Chivalry Is Dead

by Bennie Newsome

  God she was thin. How much weight had she lost? Jesus, it had only been four days.

  “You okay?” Charlie asked.

  “Did I hear right? He’s coming back tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, he heard you cough.”

  “I tried so hard…God I tried to hold it in, Charlie, but I couldn’t, it tickled,” she said, tears coming again.

  “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.” Charlie kneeled down, resting Anna on his thigh. He wrapped an arm around Mirabel.

  “But it’s not. What are we going to do?”

  “I’ve got an idea. I need you to rest, though, or this will never work. I’m gonna put Anna down, then I’ll help you to bed. When you wake up I’ll tell you exactly what we’re going to do.”

  Mirabel looked at him, hope flickering in her eyes.

  “Okay, Charlie.”

  ***

  After everyone was asleep Charlie made himself a sandwich and sat down on the couch. He flipped on the TV, only half hearing the newsman spout the same old spiel about how the increasingly excessive restrictions on common freedoms were a necessary evil. How freedom itself was no longer a right but a luxury. He tuned him out as he ate, formulating his plan. He was going to the square. He needed medicine, and that was the only place you could find it anymore.

  He had to think of Anna. If—and that was a big fat if—Mirabel did pass while he was gone, she would go after Anna. As sick as it was, she would. The mother that breastfed the child would return to the child to feed on her flesh. God was twisted. Charlie wanted to take her with him, but that was not an option. If he did, he’d risk losing her to some unknown fate. The kind of people that dealt in medicine dealt in all sorts of other shady things.

  No. He’d have to leave her with Mirabel and pray she didn’t die while he was gone. He thought of waking her, telling her his plan, and tying her up to the bedframe.

  She wouldn’t go for it though, he knew that, and he didn’t think he could tie a knot that would hold her if she died anyway.

  No. Instead he’d make sure Anna was well fed, changed, and dressed comfortably. Then he’d lock her in the wooden chest and lock that in the basement. That way if Mirabel did go, Anna would have a little more time for…for what? For him to come back and save her from her dead mother?

  If I think about it anymore I’ll talk myself out of it.

  They had almost nothing left of any value. Mirabel’s jewelry was mostly fake, Charlie had a few Anti-Reanimation Bonds, and they had almost $600 put up in the bedroom closet, saved for a trip to Santa Cruz next summer. He grabbed it all and checked his watch: 9:23—I’ll be back in less than an hour. Please don’t let anything happen until I’m back.

  ***

  The further North he got the worse things started to look. The housing projects gave way to industrial buildings and soon he was in old Down Town, just a few blocks from the square. He drove slowly, looking at the men on the corners. They stood against the brick buildings, laughing with one another, smoking cigarettes, passing around a bottle of something. They seemed not to notice the world around them falling to pieces.

  He came to a stoplight and a young girl in a hooded parka approached his car on the passenger side. He looked away, trying to pretend he didn’t see her, but when she tried the handle he looked over. Her bright eyes shone in the darkness and she shivered, shrugging her shoulders and raising her mittened hands, palms upturned as if to ask ‘What the hell, you letting me in?’

  She was very pretty. Her caramel skin looked moist as it reflected the red of the stop light. Her full lips glistened. She looked at him. The light changed and he could see her face better in the bright green. There was a scar on her upper lip, and the yellow-green of a healing bruise on her left cheek. She started to turn and Charlie hit the automatic locks. She let herself in, buckled up, and took off her mittens.

  “Doesn’t this thing have a heater?” she asked, not even looking over at Charlie.

  He turned a knob on the dash and a blast of warm air washed across the front seat.

  “Ahh,” she said, holding her hands up, squirming in her seat, “Turn right there.”

  Charlie turned.

  “That’s my place. If you want to go somewhere else it’s an extra twenty.”

  “I need medicine.”

  “What?”

  “My wife is sick, I need antibiotics.”

  She looked at him, smiling at first, then frowning.

  “I can pay you,” Charlie said. He pulled the car over and stopped.

  “I know a couple of guys. I’ll give you an address for… forty bucks?”

  Charlie pulled back out on the road. “I’ll give you sixty, but you have to take me there.”

  “Eighty.”

  “Okay, what’s your name?”

  “Grace. You?”

  “Charlie.”

  She led him deep into the square to a motel called The Knotty Pine. She had him park in the shadows while she went up to the lighted window at front. Charlie watched while she argued with the cashier. Grace pounded her fist against the window and screamed something Charlie couldn’t make out. Then she walked back to the car, coming up on Charlie’s side. He rolled down the window.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, got the money?”

  Charlie looked up at her, hesitated, then reached into his jacket pocket, feeling for a few bills, not wanting to pull out the whole wad in front of Grace.

  He counted out four twenties and handed them over.

  “Come on,” Grace said, and walked up to room number twenty-five.

  Charlie was just catching up to her when the door opened and a short sturdy man came out. He was screaming into his cell phone.

  “Tell him it’s done! Over!” he said. “Gracie, baby, where you been?” He grabbed her by the ear and turned it until she screamed, dropping to her knees.

  “Hey, come on,” Charlie said, stepping forward.

  The squat man let go of Grace’s ear and pushed Charlie so hard he fell on his ass.

  “Earl, you asshole, he has money!”

  “So, you got some money, do ya dickhead,” Earl kicked Charlie.

  “Hey come on, I don’t want no trouble.”

  Earl kicked him again, and Charlie scuttled along backwards, scooting towards his car.

  “Trouble? It ain’t no trouble.” Earl kicked him again. “No trouble at all, dickhead.”

  Charlie felt his heart pumping, the blood hot and pounding in his ears. A flush of adrenalin shot out across his body, flooding every limb with a loose unreal feeling. He stood up.

  “I just want some medicine!” he screamed and slammed his fist into the side of the squat man’s face.

  Charlie watched his hand connect, watched the man’s face jerk to the side. But he didn’t go down. He looked back at Charlie, unbelieving.

  “You son of a bitch,” Earl said, and reached into his back pocket, bringing out a switchblade. “You want to play, come on, let’s play.”

  Charlie backed away, holding his hands up.

  “Come on, please, I just want some medicine.”

  “Yeah, I got your fucking medicine.”

  There was a sharp crack and Earl fell forward, his switchblade skittered across the parking lot. Grace stood behind him, shaking, holding a gun which was now pointed at Charlie.

  “Jesus! Jesus, what did you do?!” Charlie held his hands higher.

  She lowered the gun and held up a package. “You wanted some medicine, right?” She tossed it to Charlie.

  He caught it, looked at Grace and saw some movement behind her. The cashier at the window was peering out at the commotion. She had a phone to her ear.

  “Come on,” Charlie said, “We gotta get out of here.”

  He ran for the car and Grace followed.

  She showed him the way back to her house. Charlie pulled over to let her out.

  “You know its past curfew. You can come inside if you want.”

  Charlie pulled out a hu
ndred dollar bill and passed it to Grace. “Thanks, but I better take my chances.”

  She nodded her head, turned and walked away.

  “Hey,” Charlie said.

  Grace stopped, “Yeah?”

  “You forgot your gun.” He held it up by the trigger guard.

  “Keep it.”

  “But I don’t—” The door shut behind her. “Great…”

  He dropped the gun in the glove-box.

  ***

  Charlie drove backroads the whole way with his headlights turned off. He made it all the way to his street without seeing a single patrol car.

  Once home, safely waiting in the shadows of the front porch, he allowed himself to breathe.

  He reached beneath his shirt, clutched the package of antibiotics and smiled.

  The sound of a small engine broke his concentration and he ducked behind one of the planters on the porch. The cruiser’s headlights cast elongated shadows across the house.

  What the hell am I doing? I’m losing it.

  Charlie stood up, dusted his pants and listened to the quiet as the cruiser drove off. Things hadn’t always been so quiet. He remembered when things were alive this time of night. Back when he was a kid.

  The sky was blue-black, the last remnants of sunlight being chased away by the darkness. It was Charlie’s turn to be

  “it”. He counted on the light pole, “48, 49, 50. Ready or not, here I come.”

  There was a hiding spot that was always used by someone, and that was the first place you checked when you were it: the dugout shed behind Bud and Frances’s side tree.

  Charlie B-lined for the tree and Adam popped out. He seemed to be surrendering, but at the last minute he decided to break. He went toward the street and Charlie chased him. The car that came around the corner never saw him. The driver was a young girl, nineteen maybe: a skinny blonde driving her boyfriend’s Fairlane convertible; her boyfriend sitting in the passenger’s seat. She was buckled but he wasn’t. Charlie just missed the metal, but he watched Adam get mowed over. Adam was dead when he came out from underneath the back of the car. The blonde hit the brakes, sending her boyfriend flying. He came down on the concrete head first, and then lay there, his eyes opened, looking surprised.

  All the kids came out and gathered on the sidewalk. They stood back at a safe distance. None of them had ever seen anyone die before, and none had seen anyone come back either.

  “Jesus, is he dead? Somebody should go help him,” Charlie said.

  Nobody moved, nobody said a thing. They looked at the two bodies in the road. Adam lay behind the car, a twisted mass of limbs, and the man that flew out of the front appeared to have snapped his neck.

  “He’s still breathing, see?” Ben said.

  The man in the road popped up, his neck bent at an impossible angle. He yelled out in agony and then looked at the kids with his sideways eyes.

  Charlie’s dad came up behind them right then and gripped Charlie on the shoulder.

  “Time to get inside, boys,” he said.

  They all jumped.

  “Get home now, Charlie. All of ya. Get home now. Lock your doors.”

  The kids scattered, but Charlie hesitated.

  “Dad?”

  “Go on, Charlie, it’ll be okay.”

  Charlie turned and ran for the house. He was up the stairs and on the porch when he heard the blonde scream.

  He turned to see the man with the crooked neck at the driver door of the Fairlane, the blonde struggling with her seatbelt. Charlie’s Dad yelled at him, but the man didn’t stop, so his Dad fired.

  A huge chunk of the man’s head came off but he continued to reach for the blonde. His Dad took another shot, this one hitting at the bent side of the man’s neck. His skin exploded and his head toppled to the floor. Charlie ran into the house, locked the door and slammed his hands over his ears. Another gunshot came from outside. Then another. His Dad came in about ten minutes later. The look on his face said everything. Charlie knew that Adam had come back, too. And Charlie knew that his dad had to shoot him.

  “I’m sorry, Charlie,” his Dad said.

  “Huh?” Charlie blinked his eyes.

  He felt the package in his hands and remembered Mirabel and Anna. The quiet. They must both be sleeping still. He expected to hear Anna screaming when he got home, but she wasn’t.

  She’s dead. They’re both dead. Mirabel died while I was gone and she ate our baby. NO! NO! Don’t think like that.

  Charlie shook his head.

  “They’re both asleep, everything’s okay.”

  He opened the front door.

  The kitchen light was on. Bad sign. The door that led to the basement was in there, and Charlie made sure he turned off the light before he left.

  “Mirabel? You up, baby?”

  Nothing.

  Charlie set his keys down on an end table and grabbed the fireplace poker before he walked into the kitchen.

  Boxes of cereal and crackers had been overturned, and there were faint streaks of blood on the counter tops. Clear slivers of broken glass were scattered across the floor. The basement door was left ajar.

  “Mirabel?”

  Nothing.

  Charlie pulled the door open a little further. Droplets of blood spattered the stairs and there were more smears on the railing.

  He raised the poker and readied himself as he descended the stairs. He heard something move. When he got to the bottom, he saw them. Mirabel sat in an old rocker next to the chest that he’d locked Anna in. She was holding the baby, her face smeared with blood. Her hands covered. The baby was swaddled in a bloody blanket.

  Mirabel was sleeping.

  Did the dead rest?

  He moved slowly toward her left side, trying to angle in and get a better view of his baby. He hated himself now. His selfishness. He and Anna could have had a life if he’d been willing to let Mirabel go. If he’d let them take her away. But instead, he gambled and now he had no one. Anna cried, and Mirabel stirred.

  Charlie raised the poker and Mirabel looked up at him, fear in her eyes.

  “Mirabel!”

  She put the pacifier in Anna’s mouth, looked up at Charlie, and shook her head.

  Charlie dropped the poker. “Mirabel, you okay?”

  She shook her head,

  “We’re gonna be okay, baby.”

  Charlie pulled the package out from underneath his arm.

  “I was calling you and calling you…”

  “Mirabel look—”

  “Anna was screaming and I was calling you, but you wouldn’t come…”

  She stared off past a myriad of stacked cardboard boxes as if she were seeing some whole new place.

  “You wouldn’t come.”

  “Look.” Charlie held out the package but she didn’t take it. He tore open the container and poured out a couple of large capsules. Then he reached for her hand and saw that it was bandaged crudely with a piece of her shirt.

  “Knocked over a glass in the kitchen,” she said.

  “I can’t see how you made it down here.”

  “She was screaming, Charlie. I didn’t know what happened to you. I—”

  “It’s okay, we’re gonna be okay. Here. Take these.”

  Mirabel looked at the capsules in her hand and then looked up at Charlie.

  He nodded and Mirabel swallowed the medicine.

  ***

  The rising sun bled into the bedroom and Charlie awoke. He sat halfway up, resting on his elbow.

  “Mirabel, you up?”

  He shook her.

  “Hey, you want some breakfast?”

  She didn’t respond. He slid his hand up the inside of her shirt. She felt cold. He yanked his hand away, and then reached for her again, rolling her over.

  She looked like death itself; face deeply lined, ashen, eyes drooping, lips pale-blue.

  “Oh my God!”

  Charlie backed away.

  Mirabel opened her eyes slowly. She looked at C
harlie, parted her blue lips, and whispered, “I’m cold.”

  “Okay, baby. We’ll get you warm.”

  He wrapped the blankets around her and started a hot bath.

  In the kitchen he heated a kettle and made her a cup of tea. Charlie looked at the pills. She’d been feisty last night, now she was on death’s doorstep. He had to wonder if he’d hurt things more than helped them.

  He undressed his wife and laid her in the tub just as he had the day before when the Census man came.

  The Census man!

  Jesus, he forgot: Norm. He’d be back today. God only knew what time.

  Anna started crying in her crib.

  “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  Mirabel nodded.

  He changed Anna’s diaper, heated up a bottle and dressed her in some warm clothes. He threw a few of her things in a diaper bag and laid her back in the crib. He packed a suitcase for Mirabel and himself, and then pulled the car into the garage.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Her lips weren’t blue anymore and her face had a pinkish color to it.

  “It hurts.”

  Charlie pulled her out of the bath, dried her off, and dressed her in her winter clothes. He carried her into the garage and buckled her into the front seat. Then he put Anna into the car seat and went back into the house for the bags.

  On his way back to the garage, bags in hand, the doorbell rang and he froze. He walked softly to the front door and looked out the peephole. Norm was standing there, waiting.

  He rang the doorbell again.

  Charlie watched him a minute, hoping he’d just go away.

  Norm pulled out his walkie-talkie.

  “I’ve got a possible 6-4 at a 2-9-2-6 Telegraph Avenue. That’s T as in Terry, E as in Evan, L as in Larry—”

  Charlie ran back to the garage, stuffed the bags in the trunk. He checked on Mirabel, she was going cold again. He opened the glove box and grabbed Grace’s gun. He cocked the hammer, stuffed it into his pants and hurried back to the front door. He opened it.

  “—a unit with—Oh, hang on a minute. Scratch that, residents have just come to the door.” Norm lowered his walkie-talkie. “Mr. Tabern, what’s going on? I’ve been ringing the bell out here for five minutes.”