Sacrifice

by Farris, John

  He didn't know what to make of the pistol. From the look on his face he didn't feel threatened. I was Sharissa's father. On the other hand, I was obviously pointing it at him. He lowered the water bottle, blinking, bit his lip, and thought of something to say.

  "Mr. Walker—you should be careful with that."

  "I am careful, Bob." I didn't move or change the direction in which I was aiming.

  "Oh—is it loaded?"

  "Yes, it is."

  "Oh." He was blinking again. Now there was tension in his stance, wariness in his eyes. "Sir, I really wish you wouldn't point it at me. You're pointing it at me, you know?"

  "I know, Bobby. But I'm not going to shoot you as long as you continue to look me directly in the eyes, and don't make the slightest attempt to run. If you try that then I will shoot, and I won't miss."

  He started to speak, but belated shock cut him off, cost him his voice. He swallowed hard and got it back.

  "Sir. Mr. Walker. What—I don't—"

  "I'm not enjoying myself, Bobby. I hate doing this, in fact, and I wouldn't be if you hadn't made it necessary." Silence.

  "Look at me, Bob. Don't let your eyes wander again. The next time I'll kill you without warning. You had better know I mean what I say. Look right here at me. Tell me you understand."

  "Yes, sir," he said. His throat worked hard and the next moment he started to cry. Tears poured from his eyes and he blinked rapidly, staring at me all the while. His tears made me feel very badly. I hated this, the stupid melodrama. But I had to know.

  "—Did I do?" Bobby asked me, forcing his words out through the lockjaw of fear: fear of my bizarre behavior, the warning of unjustified punishment.

  Disturbed by his fear, which threatened to release a torrent of my own fears, I was close to trembling again.

  "Bobby, I have to know what you've done to Sharissa."

  "Wha—Sharissa—?" It had been a couple of years at least since his voice had changed; now it was changing back, to the high tenor of childhood.

  "And don't lie. It's your only chance. You must not lie to me. Have you had sex with my daughter?"

  His mouth was open. He had a simple, earnest expression, as if I had put him in such a state of terror he couldn't process the question. Then, in a flash of clarity, his shoulders dropped and he cried harder, shaking with grief.

  "I love—Sharissa—"

  I moved a couple of steps closer to him. I was cold with dismay.

  "Have you? You son of a bitch, answer me! Did you fuck Sharissa?"

  My language, deliberately chosen, had the right shock effect. He raised a hand to wipe his streaming eyes. His head swung side to side, slowly. But Bobby continued, as I had warned him, to look straight at me.

  "Mr. Walker—"

  "Bobby?"

  "No, I never—never with Sharissa. No, sir! No. It's true. Oh, God, so help me, don't hurt me, I've never done anything to hurt her!"

  "Bobby?"

  He couldn't get his breath. It was a panic reaction I hadn't anticipated.

  "Take it easy, Bobby." I kept my voice low and neutral in tone. "I guess I believe you. But the trouble is, I've seen the two of you together. Do you understand what I mean?"

  "Uh-uh."

  "I've seen how you hold her. Your hands were all over her breasts, weren't they?"

  "Y-yes, I—but I swear—as Jesus is my Savior—"

  "Where else?"

  "S-sir?"

  "Come on, Bobby. You know what I'm saying. Don't you?"

  "Y-yes."

  "Okay, then. Maybe you didn't go all the way. But did you masturbate her?"

  He couldn't breathe again. I remember hearing that Bobby had been asthmatic as a child. Often the condition is psychosomatic. His face was reddening as he choked. He was holding his throat.

  But I couldn't let up on him now.

  "Nod your head, Bobby, if you ever went anywhere near Sharissa's vagina during love play."

  He shook his head instead. Vehemently, despite the fact that he was suffocating.

  I was sorry for him. I wished he could feel as much relief as I felt at that moment. I owned my life again.

  "All right," I said. "You'll be okay. Sit down on the ground, Bobby. Catch your breath. You've been very cooperative. And I really appreciate the consideration you've shown my daughter."

  He sank to his knees on the turf of pine needles, mouth open, eyes bulging. Then he was able to grab a breath of air. Another. Sucking it in with a terrible sound, the cords in his throat standing out.

  I picked up the water bottle and took the lid off, dashed some of it against the side of his face and on the back of his neck. The shock of the water on his humid skin seemed to have a good effect. He was rocking slightly, panting now, a definite improvement. All his attention was focused on the effort to get enough air. He had, temporarily, lost his strength. The strength that threatened me.

  I put the .22 caliber handgun down beside my backpack. Of course I had never intended to shoot him. Perhaps I hadn't needed the intimidation the gun represented. I certainly didn't need it now.

  In the ravine I found a smooth round geode the size of a large grapefruit, which I was able to palm with one hand. The stone must have weighed seven or eight pounds. I carried it, hand down at my side, back to Bobby, who did not look up. He might not have heard me coming. I had no shadow, but I felt as light as a shadow on my feet.

  When I was behind him I reached down with my free hand and stroked the back of his head as if I were soothing a child. He shuddered and moaned something.

  "Thank you, Bobby," I said softly, "for not taking her from me."

  His scalp was slightly exposed where I had separated the damply matted hair with my fingers. His sweat, welling up along with fear, smelled sharp and rye in the pure morning air. I looked down at the vulnerable strip of white scalp a couple of inches from the base of his skull and then, with sudden intoxicated strength, reached back and slammed the stone down hard. I hit him with a violence that surprised me and took most of my breath away.

  Even so I hadn't expected to shatter the bones with a single blow.

  Bobby fell forward, sprawling on his face in a spray of blood from his nose. I just stood there, trembling, watching him, the stone poised for a second blow, and quite a lot of time went by before I realized that it wouldn't be necessary. Bobby wasn't going to move ever again.

  We had honey-baked ham and escalloped potatoes and green beans for dinner that night, but dinner didn't go well. Caroline was home, but the phone rang every few minutes for her—some emergency or other the volunteers at Claude Gilley's campaign headquarters couldn't or didn't want to deal with. And every time the ringing began Sharissa would fall silent, shifting her eyes toward the kitchen and the nearest telephone, her mouth set in a line that betrayed both worry and anger. Bobby Driscoll had been invited, hadn't showed, apparently didn't have the courtesy to call and let her know he would be late or not there at all. She ate sparingly and paid polite attention to our other invited guest, C.G. Butterbaugh, who gamely did most of the talking and tried his best to ignore all the interruptions and the tension in the air.

  Some of his conversation was about genetic codes and the role genetic technology was already playing in scientific detective work, and the possibilities of rewriting history through DNA analysis of the remains of the famous or notorious. But I wasn't much interested in history, or those who made history. History, as someone already had pointed out, was bunk. I would see the little flash of the cross that dangled from Sharissa's left earlobe when she quickly turned her head, and then I would think of the similar cross that Bobby wore, that I stared at while waiting for him to move, but he never moved. Blood had seeped through his hair and darkened, and finally I left him there. Washed in the blood of Jesus, but oh so dead regardless.

  On the way back to where I had parked my car I buried the stolen pistol. How long, I wondered, before it would be so much a part of the earth that no one would recognize it for what it had
been? A thousand, ten thousand years. Only our genomes, the genetic blueprints of living things, lasted forever.

  "Some part of human lives should always be secret," I said to Butterbaugh. "What difference does it make now if Lincoln suffered from Marfan's Syndrome, or Stalin was paranoid, or Handel wrote the 'Messiah' in three weeks on the upswing of a manic-depressive cycle?"

  "Well, none, I guess, but once we've conquered the genetic codes, and put computers—better computers than we have now, I'm talking about computers than are small enough to operate inside the human body, even inside a single human cell—put them to work re-engineering flaws that cause disease or mental aberrations, well—don't you think we'd have the possibility of a better world?"

  The phone rang. Caroline smiled in apology and started to get up, but Sharissa beat her to it, saying, "Mom, let me this time."

  "How do we make a computer that can perform therapeutically inside a single cell?" I asked Butterbaugh.

  "Oh, it's coming. Maybe not in my lifetime, although X-ray technology has produced some incredible breakthroughs in computer chip design, but, let's say, in the next fifty years. If you're interested, there was this article in Scientific American a couple of months ago, I'll give it to Sharissa when I see her again."

  He was watching her in the doorway of the kitchen. Sharissa had her back to us and was talking softly into the phone; I couldn't eavesdrop on both of them at the same time. It was easy to know what was on Butterbaugh's mind, and in his heart, whenever he looked at her.

  I thought about it again, for at least the hundredth time that day; but no, I couldn't have walked away and let Bobby live. As long as he was alive then he and Sharissa would find a way to be together. And, as Butterbaugh had pointed out to me following a different situation, it was a case of aggravated assault to point a loaded handgun at someone. Eventually Bobby would have talked about it—to Sharissa, to his parents. Then there would have been hell to pay.

  "Immortality," Butterbaugh said. "It's not such a stretch of the imagination that in a hundred years or so we, I mean human beings, may be programmed to live as long as we want—you know, barring accidental death."

  "It might become biologically possible to live for centuries," Caroline said. "But what about the psychological burden?"

  "Too much of a good thing?" I murmured. "Anyway, I'm sure the Baptists would have a fit, if their parishioners opted for genetic engineering over heaven."

  "I'm having enough trouble with this lifetime," Caroline said. Then she looked at me and laughed at my expression and amended, "Well, this week, I guess is what I mean." She turned her head sharply and quizzically, as if hearing a knock from a spirit guide, then smiled and caught my eye. "I think I've been luckier than most women."

  Sharissa came back to the table looking perplexed. "That was Mrs. Driscoll. She wanted Bobby to stop by the pharmacy for her on his way home tonight."

  "You mean she thought he was here?" Caroline said.

  "He didn't go home after work. So Mrs. Driscoll assumed Bobby came for dinner straight from the warehouse. But he wouldn't do that. He needed to have a shower and change clothes."

  I got up to pour myself a second cup of coffee. I gave Caroline a kiss on the back of the neck in passing, and she smiled and looked up at me, with that certain light in her pale gingery eyes I was sure no other man had ever seen; and I knew that, despite whatever emergencies might crop up at campaign headquarters, she wouldn't be going back there tonight. I was thankful. I needed her.

  "Maybe he's still at the warehouse," Sharissa said. "Excuse me, I'll just call and see if he had to work late."

  She called Bobby's uncle, and this time she came away from the telephone somber and a little frightened.

  "Bobby didn't go to work today." Sharissa remained standing, gripping the back of her chair. She looked, rather blankly, around the table at all of us. She thought about it. Her voice changed. "He always calls. I was sick this morning. But he didn't call me or come back after—"

  "You saw Bobby this morning?" Butterbaugh said.

  "Well, he comes by most mornings at about ten to seven, and we've been jogging this week out at King Forest. But today I had a stomachache and threw up and couldn't go with him. Daddy?"

  "I know, he told us he was coming back after he finished running to see how you were."

  "This is not like Bobby!" Sharissa said. "To up and disappear for a whole day. I wonder if—if he could have had an accident or something . . ."

  "What was he driving?" Butterbaugh asked her.

  "Oh, he's had Kevin's Chevy Maxicab most of the summer. That can't be it, somebody would have heard by now—wouldn't they—?"

  "I'm sure there's nothing to worry about," Caroline said firmly. "Sharissa, why don't I take the phone off the hook while we all try to have our dessert in peace?"

  "No. Bobby might call. And when he does—I'm really gonna let him hear it." She sniffed a couple of times. "I mean, this is so unbelievably rude of him!"

  "Peach cobbler or cherry swirl cake or vanilla ice cream?" I asked Butterbaugh.

  "How about a little of each?" Caroline suggested, smiling.

  "Oh—oh," Butterbaugh said, looking guiltily down at his stomach. "Well, maybe—" he glanced at Sharissa. "Maybe I can handle a little of each, if we're going to get that match in later?"

  Sharissa looked up slowly, realizing she'd been spoken to.

  "Oh, sure. No problem. I have no intention of staying around here the rest of the night waiting for Bobby Driscoll to show up."

  Tracker dogs from the Sheriff's Department found Bobby, or Bobby's remains, at a quarter past four on Saturday afternoon.

  We were all at King Forest—Sharissa, Caroline, and I; Bobby's parents and two sisters—waiting in the lot near the Maxicab Bobby had parked there thirty-six hours earlier, when word came back to us.

  Bobby's mother collapsed. Sharissa and the other girls became hysterical. Bobby's father, a big paunchy man I had fished with a couple of times, wept in my arms. It was a very difficult time for us all.

  Before and after the funeral, there was a lot of media attention. Nothing we could do but endure it. A murder had been committed. There were no clues, and very little speculation about who might be guilty. Bobby had been well liked by his classmates. Nearly two hundred of them turned out for the service on Tuesday that preceded a private burial.

  Tuesday also happened to be Primary Day. Claude Gilley won his party's nomination, which made him a good bet to also win the election in November. Caroline, of course, was unable to take any real satisfaction in his victory, and she stayed away from Claude's celebration. But she couldn't get out of the obligation to accompany Claude to Washington on Thursday to meet with his staff in the nation's capital.

  I was left to deal with Sharissa, and her grief.

  I decided the best course of action would be for Sharissa to compete in the tennis tournament in Atlanta she'd been preparing so hard for. After conferring with Bobby's parents, who assured her they would not find her participation disrespectful, she agreed.

  The tournament was being held on the outdoor courts of the Chattahoochee Tennis Club. Sharissa was making short work of her second-round opponent when Detective Sergeant C.G. Butterbaugh, wearing one of his loud plaid sports coats, slipped into a grandstand seat beside me. He looked at the scoreboard and whistled. The players were taking a break between the first and second sets.

  "She looks tired," he said of Sharissa.

  "It's emotional more than physical fatigue, I think. But I've never seen her serve so well." I looked at him. "I don't suppose there's anything new?"

  "Well, as you know, it's state and not our jurisdiction. But I've got a couple of buddies in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation who keep me up on the case."

  "And—?"

  He shook his head slightly. "To be honest, unless there's a confession down the road sometime, I don't think we'll ever see a break in this case. It just doesn't look too promising. There's no obvious moti
ve. He was jogging by himself, that we do know; probably decided to take a pee break in the woods, and bang, he got it from behind. Appears to have been spontaneous, not premeditated. A crazy who felt that Bobby was violating his wilderness sanctuary, or something. Bobby's car keys were on him, apparently nothing was taken. The body wasn't moved or molested. It's a reasonable guess that the murder weapon was one of those stones from the ravine near where Bobby was lying. I don't think it'll be found. The offender was a strong guy or very angry, or both. One blow. Bobby never knew what hit him."

  "I'd think you would find a footprint—something—"

  "No, that turf is spongy with pine needles. Doesn't take much of an impression unless it's soaking wet. And there hasn't been a decent rain up that way for more than a week." He looked at the four o'clock sky overhead, a few small clouds. We were on the shady side of center court, but still there wasn't a breeze stirring.

  He mopped his forehead with a pale blue handkerchief and said, "They're going through the computers now, to see if Bobby's murder fits any kind of pattern—location, choice of weapon. Maybe something will turn up after all."

  The girls were back on the court for the second set, Sharissa serving. The effort she put into it was explosive. Her opponent, who wore her hair long on top and buzz-cut above the ears, took one step and gave up without offering her racket to the scorching serve.

  "Beauty," Butterbaugh said, leaning forward in his seat, lost in admiration, hopeless in his adoration of my daughter.

  Sharissa was so used up after her match, she drank a quart of orange juice and went straight to bed when we got home. Caroline had hoped to be back Saturday night, but she was delayed. She didn't have much to say to me on the phone; in fact, she sounded remote, not interested in talking. I assumed Claude Gilley was being a drain on what emotional reserves Caroline had left.