“But I didn’t imagine any of it!”
“That doesn’t matter,” he repeated. “You had to figure out how to tell it, didn’t you? That takes imagination. What are you going to do with it?”
“Publish it, I guess.”
“Do you know how?”
“I’ll just send it away to someone. A magazine or something.” It had never once occurred to me that I wouldn’t become a real writer, a published writer, even though it seemed like awfully hard work, and to turn out only fifteen pages in nine or ten months was not exactly the mark of greatness.
But Doctor Connor dismissed these concerns with a wave of his large hairy hand. It wasn’t how much I wrote that mattered, he said, but how good it was. He promised to take me to the library and show me where to look up the addresses of publishers. It wasn’t as simple as I made it sound, he said. He himself had tried to publish one or two articles on medicine, and even though it wasn’t fictional writing and there was a very specific kind of publication that would accept his work, it was still confusing and difficult, and he usually met with failure.
“You’re coming along splendidly, my boy,” he said. “Just splendidly.”
I looked at him with gratitude, and I realized at that moment that I trusted Connor completely. It was then I knew I had to tell him about Annie.
“Doc,” I said, “I have something to tell you.”
And I told.
It was several days later when Annie appeared at the front door. I was in the kitchen when her shadow fell across the porch, and I caught it only out of the corner of my eye. She didn’t knock or ring the bell. I went down the long hallway to the door. She stood turned to the side, so that I could see only her profile; that was how I knew she had something to hide again.
“Where have you been?” she said, speaking away from me, out into the yard.
“Look at me,” I said.
“No.”
I stepped out onto the porch and gently turned her face toward me. Her left cheek was bruised black and green, swollen out of proportion to the rest of her face. Her eye was puffy and closed.
“You haven’t been going to school,” she said.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t go to school today either,” she said. “And I have you to thank for it.”
“I’m taking you to the hospital. Right now.”
“No. You’re not taking me anywhere.”
“Annie, please.”
“You lied to me,” she said. “You broke your promise. You told.”
“Annie. Please understand. I had to.”
“I trusted you,” she said. She didn’t say it vindictively. It was simply a statement of fact.
I felt my face begin to flush with rage—at her father, but also at her. She was letting this happen. She was allowing it. She let him do this.
“How can you let him?” I asked her. “How much longer are you going to let him keep this up?”
“It’s nobody’s business,” said Annie. “Okay? It’s not yours or Connor’s or the county’s. It’s mine.”
“It’s not just yours. It’s mine. It’s everybody’s.”
“I can’t fight him, Billy,” she said. “He’s too strong. If I fight him he hits me. So I let him drug me. That’s how it happens.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When he does those things to my body,” she said. She was staring far beyond me. It was as if neither she nor I were there, as if she were talking about someone else. “I know he’s going to do it to me. There’s nothing I can do about it. So I let him drug me, and at least then I don’t feel it. And if I don’t feel it, then everything’s all right. It never happened—that’s how it feels. But after those people came, this is what he did to me. And he didn’t drug me first, and I felt every bit of it.”
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” I said.
“No you’re not.”
“Oh, yes I am.”
“Nobody is going to do anything.”
“If that’s what you think, then you really must be nuts,” I said. I was in the grip of full-fledged anger now. “I’m going to murder him. I’ll kill him!” It wasn’t me speaking, suddenly. It was the Celtic warrior again, the same one who had pounded David Weismueller’s testicles into jelly, the same one who’d beaten Trevor’s head into the snow all those years ago. Well, hello there, I said to the Celtic warrior, who gave me a cold, bloody smile. Haven’t seen you in some time. Got some work to do.
“I trusted you,” she said again. “And you told. And I’m never telling you anything again.”
“Oh, goddamn this,” I said. The Celtic warrior was waiting, a barely contained tsunami of fury. He sat down impatiently and began to sharpen his ax.
“Do you have any idea how it made me feel to have those people come to my house? To ask me questions that are none of their business? To snoop around, poke into things, interrogate me, interrogate him even, like we’re some kind of criminals? Bank robbers or something?”
I knew then that Connor must have called the county, and the county had sent its people over. That must have been the only way Connor knew to go about it, and in most situations it would have been the right way. But not this one. I knew it couldn’t happen for Annie the way it was supposed to happen. I’d always known I would have to take care of it myself. And I decided right then and there, although I didn’t say anything to Annie about it, that I would take care of it myself, the way my father would have done it if it was him instead of me. The way a real man would do it. This was a job for a superhero, a daredevil. This was a job for Billy Mann.
Abruptly she stepped off the porch and headed back down the driveway.
“Annie,” I called.
She turned.
“Yes?” Her voice was vacant, void.
“I told because I love you,” I said. “That’s why.”
“That’s nice,” she said. She turned again and headed up the road.
I felt, as she left, that Annie had not been there at all.
The Celtic warrior inside me went to the river and gathered clay. He mixed it with water and painted his naked body blue. My father, shirtless, grinning, smiled and slapped his hands together. He spit contemptuously on the ground and flexed his muscles.
Let’s get to it, I said to him. We have a job to do.
Says Willie Mann, my long-dead but always relevant ancestor:
Have no fear of anger, for then anger has no power over you. Anger is a tool. Wield it, but use it wisely, never rashly. That is the way to turn it to one’s advantage; that is the way to keep it from taking over Life.
I—by which I really mean myself, the Celtic warrior, and my father—was going on another mission to the Simpson home. If Annie wasn’t going to save herself from her father, then I was.
It had been years since I’d practiced the gentle art of spying. Of espionage. That was a beautiful, smooth-sounding word, an exotic word, hinting of foreign cities and meetings with shadowy characters in dark alleys. But this mission would not be to Casablanca or Algiers or Berlin. It would be to the top of a hill just half a mile away, to a filthy white house where great crimes were being committed on a regular basis.
I dug through closet after closet until I came up with what I was looking for: a box camera with the word BROWNIE on it, circa 1936. It was the sort of camera you had to hold at waist level and look down into. It had once belonged to Grandpa’s mother, Lily. I’d used it once before, years earlier, when Grandpa had caught a large walleye out of the Lake and wanted a memento of it. The picture had come out blurry. In the lower left-hand corner, Grandpa’s head was barely visible, and the fish not at all. I shook the camera and was rewarded with a papery rattle. There was still film inside. Probably expired, I thought, but it would have to do. I would have to take the chance.
I spent two days in preparation for my mission. During this time I stayed away from school and Annie stayed away from me, but I sent her telepathic messages: I’m coming,
I would think, standing on my porch and staring up at her house. Don’t give up. I drew maps in my head—a good spy never commits anything to paper—rehearsing exactly how I would go about the whole thing. There was a large tree just outside the Simpson house, which would afford me some cover, and if I climbed it I would be able to see into both the first and second floors of their house. I had no idea which room was my target; that was something I’d have to figure out when I got there.
I chose my clothing carefully: dark pants, black sweater, and, for the final touch, a ski mask I’d purchased at Gruber’s Grocery with my employee discount, ignoring Mrs. Gruber’s arched eyebrows as I did so.
I was ready on a Tuesday. I stood on the porch again, clenching and unclenching my fists, staring up at her old hilltop house.
I’m coming, I told her again with my mind. I’m ready. But when?
And perhaps it was purely my imagination, but this time I heard her voice come back to me, faint but distinct, clear. It was just one word: morning.
What? I thought. What do you mean, morning? Which morning?
But there was no further answer.
I went back inside and thought about it some more. Mornings seemed the likeliest time to make my run—early mornings. It had to be. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. As much as it disgusted me to admit it, Mr. Simpson and I probably had at least one thing in common with all the other males of the world: we woke up with hard-ons. Annie would still be sleeping, or perhaps just waking up, when he came to her. She’d be powerless and groggy, and he would be strengthened by his testosterone, perhaps emboldened by his lingering drunkenness. It horrified me to think that Mr. Simpson might feel the same urges toward his daughter that I felt, that we had anything in common at all. But the fact was that male lust ruled both of us. I could take comfort in the fact that at least I knew what was taboo and what was not; just the fact that I felt lust didn’t make me a criminal. But it was difficult not to feel some degree of self-loathing, simply on the grounds of commonality.
If I didn’t catch him on the first run, I would simply come back again and again until I got it right. But something told me my hunch was accurate. As I thought about it, I remembered that Annie was often most subdued in the mornings, sometimes downright silent. My conviction grew inside me. And since I was ready, there was nothing holding me back. Before the sun rose again, I vowed, I would have done my best to accomplish my mission. One way or another, things would be different for Annie from now on.
I was certain that even though she’d told me she didn’t want any help, there was a part of her that was begging for it. That part of her, the hidden, nearly absent part that had been pushed down so far it was in danger of disappearing forever, was the real Annie. That was the part of her that had answered me. That was the part of her I was saving.
I went to bed early that night, my gear laid out on a chair next to my bed: dark clothing, camera, ski mask, sneakers, small flashlight. My alarm went off at four A.M. I awoke instantly, sprang out of bed, and dressed. I was moving up the road within fifteen minutes, the dust of sleep blown rapidly from my mind as I walked and inhaled the fresh breeze. When I hit the base of the hill I entered the trees; this was why I’d brought the flashlight, to navigate among the large trunks and fallen branches. I didn’t bother with stealthiness yet, being still a quarter-mile from my target, but even though there was nobody to hear me, I was sure my crunchings and crashings echoed all over town. I hadn’t brought a watch—I didn’t even own one—but calculated the time to be around four forty-five. When I had finally cleared the trees and climbed the hill, it must have been nearly five o’clock. The sky to the east was slowly graying as false dawn approached. I was at the outer boundary of the Simpson yard…
…where I stopped and hit the ground like a man under machine-gun fire. I had caught a glimpse of orange on the porch. It was the glowing end of a cigarette butt, brightening and then fading as someone drew on it. Annie didn’t smoke, and her older sisters had all left home by this time; it was just him and her now. Therefore it had to be Simpson himself, the great criminal. I hardly dared breathe. I lay on my belly next to a large birch, hoping fervently that I wouldn’t stand out against its white bark, certain he’d heard me. How could he not have? I was blown, I thought. Mission aborted. Time to evacuate the area.
But nothing happened. There was no shout, no approaching footsteps. I could barely make out the figure on the porch now as the eastern sky began to brighten. It was him, all right.
It was then that everything for which I had not planned began to occur to me. I cursed myself for being an idiot. It would be too dark for photography, and of course the ancient camera I carried had no flash. Why am I always fifty years behind the times? I wondered. I could never take a good picture in this light. I would have to make it a long exposure, meaning that the camera would have to be held perfectly still for perhaps as long as a minute, and the figures I would be photographing would certainly move during that time, meaning that their features would be blurred and unrecognizable. And how could I be sure that the deed would take place this morning, of all mornings? I’d no idea how often it happened, or even if my guesswork was correct. Perhaps it wasn’t a morning event at all. Perhaps it happened in the afternoon. Perhaps it happened only once a month, or even once a year. After all, Annie had never said how often he did these things to her. Once in a lifetime, I thought grimly, would certainly be enough. Maybe he’d just gone crazy one day, taken it into his pickled brain to bang his daughter, and it had never happened again. Maybe it wouldn’t happen this morning after all. Maybe I was completely fucked, lying there on my belly on the cold, dew-covered ground, clutching a hopelessly outdated camera and with a plan that even the worst spy in history would have scoffed at.
But something told me it wasn’t just an isolated event. I could see that in Annie’s eyes. It was a constantly recurring thing, one that was gradually battering her into submission, eating away at her soul like a cancer. And if it wasn’t this morning, then it would be some other time. And I vowed then and there, my chin digging into the ground, the taste of grass and dead leaves in my mouth, that I would be there the next time it happened, even if I had to carry out a constant surveillance of the house and its miserable occupants for the rest of my life.
It was light enough to see now. I saw the orange cigarette butt arc toward me in a long, graceful line as the son of a bitch flicked it away from him. It skittered to a halt several feet from my nose. I heard him grunt with exertion as he stood on his spindly legs and went into the house, the screen door on the porch squeaking quietly behind him.
This was the first time I’d seen Simpson since the day Grandpa broke his hip on the ice. He’d grown fatter, waddled more. He was perhaps the most ridiculously proportioned person I’d ever seen. From his abdomen to his neck, his figure was almost a perfect sphere; but his legs were as thin as reeds, and the overall impression one got from looking at him was that of a ball of clay resting unsteadily on two toothpicks. The fact that he hadn’t let the screen door slam gave me both fear and encouragement. Perhaps he was being sneaky, not wanting to wake his poor daughter up until it was too late for her to resist. My timing might possibly be dead on.
I crawled on my belly toward the house. When it became apparent that he wasn’t coming back onto the porch, I rose and ran in a half-crouch until I gained the front door. My heart was throbbing in my chest. My ears were so alert I could hear only a high-pitched ringing, and the sound of my blood rushing through my veins at twice its normal rate.
I had abandoned the part of my plan that called for me to climb the tree. Instead I waited at the front door. I heard the thump of a glass being set down; he was close, but not too close, in the kitchen perhaps. I edged the screen door open, wishing I’d brought a can of machine oil for the hinges. But mercifully, they didn’t squeak for me, though they had a moment earlier when he went inside. It took several seconds to open the door wide enough to slip in.
And I was back in the same living room where I had first met Annie, where she had held my hand for the first time. Had it been happening even then? I wondered. I didn’t see how anyone, even the most dastardly of criminals, could be so morally bankrupt as to want to have sex with a seven-year-old girl. But it happened, I knew. You read about it in the papers sometimes. Maybe Simpson was that bad.
The house was filled with the same stench: shit, mostly, and stale beer, and urine, and greasy cooking. The living room was not quite as dirty as it had been seven years ago. Perhaps the people from the county had cleaned it up during their surprise investigation; more likely, though, was that Annie had done it herself, the sight of them pulling into the driveway sending her into a frenzy of tidying up, hiding the evidence of her wretched life. I moved quickly across the living room to the back hallway, listening with every part of my body for the sound of Simpson. I went to the back hallway first because there was a secondary motive to my mission. I wanted to see if the half-man was still there.
It seemed inconceivable that a human being could be kept in the same bed all this time, but I knew that in this house anything could happen, and that Simpson would if possible attempt to violate the one great rule of nature, which was that everything must change. He was like Grandpa in that respect, as much as I hated to admit it: he preferred to live in an earlier time, a time when things had been better, when his son had been whole and could walk and talk.
Moving through the living room was like having an old dream. I kept my hand over my nose as I approached the back room; the smell was nearly intolerable. The door was closed but not latched. I pushed it with one finger. It swung open, and there he lay, staring up at the ceiling, exactly the same as I remembered him, swaddled in the same filthy sheets.
I gagged as I stepped into the room. The odor of his unwashed body was overwhelming, almost animal. This was only a side trip, I promised myself. I had bigger and better things to be doing. But there was something about this man, this old friend of my father’s, that drew me. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to look at him again, to see if I could draw from him any inkling of my mysterious past.
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