The Way It Ends

by Marnie Vinge

  After a few more of the landmarks that I’ve heard about, I roll up on the town. The main drag stretches no more than three blocks. Houses populate it sparsely and a trailer that functions as a diner lies on the edge. Not far from there, a one room museum stands alongside a gas station and general store, from what I can tell as I drive past.

  There is one thing that’s out of place here and that’s the sheer amount of people. Cars litter the sides of the road and people mill around outside both the diner and the general store. It’s the same collection of journalists and federal and local agents that I’d seen back in Guymon. I spot one of the guys from the table in front of me. He looks at me from behind aviator sunglasses and I wonder if he recognizes me, if he even saw me at all in the restaurant or imagined I could be anything other than another journalist eager to make her name.

  I find a spot on the side of the road to park the car and get out. I slide on a pair of Kate Spade sunglasses to hide any intent that might be apparent in my eyes and I walk up to the store.

  A few agents look at me innocuously, others suspiciously. Most of them give me the cold shoulder. I imagine that journalists aren’t their favorite. Though decades in the past, I can’t help but imagine the entire situation makes fresh images of a burning compound not so unlike Tom’s come to the forefront of their minds. A blunder on the part of the ATF and FBI from years ago. The image hovers on the edges of the activity. Waco, it whispers.

  I’d wager the thought rings in each person’s mind, like a distant siren hailing a tornado the next county over, reminding all of us that we’re never too far from absolute calamity. There’s a tension in the air that betrays these thoughts. The journalists thrive on it, their energy frenetic and buoyant. That of the agents reflects a more somber nervousness. I find myself in the middle, disgusted by the fact that the situation is inherently exciting in the way that all fight or flight situations are.

  After sidestepping several clusters of both journalists and law enforcement officials, I meander into the tiny general store. Bodies occupy every spare inch of the place, and I can’t blame them; it’s air conditioned. My mind drifts to Tom’s compound, knowing that they cut the power and water the previous day from a news bulletin. I imagine Birdie.

  A menu hangs above a dusty set of shelves showcasing fossil finds from the area along with plastic dinosaur figurines. Cans from eras gone by—both of soda and vegetables long beyond their expiration date—serve as decoration. The one room building is a museum itself, it seems. Maps hang on the wall, pointing out just how close we are to the Black Mesa and boasting the stats of the panhandle’s famous landmark.

  I find a place in line and soon step up to the counter. A grizzly old man with a lopsided dark brown moustache grunts at me in greeting.

  “Just a Dr. Pepper,” I say.

  He nods without a word and turns to a cooler. He pulls out a can and charges me a dollar. I gladly pay for the caffeine though he doesn’t seem grateful for my money.

  “Lots of people out here, huh?” I say dumbly. The sentence is out of my mouth before I can filter it through any system that might tell me it was foolish.

  “Too many for my liking. But it’s been that way for a while,” he nods his head toward the front of the general store out across the desert land that leads up to Tom’s ranch.

  “People don’t like Revelation Ranch?” I inquire innocently.

  He whistles.

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “What about the guy that lives next to him? Starts with a ‘B,’ I think.”

  “Bower,” the man says. “He can’t stand it. That should be obvious,” he chuckles, referencing my friend’s gunshot wound. I bristle. “But you should know that, shouldn’t you? You a journalist?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Well, go find someone else to talk to,” he ends the conversation by turning to unload an ancient dishwasher. I hover at the counter for a moment, not content with the pitiful amount of information.

  “You won’t get anything else out of him,” a male voice says from beside me. I turn to see a dorky looking guy—pocket protector and horn-rimmed glasses part of his outfit—and he greets me. “Jerry Houston,” he says.

  He sticks out his hand and I return the gesture.

  “Ione Larsen,” I say.

  “Hey, you wrote that death book, didn’t you?” he asks excitedly.

  “That would be me,” I say.

  “Well, you came to the right place,” he looks around. “I’ve never been anywhere that death felt a more appropriate motif. I think I’ve seen less bones in museums,” he gestures to the collections of articulated skeletons on the opposite wall.

  “I see that,” I say.

  “You writing an article about this whole shit show?”

  “Something like that,” I say.

  “Same here. The San Antonio paper sent me up here to get the goods on this whack job and his harem of concubines.”

  The turn of phrase makes me smile, though a little sadly. I hate to think of Birdie that way, but I’m afraid that’s how she’ll be reduced in any news coverage. It’s such a simplification of the woman I knew.

  “It’s quite the story,” I hope that he’ll continue to jabber at me.

  “Hey,” he pulls me to the side, away from the crowd. “I wouldn’t normally say anything about this, but your book—I’m a fan—anyway, there’s a place down by the creek at the edge of the Bower place where a lot of guys have been able to get the best shots of Revelation Ranch.”

  I listen intently, marking the directions in a mental map.

  “You go northwest up the creek bed and you can see right into the heart of the compound from one of the bluffs over there, or so I’m told,” he pushes up his glasses on the bridge of his nose. The gesture makes it crystal clear that this is secondhand information. Still, it’s the best I’ve got.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I could use some shots for the piece I’m working on.”

  “I may head over there myself,” he says. “Maybe I’ll catch you later,” he adds with a smile.

  I smile weakly back at him.

  “Maybe so.”

  But I know he won’t. No one is going to catch me.

  IONE

  7 YEARS AGO

  After the party where I learned that Vanessa was pregnant, I avoided Tom for a couple of weeks. Seeing him in class wrenched my guts. Eye contact was impossible. The impending implosion of our relationship held the weight of a collapsing star. I had finally reconciled myself to it when I went to see him for the final time.

  I’d made up my mind to end things like an adult. My palms were sweaty as I grabbed ahold of the handle that led into the writing building. Sun had set and I’d skipped class. I’d watched as the usual crowd poured out of the building, some of them making their way to the library to study for other courses and others headed towards campus corner to celebrate the end of yet another week of torture.

  Inside, the building was deserted. The last class of the day—and the week—left the place an echo chamber housing the remnants of shattered dreams. You could practically put a finger on the pulse of the angst felt by the students that called this place home.

  I wiped my palms on my jeans, hoping that Tom wouldn’t reach for one of them, lest they betray my anxiety. Inside the office, I wandered to his door for the last time. He sat inside, reading. Avoiding going home, I thought.

  Our relationship was strained under the weight of unanswered calls and texts. Like a rubber band pulled past its breaking point, our connection had begun to rip and tear, little bits of whitened rubber coming apart as the band threatened to snap entirely.

  “Dr. Wolsieffer?”

  He looked up from the book he was reading, marking his place with a finger and setting it down on the desk, cracked at the spine.

  “Dr. Wolsieffer?” he chuckled. “Has it come to that then?”

  My eyes darted around the room, looking for purchase but finding none. They landed
back on him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Tom.”

  “What brings you by this evening?” his tone was cool, icy even. His eyes didn’t stray from mine, though.

  “How’s Vanessa?” I asked pointedly, regretting it immediately.

  He sighed slightly, betraying the stress he usually hid expertly. An irritation flared with his nostrils. He looked down at the book and then back at me.

  “Fine,” he said. “Why do you ask?” He was tense.

  I paused a moment. I thought briefly about dropping the whole thing, yanking him across the desk and kissing him. I imagined the way his lips felt on mine. The thought was almost intoxicating enough to derail me entirely.

  “I heard,” I said. The two words enough to bridge the gap that had formed between us in the previous weeks. Enough for him to understand why I’d come.

  “I guess you’re here to give me an ultimatum,” he smiled sourly.

  I cringed.

  “Hardly,” I said, prickling at his suggestion. But there was a part of me that wondered if I had, would he have taken it?

  “Then why are you here?” his eyes lanced through my heart, all of the softness that I’d come to know in them gone like smoke blown away in the wind.

  Stunned, I reeled from his sudden turn to viciousness.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” I said.

  “About?”

  “Us.”

  “What’s there to say? My wife is pregnant,” he said. Silence hung between us, swinging like a body from the gallows.

  It reminded me of the first time I’d ever been broken up with in high school. My boyfriend, a football player, dumped me for a cheerleader the weekend before prom. He made it out to be that I was a prude and he wasn’t leaving high school a virgin. I learned early that sex was a commodity between men and women. Yet here I was, having given it freely, and still being left, the prettier, skinnier girl chosen over me once more.

  It was more complicated than that, I told myself. There was a baby involved now.

  Part of me wanted to beg him to leave her. My pride—what little I had left—wouldn’t allow it.

  “I came here to end things with you,” I said.

  Tom smiled.

  “I thought you already had.”

  “What? By not answering your texts?”

  “It seemed pretty apparent.”

  “I didn’t know what to say!” I exclaimed. “Look, Tom. I respect you. A lot. I don’t want things to end badly between us. I’m still your student.”

  Tom nodded.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “This doesn’t have to change anything, except—”

  “I know.”

  We stayed there in silence for a moment. It was a funeral for what had passed between us. All of the chaos, the energy, dead—just like that. Snuffed out like the life of a wild animal darting across the highway straight into the headlights of a semi-truck.

  “I’m glad you’ll be getting the award,” he said.

  I furrowed my brow.

  “You deserve it,” he smiled. It seemed like a mask. Perhaps an effort to hide the hurt he felt.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  That evening, I sat in my car and cried for half an hour. Nose stuffy and head aching, I called Birdie. She came right away.

  We met at a bar on campus and toasted the end of my affair with Tom. She told me I’d done the right thing. She was practically joyous.

  “You’re too smart for that,” she said.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “He’s the kind of guy that needs a victim,” she went on. “And you’re not a victim, Ione. You’re a lot tougher than you give yourself credit for.”

  I looked at her, wondering what she saw when she looked at me.

  “Besides, you’re still getting the award. That’s a good thing! At least you’ll get some contacts out of the deal.” She laughed and ordered us another round of shots.

  “I guess all’s not lost,” I smiled.

  We left arm in arm that night, singing the chorus from a Queen song all the way back to the car where we realized we’d be better off walking back to Birdie’s apartment. We shared her bed, an intimacy of our friendship that I cherished. As I fell asleep that night, Birdie’s back to mine, I thought, everything’s going to be okay.

  How wrong I was.

  VANESSA

  The image of Mark and his warning about the baby cling to Vanessa like a sheen of sweat for the rest of the morning. The ominous nature of the vision puts her on edge, others on the compound stay out of her way, already wary of her volatile moods, changing quicker than reagents in a chemical reaction constantly fed with a new catalyst. But by the afternoon, she can contain herself no more. She needs to know if the baby is okay.

  She gathers a lunch tray and bowl for Birdie. After grabbing it, she turns to leave the empty cafeteria.

  Tom stands in the doorway, quiet as a wraith. Vanessa has no idea how long he’s been there or what fresh hell it signals, but she doesn’t care. She stares at him, her expression blank.

  She doesn’t think it possible, but he looks like he’s lost weight. Skin seems to stretch too tightly over his cheekbones and his jeans hang from hipbones sharper than those of the man she had married.

  The stress of what happened has worn on him in only a few days. Wanted in connection to what was being called a murder, he had refused to talk to authorities or face the situation like a man. He is a child in the midst of a ghastly crime scene. It should elicit an emotion other than the contempt for him that Vanessa so strongly feels. Tom used up the last of her empathy long ago.

  “Hey,” he says.

  Vanessa doesn’t speak. Tom steps forward, his frustration with his situation apparent. And that’s how she thinks of it: his situation. The emotion is carved on his features like an ancient inscription only now revealed by erosion from the latest in a series of storms.

  “How is she?” he asks, nodding at the tray.

  How do you think? Vanessa imagines herself saying.

  “Fine,” she says instead. “Hungry. She asked for more food,” she lies, trying to position the tray at such an angle that Tom won’t notice the bowl is empty.

  He doesn’t, and there’s a part of her that hates him for it. His capacity for self-absorption repulses and astounds her still. If he had any awareness beyond himself, he’d have never wound up here.

  “And the baby?” he prods the conversation along.

  “Fine,” Vanessa says.

  She isn’t entirely sure how true that is. She has an ache at the base of her skull that makes her think the baby might not be fine.

  Tom nods apparently satisfied with this assessment and Vanessa feels the web of tension at her neck slowly start to unravel. He steps toward her and reaches out a hand for her arm. He leans down and kisses her on the cheek. And as much as she hates him for his self-absorption, she hates herself more for the fact that she bears witness to it. She hates herself for being here at all. She hopes that there’s still time to make something of herself out of all of this.

  He turns, unphased by the lack of reciprocal affection, and leaves the kitchen. Vanessa gasps, as though she’d held her breath, submerged in the world Tom had created. She looks down at the empty bowl and steels herself for what she knows she has to do next.

  Vanessa slips into Birdie’s room like a ghost. She’s made sure no one in the house has seen what’s in the bowl on the tray.

  She closes the door behind her and sits the tray on the dresser opposite the bed. Vanessa turns to see Birdie stir at the sound of the dish clattering on the tray.

  “You’re awake,” Vanessa says, a smile pulling on the outer corners of her mouth.

  Birdie grunts. She shifts in the bed, trying to prop herself up but failing, like a rag doll.

  Vanessa turns back to her tray. She dips a rag in the bowl and red blooms upward, climbing the fabric like quick-growing ivy on the outside of a building. She lets it dri
p for a moment, the majority of the liquid seeping back into the bowl. She takes the rag, drops it to her side and walks toward Birdie.

  “You know,” Vanessa says. “Tom is awfully concerned about you.”

  Birdie’s eyes follow Vanessa’s hand at her side. Vanessa steps closer to the bed.

  “But as concerned as he is for you, he’s more concerned about the baby. And I told him that you said it was fine, but I wanted to ask you again.”

  Birdie’s eyes dart from Vanessa’s hand to her face. A few beads of sweat punctuate her brow like a watery ellipsis.

  “Birdie,” Vanessa says slowly. “Have you felt the baby move?”

  Birdie’s throat visibly constricts as she swallows. She opens her mouth to speak.

  “I—yes,” she says.

  “Lying is a sin, you know,” Vanessa overpowers the girl. She brings the bloody rag to her mouth, clamped tightly shut and she forces it open, pulling her by the hair. Birdie cries out and Vanessa silences her by shoving the cloth deep into her mouth. She forces her bottom jaw upward, closing her mouth as tightly as she can around the bleeding linen.

  “I know you haven’t,” Vanessa hisses in her ear. Birdie thrashes. “Calm down,” Vanessa orders her. Before Birdie can comply, Vanessa slaps her hard across the face. Birdie’s eyes widen, large as dinner plates, and she makes a noise behind the rag and tears well. She stares up at Vanessa, her captive. “I know the baby hasn’t moved. And we both know that’s not good. For us or for you.”

  The girl stares at her in horror.

  “You need to be cleansed,” Vanessa points out and clamps her hand over Birdie’s mouth. “The blood will help with that. The child will taste it and like a little vampire, she’ll wake up from her rest.”

  The two women stay in still silence for a moment. Vanessa pulls the rag from Birdie’s mouth.

  “I’m going to ask you again,” Vanessa says. “Have you felt the child move?”

  Birdie dry heaves as the cloth exits her mouth. Her eyes lock on Vanessa’s.