by Brian Bowyer
He paused, and I looked over at my father, who was staring down at his desk. I saw some of the attendees slump down in their chairs, as if trying to dodge bullets in a line of fire. Others turned away, using one hand as a blinder. I felt that I should be angry, but I wasn’t. The anger came later. At that moment what I felt was a curious mixture of bewilderment and amusement, because in my opinion, even my father’s lesser stories were far better than all of Harvey Edwards’s overblown novels combined.
“No talent at all,” Harvey Edwards went on. “Not even a small amount. I’m talking none. Absolute zero. No talent for writing whatsoever.”
He paused again, perhaps waiting to see if my father would say something, but my father did not.
“Is this your first story?” Harvey Edwards said. “And if not, have you ever submitted anything for publication?”
“It is not my first story,” my father said. “And I have never submitted anything for publication.”
“Perhaps you should more wisely,” Harvey Edwards said, “spend your time doing something for which you have a greater aptitude.”
My father shook his head. “Your words won’t deter me. I like to write. And I’ll keep writing. But thank you.”
Harvey Edwards shrugged. Then he turned a page in his notebook. “The Lazarus Mom,” he said. “Who among you wrote that?”
I raised my hand, fully expecting more scorn than my father had received, for he was a better writer than I would ever be.
Instead: “How old are you, young lady?” Harvey Edwards said.
I lowered my hand. “Fifteen.”
“That’s amazing,” Harvey Edwards said, “for your writing is already extraordinarily adept, and you possess a level of craftsmanship that usually comes to writers only after years of trial and error. You are not only a good writer, or a competent writer, or an original writer, but a magnificent writer. What you have created here is a wonder. Your story is soul-shattering and filled with humanity. It is something that never existed on this planet before you created it, but it is also something that no one else on this planet could have created but you. And that is because you, young lady, have the gift. It is as simple as that. You, young lady, are a writer. And you will always be a writer. Even if someone chopped your hands off, you would find a way to type your stories with your elbows or your nose. There may be another writer among this group, but I don’t think there’s anyone else in this room—myself included—who will ever be as good of a writer as you already are. You have the gift, and so of course that means you also have the curse. You are doomed to spend the rest of your life working in solitude. Your relationships will suffer. Your family—if you have any—will undoubtedly hate you. Any man or woman you ever love will despise the core of you for whom the writing will always be an insatiable mistress. You will miss a lot of your life because of your writing. A lot of your nights will be without sleep or even peace because of your writing. You have been cursed to a life of unending, lonely labor all the way to your grave. You’re a writer, young lady. Enjoy the gift.”
My father and I didn’t stay for the last two days of the conference. We left after the workshop and walked back to our apartment.
• • •
Your words won’t deter me, my father had told Harvey Edwards. I like to write. And I’ll keep writing. But thank you.
As far as I know, however, my father never wrote again, other than these words, which I found beside his headless corpse two weeks later after a shotgun blast woke me up at four o’clock in the morning: The shadows have returned, and they tell me it’s time for me to join them. Who are the shadows? That I do not know. But I do know that I am one of them. Or I will be, rather. As soon as I pull this trigger.
• • •
After my father’s suicide, I moved in with his sister and her husband. Their house was in New Jersey, about half an hour’s subway ride west of Manhattan.
• • •
My father kept a trunk in his closet. Inside the trunk were guns. Lots of them. Rifles, shotguns, revolvers, and semiautomatics. He had collected them over the years, along with plenty of ammunition. Before I went to stay with my aunt and her husband, I grabbed a .38 revolver from the trunk and took it with me.
Two weeks later, I took the subway back to Manhattan.
• • •
Harvey Edwards opened his apartment door. He had been expecting me and was dressed in a bathrobe. He smiled. “Writer girl. Come on in.”
I stepped inside.
It had been easy to strike up an online correspondence with Harvey Edwards. He remembered me from the writers’ conference, and he still had no idea that the author of “Clawfoot Lullaby” had been my father.
“Would you like me to make you a drink?” Harvey Edwards said.
This was less than a year ago. He was fifty-five. I was still fifteen, and Harvey knew it. He knew that he had been forty when I was born.
“No thank you,” I said. Then I gestured at the couch and added: “Shall we?”
He nodded and sipped from the glass of whatever it was that he was drinking. Then he smiled again. “Sure.” He sat down on the sofa.
I joined him on the couch, but I left one of the sofa’s cushions between us. I had brought a purse with me. The purse was on my lap. In the purse was another of my father’s short stories and the .38 revolver. I pulled my father’s story from the purse and handed it to Harvey.
He took a drink and set his glass on the end table to his right. “One of yours?” he said.
I nodded. “Yes. I wrote it just for you.”
He smiled again. “Excellent! Do you mind if I read it now?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I was hoping that you would.”
Harvey Edwards read my father’s story. Then he handed me the pages and I returned them to my purse.
“You’ve outdone yourself,” Harvey Edwards said.
“You think so?”
“Absolutely. That was even better than the story you submitted for the workshop.”
“Then you’re going to love what I’m working on now,” I said.
He picked his glass up and took a drink. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”
I pulled the gun from my purse and aimed it at his face. “The ending of you,” I said. Then I shot him once through the head, killing him instantly.
I left. My plan was to go back to New Jersey, write a suicide note, and blow my brains out in the woods behind my aunt’s house.
But then I got gang-raped on my way back to the subway station and you were conceived.
• • •
I don’t remember much about the attack. I know there were at least four of them. I remember being bashed on the head and stabbed a couple of times. I know one of them gouged my eyes out with a pocketknife.
I was in a coma for sixty-two days. When I regained consciousness in the hospital, I was blind, paralyzed from the waist down, and two months pregnant with you.
• • •
I suppose no one saw my purse when I was found bleeding and left for dead near the subway station, so one of my attackers probably took the .38 revolver. Who knows? Maybe they even read my father’s story and got a kick out of it. If so, perhaps that made him laugh with the shadows in the afterlife. I will be joining him soon, but I decided to wait until after you were born before I killed myself.
• • •
They’re inducing my labor tomorrow.
• • •
A knife to my lower spine caused my paraplegia. Patients with injuries to their lower spinal cords are less likely to have complications during labor and delivery.
• • •
You will not be leaving the hospital with me. You are being adopted by a wealthy family.
• • •
I don’t have a gun, but I have a straight razor and a bottle of pills that I will use to kill myself tomorrow.
• • •
I am writing blindly and I know you will never read this, but when airplanes
come falling from the sky, a lot of doomed passengers probably use those final moments to write letters they know their loved ones will never read.
• • •
I can tell you’re still restless in my womb, Little One. Perhaps you’re as nervous about tomorrow as I am. But the sound of my voice always calms you down, so I will sing a song for you, and then maybe we can sleep.
COUNTDOWN TO OBLIVION
Chuck parked his car behind The G-Spot and went inside. He ordered a glass of whiskey at the bar. Then he found an empty table right in front of the stage and had a seat.
All around him the men cheered and whistled at Ginger on the stage as she twirled her blood-red pigtails and the powder-blue tassels hanging from her nipples in perfect time to the music of the live band on the smaller stage to her left, but Chuck sipped his whiskey in silence. The band wasn’t too bad (especially for a Tuesday night), and the whiskey wasn’t watered down at all. And though the men around him would hoot and yell for anything in a G-string, Ginger was a bona fide knockout.
She went backstage at the conclusion of her performance. The band kept playing and another dancer took the stage.
A few minutes later, Ginger sat down at Chuck’s table with a bottle of beer and he handed her a hundred-dollar bill.
“Where’s Jenny?” Chuck said.
She put the money in her bra. “Haven’t seen her.”
“Since when?”
Ginger shrugged.
He gave her another hundred. “Since when?”
“Saturday night.”
He sipped his whiskey and handed her another hundred. “Who did she leave with?”
“Who else?” Ginger said. “She left with Jericho.”
Son of a bitch, Chuck thought. I’ll fucking kill him. “Do you know where they went?”
Ginger nodded.
He gave her another hundred-dollar bill. “Where did they go?”
She told him.
Chuck finished his whiskey and stood up.
“Do you know where that is?” Ginger said.
He nodded. “I do. Thank you.”
He left.
• • •
Chuck bought a gun out of an older car’s trunk in a bad neighborhood on the east side of town. A skinny black man (friend of a friend) with demonic eye contacts sold it to him. It was a Glock 19. The man told him it was untraceable. Chuck gave the man some cash and that was that. He checked to see if the semiautomatic was loaded while the man drove away and he saw that it was. Chuck thought that maybe he was doing the world a favor by buying the gun. If he hadn’t bought it, perhaps it would have ended up in some crackhead’s hand, and possibly aimed at some Hindu storekeeper from India who just wanted to send his kids to college. This way, only Jericho would get shot, and the Hindu guy could keep saving up money for his children’s education.
Chuck fired up a cigarette, took another shot of whiskey, and drove out of the parking lot. His destination was only about a hundred miles away. He could do the speed limit and still be there in less than two hours, easily. He didn’t know if his daughter was still alive or if she was dead, but either way, he was going to make Jericho pay.
He stopped for gas halfway there at a ramshackle filling station and went inside. The attendant was a middle-aged white man with thick forearms and a lot of amateurish green-ink tattoos.
“Surprised to find a place open at this hour,” Chuck said, “in the middle of nowhere.”
“And I’m not surprised that you’re surprised,” the attendant said. “Fucking idiot.”
Chuck had the gun in his waistband. The demon on his left shoulder told him to shoot the man in the face; the angel on his right shoulder told him not to.
Chuck paid cash for the gas. He went outside and pumped.
He drove away and parked his car about a hundred yards down the road. Then he took his jacket off, put a ski mask on, and walked back to the store.
The attendant was standing out front, smoking a cigarette.
Chuck looked around, but he didn’t see any cameras anywhere. He kept to the shadows at the perimeter of the otherwise empty parking lot, and then quietly made his way to the side of the store. He quickly approached the man and put the gun to the back of his head. “One wrong move and you’re a dead man,” Chuck said. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
Chuck forced the man into some woods beside the store and then shoved him to the ground.
The attendant looked up at him. “Money’s in the store, man. I don’t fucking have any.”
“I don’t want your goddamn money,” Chuck said. “I want an apology.”
“An apology?”
Chuck raised the ski mask, revealing his face. “Yes. The demon wants me to kill you, but the angel is telling me to let you live. So if you apologize for calling me an idiot, I won’t blow your fucking brains out right here in these godforsaken woods.”
“Okay, man. I’m sorry. Jesus fucking Christ. I’m sorry for calling you a fucking idiot.”
Chuck nodded. “Okay. Apology accepted. Now give me your fucking wallet.”
“My wallet?”
“Yes.”
“Man, I already told you: I don’t have any goddamn money.”
“I don’t want your goddamn money. I want your driver’s license.”
“My driver’s license?”
“Yes. And I’m in a hurry here, so unless you want me to shoot you in the fucking face—”
“Nah, man. Fine.” The attendant retrieved his wallet from his back pocket and proffered it to Chuck. “Here. Take my fucking wallet.”
Chuck took the wallet with his left hand while keeping the gun aimed at the attendant’s face. It was an old leather wallet and he found the license immediately in the top card slot. He tossed the wallet onto the ground and held the license up in the moonlight. “Buster Jones? Seriously? That’s your real fucking name?”
“Yeah. Why? You got a problem with my name?”
“No, Buster. I do not. Anyway, I just showed you how easily someone could kill your dumb ass for being rude to them. So from now on, be nice. You’ll have to get a new driver’s license, though, because I’m keeping this one so I don’t have to memorize your address. And if the cops come asking me any questions about this incident, I’ll find your ass and kill you no matter what the angel says. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Good for you. Have a nice life.”
• • •
Chuck was crying on and off by the time he started seeing highway signs for his destination. He had a box of tissues on the passenger’s seat and a plastic bag on the floorboard that he was using to put his trash in. He sometimes got too emotional when he drank whiskey, but tonight the booze was not the reason for his tears. He was weeping because the demon was telling him that his daughter was dead; that Jericho had already killed her, and that Jenny most certainly was not in Heaven. The angel wasn’t saying anything, and if Hell existed, Chuck wanted to make sure to send Jericho there for whatever it was that he had done to Jenny.
• • •
She had been a good kid, his Jenny. Chuck was of the opinion that kids got meaner with every generation, and kids these days were not only meaner than ever—most of them were borderline retarded. Jenny, however, had basically been a decent human being and a halfway intelligent person. But then her mother died when Jenny was ten, and nothing was ever the same after that.
Jericho got her into the drugs and the alcohol when she was in seventh grade, and it was all downhill from there.
Jenny stopped going to school altogether when she was in tenth grade. Chuck never made her go back, even though he knew her mother would have wanted him to. He felt better having her home with him. He had been hoping that things would work out for the best. They didn’t, of course, and every bit of that was Jericho’s fault.
When Chuck reached the small town that was his destination, he didn’t immediately go to the abandoned church. First he went to Wal
mart and purchased a hunting knife.
• • •
The building looked as if it hadn’t been used as a church for quite some time. All of the windows were boarded up, and a broken cross still jutted from the eaves.
Chuck took a shot of whiskey. Then he got out of the car with the gun in one hand and the hunting knife in the other. He heard a dog barking from somewhere down the road as he made his way to the front porch. Firelight flickered through the crack between the door and its jamb. He put an ear to the door and listened. Whispers hissed from the interior. He also heard people grunting and moaning inside. He wondered how many people were currently living in the abandoned church. He pushed the door open and smelled the burning-plastic stench of meth-heads smoking their drug of choice. Chuck took a deep breath, and then he stepped inside.
He saw several faces in the light of candles burning in scattered coffee cans, and all of the faces looked the same to him: sick, skeletal-thin, and riddled with scabs. A woman—slick with sweat—looked up at him and opened her mouth, but she didn’t say anything. All of her teeth were gone. A glistening rope of drool hung from her lower lip. The pews were gone (undoubtedly used as firewood), so the meth-heads were sprawled out on filthy blankets strewn all over the floor. Chuck didn’t count them, but he guessed that there were probably twenty at least. A few of them were fucking on the floor like feral dogs, oblivious to Chuck and their fellow tweakers.
A skinny kid with greasy hair and black rings beneath his eyes looked up at Chuck and grinned. Most of his teeth were gone. “Want me to suck your dick?”
“I’m looking for Jericho,” Chuck said.
