Crush

by Laura Susan Johnson

  "I didn't know he was missing till this morning!" I'm screeching again. "He promised to call me when he got to his job. I even called ahead when he was supposed to be en route, asked the nurses to remind him to call me the minute he got in! He never called!"

  "That doesn't explain why you waited until now to call us," the officer says gently. Now his soothing manner is inciting me to riot.

  "I fell asleep waiting for his call," I admit. Why did I have to fall asleep?! I don't give a shit how exhausted I was, from the fight, from the video, from all the emotional upheaval. How could I just fall asleep?! "When I woke up, it was five-thirty. I called his work twice, and both times they insisted he'd never shown up for his shift. I just know something's wrong!"

  My cell phone beeps... only to tell me that the battery is getting low.

  "You're sure he didn't leave you?"

  "I'm sure!"

  Am I? Did he coddle and promise me just to get me out of his hair?

  Maybe he did leave me. Maybe he went to the coast to cool off, to visit Lloyd.

  Maybe he checked into a Travelodge or a Motel 6 to commit suicide...

  But he wouldn't leave his kids!

  Unless... unless he left instructions about them, like he said...

  But I didn't see a suicide note anywhere.

  So what? Lots of people go out without leaving a note!

  "I'm sure," I say again.

  No, he hasn't left me. He hasn't gone to end himself.

  Two black and whites pull into Jamie's empty drive. The four cops walk the perimeter of the house. The first is short and chubby, with brown hair. His badge reads, "O. Deming". He asks, "Are his cats inside?"

  "They have a pet door. They're in and out."

  "Well, aside from the window you broke out, we don't see any signs of struggle out here." Three of them clamber through the window I broke, scrutinise the inside of his house. One officer, a blonde of medium height, stays with me as the other three go inside.

  "You think maybe his car broke down on the highway?" This officer, whose badge says, "S. Cantrell", is casual, friendly, just making conversation, trying to put me at ease, the way cops do when they're trying to spearhead a negotiation with a lunatic.

  I'm beyond fracas at this juncture. "He'd call me to come get him."

  "Maybe his cell phone died or something."

  "He would have found a payphone somewhere," I argue. "No... no... something's happened." And I can't say the word "bad". I just can't do it. My heart is in the cold, quiet clutches of terror, and to use the "B" word would send me over the edge.

  "Why'd you break the window?" he asks me, his tone a little harder now.

  I respond with indignation. "I thought he might be in there hurt! I thought someone might have forced their way in, attacked him, taken his car!"

  "Alright, alright, sir, calm..."

  "Don't tell me to calm down!" I snarl at him. "I'm worried about Jamie! He's very small. He's only about five-five, he weighs probably a hundred and ten, maybe a hundred and fifteen pounds. He's no match for anyone who'd attack him!"

  "Sir, I can see you're under duress."

  "I think someone rushed him as soon as he opened his front door to go to work. I think someone..." My voice dies as visions of Jamie being attacked and left by the side of the highway mingle with the brutalities I watched in that horrid video. "We're gay," I emphasise. "When you're gay, you're a target!"

  "I think you're overreacting."

  "No, I'm not!" I scowl, my forbearance in real jeopardy now. "I think they rushed him, attacked him, when he was taking his trash out. That's the last thing he was going to do before he left, he told me."

  We walk over to the two large bins sitting at the curb. He opens them both. One's empty, the other's got a single white bag. He removes it, opens it, sifts through it. Empty cat food cans, empty corn and green bean cans, a couple of egg shells, wadded napkins, empty washing-up bottle, food wrappers, a couple of cartons of spoiled Chinese food...

  "Nothing out of the ordinary in here," he remarks, and puts the trash back in the bin. "Look, sir, give your friend a little more time. If he's had car trouble, he might have been able to get someone to help him get it to a shop. He might still be waiting."

  "No, he would have called me!" I squawk. Nobody fucking listens to me!

  "I think you're overreacting, seen too many scary movies, or gay shows, or whatever..."

  "You're not fucking listening to me!"

  "Sir, please don't use that kind of language with me."

  "Who cares what kind of language I'm using?!" I shriek. "My boyfriend is in trouble, I know it, and you're talking down to me like I'm a five year old!"

  "I'm trying to help you."

  "You're doing zilch to help me!" I can feel steam jetting from both ears. The other three officers exit Jamie's house and walk up. "We found vomit in the bathtub," says Deming, the short, stocky brunette. "Can you tell us anything about that?"

  "Jamie was sick last night," I say tiredly. "He threw up in the bathtub."

  "It also looks like someone removed something from the wall by the tub, a bracket or a rack or something," says the third officer, who is tall, with chunky thighs and a masculine face. His badge says, "C. Howard".

  "Jamie did that," I say, and suddenly, I'm afraid. How do I explain how upset he was, so upset that he mustered enough physical power in his slim arms to wrench a towel bar off the wall? "He took it off because... he... it was messed up. He's planning to put a new one up."

  "Well," says Officer Howard, "Other than those things, and the broken window, nothing's been damaged or disturbed. You say your friend was sick last night, threw up in the bathtub?"

  "Yes," I nod.

  "Have you called all the area hospitals? Maybe he checked himself in to one of the emergency rooms with a stomach flu or something."

  "No, I don't think it was the flu." It's becoming more and more evident that I should probably just tell them everything that happened last night, no matter how embarrassing, private, morbid. The video, how it upset me, how it made me ill. How the resurfacing of his past made Jamie mortified, sick, enraged, suicidal. Do I mention that he was suicidal? Will it help? Will it get them moving to try and find him quickly? Or will it slow them down? Will it cast shadows onto me?!

  "If I were you I'd call a repairman to fix that window ASAP," Officer Mendoza, the fourth cop, says. "Otherwise, you'll lose your stereo, DVD player, VCR..."

  "Yeah, sure," I groan in exasperation. "What about Jamie? It isn't the flu."

  "Are you sure? It's going around right now."

  "No! It isn't the flu!"

  "Maybe food poisoning," Cantrell suggests. "Call the local hospitals. See if he's been checked in."

  I make for the broken window, and Cantrell calls after me, "Sir, you're not part owner of this house, are you?"

  "No."

  "Then we can't allow you inside. You'll have to go home to make your calls."

  They start towards their patrol cars. "You're just leaving?" I say incredulously. "That's it?!"

  "There's nothing we can do here," Deming replies. "There's no sign of foul play."

  "I can't believe this!"

  Cantrell grins at me condescendingly. "Sir, just call the local hospitals. You'll find him."

  And they get into their cars and drive off.

  I make sure all four cats are okay, each spending this brisk, misty morning in his/her own way—dozing on a soft rug on the back porch, hunting for rodents in the flowerbed, inspecting the trunk of one of the small plum trees and contemplating whether to climb it, watching a sparrow fluttering and fidgeting, peering longingly at the solidly frozen water in the pretty metal birdbath Lloyd placed in the centre of the lawn some years back, wishing it was sun-warmed so he could take a bath.

  I return home. As much as I hate to concede to the police, there really is nothing I can do at Jamie's house. I should have preferred to wait there, but somehow, being in his house without him, not k
nowing where he is or what trouble he's in, with the draft of the broken window chilling my back.

  I put my cell on its charger.

  Utilising my home landline, I phone every hospital I can find in the phone books, from Sacramento to Vacaville. When I come up empty-handed, I try the hospitals in Stockton, Yuba City/Marysville, the East Bay. I know I'm on a wild goose chase. Nobody has admitted or heard of a patient named James Pearce. "What about John Does?" I urge. "Have you had any patients admitted unconscious?"

  "Sir, there are so many of those around here," says one nurse in Sacramento. "We couldn't possibly try to track all of them down when you don't even know for sure if there's been an accident."

  Accident, nothing, I think dourly. He's been attacked. He's been...

  I'm barely registering what the nurse on the phone is saying now. "The best thing you can do is try to remain calm. If he's a John Doe, someone will find ID on him sooner or later."

  "But he has no family. His dad died earlier this year."

  "What about you? Aren't you kin?"

  "No. I'm just his friend. I don't know if he has my number in his wallet. How will they know who to call..." I begin to cry, and the disconcerted nurse tries to pacify me. "Sir, all you can do is wait to hear something."

  After I've exhausted myself calling hospitals all over the state of California, I check my cell. No new calls. I tell myself that I need to keep off the landline just in case Jamie calls. I need to keep off both the landline and the cell.

  But the waiting is killing me.

  I call the police again. I'm not going to stop bothering them and be a good little boy. "Something has happened to my boyfriend and I demand that you start searching for him immediately! I don't care if you think I'm a lunatic or not, just start looking for him! He's in trouble!"

  Officer Cantrell interrupts me, "Mr. Mattheis, a car has been found, about a half mile outside of town... a Mercury Cougar, dark blue."

  "Shit!" I whisper.

  "We're running the license plate and we have a unit en route right now," Cantrell says. "We'd like you to come down to the station and give us some more information, if you would please."

  When I get there, the collective of law enforcement personnel is glaring at me, and I'm dragged into the interrogation room, where Howard, the craggy-faced, masculine cop, and his partner, Cantrell, begin the first in a series of inquests.

  thirty-four:

  jamie

  (december 29 and 30)

  The distant streetlamp yields a poor orange glow to the short walk to the curb where my bins sit. I toss the white kitchen bag full of rubbish in, and I'm about to toss the towel rack.

  Strong hands grab me from behind, and the metal bar makes a musical clang-clang-clang! as it lands on the cement. Another pair of hands clamps over my eyes and mouth before I can scream for help. A male voice grunts, "Where are your keys?"

  The fear I suck into my lungs freezes me as I stutter, "M-m-m-m-my p-p-p-p-pocket!" I cannot see them, but there are at least two people. I fight to free myself but I can't even move. One pair of arms ropes around my upper torso. One hand remains fastened over my face like one of those hatchlings in Alien. I try to bite, but I can't even open my jaws. The other pair of arms takes me around my legs. A hand quickly dives into my pants pocket and fishes out my cell. Another hand removes my wallet. I'm lifted into the air, carried. I hear the creaking of hinges.

  Someone is binding my legs and hands behind my back. I'm hogtied. The hand over my mouth lifts, and I gurgle and gag hard as a cloth is pushed into my throat.

  I'm tossed into the black trunk of a car.

  Neither of them could have opened the trunk just before throwing me inside, and in spite of my kicking and fighting, they succeeded in trussing me like a pig. There are at least three assailants, not two.

  After the beatings I endured in high school, I've always imagined what I would do if confronted with violence again... what I would say. I'd remain calm, level-headed... I wouldn't scream, I wouldn't be hysterical or terrified out of my wits. I've rehearsed them many times, the serene negotiations that would render my attackers disarmed, baffled into releasing me.

  I can't remember my script, despite how I'm urging myself not to panic, and I am hyperventilating in the deathly dark of the trunk they threw me in, gagging on the cotton they forced into my throat. I have no idea whose car it is. I can't get my eyes to work in this blackness. How long have we been driving? Where are they taking me?! Calm down, I beg myself. Calm down! Don't lose your shit now!

  But the wheels in my brain spin in super-speed panic. If they wanted to rob me, they would have simply taken my wallet. If they wanted my car, they would have taken the keys and left me standing in my front yard.

  Am I in my own trunk?

  It feels like hours. The car slows to a creep. I don't hear the whish of passing cars anymore. They've taken me somewhere dark, remote, private.

  The trunk opens with a subtle whine. "Get him out," mutters the male who ordered me to surrender my keys. He's got his dark hoodie pulled up over his lower face.

  "Come on, faggot!" another guy snaps, grabbing me hard by my shoulders, and hauling me up and out. His face is hidden as well, by a puffy black or dark blue jacket. A third person silently observes nearby, identity concealed by a light coloured sweater.

  It's freezing. Their breaths condense through their facial disguises. The three of them, looming over me in the dark, are horribly reminiscent of Klansmen, or mediaeval executioners, or fire-breathing demons.

  Supported only by his arms, I wait as the guy in the hoodie severs the ligatures from around my feet and pulls the rag out of my mouth, damp with my saliva. I lean against my car, weakened and wobbly with unspoken terror, and I recognise the car as Lloyd's. I whisper, "Please, just take the car."

  "Shut up!" the man in the hoodie spits. "How about in there?" He juts his chin toward the naked vineyard to the right of the dark gravel road we're parked on.

  I would run, but I'm so afraid that I can't move. "Please, where are we?" I ask meekly.

  "I said, shut up!"

  "I don't think it's dark enough out here," speaks the muffled voice of the party in the light sweater. "Let's keep driving." Hoodie shoves the cloth back into my mouth.

  I feel something—a silent pop inside of me. Warm tears begin to run down my face. The chilly night air freezes them in streaks. I still can't see who my enemies are in this gloom. The moon is almost eclipsed by our shadow.

  Stop it, I scold myself. It can't be happening.

  Instead of putting me into the trunk again, they toss me like a sack of fertilizer into the backseat of my car. Puffy Jacket and Light Sweater get into the front seat, while Hoodie sits and re-ties my feet. When I try to kick him, my shoe barely scraping over his forehead, nearly dislodging his disguise, his fist smashes into my nose. I feel the warm trickling of blood. "Do that again, cocksucker, and you'll wish you hadn't!"

  I beg them, but nothing comes out of me except buzzing moans through the gag. I can't scream, I can't fight, I can't even move. The rag in my mouth, the blood drizzling down my throat, make me feel strangled, smothered.

  And yet, I can cry. I can fucking cry. I can do something completely worthless. I can cry. That's what I can do.

  Puffy drives and drives, my surroundings grow darker still. My abductors are beginning to argue. "Come on, this is far enough!" Hoodie barks above me.

  "Well, there might be a house out here, or dogs," says Puffy Jacket.

  Hoodie snorts, his voice chilled with hatred. "So what? Nobody's going to find him out here for at least a day or two. Right over there! Park!"

  "But..."

  "No, come on! It's almost one o'clock! Let's do this!" Hoodie opens his door, jumps out, grabs me roughly by the legs and pulls me out. A muffled squawk escapes me as my upper body plops on the ground.

  "Come on!" Hoodie roars at Puffy Jacket. "Grab him!" I'm yanked up by my shoulders.

  We're on another lonely road, t
his one unpaved. I haven't the faintest inkling where. They carry me into a sizable orange grove to the left of where they've parked the car. The trees are loaded with fruit. Thick, tangled yellow and green grass grows at the base of each tree. It's isolated, shadowy, and I can see no lights indicating civilization, not for miles and miles. My heart is whacking painfully. I'm dizzy with terror.

  About ten rows or so in, they deposit me to the muddy ground and let me lie there. Hoodie kneels and unbinds my feet again, then my hands.

  "Why you untying him?" asks Puffy.

  "Got to give him a fighting chance," sneers Hoodie. Then, he growls at me, "You know what the bible says about faggots, don't you?"

  I can't answer, even after they've taken the rag from my slobbering, bleeding mouth.

  "It says you're an abomination," Hoodie says. I can practically see him leering at me, but I can't see what colour his eyes are. I can't see anything that will help me identify him. "You're disgusting!" He lowers his disguise just long enough to hock back and spit into my hair.

  "Come on, man," Puffy Jacket says uneasily. "You're wasting time!"

  Hoodie raises something above his head, something long, shiny, metallic. I scream and curl into a ball, waiting for a squall of bullets to begin ripping into me. Instead, I hear and feel the dull crack as something slams into my right shoulder. I scream again. Puffy Jacket exclaims keenly in reaction. I launch myself forward, trying to yank the towel bar away from Hoodie's grip. He easily pulls it out of reach of my fingers and brings it down, hard, on my right arm. I howl again as the weight of the blow reaches deep into the weather-sensitised bones that were broken sixteen years ago. Hoodie backs away for an instant and then hurls another strike at my left shin.

  "For fuck's sake!" Puffy yells. "Someone's going to hear him screaming!"

  "Nobody's going to hear anything," retorts Hoodie, admiring his handiwork, me, cowering in the damp soil, writhing in agony.

  "Why are you doing this?" I sob.

  "Shut the fuck up, faggot!" He hits me again, across the left thigh. I grunt in pain as I lunge again, my right hand closing around the jagged, twisted end of the broken towel rod. My right shoulder is on fire, blazing its protest of what I'm doing. I employ my left hand as well, desperately attempting to yank the weapon away from my hooded nemesis. He swears at me again and gives a tremendous pull. Another shrill scream echoes in the darkness as the razor-sharp metal gouges deeply into my right palm and my torn fingers uncurl involuntarily. The metal bar slams down on my shredded right hand. Bones crunch and I scream so high and loud my voice breaks. I recoil, cradling my broken right hand in my left, my eyes facing the leaf and grass littered floor of the orchard. "Please," I whisper. "Please stop. Please stop..." The blood in my nose and mouth tastes sticky and metallic.