To Probe A Beating Heart

by Wren, John B

  Sunday morning came with a beam of light from his window crossing his face. It was early, around 6:30 and Ellie was surely still asleep. Averell stood and looked around his room and remembered his episode with the squirrel. He wanted urgently to do it again and started to dress. Sarah was awake and playing loudly in her room. She would certainly wake Ellie and Averell would be tasked with “God knows what.”

  Averell finished dressing and started down the stairs when Sarah came out of her room and dropped a plastic cup with little pink Lego pieces all over the floor. Averell went back to Sarah “SSHHHH, mommy’s asleep, let’s be quiet.” He picked up the Legos, led her quietly down the stairs and asked her if she wanted breakfast, “ and then we can watch some cartoons, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Averell poured cereal in two bowls and some orange juice in a small glass. They sat at the kitchen table and ate their breakfast, quietly. When finished, Averell cleaned up the kitchen and turned on the television. As they sat there, quietly watching the cartoons, a man came down the stairs with his shoes in his hand and car keys at the ready. Averell was surprised and Sarah was afraid, she screamed “Who’s that?”

  Averell was frozen in place as the man went quickly out the door and Ellie came down the stairs with her robe flying open behind her. “What are you doing?”

  “We’re watching TV” said Averell.

  “Why aren’t you still in bed?”

  “I woke up and Sarah was hungry, so we had breakfast,” said Averell.

  Sarah looked at Ellie and said, “Mommy, who was that man?”

  “We will talk about that later, you should still be in bed.”

  Ellie was angry that her visitor had been seen and she did not feel like explaining. She diverted attention from her friend by criticizing Averell for getting up early. Averell thought that he had done a good thing, and he was being criticized.

  “Go to your room and stay there ’til I call you.”

  Averell went back up the stairs. About an hour later he heard some movement in the hall outside his room. Then it stopped. He put aside the book that he was reading, quietly opened the door enough to see Ellie and Sarah walking toward the stairs. They were dressed to go somewhere, Ellie was wearing a bright blue blouse and blue denim shorts and white tennis shoes. Sarah was wearing a pink blouse, denim shorts and white shoes. They were dressed as if they were twins. He thought they looked silly and he went back to his room and sat in his corner with his book. He made no noise waiting until he heard the front door open, then close and the lock click. He went to Sarah’s room and looked out the window. They were getting in the car. Averell waited and watched the car pull out and go down the street. He went down stairs and paced back and forth wondering what was happening. He thought that they would be back shortly and decided to go back to his room and wait. He sat in the corner and looked at the alarm clock, it was 8:24.

  “They will be back in a few minutes,” and he picked up his book.

  “Yeah, sure they will,” said Stelian, sarcastically.

  At 12:30 Averell went down stairs and made a peanut butter sandwich and poured a glass of milk. He sat at the kitchen table and ate, then he cleaned up and went up to the top of the stairs and sat down and waited. He waited until he had to use the bathroom. He looked in his room at the alarm clock and noted that the time was 2:54. As he coming out of the bathroom, the front door opened. Sarah came in and Ellie behind her.

  Sarah came up the stairs and saw Averell. “You couldn’t come ’cause you’re bad. Mommy said so.”

  “Averell, I told you to stay in your room ’til I called you.”

  “I had to use the bathroom”

  “Averell, get in your room, and stay there, understand, l will call you when I want to see your face!”

  “Mommy said, you are a bad boy, she hates you.”

  “She hates you,” repeated Stelian.

  Three hours later Averell was called downstairs and Ellie said, “Set the table for dinner.”

  “Set the table,” repeated Stelian again.

  * * *

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Do you hate me now . . .

  The week passed and Averell’s punishment ended and he was allowed

  out of his room. The time spent in solitary was utilized in planning and

  preparing for his next visit to the woods. He wanted to have better tools for his sessions with the small animals that he captured. Sticks were crude, he did not see them as dependable and they would be easily broken. He was playing with the wire cutters that Steve had left laying about and a hanger from his closet. He used the wire cutters to cut the hanger into two pieces about ten inches in length and bent one end into a loop with a short arm sticking out to one side. He thought about wrapping tape around the loop end to be used as a handle and cut the other end at an angle leaving a sharp point. He could use this as a probe to pierce an animal’s skin. One was not enough, so he cut three hangers and bent the pieces into six probes of close but different lengths. These were his new probes, they would not break, they would be easy to cleanup and he could hide them in his room, or in the woods. As he sat in his room, he spread them out on the floor and pretended to select specific probes as a doctor would select a scalpel. Averell thought about Ellie punishing him for anything he did, he thought about Ellie scolding him for things he did not do. He sat in his corner and said things he knew he was not allowed to say. “Bastard, damn it,” he muttered and with a stone he kept in his room, he rubbed the pointed ends of the wire probes into sharper points.

  “Damn it, she hates you”, added Stelian.

  His eyes would moisten, but he would not cry. His head would hurt, but he would not scream. He felt alone, and he hurt. He thought about Ellie, he thought about Sarah, he thought about the squirrel. He thought about pushing a sharp probe through Ellie’s neck. He could see the blood dripping on her white shoes, he could see her eyes, he could see her go limp. He smiled.

  “She hates you,” Stelian said again.

  “I hate her.” He sat in his corner thinking about going back to the woods. The next opportunity came when Ellie went out with a man and Charlotte was in charge. Averell waited until Charlotte was busy with her current boyfriend, then went out through his bedroom window, across the garage roof, to the tree, down to the ground and straight to the woods. He took a few minutes to check the area and be sure he was alone, he then built a small fire, retrieved the trap and set it up with bait, sat down with his probes and continued to sharpen them. It did not take long for the trap to snap closed. Averell lined up his probes on a log and walked over to the trap. He had caught a rabbit, a grayish colored rabbit that had almost achieved full development. This one was going to pay for Averell’s latest punishment. He used his new probes, first pinning the rabbit with the movable partition, then aligning the first of his probes, he slowly pushed it into the rabbits abdomen . The second, third and fourth probes were similarly inserted into the rabbit’s body and sometimes through the it’s flesh and out the other side. He stared at the rabbits eyes, the rabbit stared back. Averell inserted the remaining probes one at a time and watched his victim’s eyes. Each probe caused pain, that pain was registered in the rabbit’s eyes. After inserting all six probes in the rabbit over about twenty minutes and moving them in different directions, the rabbit stopped moving.

  “Do you hate me now?”

  Later that night while sitting alone in his room, Averell took out his bag of probes and looked at them. He went into the bathroom and got a wet paper towel and a dry one. He cleaned each of the probes carefully then laid them on the floor and arranged them from longest to shortest. He sat up straight and smiled looking at them. These were his special probes, he made them, he sharpened them, he used them and he was going to use them again. The next day Averell walked out of the house and started toward the woods with his bag of probes.

  “Where are you going?,” demanded Ellie.

  “Outside,” and he continued to walk without pau
sing.

  “Where are you going? I don’t like her,” said Stelian.

  “Neither do I,” said Averell.

  Ellie stood in the doorway and glared at him, but he did not see her staring, he walked down the street toward the woods. Ellie watched for a minute, then turned back into the kitchen mumbling, “I hate that little bastard.” Sarah was standing behind Ellie and heard the words, bastard, hate.

  When Averell arrived at the little campsite and saw the four boys sitting around the fire pit talking. He hid himself and listened. The boys talked about different things, baseball, vacations, girls, school and parents.

  “I hate my dad, he hits me a lot and makes me clean my room or the garage or the basement or sweep the porch or cut the grass. Always something for me to do, he don’t give me no breaks” said George.

  “Yeah, my dad does the same thing, always wants me to do work,

  we’re supposed to be on summer vacation, and I want to have fun,” said Tom. “Don, what about you, is your dad nasty?”

  “Nope.” That was the first time that Averell heard Don talk.

  “Nope,” repeated Stelian.

  “You guys complain too much, don’t let ‘em get to ya,” said Frank. “You should get up in the morning and do one of the jobs that you know he’s gonna’ dump on ya, the one that he would want you to do first. Then say you’re gonna’ meet with the guys and be back later. It works fer me. I cut the grass yesterday first thing, and knew today he would bitch about my room, so I cleaned it up before he said anything. See, I do one job and split, he’s happy that I did something and forgets ‘bout the other things, right Don?”

  “Yep,” said Don.

  “Yep,” repeated Stelian.

  Averell thought about that. It could work. Do a little something and Ellie would get off his back, “It’s worth a try.”

  “You never know, could work,” agreed Stelian.

  The next morning Averell got up and went down to the kitchen. He set the table for breakfast and swept the floor. It was still early and he went into the living room and straightened up, picking up the newspapers and putting several books back on a shelf. He dusted the entire room and was thinking about running the vacuum cleaner, but that would make too much noise. He looked at the windows. Dirty, he could go outside on the front porch and start there, then finish later inside. As he was looking for the window cleaner, Sarah came down the stairs and Averell said, “Do you want some cereal?”

  “Yes, but mommy is still asleep.”

  “That’s okay, she won’t mind if we eat now and she can later,” said Averell.

  “Are you going to make her coffee?” said Sarah.

  “I don’t know how,” replied Averell.

  “We should watch her and learn how,” suggested Stelian.

  “Good idea.”

  “What idea?” said Sarah.

  “Oh, I was just thinking about something.”

  “I don’t like her either,” said Stelian.

  Sarah was looking at the cereal boxes, trying to decide which one she would have when Ellie came down the stairs. She walked into the kitchen and stopped, paused, looked around seeing all that Averell had done and said nothing. She walked over to the coffee pot and poured out the last of yesterday’s brew, rinsed the glass pot and refilled it with water. After pouring the water in the top of the machine, she took the old filter and grounds out and threw them away, put a new filter in the pot and added three full scoops of fresh coffee, a dash of salt and put a pat of butter on top of the fresh grounds. Then she plugged it in and pushed the button. She sat down next to Sarah and said, “Good morning Sarah, how are you today?”

  Averell knew that Ellie liked a kind of cereal that he did not, and it was on the table, obviously for her. Sarah had her multi-colored cereal and Averell had the ‘O’ shaped generic cereal that only he ate. Ellie still had not said anything to Averell. The coffee finished brewing and Ellie noted a mug on the table, picked it up and filled it with her first caffeine fix of the morning. Averell finished his cereal, rinsed out his bowl and put it in the dishwasher. As he was walking out of the kitchen he looked back at the table, Ellie was turned away from him looking at the newspaper and Sarah was looking past Ellie at Averell with an evil, twisted grin.

  Averell went to his room and picked up his bag of probes, went back downstairs and started toward the door. Sarah was coming out of the kitchen and looked at Averell. He looked past Sarah at Ellie, still ignoring him and Sarah very quietly said, “She hates you, you’re a bastard and she hates you.” She ran up the stairs giggling.

  Averell turned and looked at Sarah as she started up the stairs, then turned again and walked out the front door as Ellie came into the living room. She was about to challenge Averell when she noticed that the room had been cleaned. As she stared at the room, Averell walked down the front steps and turned toward the woods. It had worked, Ellie did not say a word and Averell was free, for the time being.

  “It worked, we’re free,” said Stelian.

  “Maybe, maybe it will work again, we will see.”

  He got to the woods and no one else was in sight. Perfect. He set the trap and sat down to wait, holding his probes, thinking about which one was best and which ones needed more sharpening. As he sat there casually scanning the surrounding area for a flat rock, he heard someone coming. It was three of the boys that he overheard before. No chance to hide, he put his probes in the bag and put the bag under some leaves under a bush.

  “Hey, look who’s here, it’s Skinny Danker,” said Tom.

  “Skinny?,” repeated Stelian, incredulously.

  “Yeah, what are you doin’ here?” said George.

  “Same as us,” said Frank, “lookin’ for a place to hide from dad.”

  “He don’t got no dad, the guy ran away,” said Tom, “And his mom is a ho.”

  “Not nice, Chubby,” said Frank, “you get pissed when I call you fat, don’t you think Danker has feelings too?”

  “Hey, Danker, why does Lardo there think your mom’s a ho?” asked George.

  “Cause my dad says that she has all kind a guys sleepin’ there over

  night. And that’s bein’ a ho,” said Tom.

  Averell didn’t like anybody talking that way about Ellie. Even though he agreed to himself that she had a lot of boyfriends, still, that was none of their business. He sat there and glared at Tom.

  “Hey Tom, you hit a nerve, Danker looks like he could hit you with a big stick” said George.

  “Cool it you butt heads, he’s just like the rest of us and your old man would jump in the rack with anything he could, so shut it!” said Frank.

  “Hey Danker we’re goin’ over to George’s place and rip off some cigarettes from his old man, wanna’ come?”

  “I gotta’ clean the windows today, but thanks.”

  The three stayed for another few minutes and were about to leave when the trap snapped shut. “Hey, that sounded like my trap,” said Tom.

  “Trap?” said Averell, “Trap?”

  “Yeah, I lost it a coupl’a weeks ago, did you find it?”

  “What’s it a trap for, I mean what do you catch with it?” said Averell.

  “You know squirrels and little things like that.”

  “What for?” said Averell.

  “Where is it, I heard it?”

  “Which way did you hear it from?” asked George.

  “I don’t know—.”

  They all looked for a few minutes each went in a different direction, Averell went toward where he knew it was and pushed some bushes aside, “Nothing here.”

  A few minutes later Frank said, “You’re hearing things, let’s get some cigs’, Hey Danker, last chance?”

  “No, maybe some other time.”

  The boys left and Averell went to the trap. A squirrel sat there looking exhausted and skittish. Averell picked up the cage and took it back to the camp fire circle. He emptied his probes on a tree stump and painstakingly selected the one he
wanted. He placed it where he thought it could go through without causing the squirrel to die. He pushed and the squirrel barked at him, he pushed harder and the probe broke the skin and entered the squirrel’s chest cavity. He slowed the probe and picked up another one. He set it at the connection of the front arm to the chest and pushed. The squirrel felt this one more than the first. Averell was enjoying the squirrels eyes when his probe hit something and blood spurted out of the wound. The squirrel thrashed and stopped moving. It had stopped breathing and was dead.

  “Very disappointing,” said Averell, “I wanted this to last longer.”

  “Yes much longer,” agreed Stelian.

  He decided that he had to learn more about how things were built. How a squirrel was put together so that he could probe the animal without causing it to die, at least not until he was ready. He wanted to be able to avoid hitting a vein or a vital organ and end his fun session. He wondered where he could find a book that would tell him that. Then he remembered going to a library with Allen. The library was his answer.

  Over the next three weeks Averell got up in the morning and did a few chores, the house was constantly in order, the windows were clean, the floor was swept and the grass was cut without Ellie saying anything. She began to leave him alone to do as he wished. When he went out, she did not question where he was going, she let him go. If he came home late, she said nothing. Averell was in charge of his own life and he enjoyed it. Night time was Averell’s chance to think about the woods, his probes, the library, anything he wanted to think about, he could at night, without interruption. Almost.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Stelian.

  Averell often turned out the lights and lay in bed thinking, Ellie would assume that he was asleep, and Sarah was generally already sleeping. He was in charge of his thought time. He imagined many things as any young boy might. Driving a car, graduating from high school, getting a job, moving away from Ellie and Sarah, spending more time in the woods. He thought about girls his own age only once in a while and he did not dwell on them. They were interesting, but at the same time more annoying than fun. He thought about using his probes on different animals. He thought about using them on Ellie. He thought about using them on Sarah.