In the Midst of the Sea

by Sean McCarthy

  He raised his chin as he came within arm’s reach of Hiram. Hiram is much taller than Dr. Mortimer, but the man did not seem intimidated in the least, and despite everything, he was doing a remarkable job of maintaining his countenance. Hiram continued to spew a volley of words, and he seemed to be yelling at the sky more than anything else. I reached up again to take his elbow, to try and pull him back down beside me, to settle him.

  “I won’t tolerate this insolence, Hiram,” said Dr. Mortimer.

  Hiram opened his eyes. Glared. “You, sir, speak to me of insolence? You?”

  “I could speak to you about a lot of things, many of which are unsettling, but not here, not now. It is neither the time nor the venue, and you, I fear, are not well. I fear you pose a danger to our community, Hiram.”

  “The spawn of your flesh leads our young men down the road to hell, good sir, and you will speak to me about danger? Who masks you? In whose name do you come?”

  “I come in the name of my family,” Dr. Mortimer said, “and in the name of our Savior, and I’m asking you to leave.”

  I feared then that Hiram would strike out at him, so I stood, prepared to position myself between them if need be, although I must confess my concerns grew more toward Dr. Mortimer than they did toward Hiram. I knew Hiram’s strength, knew the power he wielded when he closed his fist, and I couldn’t bear to think of anyone else getting hurt. Hiram was still glaring, but Dr. Mortimer glared right back.

  “Spare your wife the spectacle, good sir,” he said. “She is a good woman, a lovely woman, and she deserves better than this.”

  “Do not speak to me of my wife,” said Hiram. “Her name is soiled for coming off your tongue.”

  “Hiram,” I said, “please let’s go. Maybe we can meet later, when tempers have cooled, and talk then.”

  “There will be no more meetings with your husband,” Dr. Mortimer said, “not before this altar, not in this congregation.”

  At that point I feared it might all go very badly, worse than it did, but several more men from the congregation did come and stand behind Dr. Mortimer then and even Hiram, I believe, could not believe his eyes. He looked about the sea of heads, some turned watching, and others still turned away, facing the pulpit.

  “Will no one stand with me?” he asked, his eyes still searching, but his voice suddenly quiet. A few people whispered, a few others stirred, but no one else stood. Not Mrs. Stephens, not even her nephew. For a moment, I believed the nephew was going to get up, and Hiram, I believe, saw this, too, but then the old woman put her hand firm upon the simple boy’s shoulder.

  I stood, but not to confront the crowd, but rather to attempt to reason some more with Hiram, talking quietly and encouraging him to come with me so we could go home. The silence, the tension, seemed to spread throughout the park like water up a cloth, only to be broken by the clock on the church tower striking noon. I put my arm through his, and something changed in his eyes again then. Something went out, emptied, but then within seconds was filled with something else, something beyond rage and beyond reason.

  “I curse you all,” he whispered, “I curse you all, and the Lord permitting, I’ll see you to hell.” With that he pulled free from my arm, and walked toward the crowd. Dr. Mortimer looked startled for a moment, and several of the men tightened their shoulders, ready, but then they must have seen something in his eyes as he was looking past them, not at them, and with a nod from Dr. Mortimer, they all stepped aside, parting like the Red Sea to let Moses through, and Hiram paid them no mind as they did. He walked very slowly, his head high, and departed the tabernacle, disappearing beneath the tall oaks and off toward our little painted cottage. A proud but beaten soldier, his faculties gone awry.

  It was the next day I found the petition, taped to the door.

  23

  The lights were all out on the house on the hill, and Ford’s car wasn’t in the driveway. The gravel crunched beneath the tires, Norman’s car, as Diana pulled onto the side of the road in front of the neighbor’s house, a summer house, and Diana hoped the sound didn’t carry. She didn’t want to be heard, seen. The streetlight above turned on, reacting to her movement, as she stepped out of the vehicle, startling her for a moment. It was nearly midnight, the best time to come. It was too early into his shift for Ford to come home for lunch, or even for a break, and he never overslept when it came time to go in. Punctuality was as important to him as keeping his hair neat, his clothes pressed. Appearances were everything. Norman had tried to come with her, insisted, but she assured him Ford wouldn’t be home, that no crisis was too big for Ford to miss work. But the reality was, even if by some slim chance, Ford was home, it would be better to come without Norman. Bringing Norman might only send things escalating again, and although she couldn’t tell him—for fear of wounding his pride—she didn’t want him to get hurt.

  The lawn was covered in frost, silver in the light from the moon. Diana stepped onto the porch. The wind picked up, and the rocker to her left began to move. She pressed her face against the stained glass panel of the door, but the house was completely dark, and she could see nothing. She closed her eyes and said a quick prayer, and then she shoved as she turned the key, the chimes above her ringing out as she did.

  She shut the door quietly behind her and looked up the stairs. No movement, no nothing. Everything was shadows, the dark deepening around her. She could hear the grandfather clock ticking in the dining room, and she could see her breath; the house was cold, and maybe that was good. Maybe he had left for a few days, turned off the heat. She had given in and agreed to stay with Cybil and Norman—what choice did she have?—just for a week or two, she said, and now all she needed was a few minutes to pack two suitcases, a few more toys for Sam, and that was all. The rest could stay, at least for now, maybe for good. In her heart she didn’t care if he kept it all. It was all attached to memories and if you were going to sever the relationship, you needed to sever the memory. She believed that. She listened again, frightened for the moment that she might hear the voice she sometimes heard upstairs talking to Samantha, but still there was nothing. Just the clock. She took a step forward, and flicked on the light switch.

  Ford was sitting in the dining room.

  Diana jumped, her heart seizing, tightening, and then immediately sinking. Everything lost. “You scared me,” she said.

  He had his feet flat on the floor. His hands tightly gripping the wood scrolled arms on the winged back chair. He had positioned himself facing the door. Waiting.

  Diana’s mouth felt dry, the hairs on her neck standing on end, but she didn’t want to let him see she was scared. He was like a dog—if he sensed fear, you were done. She didn’t want to overreact, didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Big deals could turn into huge deals all too quickly. She hurried past him and turned on the side table lamp.

  “You can’t see a thing in here.” She glanced around the room, everything was clean. The dishes, glasses gone. The mess cleaned up from the floor. Ford was clean, too. Showered, his hair combed back. But his eyes were still yellow, broken with red, and his face was pale.

  “Your eyes adjust to the dark pretty quickly,” he said.

  “Well, I don’t like the dark.”

  He was watching her, but she didn’t want to look at him, not directly. “I know,” he said, “but I figured if I had the lights on, if I didn’t hide the car, you’d never come in.”

  She stopped, did look directly at him now, trying to read him. A trap. Had he seen her drive up? Was he drunk? She couldn’t smell any booze, but if he was drunk, it would be best to get out quick. Just head to the kitchen, out the back door and keep on going.

  “I haven’t been able to sleep since you left,” he said, his voice suddenly small. She listened for an edge, but there was none that she could discern.

  “Well, get used to it. I just came back to pick up a few things. We’re not staying, Ford. It’s over. I’m done.”

  He looked down at his hands, hi
s fingernails, and then when he looked up he had tears in his eyes. “Please don’t go.”

  “It’s gone way beyond please, Ford,” Diana said. “You need help, and I can’t help you. I can’t live like this. I won’t.”

  “Please,” he said again. “I’m sorry for what happened. Just let me explain. Please. I need to explain.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  “No. I’m tired of the explaining. Every time you act like an asshole, you always want the chance to explain. And I’m tired of giving it. You need help.”

  “I’ll get help. I promise. I just need to talk to you. I love you.” He started to cry. “And I love Samantha. Just five minutes, that’s all I ask.”

  Diana hesitated, her head telling her to go. He looked pathetic, sitting there like that. Nothing like the monster with the rage in his eyes that had knocked her to the floor just forty-eight hours earlier. But she knew that monster was still in there, always in there, sometimes hiding, sometimes exploding, but mostly, just there, right below the surface, waiting. She didn’t want to listen to him, he didn’t deserve to have her listen to him, but at least, she thought, if she did, she could say that she did, gave him a chance, and then that would be that. It would make it that much easier packing their things—she wouldn’t have to watch her back. Not so much. He wouldn’t hit her again, not now, not in contrition mode. Not with everything at stake. He might follow her about, crying, pleading—he did that well—but that would be it. And God, why did he have to look so pathetic?

  Ford got up and came to her, tried to hug her, but Diana stepped back, held her hand up, and shook her head. “Stop,” she said. “Back off.”

  “Please.”

  “No. Do not touch me. I don’t want you touching me. Just the thought of you really makes me ill right now.”

  His hands were shaking. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t mean crap with you, Ford. It’s not enough.”

  “I know it’s not. I never should have done that to you. I need to make it up to you. I don’t know why I act like I do sometimes. It’s like everything I’ve gone through in the past comes crashing down on me at once, and I take it out on you.” He started crying again, this time harder, his chest heaving. She hated seeing him cry, and while part of her pitied him, part of her really did just find him sickening, wanting to be away from him, and part of her realized, somehow, that part of her, a very small part, still loved him. In some way. Maybe not the way she had in the past, maybe not with the passion. But something. In a small, sad way. Her heart began to sink again, hating herself for caving, even before she knew she would cave.

  “I never told you everything,” he sobbed. “Never explained. Not about growing up. Not about my father, and the way he treated us, me.”

  “You told me enough. He was a bastard just like you. I get it.”

  “But I never explained it all. How bad it got. I need help, I know I do, and I bang my head against the wall trying to understand why I do some of the awful things I do, treat you the way I do, and every time I do I just keep coming back to him, the things he did. I just want a chance to explain. Please. “

  Diana locked with his eyes, stared him down.

  “Please,” he said again.

  “Five minutes,” she said. “That’s all I’m giving you.”

  Ford nodded. He stepped back, and took a seat again in the chair. And then he looked towards the window and took a deep breath.

  “Big Daddy was just that,” Ford said, “big—well over six feet tall, with an enormous belly and his pants always slipping down. He had to wear suspenders to hold them up. He wore glasses—thick glasses with thick black rims—when he had to read something close up, and he always kept his hair in a crew cut. Like he just walked out of the fifties or early sixties. He worked as a trucker, and he drove cross country, sometimes as far as California, Washington, and Oregon. He could be gone sometimes for a week or more at a time, and when he came back, he usually had little presents for me and my siblings. Stuff from the road. Once he brought me back a little tepee, and a little wood-carved Indian from a reservation in Nevada, and I had thought the Indian was the greatest thing ever because my father told me it had been carved by a real Indian.

  “I still have it somewhere in that house,” he told Diana, “probably in my old bedroom. I never had much, and I loved the little Indian because it was something, something that meant that maybe my father gave a shit after all. But I knew he didn’t. The good times would usually only last a day or so after my father got back—he always had three or four days off between long trips—and he would start drinking the second he got home. Beers in the morning—Schaefer’s—sometimes as early as six a.m., and then by noontime he was drinking whiskey, the country radio station he liked to listen to blaring in the kitchen. He would dance sometimes with my mother, listening to the music, and while he was doing that, he was funny, trying to make us all laugh, square dancing.

  “But if you were smart,” Ford said, “you got out of there almost immediately after the fun started because you always knew it wasn’t going to last, wasn’t going to end well. My older brothers and sisters figured this out pretty quickly, and they would go upstairs, out in the yard, or down the street, but I was only little. And besides, he was my father, and all I wanted was for him to love me.

  “Big Daddy loved the fifties,” Ford continued, “and I remembered him always saying that maybe the world should have stopped back then. Maybe someone should have pressed the button. He said that was the last time things were the way they should have been. A world full of black-and-white beer commercials. Before civil rights, and before the women’s lib movement. He loved to joke about women’s lib, and I remember a picture he kept in the basement down where he and his buddies played cards. A naked woman, legs spread, reclined on a couch, a picture of Gloria Steinman’s head taped over her face.”

  Diana was now sitting on the foot of the stairs, still near the door, her coat still on. She had told Ford she would only listen if he stayed in the chair, stayed at a distance, and he did. She kept looking at her watch. She wanted to remind him that the clock was ticking.

  “He kept porn pictures hanging on the walls of your house with kids inside?” she said. “Nice.”

  “Oh, he didn’t care. And besides it was in the basement. He always told us we had no business in the basement. The only time any of us went down there was when he was out on the road. We had all sorts of rules when he was at home that made it almost impossible to be a kid. I was always trying to help out. Mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, vacuuming, and doing the dishes. Dusting all the Hummels. And I even helped him clean out the septic tank once when I was like twelve. And it was what happened then that I first realized what a monster he really was, how much I hated him. It was then I knew he would kill me if he felt like it. That I could die, and he wouldn’t care.

  “The septic tank was always overflowing,” Ford said, “and it should have been pumped every couple years, but my father wouldn’t pay the money to have that done, so instead he got this idea—I was small enough that he could send me down into the well. He handed me a five-gallon bucket and a shovel, and lowered me down. I thought I was going to cry from the start, but I held it in, figuring my father would lose it if I did, call me a crybaby. I started shoveling, standing up to my chest in shit and piss and toilet paper, while all the while my father sat up there on the grass in his lawn chair in the summer heat, drinking his whiskey and smoking cigarettes. I had to climb out of the hole and carry the buckets of shit to a little stream that ran by our house and dump it all in there, being careful the whole time that none of the neighbors saw so we wouldn’t get reported. I hated climbing into the hole, but dumping the shit into the stream wasn’t much better because of the rats.

  “The rats were always in the stream. They swam around, propelling themselves with their tails, their eyes and snouts just barely above the surface, and sometimes they’d just float there and stare at you
, not even a little scared, waiting for you to slip, or make a mistake. Waiting to come after you. I tried not to look at them, but I knew they were always watching.” Ford pulled at his chin a bit.

  “The work in the tank went on for three days, and when I still wasn’t done, my father started to get pissed, calling me a lazy good for nothing, wasting his time, and moving too slow. And then I was still down in the tank when my father did it.”

  “Did what?” Diana asked.

  “He told me that shit belongs with shit,” Ford said, “and then he stood up and slid the cover over the tank. A heavy concrete cover that must have weighed a hundred pounds.”

  Diana studied his eyes, trying to decide whether she should believe him or not. Or whether now was the time to go. Out the door, and don’t look back. His story sounded horrible, and maybe it hadn’t happened, or maybe it had. But Ford was too far gone. He wasn’t her problem. Couldn’t be. Not anymore. So why was something pulling at her? Telling her to stay.

  “He put the cover on, and then he just left,” Ford said. “I kept screaming, but out there in the middle of the yard like that, in the middle of summer, most of the neighbors away on vacation, there wasn’t anyone around to hear me. I thought I was going to die down there. If I didn’t suffocate or bake in the heat, I figured I’d starve to death. Starve to death lying in a big pool of that fat old man’s shit. And then I started thinking about the rats. Making their way through the pipes, or burrowing through the earth, coming from the stream. And it was so dark, I wouldn’t ever even see them. But I would hear them, getting closer, squeaking, and have absolutely no way out.”

  “So what happened?”

  “My brother Jimmy found me eventually. Hours later. He came out in the yard after getting home from work—it must have been six or seven o’clock—to hit some balls because he didn’t want to be inside that house, and by that time my voice was almost gone, but I heard the crack of the bat on the balls, and I tried to start yelling again, and it took him about ten minutes to figure out where the hell the yelling was coming from. Then when he finally got the cover off and pulled me up, it was almost dark. I tried to run—there was no way I was going back in that house—but Jimmy was a lot bigger, and he tackled me, and then he was pissed because the two of us were covered in shit. I fought him a little, but then he pushed me inside, and when my mother got a look at me, and asked what happened, you know what my old man said?”