Blue Tears

by Ninie Hammon

  Just there, not demanding attention like Bundy. Just there, in the special way Sparky had of being there so it made you feel better just because he was.

  The little girl had been confused when she saw the brand new, unworn minion blanket just like her tattered one, then she had grabbed both of them and dragged them behind her as she followed the dogs’ sniffing progress around the new belongings in the den.

  When she woke up from her mini-nap, Bailey showed her the studio and the little girl was fascinated with the paints and canvasses.

  “Mommy lets me paint,” she said, and a cloud of gloom settled over her.

  Somehow, Bailey held it together.

  “Then you need to paint her a picture, a surprise for her when she gets back.”

  Bethany brightened as Bailey set her up with a small pallet and dabs of color in front of a canvas leaned against the wall. Bundy had been banished from the room after he tried to lick the paint off the canvas.

  By early afternoon, Bethany had turned whiny and quarrelsome, clearly in need of more than a mini-nap. Bailey hadn’t even taken her to see her “very own room” yet. The first floor of the big house was intimidating enough, though she had chased the dogs around and around it so often she seemed to be comfortable there. That would do for now.

  So instead of taking her upstairs, Bailey took her to go potty, then cuddled her up with both minion blankets in the rocking chair in the living room. Not like the one she and Aaron had gotten, like the one she’d seen in María’s apartment … like the one she would find to purchase somewhere, if she had to search the whole state of West Virginia.

  This chair was a normal rocking chair, back and forth. Sparky and the puppy had each learned by painful experience to stay away from it, tails at the ready, when someone was rocking.

  Bethany was half crying, half whining, rubbing her eyes, wailing her litany of “I want my mommy.”

  Bailey swallowed the lump in her throat and promised María would return “soon.” Then she started rocking and singing,

  “Somewhere out there, beneath a pumpkin pie.”

  Bethany looked up in surprise and delight.

  “Mommy sings that song!”

  Bailey almost lost it at that revelation. Of course María did! Of course she sang their special song to Bethany. But the image of her doing it so clogged Bailey’s throat she was barely able to get the words out.

  “I told you that your mommy and I were sisters, remember.”

  The little girl nodded, interested in that revelation now for the first time.

  “When we were little girls, we made up the song because—”

  “There was two boys who eated your pieces of pie and you didn’t get any.”

  “That’s right. Not a crumb.”

  “Mommy said you was mad.”

  “We were. And hungry.” She began to sing again, because her throat was still too tight to talk.

  “Someone’s eaten my piece and I’ll get none tonight.”

  “Somewhere out there, someone’s pretending to cry, saying they didn’t eat it—”

  Then Bethany burst out, “But that’s a big fat lie!”

  The little girl looked up at her and giggled. Bailey kissed her on the forehead and continued to sing.

  “And even though I know there’s not a crumb left in my cup …”

  Bethany sang along with her, “… it helps to tink dat they’ll get sick and chuck the whole piece uuuuup …”

  “Somewhere out deeeeer …”

  Bailey sang the song over and over. Bethany had relaxed in her arms and now was snuggling close.

  So she kept singing.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Sergei Wassily Mikhailov stared out the window of Maxwell Crenshaw’s outer office. He didn’t see the placid waters of the lake reflecting the brilliant early afternoon sun and the piercing blue of the sky. He saw mist, colored mist.

  The mind of Sergei Wassily Mikhailov had always been a very crowded place. He had been able to make his way through the teeming throng of ideas with speed, confidence and assurance, as one moves through a giant library, looking at the sections of books, the categories, seeking out a particular author perhaps and then selecting the book. Opening the book and going to a particular chapter, a specific page …

  A single word on that page.

  He was that laser focused …

  Until he wasn’t.

  Until the day he went to the great library of his mind and found the crowd of ideas and thoughts and plans and memories shrouded in mist. A mist that swirled in whirlpools and eddies, changed colors like a kaleidoscope.

  He got lost in the mist.

  He could no longer see the book sections. They would appear out of the mist when he got near enough, but then he had to feel his way along the shelves, peering through the fog at the spines of the books, looking for … what?

  The word or idea or plan he was seeking would blink out of existence, out of his mind with a little sparkle like a soap bubble.

  Other days, there were great holes in the library, sections completely missing, gaping caverns in the floor, and if he was not careful he would step off into one of them and fall through, fall down into an endless blackness where darkness would gobble up his screams.

  But it wasn’t just the thoughts in his mind that would suddenly be in disarray, in ordered, linear logic one moment and a pile of scrambled confusion the next.

  Not just thought, but emotions.

  He had never been an emotional man. No, that was not accurate. He had always been an emotional man but he had harnessed the power of his emotions by suppressing them. He never showed anything he felt, learned how to keep silent as a second grader when the communists told him and his classmates that they must report their parents if they were dissenters.

  His parents talked at the table at night in whispers about bad things, with wrong ideas, and wicked speech.

  He told no one. Watched, waited, kept silent. His face expressionless.

  His father was a kind, loving man. But he drank too much sometimes and when he did he spoke too openly about forbidden things. He watched his mother try to rein him in, but it was only a matter of time before his father would destroy their family.

  Sergei would be taken away from them then, but he would gain nothing in the exchange. That was not acceptable. He would find a way to take as much advantage as he could.

  The morning after his father came home drunk, having said who knows what to who knows whom, Sergei went to the principal and reported him.

  He was clear, concise. Did not overstate. Showed no emotion of any kind.

  Showed none when they came and took his parents away, his mother crying and begging, his father’s face the color of fireplace ashes.

  Showed none when he was taken to the collective farm in a rural province and tasked with feeding the livestock, primarily pigs.

  Showed none ever.

  He had watched, listened, learned.

  To be respected, you must be feared.

  To be feared, you must be ruthless.

  To be ruthless, you must have no feelings.

  In all things, to gain great rewards, you must be willing to risk everything.

  And far more important — you must be prepared to lose what you risk and gain no reward at all.

  Learning that proved to be the most valuable and costly lesson of his life. It had toughened and hardened him as nothing else could have done. Indeed, it had made him the man he was today.

  Sergei Wassily Mikhailov is thin and hollow-chested with sallow skin the color of the underbelly of a frog and eyes as dark and cold as a Polar ocean. At twelve, his voice is only now beginning to change and he is no bigger than the girls who sit in obedient silence in seats on the other side of the gymnasium. Though he is not as large and well-muscled as the other boys, he is smarter, more shrewd and clever, totally fearless and wholly unencumbered by the slightest shred of human decency.

  He knows how this drill goes. T
he men in suits from the Central Committee, who sit with the headmaster at a table in the middle of the gym floor, have come to the commune farm to select the cream of this year’s crop of young people, the best and the brightest to be trained for service in up-the-food-chain positions in the party.

  The students here are those who have passed stringent qualifying tests that demonstrate not only their intellectual acuity but their dedication to the principles on which the Communist Party is founded and by which it governs the land. Mikhailov’s scores were the highest in the commune school, but those will be overshadowed by today’s display of brute force.

  Since he cannot win this competition, he must change the rules of engagement.

  The headmaster rises to describe the organization of the competition, the manner in which boys can challenge other boys in various sports and activities — weightlifting, wrestling, boxing — until a winner is selected who excels in them all. The last man standing.

  Before the headmaster can speak, Mikhailov rises from his spot in the middle of this year’s class of boys and makes his way down to the gym floor. It is such a breach of decorum, the headmaster is too surprised to object.

  “I wish to issue a challenge, sir,” he says. Some of the girls on the other side of the gym giggle.

  “Return to your seat immediately,” the headmaster rumbles, embarrassed by the behavior of a boy who clearly has not been properly disciplined.

  Mikhailov holds his ground. “Are you not seeking the strongest boy here?” Then he turns past the headmaster and addresses the committee members directly. “These activities will not show you who that boy is.”

  The headmaster starts toward him, a blue fire of rage in his eyes. If his plan is not successful, Mikhailov will not likely survive to compete again next year.

  “I instructed you to—”

  “Let the boy speak.”

  The words come from the man seated on the far right, his chair pushed back from the other two. He wears his suit a little too casually, sits with relaxed arrogance. Reaching into his pocket, he removes a crumpled package of cigarettes, taps one out across his finger and pulls out a lighter. When he speaks again, he breathes out the smoke he just inhaled.

  “I’d like to hear what he has to say.”

  Mikhailov makes eye contact with the man and each instinctively identifies a kindred spirit in the other. This is the man he must convince — a broad-shouldered bear of a man with a thick black mustache and hair that falls over his forehead. No one else matters and Mikhailov turns and focuses his full attention on him.

  “The kind of strength you’re looking for has nothing to do with how many pounds of weights you can lift or who you can pin to the mat. You are looking for leaders who possess strength of character, tenacity and absolute determination. You want unflinching devotion and dedication. You are seeking one who risks much to gain more, who never flinches, never blinks. Sweat is not an indicator of character.”

  This is the speech he’d been practicing for months as he fed slop to the pigs and threw feed to chickens. He had come prepared, even down to washing his hands thoroughly before he entered the room, and touching nothing.

  He pauses then, never taking his eyes off the man with the mustache.

  “What does indicate character?” the man asks.

  “Character is revealed … by challenge.”

  That’s how these competitions are organized. One boy challenges another. And the winner then challenges another.

  Without waiting to be granted permission, Mikhailov turns his back on the adults and faces the rows of boys, most regarding him in smirking derision.

  “I want to issue a challenge.”

  “To whom?” the headmaster asks, and all the boys sit up a little straighter, hoping to be the one selected to pound Mikhailov into the floor.

  “To everyone.” He makes an expansive gesture that includes all the boys. “Who among you has the courage, the determination, the strength of character to match mine?”

  Then he drops his voice to a whisper, and not a soul in the room dares to breathe as he continues.

  “Who among you is willing to do what Sergei Mikhailov is willing to do to demonstrate his loyalty and devotion?”

  He sweeps his gaze once slowly across them, then turns back to the mustached man, executing his command performance for an audience of one.

  He moves confidently, without a moment’s hesitation — he has practiced a hundred times … up to a point, that is. With his left hand, he reaches up to his face …

  This will hurt; how much he doesn’t know, but it will hurt. He must not flinch.

  … and digs his thumb into his right eye socket.

  The girls gasp as one. Someone squeaks but doesn’t scream.

  In a single, unhesitating motion, Mikhailov shoves his thumb deep into his eye socket … and pops out his right eye onto his palm.

  The girls scream then, all of them. The boys gasp. Boris Stavanovich leans over and vomits onto the gym floor.

  The pain is breathtaking. Blood pours down Mikhailov’s face, but he’s been as careful as he could be. He trimmed back his thumbnail so it would not damage the socket. His hands are clean to guard against infection.

  The eyeball rests in his palm, still attached to the socket by tendrils of something. He can’t see, what with only the left eye, and it is watering so profusely he can barely see anything at all.

  With a final yank, he pulls the eyeball free and holds it out on the palm of his hand to the rows of horrified boys.

  “I challenge you, any one of you, to be this strong, willing to sacrifice this much to demonstrate your loyalty and devotion.”

  No one voice can be heard above the hubbub of horrified reactions that do not require words.

  Then there is a sound that silences everyone. It comes from the mustached man, his seat pushed back from the others.

  He is applauding slowly.

  Clap.

  Clap.

  Clap.

  Mikhailov turns and looks at him with his remaining eye. The man is smiling. Then he leans his head back and bursts out laughing.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Bailey had gotten almost no sleep the night before in the car bearing her and her daughter through the darkness to the safety of the remote West Virginia mountains. As she sat rocking Bethany, reveling in the warmth of the child in her arms, she began to nod off herself.

  All at once, the room and the child and the rocking chair vanish.

  What appears instead is another reality. Like when she’d watched Macy Cosgrove get her hand stamped at the carnival. But this is different. The reality is strange. Everything is too bright and there are sparking flashes around the edges of her vision.

  This time, she thinks of sparks flying up from a railroad track when an engine suddenly hits the brakes. Metal scraping against metal, fragments scoured off the surface. Though the sparkling lights are bright, the scene she can see is muted, wrapped in cotton.

  A surface, wooden, like the top of a table. A hand appears, the hand of the person out whose eyes she is seeing the scene. María’s hand, her right hand and her fingers are swollen and discolored, bruised — smashed. The index and middle fingers from the knuckle down are flat, the fingernails are black, and the throbbing pain of them shoots up her arm into her neck. Into that place in the jaw that reacts to something sour.

  Then María picks up a straight pin and sticks the point into the base of the nail on her index finger. She spins it between her thumb and finger, in a drilling motion. Immediately, a gush of ugly bloody liquid pours out the hole she has dug. The pressure is less. The pain is less. She dabs a tissue on the fingernail, then places her hand back on the table and starts the same process on the middle finger.

  The sparks have grown brighter and brighter, now they are so bright Bailey can’t look at them, can’t see the scene through the light. She blinks and the scene vanishes.

  Bailey’s heart was pounding so hard she was afraid the
movement would arouse the child asleep in her lap. She refused to gasp in air, knew her lungs were not really starving for oxygen, it just seemed like it. She gritted her teeth, tried to settle, calm.

  Bethany didn’t stir, was still sleeping soundly in her lap, her breathing slow and rhythmic. Bailey tried to match the rhythm of her own breathing to that of the child to calm herself.

  Slowly, Bailey’s heartbeat returned to something approaching a normal rhythm. Her mind was still in hyperdrive, though.

  María had mashed her fingers. Badly.

  Except maybe it wasn’t María who—

  The thought was so horrifying she gasped, and Bethany squirmed in her lap. Gritting her teeth, she willed herself to remain calm.

  Somehow, María’s fingers had been mashed. She would not, could not now allow herself to consider how it had happened. If she thought—

  No, not now.

  Now, she needed to try to remember what else she had seen in the vision, what there was that might help the Boston Police find María. But there was nothing. A wooden table top. Nothing more. Could be anywhere.

  She grabbed her thoughts then, held tight, concentrated on the thing she knew now, which was that María was not dead. She was alive. Perhaps this was a “right now” vision or a “future” one. She couldn’t tell the difference. But in the “now” of the vision, her sister was alive and mostly unharmed.

  But the vision itself fascinated and frustrated her. What was happening with the sharp, fractured light, the flickering, sparks-flying effect? Was it what Dobbs had suggested, some sort of feedback because the connection was too intense? Maybe. It certainly hadn’t happened during any of her visions of others.

  She thought of what T.J. had said. “This time is different from last time. Next time will be different from this. You got to take each one as it comes.”