SUMMER of FEAR

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "I think the knife is a bad idea," said my father.

  "I know it's a bad idea. But nothing else is working."

  A long silence followed. "I had a visit from your mother tonight. She still senses distress. You know, she had some wise words for me. She's fine. If you were real quiet for a while, she'd come to you, too."

  "Ah hell, Dad, I know you miss her, but make some sense for a change."

  Another silence ensued, during which I regretted my words, before he spoke again. "Don't let the storm take you with it, son. Somehow, you've got to get your head above it. I know I sound like a lunatic or some New Age fop, but when she comes, well, I just feel her."

  "How is Amber?"

  "Cooperative. Even gracious. She spends most of her time alone in the guest room—some of it on the phone. She scared."

  "It's important you be with her."

  "The Remington is handy, but to tell you truth, I'd like a little better idea what I'm facing."

  "One Sheriff's captain with a mean streak, and possibly a buddy or two of his."

  "I'm plainly outgunned."

  "Stay inside. If they come to you, it's your advantage. Don't be afraid to call the cops. I mean the local cops, not the Sheriff's Department. The one thing this guy doesn't want is scene."

  "We don't have any local cops. We're county out here.

  "Shit, that's right." I felt my guts bunching up for another spasm of pain.

  "Give me his name, son. It's the least you can do."

  "Martin Parish."

  "Marty?"

  "That's right. He's lost it. He's in line for money if Amber dies, but I'm not even sure it's the money he's after. All I a tell for sure is, he's in a rage."

  "He killed her sister, thinking it was her?"

  "That's correct."

  "Have you talked to Winters?"

  "I don't have any proof. Yet."

  "Oh boy."

  My father was quiet for a long moment. "I like having her around."

  "The second something seems wrong, call me."

  "I love you, son. Pray to your mother. She'll be there for you."

  I hung up. Guns and ghosts, I thought—two verities for my aging father.

  I lay down on the sofa in my den and stared out for a while at the shifting fog. Sundry horrors passed through my mind, most of all, perhaps, the icy touch of Alice's body against my own. But even that feeling was soon surpassed by the image of the Midnight Eye staring out the window of his stolen Ford Taurus, the mute superiority in his face, the heft and power of his arm and hand. My body began to shake. Each recent blow from Martin established its own specific ache. I heard that howling up in the canyon, the one that Isabella had named the Man of the Dark. Isabella! How distant were her arms, her voice, the comforting proximity of her beating heart. Oh woman, do not leave me. I wept. I got up and closed all the windows and doors, setting the dead bolt twice to make sure it was right. I left on all the lights. I made sure my .357 was loaded and ready and set it under the pillow that for five years had been graced by nothing less beautiful than my wife's dreaming head.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  If fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, what is the beginning of fear? I have an answer, for myself at least. The beginning of fear is to understand that you are without power. It took me half a lifetime—40 years—to realize this. Oh, I can hear the protestant brayings of those who are "taking responsibility for their own lives," or "are God," but I'm not talking about the mundanities of happiness, success, self-fulfillment weight loss, life without alcohol, or who is okay and who is not. I'm talking about powerlessness in the face of death, in the face of life, in the face of madness, love, disease, desire, in the face of all things beautiful and terrible that govern our every moment whether we know it or not. And I am talking about the fear of truly realizing that your best may not be good enough, that may, in fact, be very little good at all. To understand this is to become fluent in the language of terror, to become intimate with the contours of the pit. It is the wisdom of the man before the firing squad. But fear—true fear—is not a reason for anyone to do something as simpleminded as to surrender. No. The acts of the powerless are among the lasting nobilities of the race. To advance with a stomach knotted in terror is more than courage. Fear is beauty.

  All of which is to say that as I lay in bed on the Wednesday morning of July the seventh, bruised and still exhausted by the dismal events of the night before, I tried to separate my world into things over which I had no power and things over which I did. Against Martin Parish's bleak logic, I was temporarily helpless. There was no sense in divesting myself of Alice's body, when Parish had the tape. All an empty grave would prove is that I'd moved her! I had been crudely but effectively neutralized—exactly Parish's goal. Over the cancer cells that raged in Izzy's brain, I had no power. Over the actions of the Midnight Eye, I had perhaps even less. Dread began to work into me. But I knew that there were some things I could still accomplish. I could love Izzy, even if I couldn't save her. I could protect my daughter from the young woman's perils that had apparently befallen her. I could begin to outline my book about the Midnight Eye. I could shower, shave, eat.

  "Coffee, Russell?"

  Grace stood in the bedroom, a steaming cup in her hands. I had not heard her arrive, but that didn't surprise me: What little sleep I'd had had been the sleep of the dead.

  "Russell, where's Isabella?"

  I explained.

  She set the cup on my nightstand and assayed me with her Monroe brown eyes. "I'm sorry I was gone," she said. "I could have helped."

  "Where were you?"

  "Does it really matter, Russ?"

  "Yes, it does."

  "Don't be silly. You look rather under the weather today.

  A guy from the phone company installed something on the telephone pole about an hour ago. You slept right through it.

  I groaned, sat up in bed, and hooked the coffee mug.

  "Tell me if there's anything I can do for you," said my daughter.

  "Thank you."

  "Isabella didn't leave because of me, did she?"

  "She likes you. I think she left because of me."

  "Give yourself a little more credit than that," she said then turned and went back down the stairs.

  I called Corrine. Izzy was sleeping after a fitful night—the heat, bad dreams, many trips to the bedside commode.

  "Thank you for your words last night," said Corrine. "It important we not blame ourselves. I'm starting to understand what you've been going through this last year. She—we all owe you so much."

  "Thank you. That's a difficult thing to believe."

  "I hope you can use this time to enjoy yourself a little. Get some work done. Was yesterday relaxing for you?"

  I thought back to Amber's astonishing reappearance, thought back to last night, to Martin's palpable lunacy and the body I had buried in a grave not a hundred yards from my own front door. "Very relaxing," I told Corrine.

  "I'm glad to hear that, Izzy should be awake in another hour."

  "I'll be there."

  "God bless you, Russell Monroe."

  "I would like that."

  My Journal piece on the Citizens' Task Force got front page play and a large color photograph of Dan Winters and Erik Wald. The lead article focused on the Midnight Eye, a horrifying photograph of whom—culled by Documents from the home video—took up three columns above the fold. You could see his dark bearded face in the shadow of the stolen car, determine his girth from the size of the arm dangling from the window, sense his self-contained and predatory nature. Carla Dance had not changed a word of my article, though she did run an inset on Russell Monroe, the Task Force volunteer who was writing this special series for the Journal. I sensed Dan Winters's hand in this bit of minor manipulation—I had never told him I'd join his Force—and in the word series, which gave me a very specific idea of what my Journal employment was to entail. I had to smile at Erik's expression in the photo—
so grim, so alert, so... indispensable. God only knew how many phone lines were ringing at the Sheriff's Department, particularly on the desk of Erik Wald and the CTF. We had a hit on our hands; I could feel it.

  I called surveillance tech John Carfax at County, and he confirmed that he'd installed the intercept device. It was a Positive Control Systems DNR (dial number recorder) that had CNI (call number identification) capacity built in. He told me he could get a trace number in thirty seconds. Under specific orders from Winters, he was to share his information with me.

  I called my agent, Nell. I told her I had an inside track on the scariest, weirdest, most haunting serial killer to hit California in years and that I needed money to write the book.

  "We won't get a lot," she said. "You haven't made the list since Journey."

  "I don't expect a million dollars," I said. "As much up front as you can arrange. I need it."

  "I’ll try."

  "This will make Helter Skelter and Fatal Vision look like Hardy Boys stuff."

  She was quiet for a moment, then sighed. "How come it seems like everybody in California is either writing a mystery or going on a killing spree?"

  "Each has his own special gift," I offered.

  "I'll try, Russ. That's all I can do."

  With this bit of encouragement came the bravery to call my bank and check the balances of my three accounts—something I had not been able to do for nearly six months. They went down to a grand total of eight thousand dollars, about two months' worth. I had been subconsciously preparing myself to sell Izzy's car, my truck (rarely used), and liquidate our retirement money, which, after taxes and penalties, would have give us another year of living. There remained the specter of selling our home in the current bad market. Not to mention the eighty grand I owed the Medical Center.

  I began to wonder how I could write anything close to the whole truth, with Martin's tape, with Alice Fultz buried within throwing distance of my typewriter, with my guilty fixation on Amber Mae so central to the story. No, I told myself. You will write the story of the Midnight Eye. The rest will stay consigned to the dark annals of your secret life. Maybe you can put it in a novel someday.

  I asked Grace to come with me to see Izzy, but she declined.

  "I'm not afraid to be alone up here," she said. "I don’t think those men have any idea where I've gone. In fact, this is the only place I feel safe alone."

  "I understand," I said. Besides, there was something I wanted to do in my car, and it wasn't something that I necessarily wanted my daughter to hear.

  On my way to Joe and Corrine's, I listened to the tape that had come from Martin's box of "evidence." The voice of the Eye droned on, and I could still make little of it. I began to meditate on just how this tape had come into being and found its way into Amber's stereo. Was it faked? Dubbed from others? An original that Parish had failed to file as evidence in the case of the Midnight Eye? I finally tired of his slurred nonsense, removed the tape, and put it in my pocket. Surely, I thought, there's a safer place to keep this than in my car.

  Isabella was sitting up in bed, propped up on pillows, her tape deck and a bag of cassettes resting on her lap, when I came in. From beneath her baseball cap extended the head-phones, a little black cushion over each ear. She heard me come in, opened her eyes, and gave me a smile of such warmth and happiness that all I wanted to do was lie down beside her, take her in my arms, and tell her I loved her. I did that. She returned my hug as best she could—from her waist up—then pulled off her headset and put her cap back on.

  "You look so bad," she said without a stutter. I must have looked at her strangely. "I mean," she said, "you... look... so... good. These days, everything c-c-comes out mix-mixed up. You look so bad, Russell. You h-h-have on my favorite red sidewalk."

  She fingered my red windbreaker and smiled again. "Did you have a good day without me?"

  "Well..." I said, but I wasn't sure how to finish. I could feel a pit opening inside me, a dark yawning thing into which two little dolls that looked like Isabella and Russ Monroe were falling, arms and legs spread, twisting slowly down into a cartoon abyss.

  "Oh, baby, don't look at m-m-me like that," she said. "I know I'm not m-m-making any sense."

  "No, no, you are," I said. "And I'm flattered that you like my red sidewalk."

  She smiled again. Isabella's smile is everything good in this world. "You... are making f-f-fun of me."

  "I know."

  "I'll some e-e-even day get with you."

  "You can't catch me."

  "Not y-y-yet. After my o-o-operation, I'll catch you easy."

  "After the operation, I better look out?"

  "Gonna make you sucker, pay!"

  "Typical hot-blooded Latina," I said. "Always thinking of revenge."

  "I g-g-got my revenge when you mangled me."

  "I did not mangle you. I married you."

  "E-e-exactly."

  I held her for a while, until she broke away and fixed her smile on me again. It was the same coy, near-guilty smile she always got before asking what she asked next.

  "Guess what?"

  "You're hungry," I said.

  "W-w-would you see what breakfast is for?"

  I climbed off the bed and went into the kitchen. Joe was sitting at the table in front of a fan, drinking iced tea. Corrine stood at the stove. I had the feeling that the silence between them had been going on a while. It had legs. I reported to Isabel! that huevos rancheros was on the menu. She smiled and nodded.

  Back in the kitchen, I understood the reason for the silence: Not only Isabella's speech but her moods were becoming strangely askew. I followed Conine's stare out the window to the sky. A jet left a vapor trail high in the blue and I could see the twinkling wedge of silver out ahead of it. It seemed like a symbol for how high and perilous a life can be, but mostly was just a jet in the sky. Far out to the west, a dark blanket of clouds eased toward us, unfolding over the horizon like a shroud for morning.

  "Dr. Nesson says tomorrow," Corrine said, turning to face me. "They'll operate at six in the morning. It will take six hour: He doesn't want us to wait. He's worried, and so am I."

  I thought it odd that Izzy hadn't mentioned it, and Corrine anticipated this thought.

  "She can't keep anything straight," she said. "She forgot her own name earlier this morning."

  I joined their silence. Images of the night before, of Alice's frozen arms embracing my chilled neck, mingled in my mind with those of my wife, not thirty feet away now. I would have loved a Bloody Mary.

  "Russell," said Joe. "When Izzy was young, Corrine dropped her on her head. The doctors said she was fine. Do you think that maybe—"

  "No," I snapped. "That's ridiculous."

  I tried to tell Joe and Corrine that it wasn't their fault, that the tumor had simply happened. But I could almost see my words running off of them, I could feel them shouldering not only all the blame there was, but all the blame they could imagine. I recognized what they were doing because I had done it myself—for months—just after Isabella was diagnosed. We believe, in our helplessness, that the amount of blame we can carry somehow lightens the burden of the one we love. It is a heavy load to bear, but it is nothing compared to what the victims themselves are asked to carry.

  Nothing is quite so terrible about cancer as the way its sufferers are encouraged to believe that they have caused their disease. Legions of pop thinkers, from psychologists to MDs (few of whom have had cancer, I might add), have adopted the stance that there is something deficient in the psyche of the ill, something that has allowed them to "create" their cancer. And as Isabella—and thousands like her—embarked on her battle for life, she read these books, listened to these lectures, watched these videos (all expensive, all packaged with advertisements for more product) promising her that, just as she had created her own disease, so she could also create her own cure. She meditated. She ate a macrobiotic diet. She imaged little cells eating up her tumor. She exercised. She was acupunc
tured, acupressured, energy-channeled; she had her medians unblocked, her colon flushed with enemas, her stomach filled with chlorella, ginseng, miso, royal jelly, astragalus, echinacea, amino acids, two-phase enzyme supplements, interaction supplements, vitamins in megadose, minerals by the ton—in short, enough fringe treatment and fraudulent "medicine" to render her, at one point, little more than a feverish, diarrheic mess who couldn't even stand the smell of her own body. As instructed she told herself she was beautiful. When nothing worked, she did everything all over again. But still the cancer grew. And she knew by then whose fault that was: hers, of course, hers alone; it was a simple outgrowth of her imperfect mind. She had created it. She had encouraged it. She deserved it. She wanted it.

  But then, something began to change.

  Slowly, Isabella—always willing to blame herself first, so many of us are—started getting mad. It started with a near silence that lasted for days. She eased off the potions, pills, and supplements. She ate something besides tofu and fake cheese made from soybeans. She stopped watching tapes of doctors exhorting her to imagine her tumor, change her defective character, take responsibility for creating her illness. She brooded; she wept; she screamed.

  One evening, she said to me, "You know something Russ? It's arrogance. Pure arrogance."

  "What is?"

  "The idea I did this to myself. I did not do this to myself. I was happy. My mother loved me. My father did not abuse me. No one did. I was a happy kid. I tried to be good. I smoked some cigarettes when I was fourteen, but that was all. I drank some. I smoked a joint when I was sixteen, but when I heard a tape of how I played piano stoned, I never tried it again. When I was twenty-three, I married the man I loved. I got up one morning, had a seizure, found out there was something growing in my brain. It was cancer. And I'll tell you something—I hate it. I even hate the word cancer, the way it hisses off our tongues, so eager to be said. I didn't create it, no matter what these... these... these bliss ninnies try to make me believe. They're selling snake oil in a New Age wrapper, that's all. They're in the cancer business, the phony-hope trade. I'll take the rap for almost anything—I'm a Mexican and a Catholic, right? But I refuse to take the blame anymore for this. I'm going to win; I'm going to beat this thing. Damn those people, those... parasites. Russ, what is it with this country? We think we control the whole world and everything on it—and beyond that, the moon, all the way from the heavens down to the metastatic level of the cells in our bodies. Where did we ever get so arrogant to believe that? Did it do any good? What did it get us but a place stripped of the people and animals who used to live here, a sky full of satellites and floating junk, a nation full of people who believe they can cure cancer by eating right? How can we be so arrogant to believe that cancer is our own fault? I want to live, Russ. I'm going to beat this thing. But I'm not going to accept responsibility for what's happened. I feel invaded. I feel cheated. I love you and I love life, but I hate what's happened to me. I'm going to fight with the tools I've got—love and hate. That's what I've got for weapons. You know what cancer is? Cancer is little cells growing where they shouldn't. Nobody knows why they start or how to stop them, but nobody can cure a cold, either. Cancer is not a symptom. Cancer is not a metaphor. It is not a theme. Mailer said that cancer is the growth of madness denied. Mailer is full of shit. The only thing cancer is for sure is bad luck. It's a vicious little bastard and I want it out of me. This is not a journey into myself to discover my secret desire to die."