by L.C. Barlow
* * *
I was told not to say anything to Alex, and I obeyed. He was left the whole day to ponder. By that night, Evelyn had stopped by with a shoebox tied with twine. Alex peered at it and asked me later what was inside. I said not one word, and he flipped me off.
Cyrus brought the shoebox to the dinner table that night, set it amongst the chicken, asparagus, mashed potatoes, and apple pie. Mrs. Harper was there, and she sat at the end of the table, opposite Cyrus. She was a thin woman, and her natural expression was a grave, purposeful one. She always appeared to have other things on her mind, and I often did not see her when I was at the house. This may be, though, because she did not wish to see me. She was far from affable, but I was also fairly certain she hated me.
"Would you pass the salt?" she asked, and Alex picked up the porcelain cat salt shaker that sat beside the box. His eyes wandered over the corners of the enigmatic thing before he passed it to her, but he said nothing.
"Have you done your homework for this evening, Jack?" Cyrus asked me.
"Yes," I replied.
"Good. And you, Alex?"
Alex looked at his plate, his eyes going back and forth across the food. Finally, he said, "Yes. Yes I did."
"I'll hold you to that," Cyrus said.
Mrs. Harper gave a polite cough. "Well, Alex," she said, "if you have some extra time, how about we watch a movie together? Just the two of us. Mother and son." I thought I saw her eyes flicker to me for a moment.
"Alex will be busy tonight," Cyrus replied, taking a drink of wine and setting the crystal glass down. "I have a project for him."
"What is that?" Mrs. Harper asked. I looked at the box. So did Alex.
"Just an experiment of sorts." He swallowed with a smack of his lips. "And it must be done tonight."
"Cyrus... I haven't had any time with Alex for the past month or so." She coughed politely again. "When will I be allowed to?" She smiled exaggeratedly.
"Marie, when are you going to spend time with Jack?"
"Jack?"
"Yes. Jack. The other member of this household."
I instantly looked at my plate, but I could feel her eyes upon me. I froze, afraid to move.
"You always bring that up when you want to change the subject," she said.
"I think you'll find that they are the same subject."
I looked to Mrs. Harper, and her eyebrows were puckered. Lines were furrowed into her forehead. Her eyes looked teary.
"I don't want to spend time with Jack," she replied. "I want to spend time with my own son."
I felt a sudden flush on the back of my neck, and I rose from my seat. "I'm going to my room," I said quickly, but Cyrus rose when I began to walk, and he stopped me.
"Sit down," he said.
"I don't think..."
"Sit down."
I looked at his cold eyes and slunk back into my chair like a gassed snake, stared at the box on the table, and swallowed. I touched my plate and then put my hands in my lap and then tapped the table's edge.
"The whole point of this is to make sure that whatever Alex has, Jack, so do you. That has always been the point... Marie." Cyrus took his seat again. "Raised one and the same. I told you from the very beginning. If Alex has martial arts lessons, so does Jack. If Alex gets beef tar tar, likewise. And if Alex gets attention from his mother, Jack gets attention from you as well. And if Jack doesn't get it, neither does Alex. That is the point."
"Jack has a Mother."
"That's not a mother."
"Well... love doesn't just grow out of thin air. You can't force it from me." She was weeping now.
"Maybe not, but there will be equality here."
"Sometimes..." She shook her head back and forth. "I hate you."
I heard the squeak of wood on wood, and I saw out of the corner of my right eye Marie's form rising out of her chair. I heard the click clack click clack of her heels on the floor until she almost walked past Cyrus, but at that moment I heard a slap of skin against skin and a quick intake of breath that drew my eyes to them. Cyrus had grabbed Marie's arm and he held her there while he stared at her with piercing eyes.
"You and I both know that's not a safe thing to do," he said. "And not just because of who I am."
She pulled her arm away from him and wiped both of her eyes.
"I know, I... I apologize," she whispered, and I swear in that moment all the tears instantly stopped flowing. She stared at the wall for a moment, walked to the small wine rack that sat on the buffet to the left of the dining room table, grabbed a bottle of wine, and exited through the door, leaving a wide girth around Cyrus.
Cyrus looked at me and then Alex. "Don't ever mistake a power play for love," he said to Alex. "I know the woman I married."
Alex stared at his Father and nodded his head. Cyrus said nothing to me.
After dinner, Roland entered and ate a piece of apple pie with us. We sat together, soaking up the calm night and the silent room and the smells of the leftover food and something grave just beneath it.
"Alex, I want you to pick up the box that Evelyn brought today and open it." Alex's head flipped back and forth between Cyrus and Roland, landed on me, and fell like a ball towards the box. He sighed, swallowed, and picked it up with unsteady hands. He set it gingerly on his lap as though it might explode. It took him half a minute to undo the twine, and then he lifted the box's lid, but I could not see what lay inside. Nevertheless, I saw it in my mind.
Alex clapped the box shut. "It's a hand... I think," he said. Was that a shudder or excitement I saw in him? I can't recall.
"Yes, Alex. Tell me, though, was it right or left?"
Alex's eyes slowly fell to the box again, and he lifted the lid for a brief second. He closed his eyes, scrunched his nose, and swallowed. "Left," he said.
Cyrus grinned. "Does that mean anything to you?"
"No," Alex said quickly.
"Alright," said Cyrus. "We'll see if this rings any bells. That arm belongs to Lisa Havinger, and she lost it because she was attacked by a dog on the night of June twelfth." Cyrus squinted his eyes and looked at Alex, but Alex simply sat there and shook his head. He lifted the box and set it gently on the table. He pushed it away from himself.
"The night of June twelfth you should remember. After all, that's the night you killed Shakespeare and dug his grave. Oh, no, I apologize. That's the night that you shot him to pieces, failed to put him out of his misery, and were forced to dig a grave to right what you had done."
Alex swallowed but said nothing.
"Apparently, things have not been righted," Cyrus said.
"It was a coincidence," Alex replied softly, eyes averted.
"You think that because you are young. But as one gets older, and especially if one lives in this house, you learn that there are no coincidences.
"You, Alex, purposely tortured our family pet. You set out to enjoy it. In the process, you blew off his left paw. I saw it. As did Roland... and Jack. You did, too. Then, the very same night, the daughter of one of my greatest supporters is attacked by a dog, Alex, which bites off her left arm, mauls it to pieces. You see no connection in that at all?"
"No," Alex replied.
"You're responsible for that arm," Cyrus said.
"No, I'm not. I didn't do a damned thing to that woman."
"I say differently."
"You're wrong."
Cyrus rose quickly from his chair with the look of a psychopath ready for a kill, but Roland interjected with, "Wait Cyrus, wait," and he leaned forward with his hands clasped together and pointing towards Alex.
"I would like to tell you something, and though you may not want to hear it, it is as true as what Cyrus is saying to you now. It will be good for you.
"When I was a boy there was a man in my hometown by the name of Jim Connor. When he was young, his old man died, and Jim told me about his Father's death. Said it was a strange day because the night before one of his cats had died. It was the same night a famous a
ctress had died, actually, and that was how he remembered the specific day.
"The day after that cat died, though, Jim's Father set about to burying it. Jim said his old man got a shovel, started digging a grave, and fell to the ground. He died right there on the spot from a heart attack.
"Now, move ahead twenty years. It's a different cat that dies. Still Jim's, but a different one. Jim leaves the dead thing in his house for days, because he's afraid. He remembered what happened to his old man.
"Eventually, though, a few days later, he tells me that he's going to bury it because he got his affairs in order. I said to Jim, 'You're crazy. You're crazy to think that burying a cat has anything to do with you or your Father dying.' But he just looked at me, smiled, and said, 'Roland, you may not be able to feel it, but I can. There's something waiting for me.' And he was right. The man died the next day - just a few hours after burying the damned furball.
"Now, as I got older, I saw more and more of that stuff happen, and it doesn't matter that it's illogical. Life is illogical. Random isn't ever random. Ever. Ask a gambler in any casino, and he'll tell you. You don't leave a machine when it's just started paying, and you don't stick with one that's sucking you dry. And deaths... well, they always come in threes. So does bad luck. Often, so does the good.
"And sometimes, just sometimes, when you fuck something up, like shooting the family dog on purpose to watch it suffer, going against your Father's wishes, that brings about something else in the world. I don't expect you to feel it. Not everybody can. But I can... that equaling. And let me tell you, that woman's blood is on your hands. And it matters this time. That woman is one of Cyrus's, and after all we have done, and all we are going to do, we can't afford a few loose ends. We are always about to run out of the leniency this world has to offer. We've got to do a little good to keep doing the bad. That includes you."
Alex seemed to consider what Roland told him, for he looked to Cyrus and said, "What is it that I have to do?"
Cyrus sat back down and spread out his hands. "We wait until a full moon," he said. "We wait, and you keep the arm in your room. It will be about five days from now. When that day comes, you'll clean the hand with alcohol and wrap it in cotton. You'll place it in an oak box and bury it out on the Havingers' land in the night. I'll drive you out there. Jack, you'll come, too."
I nodded in assent.
"What will that do?" asked Alex.
"The person who caused the ruin of that girl's arm will finally be taking responsibility for it. Once you clean it and bury it, it will finally be at peace. It won't hurt her anymore. I might even be able to grow it back."
I don't know if he truly believed them, but, "Fine," Alex nevertheless said. He wrapped the box up in the twine again.
"You can't fuck this up," Cyrus said. "There's no second chance after this."
"I know."
"Good," Cyrus replied. "Now take the damned hand to your room."
