Rock of Ages

by Howard Owen

  Before Georgia can get her partially tied left wrist free, Pooh has secured it again and bound her other one as well. He then ties her ankles to something behind and beneath her. Despite the gag, she can make noises, although not loud enough to draw anyone’s attention to this lonely, God-forsaken place. She has the sense that he wants to hear the noises she will make.

  She looks to the side, wanting to get some image of the last terrain she will ever see, trying to focus on something other than the terror. Her eyes are adjusted to the dark, and she realizes she knows this place.

  People used to come here to fish or to pick huckleberries, although she was forbidden to go anywhere near it by her father, who said it was a place for bootleggers and other ne’er-do-wells. The tea-colored water wasn’t really fit for swimming, he said, only drowning. When she was a teenager, it was a popular place to go parking, if you had a vehicle that could get back here without getting stuck.

  Maxwell’s Millpond. He has taken her into the swamp that borders the Geddies to the east, on the edge of Kinlaw’s Hell, the place Scots County residents have always gone to do business that will not stand the light of day.

  She can’t beg him, and she hardly knows what she would say if she were allowed that luxury. Certainly nothing that would change his mind.

  She is shivering from fear and from the cold. The temperature has dropped below freezing, and when she feels him cut her dress and panties off her from behind, she feels burned as the air hits her naked skin.

  Pooh is on top of her now, half-leaning into her. He whispers obscenities as he applies more and more of his weight. He has already entered her when he presses down on the broken left shoulder. She blacks out from the pain, relieved at last.

  At some point, either dreaming or dead, she’s sure, she sees a face looming above her, hard and cold but somehow, she senses, meaning her no harm.

  When she comes to, she is aware of footsteps fading in the distance. She is not able to determine for some time whether she is alive.

  Only the pain, increasing as she regains consciousness, makes her think she might not yet be dead.

  Weighed against that, though, is the surreal world to which she awakens.

  Her wrists have been cut free, but the suffocating weight on top of her makes it impossible to move at first. She is finally, an inch at a time, able to extract herself from underneath it enough to understand that the weight is Pooh Blackwell, and that he is dead.

  His pants are still unzipped, she sees after she is able to roll him sideways enough for gravity to carry his 350 pounds off the edge of the table and on to the bench and then the ground. She has an urge to cover him up, but then she is distracted by what used to be his face.

  She had thought at first that she was bleeding too profusely for any hope of survival, but now she realizes that the stickiness in her hair, and the sickly, soft pieces she touched when she was able to reach it with her one good arm, are part of the late Pooh Black-well’s brains.

  She is finally able to reach back and free her legs, one at a time. As she rolls herself to a sitting position atop the picnic table, she almost passes out again from the pain. Then her head clears and she sees the gun, much larger than the one she carried. It is lying on the ground, next to Pooh’s body. Beside that is a cellular phone. She is struck with the incongruity of Pooh Blackwell carrying a cell phone.

  It takes her at least five minutes to get to it, and then she finds she can’t remember the phone number at the farm. Somehow, though, she recalls Kenny’s. Even then, it takes her five minutes more to dial it correctly, she is shaking so badly. She alternates between thinking she might freeze to death, bleed to death or just die from the sheer outrageousness that has overtaken her world.

  Kenny answers.

  “Hello,” she says, surprised at how strangled and strange her voice sounds, but taking it as proof that she is still somehow among the living. “Kenny? I’m sorry to call you. Could you come get me?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  December 21

  Whatever they’re giving me, I hope they don’t run out.

  The drugs seem to be my main topic of conversation when the occasional visitor catches me awake. They just tell me to get some sleep, that everything’s going to be OK.

  Well, that could be. Anything’s possible.

  The doctor told me I have a fractured skull, a broken nose and cheekbone, a somewhat dysfunctional shoulder, and a couple fewer teeth than I had last week.

  Everybody’s tiptoeing around mentioning the r-a-p-e, as if that was the worst of it. Maybe that would have been so when I was younger and a little more precious and fragile. Maybe if it had lasted longer or I hadn’t passed out. Maybe if what the police detective called “the perpetrator” hadn’t been missing a large part of his head the last time I saw him.

  The worst was just thinking I was going to die there, being almost sure of it at times, some goddamn victim violated and butchered on the shore of Maxwell’s Millpond.

  The terror hasn’t completely receded. I don’t want to be alone, and I haven’t been for the most part. Kenny and Justin, even Leeza, have taken turns, and the women from the church—organized by Forsythia, of course—have filled in when those three had to be elsewhere. I look over now—turning my head is no mean feat, believe me—and there’s Alberta Horne, snoring away in the chaise lounge the hospital provides for those willing to spend the night in them so someone won’t have to die alone, or even be alone.

  I didn’t really think I was going to die, once the rescue squad and Kenny found me. I didn’t know until later that he hadn’t called them until he was almost there, to the only part of the pond to which you can drive. But he told me, to my puzzlement, that they were already on their way when he called, that they got there at the same time as he did.

  These drugs are supposed to make you sleep like the dead, but I have been having the damnedest dreams.

  I’ve been carrying on the most delightful interchange with my late father. I can’t say that we are actually talking, but somehow, we get our messages across to each other.

  In the dream, he’s always out there at that rock. The Rock of Ages. I stand close enough to touch him, and he makes me know that it’s OK, that I am absolved—at least by him—of everything for which I’ve been beating myself up these past 11 years. Maybe that’s just one part of my brain conspiring to give the rest of me a free pass I don’t deserve. Maybe it’s the fractured skull, or the trauma.

  Whatever it is, I’ve had this dream three times now, and it seems to go pretty much the same.

  Daddy is slouched against that rock, his eyes twinkling, trying to suppress a smile, the way he did. I want to know so much, about what happened that last day, about Rose and him, about the Big Questions.

  The first time, I awakened just as he was starting to wave his hand in some kind of expansive gesture that encompassed the three parts of what used to be his farm.

  The second time, the reel went a little farther, to where he leaned toward me and kissed my forehead. I swear I could smell him, not just the Pinaud aftershave and Old Spice, but him, the way I had forgotten he smelled. Can you smell in dreams?

  The last time, just a few minutes ago, he gave me a little hug and then turned and walked away. I didn’t try to follow him; I knew not to. He looked back one last time and waved, and then he was gone, fading into the near woods.

  And when I woke up, I knew he really was gone, and that everything was all right, although there are so many ways in which the casual observer would dispute that assessment.

  I mean, what you have here is a woman who, some might say, is a little too finely tuned, a bit too high-maintenance, someone who is trying to recover, without benefit of professional help, from a breakdown, who has lost three husbands and a couple of parents in less than 12 years.

  Then, pile on this fall, the fall of my free fall. (Today, the Weather Channel’s happy moron tells me, is the first day of winter, the shortest day of the year.) Add
the stress of trying to sell the farm, plus dealing with an imminent first grandchild whose father is not married. Then throw in Pooh Blackwell.

  Everything definitely should not be all right. Everything should be more in the general neighborhood of all wrong.

  Somehow, though, it is all right.

  I don’t know if this was nature’s own little shock therapy or just the peace that passeth understanding like it’s standing still, the kind you get from knowing that you have taken life’s best Sunday punch and you’re still standing, figuratively.

  Phil liked to watch the fights on TV. He even got me to watch, in horrified fascination, and this flashes through my addled brain now: I feel like I’m not going to be knocked out, carried off feet first in the sixth round. I think I can go the distance, in hopes of at least a split decision.

  A policeman came by this afternoon, a detective I think.

  They let him ask me questions for about five minutes. He was an earnest-seeming young man with short black hair and, incongruously, an earring. He seemed to be confused about some of the details, and I told him I was, too.

  He asked me about how Pooh got shot, and I told him about the Ladysmith.

  “But I don’t think I killed him,” I said. “It just seemed to piss him off.” I giggled and apologized for my language.

  “Ma’am,” the detective said, “it wasn’t the Ladysmith I was wondering about. It was the .38. I don’t reckon you know what a mess … what a hole … how much damage that .38 did.

  “I need to know. It’s OK, either way. Hell, we want to give you a medal. But did you kill Pooh Blackwell?”

  I told him I certainly didn’t think so, that the last thing I remembered was lying across that picnic table, tied down, waiting to die. And being raped by a madman, I wanted to say but didn’t for fear of bruising the young detective’s tender sensibilities.

  And then, talking about it, I remembered the other thing.

  “I heard a really loud noise, like a cannon going off. I think that might have been what revived me.”

  “A loud noise,” he repeated, tugging slightly on the earring and frowning. “Yes, ma’am, that .38 would make a right loud noise, I expect.”

  The thing was, he explained, it was hard to see how Pooh had managed to do that to himself.

  I allowed that it was hard for me to imagine that, too. Pooh seemed like the type who would rather inflict pain on other people than himself.

  The detective said the way he figured it, I would have had to reach behind Pooh and shoot him in the back of the head, while my own head was turned away from him, “on account of the blood and … and all.”

  He also wanted to know, of course, why they found Pooh’s truck parked a hundred yards or so from his empty driveway. They wanted to know how and where I got abducted.

  I had enough of my wits about me at this point to tell him I had gone over to talk to Pooh about what really happened to Jenny McLaurin, that I still had my doubts. I had gone up to the front door and knocked, and that was the last I remembered. He must have hit me from behind about then.

  “So you went out there by yourself, at night?”

  I didn’t try to defend it, couldn’t think of a good answer, just nodded my head.

  “Well,” the detective said, “maybe he sneaked up on you or something.”

  He didn’t look convinced. Who would have been? I had the feeling, though, that nobody was too surprised it had turned out this way. They just couldn’t fathom what role I played in Pooh Blackwell’s demise. It was supposed to happen in some barroom brawl, something with knives, or a horrific wreck, probably involving an innocent victim.

  “Well,” he told me, “if you think of anything, let me know. I might be back later.”

  I’m pretty sure he will be. It wouldn’t take Columbo to find some holes in my story. At some point, I know, it will be necessary to tell Wade Hairr or one of his worthless minions that I did indeed walk uninvited into Pooh Blackwell’s house and take something that didn’t belong to me.

  Today, though, is not that day.

  When Kenny came by a little later, I asked him if he had retrieved my belongings.

  He said he had.

  “Including the purse?”

  “Including the purse.”

  “Were there some, ah, notebooks in there?”

  There were. I don’t suppose either Pooh or the police had any interest in going through my possessions.

  I told him to hang on to them, maybe keep them at his place for a while.

  Kenny has been so sweet, so considerate, so wracked with guilt.

  I’m the all-time league leader in guilt, I told him. I know guilt. If somebody sneaks out in the middle of the night, lies about where they’re going, and if that person is well into middle age and allegedly of sound mind, you’ve done about all you can for that person.

  “And,” I added, beckoning him to move closer, “that person is absolutely crazy about you.”

  He said he knew, that he felt the same way, and I said I was glad.

  H turned his face from me and squeezed my arm until the pain forced me to stop him.

  “You did your best,” I told him. “You gave me a gun and taught me how to shoot it. It isn’t your fault that I couldn’t hit that sack of garbage at point-blank range.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  December 24

  The nurses finally convince Kenny and the women of Geddie Presbyterian Church that Georgia is able to stay unattended in her private room.

  “You’d better take good care of her,” Forsythia Crumpler told the head nurse, a woman whose force of character was nearly equal to her own. “You all had better not let anything happen to that lady.”

  She said this outside the door, at a time when the patient was supposed to be napping. Georgia could think of nothing she had done to deserve such care.

  The flowers have almost taken over the room, several poinsettias among them to remind her that she is missing Christmas. The doctor has told her she may be able to go home early next week and start physical therapy, but she will definitely be opening her presents in Room 202 of the Campbell Valley Medical Center.

  Justin has not been by today. Kenny told her that he was staying close to Leeza. The baby could come at any time.

  Kenny left just half an hour ago to get something to eat. Georgia wonders how he can bear to look at her. The one fleeting glimpse she got in the mirror when they were helping her to the bathroom was horrifying. She wonders how much she can ever recover of her already-fading looks.

  She knows this shouldn’t be a priority, that she should be worrying about getting to the point that all her body parts function, and all her memory returns. She still has blank spots. There are old friends whose names she tries but fails to remember.

  Kenny, though, seems not to see this new, damaged Georgia at all. Or, he does a good job of hiding it. He looks after her, even helps her to the bathroom. She thinks of how much she hated having to do that with her own mother, when she was dying of pancreatic cancer. She can only draw one conclusion: He’s a better person than she is.

  Maybe, she thinks, it’s part of opposites attracting. Nurturing, giving people are naturally drawn to the self-absorbed.

  He has assured her that he will help her get through this, whatever it takes.

  When he leaned over and kissed her cheek—just about the only part of her head that didn’t hurt—she was inclined to believe him.

  Now, the night creeps past. She can’t sleep but is trying not to ask for more painkillers. The same drugs she was so fond of three days ago, she now sees as the enemy. If intelligence is her strong card, she thinks, she doesn’t want to intentionally reduce her IQ 20 points if she can bear the pain at all.

  Still, she is about to buzz for a nurse, anticipating the usual half-hour wait, when she hears footsteps out in the hall. Someone is wearing shoes too heavy and stepping too loudly on the terrazzo floor to be staff.

  Her door is cracked open j
ust enough to let a thin sword of light in; she has never been fond of total darkness. Whoever is outside has interrupted the beam, and then she sees the door open a couple of feet.

  At first, she sees only a bulky shadow, and she wonders what visitor might be coming at this time of night, after the nurses have banished everyone else.

  And then she knows. Some combination of the work shoes, the smell, the gleam of pomaded hair.

  “William.”

  She has allowed for the possibility that the Blackwells might get it in their heads that she is responsible for their son’s death, but until this moment, she hasn’t really given it serious consideration. Kenny has told her that, from what he hears and knows, Pooh’s siblings—while being “mean as blacksnakes”—do not share their late brother’s untreated insanity.

  But now, William Blackwell is hovering over her bed, looking as if he hasn’t slept in the nearly six days since a deputy knocked on his door at 2 AM and informed him of his oldest son’s death.

  Georgia thinks about buzzing for a nurse, but the movement required to do so would be hard to disguise and easy to intercept by a healthy person. Besides, William could hack her up and haul her away in little plastic bags before one of the nurses answered her call.

  “I’m sorry.” It’s all she can think to say. She is not in the least sorry that Pooh Blackwell is dead and buried in the family cemetery. Looking at his father, though, she is sincere in her condolences. Nobody, she thinks, ought to have to bury their children, no matter what kind of monsters they grow up to be.

  William is silent for half a minute. Then, he eases himself into the chair beside her and sighs.

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  He doesn’t say anything else for what seems like a very long time. Georgia, who can’t turn her head well enough to see him straight on, wonders if he has fallen asleep.

  Finally, he leans forward. He is speaking almost in a whisper.

  “I’m kind of surprised they let me in here,” he says, and he almost laughs. “I figured somebody’d stop me, but I had to try. Nurse out there looked like she was sleeping.