Dark Father

by Cooper, James

  “We’re driving blind,” Jasper said, peering through the windshield at the wet expanse of road. The statement was almost shocking, not so much because it broke the silence again, but because it reminded Kate of Jimmy, crawling on his belly, the jelly of his eye spilling across his cheek.

  “Any suggestions?”

  Kate didn’t think it fair to expect either Alison or Jasper to impose on another of their friends. Not just because of the awkwardness of how it had ended with Father Hedley, but because they had shown her more than enough kindness already. This wasn’t their problem, it was hers. They had become overly embroiled in her crisis as it was. The mess she now found herself in was her responsibility. She wanted to give the McCrays an opportunity to bow out as soon as she possibly could.

  “I have an old friend,” she said, “but I’ve not seen her in years. Perhaps we should head there.”

  Alison looked over her shoulder. “Has she ever met Billy?” she asked.

  Kate nodded. “When he was first born.”

  Jasper gripped the steering wheel and began to accelerate. “Good enough,” he said. “Let’s hope this reunion turns out better than the last.”

  * * *

  By the time they arrived at the farmhouse, the rain had begun to ease and Billy had begun to stir. He sat up and looked around as though he were still wrapped in a dream. Everything seemed foreign to him, even the interior of the truck.

  “Mommy?”

  “I’m right here, sweetheart. Okay?”

  Billy reached for his mother’s hand and allowed his fingers to be engulfed. He still looked groggy. It was like he was trying to piece together this new reality from some fractured memory, the space in which he was confined shifting between something remembered and something he wanted to forget.

  Kate watched him closely and saw his eyes dilate; his body grew tense.

  “Where are we?” he said.

  “Just a few miles from home. I’m hoping to introduce you to an old friend.”

  “Where’s Daddy?”

  Kate felt her chest tighten, her heart sink. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Won’t he be worried?” Billy asked, clearly remembering some of the night’s events. “He’ll wonder where we are.”

  “I’ve already told him,” Kate lied. “We’ll see him soon.” She didn’t think she had the strength to deal with Billy’s questions right now. The fight with Jimmy had exacted a heavy toll, leaving her feeling exhausted. She barely had the energy to sustain her half of the conversation.

  “What if he needs help?” Billy said.

  Kate froze. “For what?”

  “He hurt his eye, Mommy, don’t you remember? It was all bleeding and we ran away. We left him in the house on his own.”

  He started crying then and Kate held him, uncertain how to reconcile the boy’s pain in the absence of his father. If there were reassuring words available to her, she had no idea what they were. They were slipping through her brain like fragments of someone else’s dialogue, and though she reached for the right words to alleviate her son’s anguish, they eluded her. All she could see in her mind’s eye was Jimmy, staggering towards them, screaming Billy’s name. His left eye was gone and would remain the black clot into which his son’s wailing image would be forever impressed.

  “Don’t you worry none about your daddy,” Jasper said, taking Kate by surprise. “He can look after himself, that one. That poorly eye of his’ll get better in no time.” He turned to look at Billy from the front seat. “Your mom’s the one needs taking care of, little man. She’s had a rough night.”

  Billy stopped crying and looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. Jasper looked sad and old, his face cobwebbed with tight lines, offering a profile like an unyielding rock.

  “I miss Daddy,” Billy said.

  “Course you do, sonny. But sometimes it’s better to be apart for a while than to be right on top of each other. Sometimes people need space to breathe. Ain’t that right, Ally?”

  Alison nodded, not sure Billy would understand a word Jasper was saying, but relieved that he’d taken it upon himself to pacify the boy. She, like Kate, had gone numb as the child desperately tried to figure out his place in an inverted world, a complex shadow reality where the adults were transformed, their language and demeanor reaching beyond his capacity to understand. For Billy, the behavior of the people he most relied on had suddenly become terrifying and strange.

  “I saw him on the floor,” Billy said, still remembering his father’s distress. “I think he was crying.”

  Kate closed her eyes at the recollection. It wasn’t tears Billy had noticed; it was blood. She had reduced Jimmy to a slithering monster and the memory of it was already embedded in the mind of her son. She felt herself poised above the yawning jaws of some toxic abyss. If she faltered now, Billy might easily end up blaming her for their separation from his father, and she hadn’t come this far only to allow Jimmy to rob her of the only thing she had left. It was important that Billy learned the truth; or, at the very least, a moderated version of it. Remaining silent on the subject would only serve to confirm Billy’s child’s-eye view of events.

  “He wasn’t crying,” Kate said. “He was bleeding.” She took a deep breath and ploughed forward, trusting that she’d find a way to safely navigate the mess she and Jimmy had created. “Daddy did a bad thing, Billy.” The boy’s eyes widened and he looked at her in disbelief. “I don’t think he meant to,” Kate said, stroking Billy’s hair. “He just lost control a little. We all do that sometimes, don’t we, Big Bill?” She was conscious of having used one of Jimmy’s pet names and instantly regretted it. Now was not the time to remind her son of how playful Jimmy could be.

  Billy watched her, his face curious and still. “How did he lose control?” he said. “Was he angry?”

  Kate looked at Jasper, who nodded encouragement. “Yes,” she said, “a little.”

  “Was Daddy angry at me?” Billy said, his bottom lip trembling slightly.

  “God, no,” Kate said, holding him tight, alarmed at how easily she had been derailed. “He was never angry at you, Billy. You know that, don’t you?”

  Billy stared at her, remembering. “Sometimes he was,” he said softly.

  “But not this time. Okay? What happened tonight was between your daddy and me. We couldn’t agree on something and Daddy made a mistake. That’s all. A really stupid mistake.”

  “What kind of mistake?”

  Kate paused; she could feel herself perspiring. She hoped Billy wasn’t smart enough to pick up on her agitation, but she suspected he was attuned to more things than she gave him credit for.

  “The kind of mistakes adults make,” she said, “and then immediately regret.”

  “Like in writing, when Mrs. Monroe gets cross if we spell our names wrong?”

  Kate smiled, her heart breaking a little. “Something like that,” she said. Billy nodded, as though everything had been perfectly contextualized. It made Kate consider for a moment exactly what was going on in the boy’s head, and she felt disgusted with herself for forcing him to have to contend with such complicated issues in the first place. How did you explain infidelity and emotional cruelty to a child? More to the point, who would want to?

  Billy continued to stare at his mother, the dark tracks of his tears drying on his cheek. “But why did we have to leave?”

  “Because Daddy’s mistake was so bad I didn’t think we should be around him anymore. He needs some time alone, to think about what he’s done.”

  “Just like me when I do bad things!” Billy said, suddenly understanding.

  “Just like you,” Kate whispered.

  She looked up imploringly at Jasper.

  “Okay, campers, enough chitchat. Time to move on. You ready to introduce us all to that new friend of yours, Kate?”

  She smiled at him, wondering how many times she’d felt grateful for his intervention already this evening. His gruff manner belied a sensitivity
to other people’s pain that she thought Jasper himself was barely even aware of. Alison was a lucky woman, Kate thought; she yielded to a stab of resentment at the couple’s good fortune and then felt immediately ashamed. The McCrays deserved better than to have their marriage sneered at by the likes of her just because her own relationship had fallen apart. She felt petty and small that such a thought had even occurred to her.

  “Sure,” she said, hefting Billy towards the door. “Her name’s Sally. She lived with us for a month when Billy was a baby. We gave her the run of the house.”

  Jasper grunted. “Let’s hope she remembers your hospitality,” he said.

  They climbed out of the truck and stood in the early morning mist surveying the farmhouse. There was a row of dilapidated barns along the eastern side of the building and a number of crumbling outhouses just visible beyond a cobbled entrance to the yard. The farmhouse itself settled into the landscape as though pummelled into it by the elements, its old brick glistening with drizzle and mist. A scrag of trees to the west kept it in isolation, ensuring it remained hidden from the nearby road.

  “It looks a little run-down,” Alison said. “Do you think your friend might have moved away?”

  “I doubt it. She inherited the farmhouse when her parents died. Without this place, she’d have nothing.”

  They walked towards the front door. Kate knocked hard on the wood and took a step back. She noticed that the white paint was peeling. Tiny flakes of it fell to the ground like shaved ice.

  The door was opened by a woman in a pale blue dressing gown. She looked surprised to see them; her hand was held out as though she expected a newspaper or a bottle of milk to be dropped into it. She looked wary, within a second or two of slamming the door. Then her eyes locked onto Kate’s and she frowned.

  “Kate? Shit, is that you, honey?” She glanced down at the boy. “And little Hillbilly, all grown up and about as tall as his daddy?”

  Kate hesitated at the reference to Jimmy, but Billy rode it well and, if he felt anything at all, he was resilient enough not to let it show. He was watching the woman with intense curiosity, fascinated by the pale globe of her left breast in the gaping V of the gown.

  “Hello, Sally,” Kate said. “Long time no see, eh?” There was a moment’s silence as they each weighed up the other before Sally smiled and threw open the door.

  “Jesus, Kate, I don’t know what the hell it is that brings you all the way out here at this hour looking like you’ve been in a bear fight, but I’m guessing it’s not good. Why don’t you and your friends come on in and you can tell me all about it over breakfast.”

  Sally stood aside and ushered them all into the farmhouse, ruffling Billy’s hair as he drifted past. Billy thought he could smell old cheese and he wondered if the odor belonged to the house or to Mommy’s friend. Either way, it made him feel uncomfortable and he longed to be back in McCray’s dusty old truck. The farmhouse reminded him of the bombed-out buildings in Mr Farraday’s field that his daddy had warned him about. It was dark inside and cold, as though parts of it had never been touched by the sun.

  Sally led them deeper into the building until they arrived at a large kitchen cluttered with oversized pans and ceramic pots. There was a large wooden table in the middle of the room and Sally gestured for them all to be seated. Kate noticed that one wall of the kitchen had been covered with some kind of framed embroidery. They looked like cross-stitch tapestries, only the colored thread appeared to spell out elaborately rendered words instead of pictures. Kate peered hard at them but, from where she sat, she couldn’t quite identify what they were. She looked at Sally busying herself with the teapot and realized that the woman she’d turned to for help had changed. She looked like a haunted version of the girl she remembered, her face twisted by loneliness, as though time had wrenched away her youth and replaced it with this tired, unsympathetic mask. Kate looked again at the embroidered words and wondered what kind of woman spent her days stitching decorative letters into binca before framing them and hanging them on the wall. She felt uneasy just thinking about it.

  “So who are these good people?” Sally said, smiling down at the McCrays.

  Kate made the introductions while Sally began pouring tea from the pot.

  “It’s good of you to take us in like this,” Kate said. “We shouldn’t have imposed but…we’ve all had a difficult night. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

  As she said it she realized that it was a sad indictment of her life that, in her moment of crisis, her options had been so limited.

  “I’m glad you came,” Sally said. “It’s been too long since I’ve set eyes on little Hillbilly here. Bet he’s breaking hearts already.” She winked at Billy and he blushed, not sure what the woman meant. He reached for his mother’s hand.

  “Tell you what,” Sally said. “Why don’t you take Alison into the front room and see if you can find a game in the cabinet. It’ll give your mom and me a chance to catch up on old times. Jasper here can enjoy his tea after the long drive.”

  Alison nodded and led Billy away from the table. He looked back once at his mother and then walked solemnly out of the kitchen. It was almost as though he knew he was being politely dismissed.

  “That’s a great kid,” Sally said, watching him go. “I imagine you’d do anything to protect him.”

  Kate looked at her old friend and frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, Kate. You turn up here looking like shit with your son in tow. I’m smart enough to count the ducks when they’re lined up in front of me. Is it Jimmy?”

  Jasper leaned forward, his large hands spread along the rim of the table. “Now listen here, missy…”

  “It’s okay, Jasper,” Kate said. “Sally’s been warning me about Jimmy since we first met. In some ways she knows me better than I know myself.”

  Sally stared at her. “You married a complete shit, Kate. That it’s taken you till now to figure it out is your own damn fault.”

  Kate bowed her head, nodded. “I know. But it’s over, Sally. This time for good. We had a terrible fight over some damn woman and I hit him…I think I might have…done something to his eye…”

  Sally said nothing; she glanced at Jasper.

  “That miserable goat had it coming,” the old man said. “He treats Kate like dirt. Always has done. Only ever stayed because he doted on the kid.”

  Kate rubbed a hand across her brow. “Which is why we’re here,” she said. “I think Jimmy’ll try and come after us. He certainly won’t give up Billy without a fight. I just need a night or two to figure things out. To work out the best way of dealing with it. I need somewhere to lie low, Sally; somewhere Jimmy won’t think to look.”

  “Why haven’t you gone to the police?”

  “I took his fucking eye, Sal. I beat him to within an inch of his life. If I go to the police, Jimmy’ll use all that against me. I can’t risk being apart from Billy even for a minute. They’ll take him away.”

  “Maybe Jimmy’s in the hospital.”

  Kate smiled. “You really think so? You know him well enough, Sal. He’s relentless.”

  Sally remembered all too well. She had spent a month in the house fucking Jimmy Hopewell behind Kate’s back. He had been relentless alright. He had fucked her in every room of the house.

  “What do you think he’ll do if he finds you?”

  Kate stared at her friend across the table. “He won’t,” she said. “I’ll make sure of it.” She paused for a moment, picturing Father Hedley, and then added: “God willing.”

  * * *

  Sally and Alison spent the next hour or so preparing them all a traditional English breakfast. Billy watched at the table as the women moved around the kitchen, their hands a blur of concentrated motion. Jasper occupied the boy with tales of his own childhood when he’d grown up, he said, in a farmhouse very similar to this one. Billy laughed when he told him about how once one of the pigs had escaped, and laughed even harder when Jasper des
cribed his valiant attempts to guide the animal back into its pen.

  Kate was grateful for all their support and found herself relaxing in the heat of the kitchen. The food hissed at them from the stove. The noise of the clattering pans reminded her of home. Sally and Alison chatted amiably as they worked, talking about anything other than what had actually drawn them together, and Jasper continued to amuse Billy with his tall tales of life on a working farm.

  Kate wandered over to the far wall of the kitchen and admired the framed needlework. She squinted hard, trying to decipher them. Though the words were more legible up close, they remained meaningless to her. Most of them she’d never even come across before: glochidium, leucocratic, myotonia. No matter how hard she tried, Kate could think of no connection between her friend and the vocabulary on the wall.

  She noticed that Sally had stopped working and was watching her with obvious mistrust.

  “These are interesting,” she said, feeling another of those weird axis shifts where the world suddenly made slightly less sense.

  “They’re my words,” Sally said, her voice wavering. “They come to me in the night and I write them down. I repeat them when I can’t get to sleep. Like a prayer.”

  Kate looked confused. “You sleep in the kitchen?”

  Sally stared back, her eyes dark and unreadable. “Sometimes,” she said.

  There was a knock at the front door. Kate went cold.

  “Milk,” Sally said, moving down the hall. The drumming of Kate’s heart was loud; her throat was parched. She watched each unflinching frame of reality slow down; sensed the bright scope of her husband’s absent eye.

  * * *

  Even without the guidance of the eye, Jimmy would have predicted Kate would end up here. Who else would the bitch run to, if not that crazy skank she used to knock around with when they first met? Yes, given time he’d have figured it out. No doubt about it.