by Glover, Dan
“I think that’s wonderful that you remember… maybe your memory is starting to come back. So you have a sister… what’s her name? Where is she now? Tell me about her, Billy.”
“Pearl. Pearl Ann. When I got mad at her I’d call her that. I’d say: Pearl Ann! And put my hands on my hips as I said it. Sometimes little sisters can be aggravating. I never hit her though… not like my father did. If we made too much noise playing he’d take off his belt to us both… especially if he'd gotten drunk. I remember the last time she got sick. It’s a wonder we all didn’t die—what with never having enough to eat—and the places we lived were always full of cockroaches and never had heat.
"My mother wouldn’t take Pearl to the doctor—I don’t know... maybe my father wouldn’t let her, or maybe we didn’t have the money. Instead she had people from her church come over to the place we lived and pray over her. They’d all stand in a circle reading from bibles and saying some old prayer and looking at the ceiling like they could see God peering down on them from on high. But Pearl just got worse and worse.”
“That’s so sad, so what happened, Billy?”
“I thought I could save her. One afternoon I sneaked out of the apartment when it got dark and I went to the drug store. I remember those Oklahoma winters… bitterly cold… numbingly cold. I didn’t have a coat to wear. The kids always made fun of me at school because of it. I put on several shirts and a thin wind-breaker jacket and walked at least a dozen blocks to the pharmacy. There weren’t any stores like that in our neighborhood… only liquor stores… there were lots of those… three or four on every block… but they didn’t have the medicine Pearl needed.
"Anyway, I remember that I didn’t have any money and the clerk who saw me come into the store watched me as if she was sure that I was there to steal anything I could. So I walked around the store waiting for someone else to come in to distract the clerk. I thought about asking the clerk if I could just have what I needed but she looked mean. I figured she’d say no and then she’d realize I didn’t have any money and make me leave the store. I couldn’t take the chance. I didn’t know of another drug store close by.
“So I waited, walking around acting like I was looking at candy bars and toys, feeling watched, feeling ashamed of what I had to do but determined to do what I had to do to save my sister’s life. Finally an old man with a cane tapping on the floor walked in to the store. The clerk turned to help him. I hurried to the aisle with all the medicine and I stole several bottles… not sure what to take. I took cough medicine and cold remedy medicine and flu medicine, shoving it down into my pants before walking out. I thought sure the clerk would hear the glass bottles clanking together but she didn’t.
“I hoped the medicine might help Pearl. I prayed it would help… all the time walking home I prayed to God to let the medicine help my sister. It was snowing harder by then… I remember being so cold that I couldn’t feel my fingers or my toes, my ears or my nose, and being afraid my mother would know I stole the medicine if she saw it and take it away from me.
"It was over the counter stuff. Now that I am older I figure Pearl had pneumonia or whooping cough… she coughed so much she vomited sometimes. Maybe if I could have gotten hold some real medicines… penicillin or something like that… it might have helped… I don’t know for sure though. I understand now that I didn’t know anything about medicine at the time… being a stupid kid… but I loved my sister.
“Anyway, I gave Pearl some of the medicine I’d stolen hoping it would help make her better… she was so weak that she couldn’t hold up her head. I put my arm around her holding her up as I gave her a spoonful of each bottle like it said on the label. I slipped it to her while I heard my mother downstairs talking to my father. I thought it sounded as if they were arguing but I couldn’t be sure.
"Pearl looked at me. Her eyes had sunk deep down into her skull and there were black half moons under them. She tried to speak but she could only whisper. I put my ear close to her mouth. She said thank you, Billy. I wanted to stay with her but about that time my mother came into Pearl’s room telling me to leave… that I might get sick as well if I got too close to her. I remember crying myself to sleep.
“In the darkness of that night I think I remember having a dream about Pearl. Or maybe I just imagined dreaming of her and I really didn’t. I don’t know for sure. I never knew. I thought that I woke up during the night thinking I heard her laughing and giggling like she used to do as a baby and we’d play patty cake and other silly games together since there wasn’t much else to do.
"But when I got up—acting like I had to use the toilet in the hall… we didn’t have our own bathroom… we shared one in the hall with other families who lived there in the building too—I walked by her bedroom. I could hear a deep-throated rattling as she breathed.
"My mother slept in a chair beside Pearl’s bed with her elbow on the arm of the chair—my father’s bible in her lap… my bible now—one hand on her chin. I stood there a long time just watching my sister in the glimmer that came through the window from the streetlight outside. I wanted to go to her but I didn’t want my mother to see. She slept so lightly I knew she’d wake should I step on a loose floorboard walking into the room.
“When I woke in the morning I didn’t hear Pearl coughing; I thought the medicine made her well. I remember bounding out of bed feeling like a hero. I’d saved my sister’s life! I remember feeling so proud. But when I walked into her room, there were people gathered around her bed… policemen writing in notebooks and old women crying and paramedics shaking their heads and a priest with a bible in his hand and a purple satin ribbon of around his neck. He kissed it as he mumbled something I couldn’t hear.
"Pearl had passed away during the night between the time I checked on her and the time I woke up in the morning. Or maybe I just dreamed that I checked on her. I could never be sure. She lay there in bed, white and still and her eyes were open but I knew they didn’t see anything. When one of the policemen saw me standing there staring at my sister, he pulled a sheet over her head motioning towards me with his head. The priest came over leading me out of the room with something resembling a smirk on his face. I’ve never much liked priests since… or God for that matter.”
“Oh, Billy, I'm so sorry.”
Lisa was wiping tears from her eyes.
“That’s the saddest story I think I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“My father went missing a day or two later, just after the funeral… I remember my mother and father arguing how he drank so much that they didn’t have the money for a coffin so before he left he built one himself out of scraps of plywood piled in the corner. I heard hammering so I went into the garage.
"He stood there swaying… drunk and angry. He said come here you little son of a bitch and hold this board for me. He put several nails in his mouth before he nailed it into place and then he had me hold another board. As we worked he talked about how Pearl would be buried beside his mother and father at the family plot in a little town just outside Oklahoma City where he’d been born and raised. Remember where she’s buried, boy, he told me. There’s a plot there for you too. It’ll be waiting when you’re ready.”
“What a horrible thing to say to a ten year old boy, Billy.”
“It’s strange but it was almost like he knew I’d forget. When I saw that picture you showed to me from my old bible I began to remember my sister Pearl. It took me a little while but then it came to me… the little girl holding my hand… it was my younger sister Pearl. It’s the first time I’d thought of her since… well since my treatment, I suppose. Pearl must have been about Jem’s age when she died. That’s so weird…”
“What’s weird?”
“Yelena fainted the first day we met, when we shook hands. Just before she fainted, she told me that I thought I talked to God but I didn’t. And then she said something about me saving a girl… a girl who seemed like a jewel… a girl who I didn’t know. A pearl is a jewel… right? B
ut how could she know about my sister if I didn’t even remember it myself? Is that what she meant by me not knowing the girl?”
“Yelena is a bizarre old bird. She has that eye that sees right through you. Most of the employees stay away from her. They say she has fits. That’s probably what happened when you met her. She had a fit. Maybe she’s epileptic or something.”
“Yeah… you’re probably right.”
Billy knew what Lisa meant by Yelena’s eye… her left eye staring out at the world, much larger than her right. When she looked at people it seemed as if she always looked at them from her left side.
“But Jem is a jewel too, Lisa.”
Chapter 38—Hell's Cellar
"Is this you?"
Kirk laid a local newspaper in front of Oscuro. The headline read: Family Slaughtered: fetus cut from mother.
"That's what we ate the other night."
"You did that for me, didn't you."
Kirk hadn't washed his face yet. The clown makeup made him appear more sinister than normal tonight. Oscuro wondered if it might not be such a terrible idea to start wearing the same kind of get up when he made his nocturnal sojourns. Still, he preferred black to colorful.
"You saved my life once, old man. I thought it high time I repaid you."
"I can't tell you what it means to me, thank you, son. You took a real chance though. What if you were caught?"
"It isn't the first time that I broke into a house and had a bit of fun, my friend."
Memories boiled through Oscuro's mind as the old man's words caused him to relive those moments. Standing outside with his heart beating so loudly he was sure the occupants in the house he targeted could hear it from where they sat huddled in front of a warm flickering television.
It was more than a compulsion... he felt he was doing what he'd been created to do. Some folk were musicians. A few painted fantastic works of art. Others were writers of grand books.
He was in charge of culling the weak from the gene pool. If not for his unappreciated work a whole line of misbegotten children might be born, growing up to be nothing but a nuisance and a drag on society. If not for his vision of a better world, feeble-minded idiots would rule as they gradually overwhelmed by their sheer numbers those who were better fit.
Oscuro longed to talk about his work. Others were able to share the fruits of their labors. Why not he? Though he suspected the old man knew what he was and how he spent his invisible nights, he had never before broached the subject. Oscuro wasn’t sure if that was simply Kirk conducting himself as a gentle man or if the man disagreed with his crimes so vehemently that he could not speak of them openly.
It pleased him that he no longer had to hide his felonious ambitions. Kirk had partaken with him in the feast of the forbidden flesh. They were both on the same page now. Murder was the least of their crimes.
"What if I told you I know of another way, my boy? Would you be agreeable to it?"
"I suppose that depends, old man. I can't get that night out of my mind or the sense of power I felt while we were eating."
"You're like me now. You can't stop. The only thing that will help you is another little treat. But I don't want you risking your safety like you've been doing."
"What's your plan, Kirk?"
"Young girls disappear all the time... hundreds of them, even thousands. People just think they've run away with a boyfriend or maybe they think they have stars in their eyes and head to Hollywood hoping to make it big. It happens every single day all over the country. The authorities don't pay too much attention. Their resources are already stretched to the breaking point with the gang bangers and the endless war on drugs. We can use that to our advantage."
"Keep talking. I like what I'm hearing so far."
"Let's say I own a little piece of property. Being a man who was aware of the constancy of disaster sweeping across the country, I managed to acquire an old missile silo, devoid of the missile, of course. I had designs of outfitting the silo as a sort of bunker should the unthinkable ever happen... make it into a place where I could retreat should civilization break down.
"Over the years I've come to see the futility of my ambitions. I've done little with the property other than installing sump pumps to keep the water from collecting in the bottom of those pits. Still, the entrance is invisible to anyone who doesn’t know where the property is located, there is a diesel powered generator left over courtesy of the United States Air Force, and a ten year supply of non-perishable food that I foolishly squandered thousands of dollars on thinking it would come in handy one day.
"Last night my blood was boiling so hot that I could not sleep. I began to think about that old bunker. I haven’t been there in years but it has three foot thick hardened concrete walls so I doubt it has crumbled away. I decided that I should perhaps pay a visit there the next time we're close... sort of like going back home, though of course I never actually lived in that horrid pit nor could I ever visualize doing so, short of a calamity.
"I got to thinking... if I had a partner who had certain skill sets which I no longer possess—a young man, a handsome man, such as you, Oscuro—well, that partner might well have the ability to lure young women to my old property. Once there, they might well become our prisoners. We impregnate them from time to time, or perhaps I should say you... I am a bit past my prime. Anyway, once the fetus is old enough we abort it. The cycle then repeats itself. I mean this as merely a hypothetical scenario, of course... something to consider during the long ride between towns."
"A baby farm, that's what you're hypothetically suggesting, Kirk."
"I like to think of it as more of a brothel. My lovely little Chinese lady once told me a story about how the unwanted girls in her home country were sold by their families, the lucky ones, that is. See, the people there favored sons... daughters, not so much.
"It was made known to the poor community how Buddhist monks would buy many of these unwanted girl babies. Of course they did so for no more than a pittance but that is neither here nor there. In the beginning this was seen as a kindness, for otherwise the sweet little things were often times left to die in the wilderness. Taken to the monastery they were raised in accordance with the laws of the times.
"Once they grew into children they began serving as slave labor at those monasteries. It was seen as a way of paying back the generosity of the monks who had little to eat and less to share. Everyone was happy... the parents were glad to be rid of useless girls, the government was elated that they did not have to waste precious recourses on prosecuting parents who murdered their own children, and the monks were provided with an endless stream of worker to help sustain their monasteries and give them more time to meditate.
"One day a particularly enterprising head monk had a revelation. The value in those slave girls went far deeper than providing needed help around the monastery. It was all well and good to have someone to sweep and clean up after the filthy monks but he wondered if perhaps two goods might be accomplished where heretofore only one had been accorded.
"He reasoned that there might be a market if these girls had their own babies, especially if they turned out to be boys. There were many wealthy couples in China who could not conceive... couples who were always on the lookout for a male heir.
"So, he and his fellow monks took it upon themselves to begin impregnating the slave girls once they came of age. An elaborate ritual grew up around the whole procedure. Days of celebration were decreed. Even the governors of the precincts got into the act by accepting bribes to look the other way when disgruntled clients came to them complaining of the enterprising monks and their illegal activities.
"In order to assure the docility of the girls, it was deemed best to make known to them that their children would have only the most excellent of lives. The wealthy couples who adopted them would shower the children with riches, give them the greatest education money could buy, and furnish them with everything needed for a fulfilling, a long, and a happy life.
>
"The monks did not lie about that. For if it was a boy it would be sold to wealthy families who would bestow all their riches upon the child. They would become renowned men who grew up to be leaders in business and even in the political arena, princes, even.
"However, since baby girls held little value as a commodity in adoption another market sprouted up. This particular arena was every bit as lucrative for the monks as was the selling of the baby boys but they did not let on to the mothers what would become of those unfortunate children."
"So tell me... who bought the girl babies, Kirk?"
"The mid-wives in those days had countless contacts. The secret I taught to you has been passed down for centuries, maybe even thousands of years. That Chinese lady regaled me with many tales. One story she told me was of a mother who lived ages ago and who went quite mad while pregnant. She had been a mild mannered thing up until that time. She began stealing newborn babies from other mothers, taking them into the forest, and bashing their brains out against a rock. She then consumed the brains.
"When she gave birth the villagers thought she would kill her own child but her madness dissipated as quickly as it set in. Her boy grew to be an exceptionally intelligent man who became a great leader, setting order to those ancient and troubled times. So, for eons, many peasants believed if an expectant mother consumed the brains of newborns, their offspring would be blessed with insight and great intellect. You might imagine what price newborn babies would bring."
"This is still going on in China, old man?"
"Hearsay, my boy, nothing but hearsay; I like to think there is an element of truth to the old wives' tales, however."
"That's pretty sick, Kirk. I like your plan, though. So when do we start?"
Chapter 39—Silk Scarves
"I want us to surprise Allison."
"How do you mean surprise Allison, Lisa? I'm not following you."
