Sacred Ground

by Mercedes Lackey

  But Jennie Talldeer somehow had a sixth sense for when Rod was going to return, and she never visited when he was around, or left any signs that "she had ever been there at all. Jennie was bright, fun to talk to, and didn't seem much like a private investigator at all, just like "one of the girls."

  Best of all, Jennie understood. Even if some of the things she had to say-about husbands in general," admittedly, and never directly accusing Rod-made Toni acutely uncomfortable. Then again, maybe Jennie was simply telling Toni in a roundabout way why she was avoiding Rod. When Jennie was gone, and Toni sat alone over the coffee, she had to admit that what Jennie said made sense.

  The things Rod did, to her and to Ryan and Jill-they just weren't right. All those cruel taunts, and the way he kept trying to frighten Ryan under the guise of "making the boy tough."

  And the scolding sessions that had gone from words to blows. . . .

  True, Toni's father had never been a very warm or loving man, but he had never hit her mother. Although he had been just as sarcastic and cutting as Rod. He'd always known what to say to just devastate a person.

  So did Rod.

  Well, that made sense too, from what Jennie said. Funny, she had never thought what a weapon words could be, until Jennie pointed it out. Words could hurt worse than knives, because they cut you where it didn't show.

  On the outside. On the outside.

  She had begun thinking over things, in the leisure granted her by Jennie's willingness to pitch in and help. She often had as much as an hour or two, now, when she could just sit and think, and a lot of her thoughts were very uncomfortable.

  She had to admit, if only to herself, that Rod never had been the Prince Charming she'd thought. In fact, in a lot of ways, he was more like Ivan the Terrible. But she'd been so busy, what with one thing and another, that she'd never really thought about how she was less his wife and more like his housekeeper, errand-runner, and-

  Admit it, Toni. Punching bag.

  That was how Jennie, detached, but compassionate, had described some of her clients, women she had met at the Women's Shelter or women she had taken there. They were punching bags for their husbands, she'd said, sighing. Whenever something went wrong for the man, he came home and took it out on her or the kids, or both. I mean, in a way I can almost understand it. These guys all had nowhere to go, no way to express their anger and frustration, and their wives were the only creatures they knew weaker and less powerful than they were. It's like chickens in a chicken house; the big chickens pick on the littler ones, and so on down the line, until it comes to the last chicken in the chicken house, who gets abuse from everybody. But that doesn't make it right. People aren't chickens. People know better. Uncomfortable thinking.

  She'd asked Toni about what she'd done before she married Rod; pointed out that she could still make a living for herself, even if Rod wasn't there. That was something that hadn't occurred to her in ages, and Toni had started to wonder just what life would be like without Rod around.

  Jennie was a pretty smart cookie, when it came down to it. Everything she said made sense.

  She'd said other things too; things that were beginning to make Toni wonder about being crazy or not. She had a lot of funny, and sometimes not-so-funny, stories about people who'd seen what she called Spirits, things that weren't necessarily ghosts, but certainly weren't physical. And what Jennie said about the Spirits sure matched those Indians Toni kept seeing. ...

  She was seeing them, out of the corner of her eye, all the time now, half-seen shadows, or transparent ghost-images. Sometimes they even showed up when Rod was home, though never in the same area of the house as he was; they seemed to wait to try and catch her alone. The only time they weren't there was when Jennie was visiting. Toni really wished they would show up then, so she could find out if Jennie saw them too, but they never obliged. Like a kid, they were never there when you wanted them. They lurked around the house to the point where she saw them at least twice or three times a night, peering in the windows, grimacing at her, and disappearing when she turned to look straight at them.

  They tended to show up after dark, too, which made them pretty unnerving. She hadn't told Jennie about them, but it was almost as if Jennie knew about them, just like she knew about Rod without being told anything.

  Almost as if she knew-and understood.

  Thunder growled, making them both look up.

  "Gripes, where did that come from?" Jennie Talldeer said, glancing at her watch and then up at the growing storm outside. "I really have got to go, before this breaks.

  It looks like it's going to be hell to drive in."

  Toni nodded, surreptitiously rubbing her sore wrist, hoping Jennie wouldn't notice. But Jennie spotted the movement anyway, and raised an eyebrow at her.

  "Arthritis?" she asked. Grateful for the "out," Toni nodded. Rod had grabbed her wrist and yanked her around last night, shaking her; the wrist had been swollen this morning. It had gone down some, but this coming storm made it twinge.

  "I guess so," Toni replied, hoping her flush of guilt at lying didn't show. "It was real sore this morning. I hate to think of having arthritis already, though; it makes me feel so old,"

  Jennie shrugged. "My brother broke his ankle fancy-dancing on uneven ground, and it gives him all kinds of hell whenever it's about to rain. And my fingers hurt, sometimes. Trust me, arthritis doesn't care how old you are! But I really need to go, Toni, much as I hate to."

  Because the minute the rain breaks, Rod will be coming back home, Toni thought with a sigh. Jennie knows. But she's too nice to say that. She doesn't want to run into him, I'm sure. If he knows that she's supposed to be checking him out, he 'II be nice to her but take it out on me. And if he doesn't, he'll be rotten to her just to get rid of her.

  "Well thanks for coming over and giving me a hand with everything," she said, instead, and smiled. "Come on, I'll see you off."

  Jennie grimaced as they got outside and saw the true magnitude of the storm on the western horizon. The window in the kitchen looked north, while this "boomer" was coming straight out of the west. Huge black thunderheads loomed thousands of feet up in the air, their tops forming the "anvil" formations that meant dangerous weather to come. The roofs of the houses hid the bottoms of the clouds, but they wouldn't for long, and the angry growl of thunder was testament enough to the amount of lightning hitting the ground at the leading edge of the storm.

  "You'd better go turn on a radio," Jennie advised, as she got into her little truck. "Keep the TV off though, and stay away from the windows. This looks like it could brew up a tornado, and there's going to be a lot of lightning, for sure. You might want to get the kids ready to duck into the bathroom if we get a tornado alert."

  "I'll do that," Toni said, just as the wind picked up, with three chilly gusts that sent garbage cans flying into the street and flattened her clothing against her. The air was full of rain-and ozone-smell. "You'd better get going!" she added, over the distant growl of thunder. "This may flood the underpasses!"

  Jennie pulled out, with a backward wave.

  She hurried into the backyard to gather up the kids; Ryan and Jill were only too happy to come inside, but Rod sassed her. "I want to watch!" he said. "It's not here yet! You think I'm gonna melt if I get a little wet?"

  Toni gave his rump a little smack for the sass. "You get in that house when I tell you to, mister," she scolded, shagging him inside after the other two. "You're not too big for me to spank; you better remember that!"

  Ryan and Jill went to their rooms, and she assumed that Rod followed. She went straight to the kitchen to turn on a radio; they didn't have cable anymore, and she didn't trust the television in a thunderstorm. Jennie was right to warn her. The antenna that Rod had put up before they got cable was too high and he had never taken it down; it was on a tower that made it the tallest thing in the neighborhood, and whenever there was lightning, she was always afraid it would get hit. Rod laughed at her for her fears, but she would never al
low the set on during a storm if he wasn't there to insist on it.

  Outside, the sky turned black, and the kitchen went as dark as if the sun were setting. She tuned in right in the middle of a National Weather Service bulletin; they were always so scratchy and full of static she had to concentrate to make out what the man was saying. Strong winds, damaging hail, severe thunderstorm. . . . Not even a "watch"; this one, as any fool could see, was already here. No talk of tornadoes, though-

  She caught the sound of the television from the living room, and hurried in to find young Rod messing with it in the gloom of the living room. The only light came from the screen.

  "You get away from that!" she snapped. "I have told you and told you, don't use the TV in a thunderstorm!"

  "I wanta see Doppler Six radar," Rod whined, defiantly. "Chill out, Ma! Nothing's gonna happen! You talk like some kind of hystric! And you act like you want me t' grow up t' be a fag!"

  Now that-except that the word was "hysteric," not "hystric"-was straight from his father's mouth. Bad enough to hear it from Rod-but this was too much.

  She saw red and was about to give him that spanking she had promised-but before she could move to give his fanny a real tanning, she saw something else instead.

  The Indian.

  It rose up from the shadows behind the television set, where it had either been lurking, or been doing something to the television set. Ryan came up behind her, and grabbed for her hand with a gasp.

  This time the Indian did not disappear when she turned her full attention on it; she was looking straight at it, and although Rod didn't seem to see it, Ryan beside her did, and shrank against her, whimpering.

  It grinned at her, a nasty, snide grin. Like a wolverine, she thought, crazily. Like a bear trap. Like-like the Devil, just before he takes a soul!

  And it vanished.

  Rod was still messing with the television. "There!" he said in triumph, as the picture came in, the Channel Six weatherman standing in front of an image of a Doppler Radar scan. "I need to tune-"

  His hand was on the dial, just as lightning hit the antenna above them.

  The next half hour was hell on earth.

  Toni found herself on the dining room floor, Ryan beside her, with no memory of how they had gotten there. She scrambled to her feet and dashed into the living room, vaguely aware that every hair on her head was standing on end, and feeling a kind of tingle in her hands and feet, as if they'd been asleep.

  Young Rod was collapsed in a heap beside the television. The back of the set had blown out, and glass shards were embedded in the wall behind the set.

  Rod's outstretched hand was black and crisped. He wasn't moving.

  She didn't scream; she didn't panic. "Ryan," she said, very clearly and out of some kind of unholy calm, "call 9-1-1. Tell them your brother's been hit by lightning. If our phone doesn't work, go next door and use theirs, and give them our address. If the phone does work, make the call, then go next door to Mrs. Nebles. Take Jill. Stay there."

  "But Ma-" Ryan burbled, clearly terrified.

  "Go now," she yelled, fiercely, and then all her concentration was on the child who needed her. She ran across the living room and fell to her knees beside Rod. She put him over on his back, carefully, in case there was a spinal injury, feeling under his chin for a pulse.

  No pulse. No breathing.

  She had never done CPR except on a dummy, but it all came back to her now. She tilted his head back, made sure his airway was clear, covered his mouth and nose with her mouth, and breathed.

  Once. Twice. Then pump his chest. She didn't need to be too careful; he wasn't so small that she'd crack his ribs.

  Breathe. Pump. Breathe. Pump. Don't forget to breathe for yourself, or you 'II pass out.

  At some point, she heard sirens over the sound of the pouring rain and the thunder outside. She ignored them as she ignored everything else.

  Breathe. Pump. Breathe-

  Hands pulled her away; she fought them for a moment, until she saw it was the paramedics in their bright yellow slickers, then she let them take over, surrounding Rod with their machines and their expertise.

  Other people came crowding in; firemen, Mrs. Nebles, the neighbor with Ryan and Jill. She couldn't see Rod for all the bodies around him, but she heard the pure tone of a flat-lined EKG, then heard someone say "Clear!", and then everyone pulled away.

  She heard the snap of the fibrillator, heard someone curse. The flat tone continued.

  She collapsed into the chest of whoever was holding her, sobbing as hysterically as her two remaining children. She would never forget that horrible, unwavering tone for as long as she lived.

  They tried, over and over again, to get Rod's heart started. But the tame lightning of their machines could not restart what the wild lightning had stopped.

  Finally, they pronounced Rod dead on the scene, covered him up with a rubber sheet, and took him away, into the rain, in an ambulance, but one with the lights and siren dead. She rode in the back, with the paramedic holding her hand, awkwardly.

  She was no longer crying, no longer screaming with the pain of her loss. She was numb, now; after the ambulance ride, after the session at the hospital with the doctors and the paperwork--how could they bother with paperwork at a time like that?-after the call to Rod, missing him by minutes. They'd left a policeman at her home, the nurses told her, patting her hand. The policeman would tell him. He would come soon, to help her with all this.

  But he never came, and she stumbled through it all alone. Thank God Mrs. Nebles had said she would take care of Ryan and Jill. Thank God the paramedics had reminded her to bring her purse. What she couldn't remember was in the papers she kept in her purse.

  Insurance. Why? she had wanted to scream. People to notify. Recounting it all to the police.

  Still Rod did not come.

  Surely he would come and take her home.

  But he didn't come, and finally the nurses took pity on her and called the neighbor who had Ryan and Jill, asked Mrs. Nebles to keep the kids overnight, then sent her home with another policeman rather than a taxi. They probably didn't trust her to remember what her own address was. . . .

  Rod's car was in the driveway; she walked up to the silent, darkened house, still numb, not knowing what she was going to say to him. Suddenly, she was afraid for him-how could he be expected to bear up under this? Rod was his image, his golden child! He must be half insane; no wonder he hadn't come to the hospital!

  She pulled open the door-and there he was, staring at her. She opened her mouth, the tears starting again.

  But as it happened, he didn't give her a chance to say anything.

  He simply dragged her inside, face full of-not the grief she had expected, but silent fury. He dragged her into the living room, to the spot in front of the TV, where Rod had died. He shoved her down on her knees on the spot where he had lain.

  He screamed at her, as she knelt there, unable to move or think. Screamed at her that this was all her fault-she was a slut, a whore, an unfit mother-she had caused Rod's death, to make way for her own favored brats, who were probably bastards by some fancy gigolo, conceived while he was hard at work, trying to make a decent life for them all-

  Then, when she didn't respond except for silent tears, he hit her.

  He knocked her into the wall, and she put up her hands, ineffectually, to defend herself. That seemed to infuriate him even further and he pulled her to her feet, then balled up both his fists, punching her in the face and stomach alternately, while she wept and retched, and finally dropped into merciful unconsciousness.

  She woke up again, lying where she had fallen, in the dark and silent house, and crawled as far as the bathroom, using the sink to haul herself to her feet. Somehow, she got herself cleaned up, studiously avoiding looking at herself in the mirror. But she could not bear to go to the bedroom. Not to lie beside the man who had done this to her, and blamed her for her own son's death.

  Instead, clutching her sor
e stomach, she got as far as the little bed in Ryan's room before she collapsed again, face and body throbbing with pain, onto the neatly made cotton comforter.

  Eventually, she slept.

  When she woke the next morning, an aching mass of misery inside and but, Rod was already gone.

  The doorbell rang just as she was putting the finishing touches on a makeup job that she hoped, vaguely, would disguise the bruises, the black eye, and the swollen lip and jaw. It rang again, and she moved carefully to answer it, assuming that it must be the neighbor, Mrs. Nebles, who had taken Ryan and Jill-poor things, they must be hysterical; Rod hadn't come to get them and only God knew what they'd been told last night- But when she opened the door, it wasn't the neighbor, it was Jennie Talldeer, her expression one of sympathy and haunted guilt, a guilt that Toni recognized, but could not imagine the meaning of. There was a handsome, long-haired young man standing politely behind her, and Toni gulped down a surge of nausea and revulsion. Right now, she did not want to see any men-he would think she was to blame; he would say that Rod had been right to beat her-

  "Toni, we heard on the news this morning and-my god!" Jennie exclaimed, her expression transforming from sympathy to shock and outrage. "What the hell did Rod do to you?"

  Not "what happened," but "what did Rod do to you."

  Jennie knew. It was out in the open between them. And Toni was too tired to try to hide it anymore.

  "He said-" she began, then burst into tears, momentarily forgetting the presence of the young man. "He said it was my fault!" she sobbed, as Jennie took her arms and gently led her inside to the kitchen. "He said it was all my fault, and he hit me and-"

  "God-how badly are you hurt? Did he touch the kids?" the young man asked, quietly, but urgently. Toni cast a quick glance at him through her tears, and to her amazement, saw that his expression was identical to Jennie's. Shock, and outrage-and concern.