time for lunch anyway," I said, smiling.

  She steered us away from the student center, to an off-campus organic place four blocks away. Tuna sandwiches on whole wheat, heavy on the bean sprouts. She had carrot juice, I had lemonade.

  "Wish we could get in some tennis while you're here. How long has it been? Lord—five years?"

  "I had to give up tennis," I said.

  "Oh." She looked crestfallen, sipping her carrot juice through a straw. "You came close to dying, Grammer said."

  "We both did, I guess."

  Sharissa nodded, picking up the cue. "Hey, how is Veronica?"

  "With child, and crabby. Otherwise I'd stay overnight." She clapped her hands. "C.G.! You're gonna be a daddy?"

  "Again." So I got out all the pictures, of me and 'Nica and the twins, who by any standards were adorable. "For which 'Nica gets all the credit," I said.

  "Which one is Miriam, and which is Damiana?"

  I pointed out the minute differences in the eighteen-month-old girls.

  "And the new one?" she asked me.

  "Haven't chosen her name yet."

  "But it's definitely—"

  "Yeah, another girl."

  She clapped her hands again, beaming, then reached out and put a hand on my wrist, maybe more urgently than she intended.

  "Are you happy, C.G.?"

  "Yes. Yes, I really am. 'Nica's great, and I like my work. There's a lot of travel involved, though; I'm Security Chief for the chain, and there was a vice-presidency tossed in a few months ago."

  I found one of my embossed cards and gave it to her. She studied it proudly. I basked in this moment of glory. One lucky guy. 'Nica's share of Francisco's majority interest in the Itzá Maya would make us comfortable the rest of our lives. Through the new owners of the hotel, one of the big luxury chains, I had gained employment once I healed. And that led to more responsibility, to my corner office at company headquarters in Sarasota.

  "Hey, Butterbaugh! You and Veronica. I mean, doesn't life take some twists and turns?"

  "All you can do is hang on and grit your teeth. So. How about you? Any special guy?"

  She moved her shoulders a little uncomfortably, and looked away.

  "Not right now."

  "Things didn't work out with Hazen?"

  "Well, you know—I guess we woke up one day and saw how it was going to be, he had his career and I wanted mine. I made one trip with him, down—down there." The fingernails of one hand tried to dig into the Formica tabletop. "I'm sure I was a major disappointment to Glen. I mean, I couldn't—I didn't last. The animals, the insects, the heat—everything came back to me; Daddy—I just unraveled. I was ashamed of myself, but that's how it is. Maybe I'll never get over—"

  "Listen, it's okay, you don't have to—"

  "When you called, I got kind of a chill. Not that I didn't want to see you again. I owe you so much—my life; but I—"

  Her shoulders trembled again; she grimaced, catching herself at the brink of tears. Snuffled and looked up apologetically.

  "It's all right," I said again, but her eyes had drifted off. She looked apprehensive, defenseless.

  "Maybe only a couple of times a year now. When I'm really stressed out, lonely—I don't know. That awful goddamned dream. Only it's more real than any other dream I've had. I have to go through it again, step by step. The rebel soldiers in the road. They were so young, they didn't seem to mean any harm. Then I see Cora Randall, her face is cut and bloody, she's looking up at me so helplessly. But Daddy is yelling, 'Run!' So I run, but that's when the dream goes out of whack. There's something wrong with my body. I can only run—backwards. Very, very slowly. Daddy is right there with me. And then they just—shoot him. In the back. They kill my father, right in front of me, and I can't do anything."

  I almost shuddered. I had a different, indelible image of the last moments of Greg Walker.

  "Don't be so hard on yourself, Sharissa."

  "But when—will it stop?"

  She fumbled in her purse for a tissue. Then, after slowly dabbing at her eyes, she took out her wallet and put that on the table.

  "And the next thing I knew, I was—in a hospital. With you and Veronica. And she told me—you were probably going to die. She was crying when she said that."

  Sharissa frowned as she sorted through her own wallet-album of photographs. She slid one out of its transparent envelope.

  "Here's a picture I took of Daddy with Mr. Colon—he owned the hotel, the Itzá Maya. Veronica's cousin. You remember him, don't you?"

  I took the photograph and glanced at it. "Oh, sure." She was busy sorting through other photos, and didn't see what must have been plainly visible on my face. "I thought he was a very interesting man. He and Daddy got to be real good friends."

  "I know."

  "And he was killed trying to rescue me."

  "We couldn't have found you without Francisco, and what Veronica calls the 'Maya wireless.' The rebels had probably been using Kaxtún as a base for a couple of years. Most of them had gone off on a raid, otherwise I don't suppose any of us would have got out of there alive. Hazen deserves a lot of credit for the way he handled himself. He carried both of us down a steep flight of steps to the helicopter."

  She smiled, having come across a photo of the archeologist. "He just never would talk about it, though."

  "Take it from me, Glen was a very brave guy."

  "Well, they're still hoping to restore that temple at Kaxtún, the one that collapsed. But it takes a lot of money."

  "Yeah, that was a shame. The vibrations from the helicopter's rotors must have caused the whole thing to cave in. If they ever do dig it out, they ought to find some interesting artifacts. But my memory's a little hazy as to just what I saw in there. I was about two quarts low on blood."

  Sharissa shook her head, chidingly, and smiled again. "I never was all that sure what you were doing in Guatemala."

  "Blame your grandmother. She just wouldn't leave me alone. 'I know she's not happy, I know something's wrong, and it would make me feel so much better if you just went down there for a day or two—' Okay, I had some time coming, I thought it would be fun, get in some tennis at the Itzá, have dinner with Greg and Sharissa. Twenty-four hours after I get off the plane, I'm in a firefight in the Guatemalan—"

  I don't think she was listening. She stared down at a photo in her cupped palm with an expression so close to heartbreak I almost bit my tongue.

  "Sharissa?"

  She swallowed hard, and nodded, then held out the photo for me to see.

  After so many years, I still felt considerable shock looking into Greg Walker's eyes. And a tightening on the side where four inches of scar tissue partly filled the space of a missing rib.

  "That's my favorite of Daddy," Sharissa said. "I guess it's true what they say. C.G.?"

  "Oh. I—what's true?"

  "That girls look for their fathers in the men they go out with. If that's the case—I guess I'm going to be awfully hard to please. Because he meant so much to me. And I loved him so much. He took such good care of us. He worked hard, and never really made a lot of money. But he didn't want a thing for himself. We had to drag him to the mall to buy a new shirt, or a pair of shoes. Everything was for us. So unselfish! Such a kind, decent man. And I will love him . . . love him forever."

  Her eyes closed slowly, and there was a moment's tremor in her face, barely noticeable, that produced a single tear, and this time she didn't care about her makeup, she let it roll, slowly, down her cheek.
/>   It wouldn't have mattered what words I spoke then, what sound of sympathy I made, because I wasn't there, in that sunny corner of the restaurant. Only Sharissa was there, with the spirit of Greg Walker, his small imperishable flame visible only to her. And I realized, with a sad stirring in my heart, that blood had been spilled for nothing, that she was alive, but trapped for the rest of her years. He had sacrificed her in a way he never intended.

  Soon the pressure of time weighed on us. On the short walk back to the campus we said little, a couple of times meeting each other's eyes, each wondering if the other would say good-bye; but neither of us said it. She kissed me instead, with just a little linger to the kiss that reminded me of the August day and the first kiss she'd given me, and what she'd meant, and all that had followed that never-to-be-repeated night. The night Sharissa chose not to recall; or did she ever think about it? No reason to, it had been the briefest interlude in a month of huge, unsupportable sorrow.

  We promised to stay in touch with smiles that might have seemed genuine to any but us, and parted. I went through my interview chores only partly focused, caught an American flight to Tampa that evening, and went back to the rich life by the Gulf of Mexico I enjoyed with 'Nica and the babies. The lights of my life, my imperishable flames. C.G. Butterbaugh. Un hombre con buen suerte as 'Nica would remind me when she was in one of her unfathomable moods. One lucky guy. The only thing that kept me from worrying about my luck was, probably I'd earned some of it.