“One day I put a knife to my father’s throat…” he began, looking up at the ceiling as he crossed his arms over his heaving chest.
“What?” Traci asked, covering her beautiful naked body with the sheets as if they would protect her from whatever other shocking revelations he may have in store. He second-guessed himself after observing her, thinking he could just turn it into a joke and move along the same deceptive path he’d forced her to travel previously. But that wasn’t right. It was time to either shit or get off the pot.
“I haven’t told you much about him, except that we don’t talk.” Jagger swallowed and slid one arm under his head. “My father was…is a bad person, Traci. I think I should tell you about him. I can start at the beginning. He is from New Jersey.”
“Right, you told me you were born there.”
“Yes, and then we moved to Colorado when I was young because that is where my mother’s family was from and she wanted to be back around her sisters. That’s where I met Lawrence. Our fathers had become friends, and he and I did the same. It was strange because Lawrence’s father is kind-hearted, and my father isn’t. We suspected he was trying to correct my father’s bad behavior, but it never worked. Anyway, if it weren’t for Lawrence, Traci, and his influence on me, I think…I know I would have gone through with it.”
“What would make you do something like that, Jagger?” she asked quietly, her tone soft and comforting, but her face exposing the truth. Saint had advised that he tell her when she was relaxed, and she was—but she was tensing up fast.
He just stared at her, studying her. Her eyebrows dipped low and a look of complete and utter disbelief took over her expression. He turned away, looked back at that vacant spot on the ceiling, the one that offered no assistance but he stared at it as if it were a gift from God and could throw down some sweet protection over this woman’s heart as well as his relationship.
“He was beating my mother. All the time. Day and night.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her. Traci took a loud deep breath and looked down at the small space between their bodies. She shook her head and ran her fingers delicately over his shoulder. Jagger focused back on the ceiling.
“I came in the house. I’d been out with Lawrence and some of our other friends. It was late. We’d been out partying, well, the most partying a seventeen-year-old in Colorado could do.” He wiped his nose. “I walked in, and my mother’s eye was all puffy and her lips busted. She was…about your complexion,” he said, shooting her a look, “but her natural skin tone was barely visible after he’d gotten through with her. Everything, and I mean everything was black, red or blue, except the whites of her eyes, like she was the damn Korean flag!” He gritted his teeth. “My brothers thankfully weren’t there at the time. They were on a weekend fishing trip with our grandfather…”
He felt her touch, but didn’t dare look at her again. If he did, he believed he’d break into a million pieces before he’d even got the nerve to see this through.
“She was sitting in the living room, in the dark, but I could see her and she knew it. Her bruises shone, like they were pretty, something to see. They shone because the blood was still oozing, and the traces of light from an open bathroom door caught the glimmer, like it was a lake of blood running down her face. I turned on the light in the living room and she put her hand over her face like a vampire, slinkin’ down into the chair. All she could say to me was ‘Don’t.’ She knew what I was getting ready to do and I stormed past her, opening all the doors in that house until I found him asleep in one of my brother’s beds. He had an empty bottle in his hand. He’d been out drinking all night. This was the worst I’d ever seen him do to her, and he could do it because no one was home to stop him. I walked into my room, removed my fish gutting blade from its sheath and went back in there, standing in the doorway, just staring at him until my mother came up behind me, screaming.”
“All her noise woke him up, and he looked at me, all crazy like, out of his head. I shook her loose and lunged toward him, put that knife right up to the fucker’s neck…”
Traci stroked his shoulder and chest, her breathing accelerated and loud, like it was in stereo. She was scared, but he had to keep talking, had to keep going. “I pressed it into his flesh until I saw some blood, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.” Jagger felt numb. He told the story as if he were discussing a baseball game, but this was how he felt about it. He didn’t feel any way about it at all.
“My dad struggled with me the best he could, but I was bigger than him, even at that age, and stronger. Stronger in all ways…” He shot Traci a glance.
“My mother had run out of there and called the police after trying to grab me off of him. I started slicing again, and he screamed, fought and the more he screamed, the deeper I cut, taking my sweet time. I wanted to see it drawn out, wanted him to feel the pain. I didn’t want it fast and over with. I wanted it slow and painful, like torture. He never picked on anyone his own size, and he’d beat that woman, the woman he married. The woman who gave birth to five of his babies, two of which had died before they drew more than ten breaths…an older brother of mine and a younger sister, conceived right after me, but I never saw her.”
Traci burrowed her head near the crevice of his underarm and cried, wet tears flowing on his skin. But he had to keep on going.
“My mother is a good person, Traci, but she’s weak and docile and thinks she doesn’t deserve shit. She was mentally abused from a young age, so that’s all she knew. My parents argued all the time, but even when he was wrong, she’d consent, just to stop it all. She’d say whatever happened was her fault. She is the helpless sort. My father took her away from a bad home, but she didn’t know she was walking into a worse home than the one she’d fled. Her family hated my father, and as a kid, I thought it was because he was Italian. You know, since I’m half Navaho, I figured it was some race issue. They didn’t like white people too much. But that wasn’t it at all. It was because he was a fucking loser, and everyone knew it but my mother. He was no good. Anyway…” He rubbed his eyes and shrugged. “So I’m slicin’, digging in deeper and deeper, and the more he struggles underneath me, trying to strangle me, the deeper I’m cutting into that drunk son of a bitch. Then, at the doorway, I hear Lawrence’s voice.
“He said I’d left something with him, so he came back that night to give it to me. My mother let him in, but that wasn’t it, Traci. He could feel me—we were close, you know? Not blood brothers, but may as well have been. He knew I was in trouble and about to off this motherfucker. I looked over my shoulder and he said, ‘Jag, don’t do it. He isn’t worth it. You’ll be thrown in prison. Who will watch over your mother if you’re gone for good?’ And he was right.” Jagger smiled and wiped the moisture from his own eyes. “Nobody could watch Mom if I’m gone and though Dad would be dead, the way Mom was, some other fucker would find her and take advantage.” He laughed, a dark laugh with tattooed pain all over its atrocious arms, back and chest.
“She’d tell me some shit like, ‘Jagger, he doesn’t know any better. He loves me and is afraid I’ll leave, like everyone else in his life.’ And the fucked up part is that it sounded all right to her, Traci; it sounded like an understandable sort of thing for a man to lay his hands on his woman and hurt her like that because he wanted her to stay. That shit isn’t even rational!” He sat up suddenly and ran his fingers over his face. Traci clung on to him, pressed her forehead into his shoulder and caressed his back. She remained quiet, and her tears continued to fall. Those tears rolled down his arm, and that was all he needed to feel. He patted her hand. She was more hurt than he.
“So, I got off of him, and he was holdin’ his neck, talking about I was crazy and all that jazz. He used to say shit to me when I was little, things you don’t say to a little kid, like, ‘I should have pulled out and came on your mother’s ass if I’d known you were being made.’ And he’d laugh at that shit, like it was a big joke and something I should l
ike to hear. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. My mother tanned real fast in the summer, and he’d tell her she looked like a nigger in the summertime and how he didn’t like it. She’d laugh it off, like the shit was funny, you know. I had a lot of black friends, and he’d say racist shit around them. They wouldn’t want to come back to my house. He would always say he was only joking, but he wasn’t. He caused me a lot of trouble at school, Traci, because of that. Word got around and people thought, well, if Jagger’s old man thinks like that, he probably does, too.
“I wanted to ask this black girl out for senior prom. I knew if he found out, he’d say something stupid to her, maybe even come up to the school drunk…so I didn’t. I never said anything to her and had to sit back and watch her dancing with another guy all night. I was still living under his roof, even after I tried to kill him. It wasn’t because he was forgiving, but because I worked and brought money into the house while he sat around doing nothing all day. However…he never hit our mother again after that because…” Jagger looked at Traci; he had to. The woman was trembling. He ran his hand along her arm, comforting her, as he kissed the top of her head.
“…because I told him that if he ever laid his hands on her again, no one would be there to help him next time. Not Mom. Not the police. Not Lawrence.”
“Were you arrested for that night?”
He shook his head. “No. Lawrence got me out of there before they arrived and my father wouldn’t tell ’em what happened. I guess he was embarrassed, I don’t know. They asked about my mom’s face, that’s the real kicker. My mother forgot about the whole reason he was about to die in the first place, and when the police saw her face, it’s like she remembered, ‘Oh yeah, he kicked my ass and they can see it!’—like a light bulb had gone on, at least that’s what my brothers said. They took his ass away but they were right back together a week later…although he sure as hell didn’t touch her again.” His eyes narrowed. “Not because he didn’t wanna, or because he’d been in the slammer. It was because of me.”
He looked at her with bursting emotions, felt compelled to look at the one person who’d given him new life. “Traci, I love you so much.”
“I love you too, Jagger. I really do.”
Looking back away, he braced himself. “I told you this story because there is something you need to know… I told you this story about almost killing my father, a story only Lawrence and Saint know the details about, for many reasons.” He took a deep breath and continued. “When I walked in that room after being out with Lawrence that night, I could see my mother.”
“Yeah, you explained that.”
“Well, she was sitting in the dark, but I could still see all of her bruises, all of that shit. I told you that it shone, it glowed. Do you know why I could see it, Traci? In the dark like that?” Now, he met eyes with her.
She shook her head, wiping the tears away.
“I could see it clearly not because of the meager light pouring through the bathroom, but because I have the ability to see very well in extreme darkness. It’s like a light is on all the time inside of my head, if I want it to be.”
Her reaction was as he expected. She never said anything, but her face tightened and she relaxed her touch on his arm.
“Remember when we were first dating, and you joked, telling me my eyes were so bright blue, they looked like flashlights sometimes?”
She nodded, a cautious nod.
“You were right. They are like flashlights. Then Traci, there was another part of this story that you need to understand. I couldn’t just see the blood, I could smell it. When someone is physically injured, I can smell it from quite a distance away, and I sense it, like a sensor going off inside my head. When I smell blood, it is ten times stronger than when you or someone else does…”
“Jagger, what are you talking about?” She was terribly confused. He sighed in frustration.
“Okay, let me give you an example. Not to be crude or off putting, but that is how I always knew when you were on your period.”
“Uh.” She looked away, sliding her hand off of him completely. “I’m not really sure what to say about that—”
“No, not like that, Traci. I’m not insulting you. No one can tell but me. I’m sorry.” He fumbled around, trying to clean things up. He didn’t want her to feel offended. “Look, you know how you don’t like sex on your period? I wouldn’t ask you for it anymore after you explained that to me. If you noticed, after that first time, I’ve never tried to have sex with you while you were on. It wasn’t a coincidence. I have…” He closed his eyes and sighed in annoyance as he watched her becoming more and more distant. “I have heightened senses.”
Traci gulped and looked down into her lap. He knew she was perplexed as hell, and it would only get worse.
“Then, there is another part of the story, where I said my mother told me ‘Don’t.’ She didn’t say it out of her mouth, Traci. She said it telepathically, and I heard her. She has the same gifts I do, I just have a few more than her. That’s not uncommon for people like me.” His jaw twitched as his nerves turned into a ball of barbed wire. “Then, there is yet another part of the story, where I said Lawrence showed up. I hadn’t forgotten a damned thing. My mother was on the phone with the police, so she couldn’t have called my friend to come get me. How would he know I was getting ready to off that fucker, huh?!” He was huffing and puffing, angry at God and the whole world for putting him in a position like this. “It’s because Lawrence is one of us, too! He and I are so close, we can speak telepathically, and when something is wrong, something major, we sometimes send out signals to one another, whether we want to or not. He got a mayday that I was doing something that could change my life forever.”
He grabbed her arm as she trembled, and she didn’t dare look at him. Jagger was desperate, trying to grasp at any chance he had to make her understand.
“Do you know why I left the Marines, Traci?”
She was so afraid of him, and it was killing him, but he’d already begun; there was no turning back. He had to tell the truth, just like Saint said.
“I left the Marines, Traci, because people were dying around me and I was the only one living, so a rumor started that I was offing people! I wasn’t, okay! I was the only one surviving these attacks with little more than a scratch here and there. A damn grenade was launched while I was in Iraq, I heard the fucker way before it had even sliced through the air. I heard it pop because, like my sense of smell, I can hear incredibly well, better than you, better than a guy with a hearing aid turned up 100 decibels. I heard the grenade and yelled out, warning my men, but it was too late. As I ran, they stood there looking at me like I was crazy, and most of ’em died! This happened too many times to count and I had an honorable discharge. There was no evidence against me because I didn’t do it, but how could someone look at me and feel okay about it, knowing I had all of my limbs and survived shrapnel, bombs, gunfire and all sorts of attacks. I had my share of bruises, I even was grazed with a bullet while in service, but because of my heightened sense of vision, sense of smell and my hearing, it affords me extra seconds— seconds that can save a man’s life—to get the fuck out of trouble before it gets real hot and heavy.” He grasped her chin, trying to force her face up, but it was a struggle. “Baby, please, I’m not crazy… I’m telling you the truth.”
She continued to shake, and wrapped the covers tighter around her frame, her face now shiny with tears and her body covered in goose bumps. He died a little inside as he looked at her. He knew it was over. He could feel in his heart that Traci was done with him, but the poor thing was too frightened to move. She couldn’t run out into the street naked, but she probably contemplated it. It was still safer than being inside the home of a lunatic.
“Traci, please…” His voice shook as he held her gently. “Please say something.”
She looked into his eyes and swallowed. “I think you’ve had a lot of trauma, Jagger,” she said. “I think, maybe t
he war and…and your childhood did some bad things to you. I’m sorry…that you went through all of that. You should get some help. I know you believe what you’re saying to me, I know you do, but—”
He let her go and leapt off the bed, quickly throwing his jeans on. He was in a manic state, needing help, needing immediate backup.
“Get dressed.” He huffed. “We’ve got guests coming over.” He dashed out the room, frantically searching for his cell phone. He spotted it in the kitchen, almost tripped over himself to reach it and frenetically dialed Lawrence.
“Lawrence, please get over to my house right away and call Saint and Xenia. I need you here, now! I told Traci, she thinks I’m crazy and—”
“You told Traci what?” Lawrence asked wearily. He’d obviously been awakened out of a sound sleep.
“About me! About us! About what we are!” Just then, he saw Traci half-dressed slip out of the hall bathroom like a thief making a clean getaway, her shoes in hand as she tip toed around, more than likely looking for her purse before making an undercover exit. His heart sank. “I won’t be able to keep her here long, I need you to fly over here right this second. You’re only five minutes away, Saint is much farther, so call him, just hurry!” He hung up and called out to her.
“Traci!”
She stopped in her tracks, her back to him.
“Traci, please!” he begged. “Just give me ten minutes to prove what I’m saying is true. If you still think I’m crazy, you can bounce and I’ll never call you, I won’t come by, I won’t say anything to you ever again. I promise.”
He heard her exhale as she turned and faced him. He knew what she was thinking: that she was with a mad man. She believed she didn’t have a choice in the matter, too. He was no longer concerned as long as he could buy some time. It would be emotional currency well spent…
~***~
Lawrence pulled up at Jagger’s place with no shirt on, wearing some old jeans and dark brown, worn flip-flops. He parked haphazardly and raced up to the house, the one that looked like all the others next to it in a new development—a bit younger than his own area right down the road, but these were filled with singles and young couples living together, trying to make a go of it. It was a ‘hip’ part of town, that didn’t seem to fit into Jagger’s personality, but Jagger kept to himself and hated being around nosey neighbors. Living here helped feed his preferred hermit living arrangements. He tapped on the door and soon heard Jagger’s heavy footsteps approaching. The door swung open and there stood Jagger, his eyes glowing like an owl’s and Traci in the background, as if she’d been drawn in watercolor. She simply blended away, like a past love, as if her heart had already walked out the door.
Saint's Sacrament - Sins of the Father Page 68
