Diesel stumbled backward till he hit the counter, glancing around in a daze. The jars of cotton balls, the red biohazard waste bin, the gauze and napkins, they began to dance and jitter. His mouth filled with water and specks of light flickered before his eyes. The room was spinning and he was going to be sick. The nurses were busy hovering over Katie, telling her not to push. Not yet. Just chew on this crushed ice.
He ducked out the door and into the hall, racing past startled people and pictures of newborns, and ran to the bathroom.
Falling to his knees before a toilet he wretched up yellow bile. He hadn’t eaten in days. He shuddered and dry heaved. Again he spat up a slop of yellow slime that burned his throat and left a foul acrid taste on his tongue. A cool sheen of sweat lacquered his body. He trembled slightly and then braced himself, clenching his eyes tight. He focused on his breathing, lifted himself up, went to the sink, and splashed cool water onto his face.
He could hear laughter outside in the hall.
Keep it together, he told himself, keep it together.
The girl needed him. He had to go back, but he was shaking badly and needed a smoke.
He remembered the night DJ was born, holding him in his arms, so tiny. All those promises he’d made to himself. All the promises he’d broken.
First, it had just been celebrating. Then it was a bender. Then getting on the speed so he could keep it together at work, jamming the shovel bucket of his excavator into the ground to haul earth up out of those deep black holes.
He needed a smoke. Just one quick smoke and he would go back to the girl.
He headed out towards the exit, shuffling past the doctors, nurses, pregnant women and families, pulling a rumpled pack of Marlboros from his front pocket. He stepped out into the rain.
The overhead lights in the parking lot glimmered in the downpour, halos of dull blue light. He found a small balcony to stand under and, as he took a drag of his cigarette, he noticed two uniformed Fortuna police officers storming hurriedly into the door of the maternity ward.
He knew where they were headed.
He had no choice but to leave. He didn’t want to end up down at the station answering questions, possibly even see his ass thrown in jail again. And he still had that goddamn hunting rifle in his truck. He was a felon, he’d end up back in the joint if the cops discovered it.
He hobbled back to his truck feeling ashamed and beaten. But he didn’t see any other choice. Starting the engine, the truck roaring to life, he felt a deep and utter emptiness within him: a chasm so deep he could see no end to it, only darkness, eternal and black.
26
“Megan?” Rebecca rushed to the edge of the embankment. “Megan?”
The little girl stopped and looked up at her, a blank, questioning look on her face, as if she was unsure which direction she should head: to her mother or to the river.
“Mommy?”
That same word, loud enough not to be taken by the wind but quiet enough to barely make it up the ravine.
The dead boy grinned dementedly over his shoulder and raised a hand in a friendly wave. How had they gotten down there? Not seeing a path, Rebecca rushed off the edge, sliding down the cliff face feet first through the chaparral and rocky clay, slipping faster, for a moment her belly rising up into her lungs, and then her feet slammed down on the sandy bank.
Megan stood there before her, crying, a futile look of hopelessness on her round, doll-like face. The little boy stood beside her, pale, black-haired, clad only in cutoff jeans cinched around his waist with a rope. He was smiling.
Rebecca leapt at Megan and pulled her—limp as a bundle of rags—into her arms, taking a step back and hissing at the boy. “You stay away from us. Stay away.”
The ghost simply grinned, black hair plastered to his head, beaming at her with a look of bemusement, his eyes large and dark in his pallid face, head cocked jauntily, something green and viscous leaking out of his mouth.
Scared to turn her back on him, Rebecca backed away, snarling like an animal. “Stay the hell away from us.”
Then the boy spoke, a sweet, high-pitched voice, filled with amusement. “Take your time. The river will be waiting. It’s not going anywhere.” His eyes twinkled and his smile grew bigger, black lips, stained in slime, stretching over impossibly white, square teeth.
27
Ivy watched Sunbeam circle the Navigator in the glare of her headlights, the pounding rain beating a cacophony against the roof of the Four Runner.
At first she thought the movement she noticed in the darkness was just a trick of the shadows. But when she squinted she saw it was a hunched figure, sneaking slowly up behind Sunbeam. She screamed as she saw it rise up, raising something long and skinny over its head. All the tiny hairs on her arms and neck went erect, a coppery flood of saliva filled her mouth as she slammed both hands down against the horn.
—
The blare of the horn startled Sunbeam and she turned around just in time to see the rusted blade of the shovel come swinging through the rain.
Her face exploded in pain, her nose shattering into a bloody pulp of cartilage and snot.
Staggering back, she lifted her hands to her face in a brief moment of disbelief before the shovel rose back up and slammed down again, this time on the top of her head, sending her into darkness.
—
Rebecca clawed her way up the embankment, scrabbling for purchase in the soft dirt and clay, pushing through a tangle of whitethorn and huckleberry that scratched at her face, one hand digging into the wet earth while the other clutched Megan to her chest. Megan whimpered and shook. They were both covered in mud and drenched to the bone, shivering violently. Rebecca pulled herself to the crest of the embankment. Exhausted, trembling, and gritting her teeth, she managed to heave herself up to the road.
Collapsing to the ground, she lay there, struggling for breath. The fear and rush of adrenaline-filled panic subsided into an utter fatigue. Lightning flashed and she cradled Megan tight as thunder came bellowing behind it.
She had to think, had to find some way out of here.
The sound of a car horn.
She turned and looked up the road, her cheek pressed into the cold, wet gravel. Was that another set of headlights? Was she hallucinating? Seeing double? No. A new set of headlights and then the car horn again.
Someone was here. This was her chance.
She pulled herself up into a sitting position, scratches and bruises screaming, and shifted Megan so that she sat on her lap. She stroked the hair from her face.
“Listen to me, Megan. Listen.” Megan trembled, her breath coming in quick, awkward gasps. “Megan, please, you have to listen to my words. Are you listening to me?”
“Yes.”
“You have to be strong. It’s time to be strong. Do you hear me?”
Megan didn’t respond, so Rebecca took her by the shoulders and shook her, trying to make contact with those big, brown eyes. “Now is the time for us to be strong.”
28
“Can’t you mind your own business?”
Calendula watched Sunbeam crumple to the muddy earth.
“Always sticking your nose where it don’t belong. Let this be a lesson.”
He lifted the shovel over his head and sent it rocketing down against the side of her skull. It struck with a loud crack and he felt something give. A trickle of dark liquid leaked out her ear and began to form a puddle on the muddy ground.
Breathing heavily, he raised the shovel up again.
—
Inside the Four Runner, Ivy howled, fumbling with the door latch, watching the shadow f
igure strike her friend down.
“No. No. No,” she whimpered, pushing the door open and falling out onto the gravel and dirt.
Leaping up and barreling out into the rainy night, she sprinted up behind the figure as it raised the shovel again. She grasped the blade as the shovel rose and yanked hard, using its upward momentum to pull the shovel free from Calendula’s grip.
“What?” He spun around, fire in his eyes. “What are you doing? I’m trying to work here!”
Terrified, Ivy slowly retreated, holding the shovel up defensively.
When he lurched forward and came at her she turned to run, but it was too late. He grasped the shovel handle, slamming it against her so that she stumbled backwards, and quickly yanked it free from her grasp as she fell.
She hit the ground hard, the wind escaping her lungs and leaving her breathless for a moment. Then she squirmed onto her belly and began to crawl away. Casting a panicked glance over her shoulder, she screamed in terror when she saw him behind her, readying the shovel, eyes wild and demented.
As the shovel came plummeting down Ivy spun away, onto her back. The shovel whizzed by her head, slamming into her hand. The thin bones cracked and she bellowed in pain. Frantically she began to crab-walk away, gasping for breath.
Calendula lifted the shovel, his stubby, rain-soaked dreadlocks poking from his head like demonic horns. He grinned.
—
When Rebecca saw the silhouette of Calendula in the headlight beams, she thought of her mother. Her mother drunk. Sprawled on the sofa, smoking, slurring her words. Telling her men are pigs. Fighting to enunciate each word as she sipped cheap vodka from a plastic cup.
“Men will hurt you. Fight back. They’ll be all hands and try to take away what isn’t theirs. Stick it in you. You fight back, girl.”
And her mother had locked eyes with her, her face heavily made-up, lipstick smeared. She pointed a finger at Rebecca, just a little girl, only eight or nine, and said, “If one of those bastards tries to hurt you, go for his eyes. You claw his damn eyes out. You understand me?”
At the time she had just nodded, incapable of understanding what her scary, drunken mother was rambling on about.
Now she understood.
—
She had just been saved by Joan of Arc. Joan of fucking Arc had just come howling out of the darkness and saved Ivy. A short-haired crazy woman: mouth open, bellowing some primitive war cry, tendons stretched tight at her throat, leaping onto her attacker’s back and spearing his face with her fingers.
Joan of Arc. It was a miracle.
—
Rebecca clawed frantically at Calendula’s face, searching with her fingers, scrabbling with her nails, for his eyes.
He dropped the shovel and managed to push one of her hands free, shrugging violently to get her off his back. But her other hand found purchase and she dug her fingers into his eye socket, twisting until she felt them sink in.
As she tried desperately to tear his eye free from his face he bucked wildly and finally managed to break free, throwing her from his back. When she hit the ground her teeth clacked together so hard she thought they might shatter.
—
“My eye,” Calendula moaned, gently trying to push it back into his head as he stumbled towards the escarpment. “Why? Why would you do that?”
—
Ivy, seeing him on the edge of the overhang, pushed herself up from the ground, the pain from her crushed hand causing white triangles of light to dance before her, and ran at him, intent on pushing him off the edge and into the river. She slammed into him, but instead of falling backwards he simply crumpled around her and they both tumbled to the ground and rolled through the mud to the edge of the embankment, the black water of the rushing river below them.
—
Calendula struggled with Ivy. The bitch was going crazy, clawing at him, kicking, all knees and elbows as she writhed on top of him. He filled one hand with her hair and groped at her face with the other, sinking his index finger into her ear. He worked his finger in, squirming, the pressure of the trapped air building, swelling the canal, until he felt the soft pop of her eardrum and the warm flood of blood. He watched her clench her eyes shut and shriek in pain, rain slashing against her face. Turning, he pushed his weight against her with his knees so that he came up kneeling on her chest and, releasing her hair, began to pummel her face with his right fist while, with his other hand, he ground his finger deeper into her ear, the slick, warm fluids lubricating the descent as he wiggled it further and further in.
—
Gasping for breath, Rebecca got shakily to her feet and grabbed the shovel. Limping over to where Calendula and Ivy grappled on the edge of the embankment, she lifted the shovel over her shoulder like a baseball bat and swung it with a grunt.
It smacked into the side of his head, striking his skull with such force that the metal rang like a church bell. He crumpled and Ivy squirmed free from under him, screeching, her hand to her ear, running off towards her Four Runner.
Calendula lay on the edge of the embankment, blinking confusedly, mouth opening and closing like a beached carp.
Rebecca stood above him with the shovel in her hands. He had to be put down. He was dangerous. Like a sick dog. She gritted her teeth and raised the shovel over her head, preparing to bring it down into his face. But then Megan was suddenly there, grasping her leg, looking up at her with those huge brown eyes and pleading with her.
“Don’t, Mommy. Please, don’t hurt him.”
—
Lights danced around the periphery of Calendula’s vision. He thought he could hear Megan somewhere. His head hung over the embankment’s edge and the sound of rushing water filled his ears.
Looking up through the blood and rain he saw Rebecca above him, the shovel poised to strike.
He struck out instinctively, snagged the hem of her jeans in his grasp, and quickly rolled over, pulling her feet from under her. He could see the surprise in her face as she fell, heard her grunt as she hit the ground.
Megan—tangled in her feet—tumbled down with her, the ledge of the escarpment quivering. He sprang up onto his hands and knees, teeth bared, and leered at her with his single eye.
Rebecca scrambled to put herself in front of Megan, then crawled forward to face him, the two of them like wild animals in a standoff.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you hurt us.”
His leering expression broke. Cracked like parched earth. The viciousness, anger, and insanity slipping away. He sat back on his haunches, looked at her pleadingly.
“How could you say that? How? I would never hurt you or Megan. I love you. Love you more than anything. Can’t you see that? Don’t you know you’re my everything? My world? Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for us. For the dream.”
He rose up and held out a hand to Rebecca.
“I love you,” he said, and then there was only the roar of an engine and the blinding light of high-beams.
—
The Four Runner hit Calendula just as he was beginning to stand and stretch out his hand to Rebecca.
The bumper slammed into his left leg, pulverizing his pelvis and snapping his femur in two—the jagged ends of the broken bone pushing out through the muscle and flesh of his thigh and nearly severing his leg—while simultaneously throwing him upwards, off his feet, and into the windshield, the impact of his neck and shoulders shattering it into a spider-web pattern of tiny white triangles.
Rebecca watched as the Four Runner skidded to a halt and he thumped down, rolling off the hood, smacking the ground in a heap, like so much dirty laundry. She thought she saw him
look up at her, extend his hand in a pleading gesture, and mouth something. But she couldn’t hear what it was.
And then the world turned upside down. Everything was moving, sliding, and tumbling as the embankment gave way and crashed down into the river.
Rebecca fell for what seemed like a long time, spinning through the torrent of mud and clay that fell all around her, finally slamming to the earth by the shore of the river with Megan on top of her, feeling ribs give and break. She moaned, her side on fire, and wondered for a quick moment if she was going to puke, then looked up to see the blinding lights of the Four Runner falling through the air towards them.
She threw herself away from the vehicle as it crashed headfirst into the shore, front end exploding, radiator erupting in a torrent of steam and hot water, horn suddenly blaring. It hung there for a moment, suspended and balanced on its smashed nose, then slowly tipped over into the river with the wrenching sound of twisting metal. It landed on its roof, the sides collapsing in on themselves and the windows shattering.
As she rolled blindly away from it, shielding Megan with her body and arms, Rebecca was suddenly at the bend in the river, slipping off the shore and into the water, the icy cold of it making her gasp as the current engulfed her.
Turning over and digging her feet into the sandy bottom, she lurched for the shore, still clutching Megan to her. Crawling through the shallow rapids at the river’s edge, she slipped on the slimy, moss coated rocks and fell onto her side, cracked ribs shrieking in pain, the icy water rushing over her. Fingers numb, her teeth chattering, she felt Megan slip from her grasp, screaming, as the current pulled her away. Rebecca shot out an arm and grasped Megan’s hand.
Kind Nepenthe Page 22
