To Live

by C. G. Cooper

  “Yes, please.”

  Her mother leaned back to the door.

  “Hey, bring that shit in here.”

  A man, the one who’d hit Elmore over the head, came in the room. Sam tensed. At least she could deal with her mother. Her mother never touched her and made her squirm. She had her men do that for her. It was part of her deal with the devil.

  “There’s none left,” the man said, wrapping an arm around her mother’s waist, hand resting on her bared navel.

  Sam’s mother pushed him away halfheartedly, giving him a languid slap in the process.

  “Then go get some more,” she said. “I can’t let my baby go hungry.”

  She was middle high. That’s what Sam thought. Middle high was almost normal mom. Middle high mom didn’t yell, scream. She tried to act like a proper parent. It was sober mom and too high mom that scared Sam. Maybe she could use this.

  “I can go get it,” Sam offered. “Just need my wallet.”

  Her mother took her tongue out of the man’s mouth long enough to give her daughter a bored stare. “Nope. You stay right where you’re at, little princess.”

  Then they left. Left her to sit. Left her stomach to grumble. Left her to wonder which mother would be the next to appear.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Franks’ friend was a gold mine. He must’ve had access to cameras or some of the suburban technology grid. He didn’t explain how he knew what he knew. In fact, the man looked like anything but what he was.

  His name was Jerry, and his squat jiggle only complemented his constant smile. Elmore couldn’t help but like the man. He was the exact opposite of what he thought his old friend, Franks would need to get sober.

  “I tracked them here, here, and here,” Jerry explained as he pointed to points on a map they’d picked up at the closest gas station. “I’ll keep at it until I know more.”

  “Thanks for your help, Jerry,” Franks said, offering his hand which turned into a hug. These men were not just friends. There was a deeper connection.

  “It’s my pleasure,” Jerry said, releasing himself from the embrace. “And Mr. Nix, it was so nice to meet you. The old sarge told me all about you.”

  Elmore didn’t know what to say other than, “Thanks.”

  Jerry nodded at Elmore and then the others. “I’ll be in touch.”

  When he was gone, Franks regained command of the room.

  “Okay. Now we know we’ve been looking in the wrong part of town. I suggest we get back at it.”

  No one disagreed. Elmore was starting to think that maybe the others were right, that the authorities needed to be involved. But he couldn’t make himself do it. He couldn’t explain why, then or ever. Not to himself or out loud. He just felt it.

  But he also felt like Sam’s time was running out.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Night came, and the food didn’t. Sam’s stomach had gone from groaning to moaning. She tried to ignore it by imagining all manner of vacations. To the mountains. To the beach. To the Taj Mahal.

  The laughter and music still came from the other room. Loud sometimes and hushed at others.

  At some point, despite her unease, and despite the hunger, Sam fell asleep. She drifted to a place far away. Far away from the past. Far away from her mother. Walking next to Elmore Thaddeus Nix. His wife was there. Eve. She smelled like Sam imagined she would, like springtime. And looked the way she looked in the pictures that her mom’s goons had smashed.

  Sam tried not to think about those, what Elmore must be thinking if he was still alive. She thought about the box she’d found in the closet of the guest room. High on a shelf, she’d had to fetch the rickety chair from the old desk in the corner. The box was heavy, weighed down by piles of papers – or so she thought. As she eased it down, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to put it back.

  The box wasn’t some repository for household papers like bills or instruction manuals, it was full of memories. Decades of memories in their final resting place. Pictures. Letters. Postcards.

  Through those memories, she’d learned of their love: Elmore and Eve. Two mismatched lovers who the universe had somehow, inexplicably stuck together. Eve wrote about it well, especially in those early letters. She marveled at what she called ‘God’s Plan’ and how that fateful day in Central Park had changed them both forever.

  Sam had never been to Central Park, but she imagined it now, food vendors, horse-drawn buggies, tourists clicking on their phones and cameras and the smell of roasting nuts. Such a strange and wonderful glimpse into Elmore and Eve’s past.

  She saw them now, walking hand in hand. Sam tried to catch up, but as in dreams, catching up didn’t work. They never ran like Sam thought she was running; they stayed just out of reach. She couldn’t hear what they were saying. Eve was doing most of the talking and Elmore was smiling. They didn’t let go of each other’s hands.

  Something of Eve’s letters had transferred to Sam’s dream. She talked about how her favorite times were when she held her husband’s hand, and they walked together in peaceful silence. That first time in Central Park. On the beach. In the car.

  They were holding hands now in Sam’s vision, inseparable. Then something happened – the dream shimmered, and husband and wife looked back at Sam with looks of utter confusion.

  “Sam?” It was Elmore speaking, but his voice was different somehow. He was close and he reached a hand out and stroked her forehead. There was something alien about it all. Something he would do. “Sam,” he said, not a question this time. More urgent. Something about his voice.

  Then his hand traveled from her forehead, down to her cheek, and then…

  Sam awoke with a start.

  “Hey, honey,” the man said, his alcohol-laced breath sending waves of nausea through the girl.

  She tried to scoot away. She tried. But his hands were on her now, pinning her in place, right in the corner.

  “Let go,” she said, though Sam thought her voice sounded gone, like it was calling from a cave muted with cotton lining.

  “Baby, it’s okay.” He was touching her now. Touching her.

  “No,” she said, trying to squirm away.

  He was too big, too strong.

  Down the hands went.

  Somehow Sam was able to twist just right, and her leg shot up, smashing into his privates.

  He grunted and, reflexively, doubled over. His eyes swirled, and before she could squirm out of reach, his hands went to her neck.

  Her vision wavered, but she kicked again. He moved. She kicked a third time. The pressing on her neck went from strong to a bit weaker. She couldn’t breathe.

  She kicked and she kicked.

  “Hey,” said her mother from the doorway. “What’s…?”

  Sam’s foot hit home once again. The man stumbled back, hands flying from Sam’s neck to his crotch. This time, he wailed like a wounded dog.

  “You idiot!” Sam’s mother said, but there was no anger like there should’ve been. No, she was laughing, first no more than a chuckle, then with a high pitched cackle. “She’s made of tougher stuff than you!” The man slunk from the room, receiving a wobbly kick in the rear from the laughing mother.

  When the tears were dried and the laughter gone, Sam’s mother stood over her daughter. “Look what you did. You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

  And then she turned, walked out the door, leaving Sam to the emptiness of her life.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  “I think we’re close,” Franks said. He’d said that more and more in the preceding hours. Ever the optimist, Elmore’s former platoon sergeant’s attitude had never wavered. Thank God for Marines, Elmore thought.

  He was a nervous wreck, though he hid it well. He thought of Sam, of her mother, of what the mother’s friends might do. Time was slipping away.

  The call came minutes later. Franks grunted a couple of times and finished with, “Thanks.”

  He put the phone on the dash and pulled off
onto the shoulder of the highway.

  “My guy says he’s ninety percent sure he knows where Sam is.”

  “Where?”

  Franks told him.

  Elmore didn’t feel relieved. He only felt the anticipation of a final battle.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Now hold on. That’s not the best part of town, you know.”

  “Can’t be worse than Hanoi,” Elmore said. “And if it is, I don’t give a shit.”

  “The point of all this is to get her out safe, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, you think charging in like you’re taking an enemy machine gun hole is the best way?”

  “I don’t care. We need to help her.”

  “Sure. But I think we need to call the cops.”

  Elmore saw the severity that was stamped on his friend’s face. There was no getting around it this time.

  “Fine. But let’s get there first.”

  They arrived at the apartment row just before nightfall. The placed looked deserted, until Elmore looked closer. A man stood beneath the busted front porch light. As Elmore watched, the man flicked his cigarette off the porch and pulled out another.

  He suddenly felt like there were eyes all around, peeking from every window. A civilian sniper nest watching. Waiting.

  “It’s either apartment 5A or 6A,” Franks said.

  There they were. Closed doors. A brand-new door on 5A. Graffiti slashing across the door of 6A.

  “Okay. Let’s call in the cavalry.”

  They’d consulted the others, the former cops. They’d say a suspected kidnap victim was in either apartment. That would do it. The police would have to show. Maybe they’d punch it up by adding a domestic abuse charge. Anything to get them on the scene.

  But Elmore had played along enough. He grasped the car door handle and leapt out before Franks could protest. His feet hit pavement and he moved with a surety and strength that belied his age. He was a young Pfc. again, as sure about life as he’d ever been. He decided to go for the graffiti door first. A 50-50 shot.

  He saw the smoking guy shift, watching. Not a move to hide. Confident in his safety. No matter. Elmore was no threat to the man.

  “Nix,” Franks hissed from the car.

  Elmore knew he was faster than his friend. Bum hips were an easy thing to take advantage of. He also knew that Franks wouldn’t want to make a scene.

  6A loomed closer now, twenty feet. Fifteen.

  The first gunshot made him pause. The second turned his walk into a jog. The third fourth and fifth sent him sprinting toward battle, to the enemy inside 6A.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Minutes earlier.

  Sam had listened harder this time. She knew the cycle of her mother’s demons. The next time the man came in, her mother wouldn’t be sane enough, or even awake to intervene. Sam had to do something.

  No windows to climb out of. No vents to climb up and into like in the movies. There was one way out.

  They hadn’t locked the door.

  Impossible when the lock was busted. But it didn’t matter. She was a scared little girl to them. Obedient in the past. Always listening to her mother.

  But that last invasion of privacy had switched something in Sam’s mind. It was wrong on too many levels to comprehend. Suddenly, the injustices of the past bubbled to the surface like a roiling geyser. She felt the surge keenly as she imagined Elmore and what he would do in her place. She smiled at the thought. Levity in the place of pity. That was her way. She imagined him in the jungles of faraway Vietnam saving countless lives.

  They’d pulled her aside at the banquet, many whispered voices, and told her how special she must feel to have such a hero for a grandfather. They were in awe of him, the man who’d befriended her through the simple act of buying a card and a bottle of Gatorade. This man who lived a quiet, simple life. This man who’d lost his wife and now lived…

  No. He hadn’t really been living. He had cancer and she knew he’d meant for it to take him.

  But she wouldn’t let that happen. Not then. Not now.

  No. She had to get out and make sure he was okay.

  She made her way to the door, cringing at the squeak under her foot, an old creak under the moldy carpet. She made it to the door without incident, opened it slowly.

  There was her mother, passed out on a couch in the corner. No snores. Just dead sleep. It was the other person in the room that worried her.

  But he leaned against the couch, head hanging, and television still blaring. Some cop show Sam didn’t know. How fitting. She could use a squadron of police cruisers right about now.

  The exit was all the way across the room. An endless stretch that looked like the length of the Mohave Desert. Barren except for the detritus of junkies and addicts. Beer bottles. Used needles. Plastic bags licked of their dregs. These were the familiar furniture of her childhood.

  Sam needed her backpack. There it was, in the corner closest to where she stood. A couple of steps and the first strap was in her hand. She glanced at the man who had tried to fondle her. Still asleep. She lifted the pack, revealing a pistol underneath.

  She almost left it. Almost.

  Once she had her backpack on, she bent down, stared at the weapon for a long time. It could be loaded. It might not be. She didn’t know. She didn’t know how to check. When she lifted it up she did so tentatively, like it might go off at any moment untriggered. But guns were only weapons in a person’s hand. The man on the YouTube video had said that.

  She turned the heavy thing over in her hand.

  If nothing else, she could club the man over the head.

  Yes, that’s what she’d do. Only if she needed to. She didn’t want to hurt anyone.

  Sam was careful not to put her finger on the trigger, holding the pistol how she thought she was supposed to.

  She felt better about her position now. Even if she made it halfway across the room and man woke up, she could still make it. Sam knew that now.

  And she did make it halfway, tiptoeing just in case she made any noise over the rattle of the commercial jingle blaring from the TV. She made it halfway and the man woke up.

  “Whoa, whoa, where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  Sam froze. It was the fondling man. She remembered his name now. Ken.

  “I’m hungry,” she said, not turning to hide the weapon at her side.

  “Get the hell back in your room, you little skank,” he said, more annoyed than worried, or so it seemed.

  “I’m just gonna get some food. My mom—”

  “Your momma’s dead.” The way the man said it. No humor. No nothing. Just words tossed in the air like a blown match.

  Sam now turned and saw that he wasn’t as torqued as she thought. Worse still, his eyes leveled like laser beams. The pistol rested on his lap, one hand gripping it at the ready.

  “You’re lying,” Sam said. She swore she’d seen her mother’s chest rising and falling. She wasn’t dead, just passed out. She was always passed out.

  Now Ken grabbed the pistol, and stood – shakily at first, steadier once he caught his balance.

  “Sorry, baby,” he said. The way he intoned that second word. Too much yearning there. Sam knew what came next, so she brought up the pistol.

  Ken laughed mockingly. “Well, look at Annie Oakley over here. So, that’s where that shit went.” He reached out his free hand. “Come on, baby, hand it over.”

  “No,” Sam said, the pistol shaking in her hand. It felt so heavy now, too much to hold.

  “It ain’t loaded, baby.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Another mocking laugh. “You a gun expert now?”

  Ken took a step closer. Sam’s finger nudged the trigger, unsteady but still there.

  “I know it’s loaded, you piece of shit.”

  Ken let out a smoker’s laugh, half cough. “I like you, baby. You’re feisty. Keep it up, you’re turning me on. I can’t wait to get you a
lone.”

  “Stay back, goddammit!”

  “Keep up the dirty talk, baby. You’ll grow to like me. I was a cop you know. Yeah, four years on the force. Best time of my life. Free money and free drugs whenever I wanted. Too bad for the piss tests though. I used to steal clean piss from the lab, until they got me.” His words trailed off into a laugh. “Caught me yellow-handed.”

  He stepped closer, too close. “Give me the gun, darlin’. No sense hurting yourself, what with your mom gone and all.”

  Sam had been sneaking glances at her mother. Was it true? There was an unnatural pallor to her mother’s once-beautiful face. But that’s how it always was, wasn’t it?

  “No.”

  Ken must have seen Sam’s glances, because he half turned and grabbed one of Sam’s mother’s arm. It was limp.

  “See? Dead as Elvis.”

  He went so far as to pull her mother off the couch where she slid to the ground, not a move of consciousness. Not a hint of life.

  Sam’s finger curled around the cold trigger. “No.”

  “Darlin’, I’m gonna take you for one last ride before I—"

  Without warning, she pulled, over and over again.

  Eight shots in total, though the ear-splitting booms blended into one. She’d closed her eyes during it. There was no way she’d missed. She wasn’t a monster, but she done a monster’s deed.

  When she opened her eyes, she expected blood and gore, just like in the movies.

  But what she saw was worse – Ken was standing before her, laughing.

  “Stupid little bitch,” he said, barely getting the words out.

  That’s when Sam saw the holes in the wall behind him. High, at least three of the eight shots in the ceiling.

  Ken straightened up like he’d been jolted with electricity.

  “Okie dokie. After that racket, the cops’ll be here soon. Better get to business.”

  His eyes turned to shiny stones, and he regarded her the way a leopard regards a fawn. In the past, she’d zone out. Now, she just cried. Her mother dead. Her life gone.