by Ledger,John
The man picked up her husband’s head by the hair and chopped hard with the rusted blade. The head came away with five hard whacks of the knife. The man threw the head into the crowd and sat on the hard floor. His heavy frame shook with pitiful sobs. June didn’t watch her husband’s decapitation. The body on the floor wasn’t the man she had fallen in love with. Nothing was the same since everything fell apart.
First, the jobs went away. The country that couldn’t support its poor during times of prosperity was completely worthless during recession. Then other countries called in their debts. The superpower that was America defaulted. The dollar became worthless. The riots started. Police were helpless to stop it. Government collapsed.
The fat man rose to his feet. He wiped tears and blood from his face. His own wife and child were huddled at the other end of the concrete circle of the killing floor. He turned away from June and her child and walked over to his family. He hugged his wife and kissed his boy. A rope ladder was lowered into the pit. The large man boosted his wife and child to the dangling rungs. He watched them climb to the relative safety of the mass of people above. The ladder was raised before the man could climb it. It was double-death night. One more person had to die.
***
June met Steve at his high school youth group at the local Methodist church. She had gone with the intention of meeting boys. Steve liked the sight of her. A sign-up sheet was being passed around for a local clean-up project and Steve took her phone number off it. He informed rather than asked June he was taking it. She shrugged. Three weeks later Steve was at his friend’s parent’s house and found the phone number in his wallet. He called June and she invited them to come over and watch a movie with her and her friends. When he and his friend arrived at her house, she didn’t remember which one Steve was at first. (She still enjoyed teasing him about whether or not she made the right choice.) They left her house to go rent a movie. Steve and June got in the back seat of his friends’ car. The back seat wasn’t very big and Steve had to lean way over to get inside. June grabbed him as he entered the car and hugged him. It was a whim that felt right to her in the moment. She didn’t let go the whole way to the video rental place. That’s when Steve fell in love with her. She didn’t fall in love with him until later, but that was okay.
Six years later Steve bought an engagement ring for June. They had been dating for a long time. Everyone who knew them couldn’t imagine one of them without the other. It had been assumed for some time that they would get married. Steve didn’t assume anything. He was terrified. He was going to propose to June that upcoming weekend and he was making arrangements for the perfect opportunity. He was sitting in his bedroom of the lower half of the college area house that he and two of his friends rented for an exorbitant amount of money. Students of the area were fleeced by landlords who assumed their parents paid the bills for their hard-up children.
Steve wasn‘t going to school. He was working. He had saved long and hard for the ring. It was a paltry diamond with even smaller diamonds spread out amid waves of silver. He‘d paid for it in ten dollar bills; every last cent of his savings. He knew it was in the style that June liked. (He wished he could have afforded something nicer, and still does to this day, but he doesn’t think June would trade it now, even though they have the money.) He set the ring on the bedspread and wrote out plans for the weekend. He orchestrated the perfect time and place to ask her. She lived a couple miles away, so he didn’t have the slightest idea that she was about to barge into the room looking for postage stamps - Which she did.
“Do you have any stamps?” She said.
He just looked at her. She saw the ring. The perfect plans went out the window. He got down on one knee.
“Will you marry me?” Steve said. He was never more painfully aware of how little he had to offer her than at that moment. He had nothing but himself.
She looked shocked. She stammered.
“I have to go,” June said, “I have to think about it.”
She left. Steve sat back on his bed. He didn’t know what to think. He sat there for over an hour. The phone rang. It was June. She asked him to come over. She said to bring the ring. Steve did. Her apartment was empty of roommates. Candles were lit all over. She led him over to the couch. He went meekly. He never felt so small and powerless in his whole life.
“Ask me again,” June said.
“Really?” Steve said.
“I just got off the phone with my mom,” June said. “She asked me how long I was going to make you wait. She said you weren’t going to wait around forever.”
There was a pause. She was patient.
“Ask me again,” June said.
“Will you marry me?” He said.
“Yes,” She said.
***
The man shifted his heavy bulk and picked up a wooden baseball bat from the killing pit floor. The bat was stained red, cracked and ugly from heavy use. The man walked toward June and her child. He stepped around the headless body of her husband Steve. He didn’t even give the gory form a glance as he moved toward his target. June shoved her child behind her, blocking him with her body. The crowd roared in approval. The din was so tumultuous it threatened to rupture June’s eardrums.
She looked so small compared to the hulking male that stalked toward her. She was barely five and a half feet tall. Her simple white dress was stained yellow from sweat and dirt. It hung in tatters around her emaciated frame. Her curly hair hung in unruly clumps. Most of it was tied in a knot on the back of her head, giving her a vague ponytail. The man stopped a few feet from her. His body reeked of old sweat and death. He held the bat in his right hand. His muscles tensed on the wooden shaft of the bludgeon. June wondered if he would bring the bat down on her or if he would just try for the child. The man opened his mouth, revealing several broken teeth from other fights on the killing floor. He spoke to her. His voice sounded deep and weary.
“Give me the child,” He said. At his words the crowd surrounding the pit quieted a bit. They strained forward to hear. Many shoved each other, cursing for quiet.
“You can’t have him,” June said. “Kill me.” The man waited a moment to answer. His words came slowly. It was almost a plea.
“The child has to die,” He said. “That’s the rules. It’s either him or both of you.”
“You’ll have to kill me too,” June said. The crowd grew tired of the parley and screamed for June’s blood. They came for death and were impatient when it was withheld. Their blood lust threatened to take the whole pit down with them. The man raised the bat and swung hard for June’s head.
June shoved her child to the side and lunged toward the man. She bit hard into his neck. The man screamed low and steady as she ripped a parcel of flesh from his throat. He tore the flailing woman off his body. He flung her bodily against the wall. She hit the concrete hard. Darkness clouded her vision. She nearly passed out. She tried to rise but her legs wouldn’t work from the shock of her blow against the wall. The man shook his head. He turned toward her child. The boy, nearly four years old now, his shadowy brown hair plastered to his face, stood stock still in fear. He wouldn’t move when the death blow came. The man raised the bat to kill the boy.
June panicked. She picked up a rusted spike off the pit floor and rose on unsteady legs. The bat came down at her child. June hurled herself at the man, driving the metal spike deep into his back. The bat’s course altered slightly from the pain of the wound, glancing off the side of her child’s head. June ripped the spike out of the man’s back and stabbed him again. The man swung his arm back and knocked June sprawling. He tried to pull the spike free from his back but couldn’t reach it. June picked up a hatchet off the killing pit floor. She rose to her feet again.
“You can’t have him,” June said. The crowd roared its approval.
***
Steve’s cell phone rang. He groaned and rolled over in bed, covering his face with a pillow. June prodded him in the ribs. Steve sat up and rubb
ed his face.
“Answer your phone or I’ll never sleep with you again,” June said.
“It’s not fair to use sex as leverage,” Steve said.
“Nothing is fair this early in the morning,” June said. “Answer it or die.”
“I don’t know why you’re so cranky at a quarter to three in the morning,” Steve said. He leaned over the bed and fished out the pair of jeans he had worn the previous evening from a small pile of dirty laundry on the floor. He found the cell phone and answered the call. Fifteen minutes later June and Steve were in their car, driving to the Department of Child Welfare social services building.
June loved children, always did. She just didn’t want to go through pregnancy in order to have one. She had to endure a lot of misunderstanding from friends and family over this. Her mother tried to coax her by telling her that she would make beautiful children. June told her that even beautiful people could have ugly babies. One of her friends told her that maybe she just wasn’t ‘the maternal type.’ Needless to say, she wasn’t friends with that person anymore. June and Steve longed for a child and decided on going the adoption route. Steve was on board with the plan. He believed that he could love an adopted child just as deeply as a biological one.
The problem they faced was that adoptable children were treated like a commodity. Their family, being solidly blue collar and desperately hanging on to middle-class status, couldn’t afford the ten to fifteen grand it would cost to adopt a child overseas. They decided to become foster parents after speaking with a few families that worked for the system.
“Those parents never pull their act together,” a foster parent told them. “They hang on for a few months but don’t do what they have to in order to get their children back. They prefer drugs to their kids. You foster a child and they eventually become free to adopt. It doesn’t cost you anything. The kid is already in your home and under your care. The State won’t want to move the kid to another family. You’ll be first choice as an adoptive placement.” Steve and June didn’t think they had any other option of getting a child. They enrolled in foster classes and became a licensed home.
Weeks had gone by and no children had been placed with them. They had gotten a couple calls about some teenagers that needed placement, but they didn’t accept. They wanted a baby. The call finally came. A child had been removed from a home in a trailer park near the north side of the city. June found herself saying ‘yes’ to the social worker before she had even finished telling her about the boy. She roused Steve and they went to pick him up.
The night emergency social worker, a heavy set blonde with large bags under her eyes, led them to a waiting room. She walked hurriedly, speaking at the same fast clip as her step.
“He’s been taken for severe neglect,” The social worker said. “The police went to the home on a domestic disturbance call and found the child in the parent’s bedroom.”
“Is he hurt?” Steve said.
“If he was he would be in a hospital now,” the social worker said. “What he needs is some food, which we can send some with you. The kid looks like he’s spent most of his time strapped into a little bouncer seat, back of his head is kind of flat. You’re going to need to get him to a doctor as soon as you can. He’s got some skin issues from lack of proper custodial care by the parents. I doubt his immunizations are up to date. I don’t know what else to tell you now. I won’t know much until I get the police report.”
“Thank you for calling us,” June said.
“Thank you for helping the child,” The social worker said. “I can give you one of the agency’s car seats too. You need to bring it back by tomorrow. It’s the only one we have. The one he came here in is filthy. I can’t send it with you in good conscience.”
“We have one already,” Steve said. “It’s in the car.”
“Good,” The social worker said. She stopped by the door of the waiting room and turned to June and Steve. She saw the look of concern on their faces and put a warm hand on June’s shoulder.
“First time?” The social worker said.
“Yes,” June said.
“Honey, it will be okay,” The social worker said. “The kid is looking pretty rough but he only needs a few things; good food, love and a bath.” She opened the door to the waiting room and they saw their baby boy for the first time.
“He’s beautiful,” June said.
***
June couldn’t move her left arm. She had taken a shot from the bat at the elbow. She thought her arm was probably broken. She no longer held the hatchet in her hand. It was buried in the big man’s chest. He was dead. It all happened so fast. The man had swung the bat sideways at the same time June struck with the axe. She hacked with desperate hopelessness. The bat crushed her arm. Her hatchet struck deep, hitting the vitals and killing the man. The crowd was louder than ever. The fighting pit was filled with debris as people threw everything but themselves over the rebar railing onto June and her child. It was double death night. Two people were dead. June and her boy would be leaving the killing floor alive.
She felt her son lean tentatively against her. She hugged him with her right arm and waited for the ladder to drop. It seemed to be taking longer than usual. The result of the fight was unusual. June thought that maybe they were deciding whether to kill her anyway, but she heard the crowd and noticed that the cheers were drowning out the curses. They loved her. Their blood-lust was placated. The pit bosses had nothing to lose in letting her and her boy go.
The rope ladder was thrown over the side. Her boy climbed up first. June had to be hoisted up by the rough hands of the crowd. She felt startling pain from her arm as they dragged her up over the side of the railing. Her boy was almost swallowed up in the jostling throng of people, but she clutched his shirt with her good arm and held him close. She walked away from the pit and was stopped by a diminutive man by the door. He wore a stained powder-blue suit, no shirt underneath the vest. His skin was covered in some untreated disease. He was shoeless. June halted several feet away from the man. He was the reason that she was here.
“You can consider our contract paid in full,” He said.
***
Elijah was growing quickly under the care of June and Steve. He was a voracious eater, demanding feedings every three hours. He squealed his demands with an ear splitting screech. Steve had taken to wearing earplugs everywhere he went.
“I can still hear him,” Steve said. “It just takes some of the edge off.” Even though the child was loud, June was still calling him ‘little silent one.’ The baby didn’t make a single sound for the whole first week he was a part of their family. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to cry. Crying was apparently one of his greatest talents. It was that he used to think that nobody cared when he did. One of the first things a baby finds out about this world is if anyone loves him. He learns if anyone will come to his call. Nobody used to answer his cries and Elijah, like many children in his circumstances, gave up and stopped crying. One night around midnight his stomach hurt from hunger and he let out a small peep. June heard him and entered his bedroom. She picked him up and fed him a warm bottle of formula. Elijah stared into her eyes as she cradled him. He studied her face and the sound of her soothing voice. He felt a warmth in his little body that he never felt before. He was too little to understand what it was, but it was love - Plain and simple, yet fiercer than any emotion, love. Someone cared about him when he cried. From that night forward, Elijah found his voice.
Elijah grew quickly. His head rounded out all on its own. Steve was secretly pleased. He was worried the kid would have to wear some sort of head shaping helmet, and he would have been a little embarrassed at the attention it would receive. The malnourished child they picked up from the social services building two years ago was now a stout little man. He toddled at a sharp pace on chunky legs. He thrust his stomach forward as he moved. June was worried that he was eating too much, but her mother told her he was a healthy boy. She said all that extr
a girth was just baby fat and would disappear within a couple years.
It was around that time that Elijah’s biological father was released from jail. Termination of parental rights was never finalized by their state court system. As soon as Elijah’s biological father was out of jail, he was contacting the system to find out what happened to his child. He demanded visits and was granted a couple supervised hours a week. June and Steve didn’t worry about Elijah’s biological mother demanding her child. She had died of a heroin overdose that same year.
Steve and June drove Elijah to the social services building. It would be the first time Elijah had seen his father in over two years. They were concerned with dropping Elijah off because government control and regulation was tenuous. It had been several months since they received Elijah’s foster maintenance stipend. Their last check from the state bounced. Steve had driven over to speak with the foster case worker about it and found the building overrun with people demanding food stamps, disability payments, clothing stipends and every other type of government welfare support. Steve didn’t even bother trying to get into the building. The throng at the doors was too thick. The people had a look of desperation about them that spoke of danger. Steve left before things got out of hand. June and Steve watched the live news feed at home of the riot police descending on the crowd. Families were tear-gassed, beaten and arrested. Three police officers were wounded in the struggle. He needn’t have bothered to worry. Elijah’s biological father never showed for the visit and they never heard from him again.