by Ivan Blake
“Not sure. I guess because we’re talking about weird parents.”
“Well, I didn’t before. Maybe it’s a good thing the secret’s now out. He might get help.”
“Not likely because his dad denies it.”
“Christopher Chandler! We’re here alone. I’ve taken off my bra, see,”—lifting her shirt to reveal her ample breasts—”and all you want is to talk about Floyd Balzer? Really?”
“No, of course not.” Chris lay back on Mallory’s pillows and grinned.
“Then what should we talk about?” Mallory asked with a coy smile.
“I’d rather we not talk at all. I would love to see your breasts again.”
“Well then...” She pulled the T-shirt over her head and tossed it aside. “Happy now?”
“Now your jeans seem a little out of place.”
“How right you are.” She slipped them down over her hips. “Like?”
“Oh yes. Come here.” Mallory threw herself onto the bed.
Chris’s afternoon with Mallory wasn’t the first time he’d made love. The first time had been with a woman in his father’s office at another plant, in another town and another state, when Chris had been just fifteen. A secretary, plump to bursting out of her tiny red skirt, she’d hoped to make her philandering husband jealous and to blackmail Chris’s dad into securing her a new job when that plant closed. The affair ended badly, with the husband waving a shotgun about in the parking lot, the wife threatening to go to corporate head office, and Chris’s dad threatening to charge the woman with statutory rape and luring a minor.
Chris’s second liaison, in another craphole on the Chandler family’s odyssey across America, had gone only slightly better. A cheerleader, and a favorite of the football team, had made it clear she found Chris interesting, and they’d dated a couple of times without incident.
When the girl had discovered Chris was neither the jerk she’d imagined nor the inept lover she’d expected, she’d tried to renege on the deal with the quarterback to seduce and embarrass Chris. She’d begged the jocks to leave Chris alone, and like the dim-witted child she was, she’d expected they’d respect her wishes. The football team had no intention of letting an opportunity to humiliate the Chandler boy slip away, however, and the evening ended with Chris running through the streets in boxers pursued by a pack of howling hyenas.
With such a sexual history, Chris couldn’t help but be nervous when Mallory threw herself across him. It wasn’t Mallory’s first time either, that was obvious, although Chris found her frenzied excitement a little intimidating—like waving a steak before a starving dog. He tried to be tender and unhurried as he caressed her breasts and kissed her belly. Mallory wasn’t into tender. Her enthusiasm was overwhelming, excitement unbridled, and breathless satisfaction something of a shocker.
Nothing about the experience felt quite right. Mallory’s constant giggling, persistent baby talk during their passionate embraces, and smothering affection when at last they both fell back exhausted on perfumed pillows, were all…well…off-putting. “So wonderful,” she kept whispering: “I’ll always be your little girl”, “Mine forever”, and, “I’ll never let you go.” That last remark sounded a little too much like a threat. Then Chris’s ego got the better of him, and he lay back, with Mallory in his arms and a self-satisfied grin on his face. Had Floyd Balzer ever received such praise?
Headlights shone through the small window facing the lane. They heard a car coming up the drive.
“God, it’s six and they’re home!” Mallory cried, jumping from the bed and heading for the bathroom. “Say I’m changing!”
Chris pulled on his clothes and ran to the living room. He threw himself onto the couch and tried to look relaxed. The room was still in darkness and he didn’t have time to turn on a light before the door opened and Mallory’s mother stumbled in.
Freda Dahlman slammed the door behind her, dropped her purse on the floor, and cried out, “Oh Christ, my boy....” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
“Mrs. Dahlman? Can I help you?” Chris asked as he switched on a lamp.
Freda screamed and stumbled back against the door. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my house?”
“I’m Chris Chandler, a friend of Mallory’s? I was here for dinner last Saturday night?”
“How did you get in here?”
“With Mallory. She’s changing. We…we were going to get dinner ready for you.”
“Bullshit!”
“Mother?” Mallory emerged from her room, dressed in jeans and a powder blue Irish knit sweater—and bra apparently. “Are you all right, Mother?”
“All right? No I’m not all right!” She stumbled toward the couch and flopped down beside Chris.
“Where’s Rudy?”
“In the hospital.”
“I thought he was getting better....”
“They say he’s got some kind of blood poisoning in his arm!”
“From an insect bite?”
“It’s horrible…and the smell!” She sobbed for a moment, then pointed a finger at Mallory, and shouted, “You…if I find out you had anything to do with this….”
“Oh, Mother, how could you possibly think that? I’m so hurt.” Mallory looked wounded, then turned to Chris and offered a sly grin.
“I have to go back tomorrow. They want to...to amputate!” Freda began blubbering, mostly to herself.
“His right arm too. How will he ever cope?” Mallory said.
“I...I have to lie down.” Mrs. Dahlman flopped like dead weight onto her side and closed her eyes. Chris moved to make way.
“Mother,” Mallory said. No reply. “Mother!” she shouted. “Mother! Would you like something to eat before you go to bed?”
Mrs. Dahlman stirred. “Get me the vodka from the fridge and a glass.” She heaved herself off the couch. “I’ll have one drink and then a short nap.” She started for her bedroom.
Mallory intercepted her mother’s slow trek across the room to hand her the bottle and glass. In exchange, Mrs. Dahlman gave Mallory her coat, which Mallory promptly dropped on the floor.
“I may be gone a few days...” Mrs. Dahlman mumbled as she disappeared down the hall. “I’ve tried so hard to protect him...” was the last thing they heard before her door closed.
Chris and Mallory looked at each other. “That’s awful,” Chris said.
“You think so?”
“Well, yes.”
“He’s a creepy little pervert, he deserves everything he gets. Let’s eat. Let’s go out for dinner. We’ll take Mother’s car!”
The car, a fairly new Chevy, was parked askew across the front of the house, one wheel plowed deep into a flower bed.
“You can drive if you like,” Mallory said.
“No...I...”
“Then I will. Hold tight!”
* * * *
The damp air and falling temperature had rimed the dark landscape with hoarfrost. Even so, Mallory drove at breakneck speed toward town. Chris tried his best to look cool as the car swerved and squealed along the narrow road. Images of their mangled remains in a fiery wreck brought the goatman to mind.
“Could you...” He tried to say without his voice breaking, “Could you do me a big favor?”
“Oooh, Christopher Chandler, what do you have in mind? A repeat performance?”
Was she serious? God! “It’s just I...I need to see Mr. Duncan. It’s something kind of personal, and I didn’t get a chance at school today...and I wondered if maybe we could go by his house?”
“You want to go to a teacher’s house, now?”
“No, I mean after we eat. It won’t take long. He lives up near the Potteries.”
The Potteries were a formation of tall, jagged rocks clustered along a windswept beach north of town. They’d been carved over millennia from the ancient cliffs by wind and wave and were said to look like monstrous flower pots. He had the impression Mr. Duncan lived somewhere near the Potteries because Dunc
an had a Save the Potteries sticker on his bumper, a poster on the classroom wall calling for protection of the Potteries, and had once talked about the campaign in class.
“If that’s the best idea you’ve got for our first evening together, I guess the Potteries will have to do.” Then she grinned and said, “Guess it might be interesting.”
“Shouldn’t take long and then maybe afterwards...”
“I have an idea. Let’s eat at Jennifer’s Place.” Jennifer was a classmate, one of Mallory’s entourage. Her parents owned a motel the other side of town, biggest in the area, and its diner, named for their daughter, was popular with truckers.
When they entered the restaurant, Jennifer was waiting tables, and became noticeably flustered at the sight of her queen bee. The place was bustling. Even so, Jennifer immediately escorted Mallory and Chris to a clean booth. Several truckers ogled Mallory, then whispered and chuckled amongst themselves. Mallory gave them her sweetest, little-girl smile in return. Jennifer nervously reviewed the dinner specials, and Mallory and Chris both chose the hot turkey sandwich special and apple pie. Mallory wanted to treat and insisted Chris have ice cream with his pie. As they ate, they talked, first about school, then her father’s work on oil tankers, and finally about Tana Toraja.
“You were only there once,” Chris said, trying to understand Mallory’s enthusiasm for such a bizarre place.
“As soon as our plane landed, I knew Toraja was where I belonged. If my mother would let me, I’d move there tomorrow. I’ll be eighteen soon, and then she won’t be able to stop me.”
“You said your dad might have another family there, like another wife?”
“He won’t need another family when I get there, will he?”
What the hell did that mean? If her father did have another family there, did Mallory really think he’d throw them aside—his other kids, his wife—for her?
“So you’d rather be there than here?”
“Wouldn’t you, if you were me?”
“The place sounds beautiful, but I gotta say…creepy?”
“Creepy, how?”
“Corpses walking around the countryside, for one thing.”
“You silly, it doesn’t happen all the time. And anyway, what’s so bad about corpses? They’re only empty sacks.”
“Walking around?”
“You’re missing the point. It’s not the walking that matters, it’s what the walk signifies—that even death can’t keep loved ones apart.”
“I guess....”
“When my daddy dies, he’ll be buried in Toraja with his parents, and one day, so will I. We’ll be together, even if I have to walk there.”
“That’s like a million miles!”
“I made my daddy promise he’d summon me.”
“But your mother wants you here.”
“She hates everything about Toraja, and I hate her.”
“You hate your mother?”
“Yes, you’ve seen her. She’s a wreck and a weakling, and my brother is just like her. I may have to kill both of them one day.”
There was not a trace of humor in her face.
“Mallory, I...I can’t get over how different you seem, I mean, with me.”
“Different? How?”
“Well, at school, everybody thinks you’re such a good little girl. You’re Mallory...you’re like a princess to people in Bemishstock. Here with me...you’re…”
“I hoped I could be myself with you.”
“Yes, sure, of course, but, aren’t you afraid I might tell people what you’re really like?”
“You wouldn’t do that.” Her lips were smiling but her eyes were cold as ice. “Besides, who would ever believe you?”
A chill ran up his spine. “You seem so…so angry.”
“I’m not angry, I just know how things work, how things are in this world.”
“Okay, you’re dark then, like you see the dark side of everything.”
“And you don’t? Have I misjudged you? So we’re not alike, you and I?”
“Sure, sure we are. I…I see the dark side too. It’s not like I have a choice however. Everybody just plain hates me.”
“Of course you have a choice. You just don’t know how to play the game.”
“The game?”
“The game of pretend: pretend everything’s fine, pretend to be happy, pretend to care...”
“So are you pretending now?”
“No, I like you. With you, I feel I can stop pretending.” She reached across the table and put a hand on his. Chris shivered. “I want to explore my power—with you.”
What the hell did that mean? “So...at school, you’re pretending all the time?”
“It’s like a test...to see how strong I can be. It’s like when a priest in Toraja sacrifices a bull. The gods don’t want the bull, they want to know the priest is strong enough to slaughter the bull if they ask. It’s our strength—to draw blood, to cause pain, even to take life—that’s what makes us worthy.”
“I...I’m sorry, I just don’t get it. Why would your gods want you to pretend to be nice and sweet when you actually hate everybody?”
“I don’t hate everybody, just my mother and Rudy, and most of my teachers, and some of the kids at school. Not everybody. Most people just bore me because they’re ugly or they dress badly, or because they’re just plain stupid.”
“Then why pretend? Why not tell people how you feel? Wouldn’t that take a lot more strength?”
“That would be stupid, not strong at all. We have to learn how to use people in this world, if we’re going to get what we want. The gods want us to be smart as well as strong. They want us to be capable of inflicting pain, not just of suffering through it. This world is their creation, and it sure as hell isn’t filled with love and kindness. This is a world of horror and misery, and our gods expect strength and discipline from their followers. That’s what they reward.”
“Where’d you learn that?”
“From my father,” she said, and then took a long sip of coke.
“Your father taught you the world was created by gods who reward cruelty?”
Mallory waited for a moment before answering. “When my father was six, he saw his parents and grandfather killed before his eyes. His grandfather was impaled on a cross, mother raped and then hacked to pieces, and father burned alive.”
“That’s horrible!”
“He told me all about it when I turned seven, even showed me pictures. He wanted me to know just how vicious the world is, and to understand why my mother kept us apart.”
“He told you your mom was cruel too?”
“Oh, I knew it already. From the day I was born, she did everything she could to keep my father from me. Daddy said I brought love back into his life. After what had happened to his parents, he’d believed he’d never love or trust another person—and then I was born. Daddy loves me and I love him, and there’s nothing we would not do for each other.”
“But what about your mother; did she never love your father?”
Mallory was dismissive. “Oh, maybe once, but he only married her to get into this country, and then he hated it here.”
“So why didn’t he take you with him when he left?”
“He tried when I was a baby. My mother wouldn’t go. Then he tried again when I turned eleven. My mother threatened to tell the police he’d ‘interfered with me.’ Mother lied, of course. Daddy never did a thing to me I didn’t want him to.”
Chris felt nauseous. He could still hear Mallory whispering, “Daddy” in his ear earlier that afternoon.
“More even than the deaths of his parents, Daddy says Mother’s cruelty made him realize how nightmarish this world is and what our gods expect of us. We have to be able to inflict pain—not merely endure it—if we are to thrive and be worthy of Puya.”
Chris was stunned. He had no idea how to react to Mallory’s horrifying view of the world. Chris thought he knew more about pain than most people, but Mallory’s v
ision came from a far darker place than even he’d known.
Mallory must have sensed how shocked Chris was. She sat quietly for a moment, then smiled. “Look at you, what you endure. Everyone hates you, treats you like scum. And do you care? No! You ignore them. You’re strong, like me. I’ve seen it. That’s what I like about you. You see the dark side, and it doesn’t frighten you. I just have to teach you how to use your strength more effectively, that’s all.” She leaned close and whispered, “Chris, you’re chosen. We both are.”
“Sure as hell doesn’t feel that way.”
“Only because you don’t know how to play the game yet. You don’t know how to pretend so you can get what you want from people. I’ll teach you. We should make an offering sometime, to help you learn.”
“What kind of offering?”
She grinned. “Of somebody else’s pain.”
This was getting way too weird. Chris wasn’t into pain, not other people’s, and certainly not his own. Even so, he asked, “So how do you make these offerings?”
Mallory sat back, wearing a knowing grin like the Cheshire cat. Then she glanced across the diner at her friend, Jennifer, bussing tables. She leaned forward and said quietly, “Did you see Jenny in the schoolyard last week, crying like a big baby? Somebody sent pics to her parents of her making out with Freddy Jessop. Now they can’t see each other anymore.” Mallory sat back, smiling. “Pain,” she mouthed silently.
“You?”
Mallory’s lips smiled, but not her eyes. “And Darleen Jensen,” she said.
“The girl who jumped in front of the truck?”
“Right.”
“How could I forget?”
“That’s right, your picture was in the paper.” Mallory laughed. “I liked what you said.”
Chris could only shake his head.
“Darleen was so sanctimonious. Well, someone sent a letter to the school superintendent saying pregnant girls like her shouldn’t be allowed to stay in school…before she’d had a chance to tell her parents that she was. That’s how they found out—when Principal Dell called them to say Darleen had been suspended. Can you imagine?”
It took a minute for the implication of what Mallory had said to sink in. “You?”
