Eleven Hours

by Paullina Simons

  “Mrs. Bleck,” said Scott, “that isn’t why I’m here.”

  Bernie Bleck sucked in his breath.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Bleck, sir,” said Scott. “No matter how efficient you think the U.S. government is, not all branches communicate with each other. Believe me, this is not my jurisdiction. I do not do the dirty work of the Treasury. Well, not today anyway. No, I’m here because we want to know if you’ve seen your son-in-law lately.”

  “Son-in-law?” Bernie exclaimed. “Lyle? No, we haven’t seen him since—” He caught himself. “Since a few months ago.”

  “No,” said Maureen, hanging on to her husband. “Not since a few months ago.”

  Clinging to each other, they were inching their way to their porch.

  Scott went around and stood in their path. Reluctantly they stopped.

  “Have you seen him today?”

  “Today? No, of course not,” said Bernie. “Why would we see him today?”

  “He hasn’t stopped by? He hasn’t called?”

  “Not as of seven o’clock,” said Bernie.

  “Maybe he called since then,” said Maureen.

  “I doubt it,” said Bernie. “Why would he?”

  Scott asked, “Where did you go?”

  “To San Angelo. To the movies,” Maureen said.

  Scott said, “Mr. and Mrs. Bleck. Lyle Luft kidnapped this man’s wife. A pregnant woman. This is a matter of life and death. He has come to Eden to pick up a car and then disappear. We found the car, but we haven’t found him. We need to know where he may be hiding out. Lyle has killed a police officer and stolen his vehicle, so he has to be in a place where he can hide the car. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

  The cell phone rang. Scott listened, grunted, then hung up. “Somewhere other than the Eden cemetery,” he said. “Because he’s not there.”

  Deflated, Rich stood spiritlessly at Scott’s side.

  “Gee, we haven’t seen him in a long time,” said Mrs. Bleck. “Where could they have gone, Bernie?”

  Bernie wasn’t listening. “God, I knew he was crazy. I told you and told you,” he snapped. “Told Mel too. Don’t marry him, I said. He is unstable. He’ll make you unhappy.” Bernie Bleck shook his head miserably. “Now look what he’s gone and done.”

  Scott said sternly, “We need to find him right away. Is there any place at all that Lyle and your daughter hung out, frequented, liked? Any place here that meant something to him?”

  “They used to go to the movies a lot,” said Maureen, sniffling. “But the movie theaters are in San Angelo.” She turned to Rich, “I’m real sorry—”

  “Where else?” Scott interrupted her.

  “Where else, Bernie?”

  “How the hell should I know where that maniac liked to go? I told her not to marry him!”

  “Try to stay focused, Mr. Bleck. Where else? He’s not in San Angelo. He’s here in Eden. He’s someplace where he can hide a large Crown Victoria police car.”

  “Maybe Tony’s garage?” offered Bernie Bleck. “He was kind of friendly with Tony.”

  “My men have searched the whole place. They’re not there. That’s where his Honda was, though, so you’re on the right track. Can you think of anyplace else?”

  “Not really,” said Mrs. Bleck. “This is a real small town, you know. They met in Abilene, where Mel worked as assistant manager of a Taco Bell. But here there really wasn’t much for them to do. They went to the park a lot when they were here.”

  “Park?” Scott became rigid. “What park?”

  “Pfluger Park. They used to go and have picnics there on Sundays—”

  “Where is it?” Scott said, backing away and gesturing violently to the black vans and the cars.

  “It’s a few miles down Eighty-seven. There’s a sign. Pfluger Park. It’s kind of woodsy back there, and there are a couple of picnic areas, so I don’t know—”

  Scott was dragging Rich by the arm. “Thank you!” he yelled. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

  Rich ran.

  10:35 P.M.

  She didn’t have the strength to keep pressing on the horn. No one was going to come anyway.

  On the floor of the car, Didi saw her shopping bags from the mall. She wanted to get up, but she couldn’t move. She lay in a fetal position, her right hand gripping the underside of the seat, holding on, riding the contraction down. She was in too much pain even to scream. All her energy was fighting the inevitable. She was too afraid to bring a baby into the world by herself. Yet every ninety seconds, her belly was telling her push, and every ninety seconds Didi was biting her lips in an effort not to.

  Where are the keys to the car? Maybe I’ll start the car up and drive to the nearest gas station, the nearest anything. I’ll drive as long as driving somewhere doesn’t take longer than thirty seconds.

  It was too late to drive at this hour.

  They’d missed the ride to Mazatlán.

  No one to call. No radio, no phone. It’s dark. I have no water. Don’t they always tell you to have water nearby? Is that to wash the baby? It’s a good thing I don’t have any water. I’d drink it anyhow. The baby wouldn’t get any.

  Her body shattered through another contraction.

  Come on, Desdemona. Your hour has come.

  No. I’ll just lie on my side till help comes. I’ll lie on my side and wait.

  And the baby will die, stuck for an hour or two or four in the birth canal. Lyle didn’t kill it, couldn’t kill it, you wouldn’t let him. You wouldn’t let him. Why? So you could kill the baby yourself? So you could let him run out of life out of your womb but not into life yet? Somewhere in that tunnel, where you are and where the moon shines bright as your only light and where the trees are dark and the crickets cry, he’s stuck with you, and you aren’t getting up, Desdemona. Come on, get up, she groaned, clasping the wheel. GET UP, DIDI.

  She sat up, and felt the exploding pressure in her pelvis. Push me, it said, or I will tear you from side to side. I will shred you.

  Wait, she breathed. Wait. I have nothing to catch you with. I have nothing to tie you with, when you come. Just wait.

  Unbearable tremors overran her body. Her legs, her arms were shaking uncontrollably. In the hundred-degree heat of the night, Didi felt very cold. When the contraction was over, Didi ripped off her bloody dress. I don’t want my baby lying on Lyle’s blood. He’s not going to feel the pig anywhere near him.

  Again.

  That motivated her. Disgusting bastard, she thought, leaning into the Victoria’s Secret bag and pulling out her silk robe, silk nightgown, silk bra, and silk panties, all in the color of a nice burgundy. Didi took off her blood-soaked bra, but she had neither the stamina nor the coordination to put on the clean one. She hung on to the door handle and cried, breathing shallowly, breathing the baby back inside her.

  In the next twenty seconds, she tried to put on the nightgown, and failed. Her shaking was too severe.

  Didi finally managed to throw on the robe, ripping off one of the robe ties. Where’s the knife? I need the knife. She had left it near Lyle. She moved the seat back as far as it would go, opened the car door, and screamed, “Help me!” Her voice rang through the trees. “Help me!” Didi didn’t recognize her voice. It didn’t belong to her. It belonged to a man, or a woman with no vocal cords. It barely registered out of the car. “Help me,” the voice hoarsely whispered. Swinging the door shut, she laid the nightgown under herself. I have nothing to push against. I have no midwife to put my feet against, I have no stirrups, I have no Rich.

  Who?

  Rich.

  “Help me,” she whispered. “Dear God, help me.”

  Still calling for God, after everything.

  Didi moved the seat closer to the dashboard.

  The dashboard would have to be her Rich, her God, her midwife, her stirrups.

  Putting her feet up on the dash, she gripped the door handle with one hand, the seat divider with the other, and rasped,
“Okay. Let’s go.” And pushed.

  She pushed as hard as she could. She felt as if she were being ripped from the inside out. Then it stopped. Panting, she let go of the door handle and lowered her hand between her legs. She felt a squishy, wet softness.

  That’s it, she thought. That’s my baby. He’s been there all along, just waiting for me.

  Her teeth chattering, Didi remembered the cries of the nurses during her last labor. She put her chin on her chest, grabbed on to the door handle and the seat divider, and pushed.

  And pushed and pushed. And then thought fleetingly, wait—

  Here I am, pushing away, holding on for my life, shaking. But who’s going to catch this baby?

  And the answer came back to her in a rasp. You, Didi. You. Let go and guide your baby out.

  She let go of the door handle, slumping against the seat and unable to hold herself upright any longer. The handcuffs were still attached to her right wrist. She could have found the keys, but they were with Lyle, and she’d be damned if she would touch that bastard again. Unless it was to kick him.

  She put her fingers between the baby’s crowned head and her own torn perineum and pushed. She pushed hard at first. If it hurt, she couldn’t tell, she was numb, she was her own Darvocet, her own epidural anesthesia. She pushed hard, then remembered she was to push slow. At first it was just the squishiness, but then more came through, and for a second she became terrified that there was something wrong with the baby, because the head was so soft and pliant, and then she thought, are the cuffs digging into his head, and then, no, that’s not the head, it’s his behind, and before she had a chance to push again, the baby forced its head into the world. Didi held it in her hands. The little head was so slippery and she was shaking so badly, Didi thought, I could drop it without meaning to, without wanting to. And where’s the body? Do I have to push again? No, no. Her legs were falling off the dash. Didi couldn’t keep them up, couldn’t keep them open. Grunting like a weight lifter, she pushed one more time, and then the body of her baby slipped quietly into her hands. She saw its back and behind. She turned it over.

  It was a boy.

  He was dark and still. Oh, my God, she thought, he’s not breathing. She pried his mouth open with her fingers and a glob fell out. She didn’t know what it was and wouldn’t care to find out. She touched the baby’s nose, his wet throat, opened the mouth a little more, held the head down for a few seconds. No sound was coming from him. Didi went deaf trying to hear her son’s first cry.

  Ahh, she breathed out, tears running down her face, ahh, come on, come on, darling. Taking him with both hands, Didi held him to her, and then lifted him up and turned him upside down and shook him a little. Come on, come on. She heard him croak and choke and splutter like an old car, and there was a little sound. Then it stopped.

  Oh, God! Come on, dear one, come on. The baby coughed again, and suddenly let out a bellow, and even in the night, she saw his color change—from dark to something lighter. Didi put the baby on her naked belly and chest and realized she had been holding her breath. Grateful, she breathed out.

  He cried. She saw his face. He was blue and his little face was all scrunched up and he was crying. “Wah, wah.”

  It was the best, the dearest sound.

  Didi stroked his sticky head. His face was little, and his eyes were closed. His lips were very big, like Mick Jagger’s lips. She didn’t know where those lips came from. They were just enormous. Her throat made a noise. “My little one, my dear one, cry, my darling, cry.”

  And then she cried herself. “You’re a sweet boy,” she whispered. “You’re a dear boy, you’re Mommy’s boy, and we’ve made it. Me and you, you and your mommy, we’re here, and we’re going to be okay. We didn’t make that trip to Mazatlán, thank God. Thank Mommy. Thank you. You did very well,” Didi said, stroking her baby’s tiny face. “You did very well. What a brave one you are. Wanted to see your mommy, huh? Well, here I am.”

  Leaning back, Didi closed her eyes. “Today is the day God and I gave birth to my son,” she whispered. “And his name is Adam.”

  * * *

  Didi had nothing to cover the baby with. He was under a flap of her robe, but they couldn’t both fit under it if Didi was going to try to find the highway.

  The baby was still attached to her. There was nothing to cut the cord with except the knife near Lyle. She looked out of the car. She could see his silhouette on the ground. The cord would have to stay uncut.

  There was no more pain. All pain had stopped when the baby was born, but her left wrist felt weak, and Didi thought she might have broken it trying to get free from the cuffs. Also there was a vague stunned feeling to her body. Parts of her felt swollen and numb. She was sure that tomorrow she would feel worse. It was a blessing she would feel anything at all tomorrow, Didi thought.

  Her baby was crying.

  “Dear Adam,” she said. “I have nothing to wrap you in. All I have is the robe on my body and the nightgown that’s all full of blood now, and my yellow dress, which is clearly unsuitable. Why don’t you have some milk? And tell Mommy,” she whispered, “what it’s like to drink, Adam.”

  She put him to her breast, and it took him a few seconds, but he got the hang of it, and stopped crying, and opened his eyes. She looked down at him looking up at her, and muttered something to him, something sweet and simple.

  * * *

  Didi’s eyes felt very heavy. She was about to fall asleep, but she suddenly became afraid that Lyle might still be alive. That he was just pretending to be dead, just so she could have her baby, and then he would snatch him, kill her, cut her throat, and escape to Mazatlán.

  She had to get out of there.

  Wearing only her wine robe, Didi gingerly stepped out of the car, holding her naked baby. She wobbled like a newborn giraffe and nearly fell over.

  Didi looked to see where the road was. She was going to honk the horn, but then, thinking it might upset the little one, decided not to.

  She found the road, and with the baby in her arms, began hobbling, clad in one sandal, to what she hoped was out of the park and onto the highway. After a few steps, she kicked the sandal off and continued walking barefoot.

  If it hadn’t been for the quarter-moon up above, she would have been lost in the dark.

  Thank God for the moon.

  * * *

  Up ahead, she thought she heard a distant noise and saw bright lights. Is that God? Didi thought.

  She saw a procession of cars with red and blue flashing lights turn off the main highway and rush toward her. Didi was walking in the middle of the road. The cars were coming up fast. Their lights were on her. The first car slowed down, then stopped. A man got out and ran toward her.

  It’s Lyle! thought Didi, turning around and limping with her baby away from the cars. She wanted to run, but couldn’t run. She heard his voice: “Didi, Didi.”

  Oh, God, I knew it, I knew he was still alive, help me, and then arms grabbed her and a voice again said, “Didi,” and a man was crying and holding her to him. She couldn’t see his face. She wasn’t dying yet.

  “Didi,” he said.

  With one eye, she looked into a familiar face. The other eye felt as if it were closed forever. Was it Lyle? It was hard to tell. She hadn’t seen another face in so long she’d forgotten what other men looked like. It wasn’t the dead policeman. “Didi,” the man repeated, looking at her with a horrified expression. “It’s me, Didi, it’s Rich.”

  Rich, she thought. Rich?

  It wasn’t Lyle.

  The man was crying, and Didi mumbled to him, and he said, “What?”

  She said it again, and he said, “I can’t hear you! What?”

  And she whispered, “Water. Water.”

  He started to go away, and she grabbed onto him with one arm. “Don’t leave me,” she said. “Water.”

  “Water!” Rich screamed. “Bring her some water!”

  Someone ran out of the car with a bottle and gave i
t to Rich. Didi opened her mouth, and he put the bottle to her throat but didn’t tilt it all the way up. He was trying to be delicate, but she grabbed it away from him and poured the contents of the bottle into her throat. Then she bent over and threw the water up without letting go of the baby.

  “Let me hold the baby,” Rich said, crying. “Is he alive? Let me hold the baby, Didi.”

  “No,” she said, holding the infant tighter. “Water.”

  She was brought more. She continued to stand, then she sank down to the ground. She threw up the second time she drank and the third, but then some must have stayed inside her and she felt better.

  Another man came up to her.

  She looked up at him and he crouched down. He had a kind black face. She was leaning against Rich, who was holding her up in a sitting position. All Didi wanted was to lie down and sleep, so she lay down, holding the baby to her breast. The man leaned over her and said, “Didi, we’re so sorry. We tried to find you. We really tried.”

  She nodded. She didn’t believe them. God could have found her. He could have told them where she was.

  “Where is he?” the man asked. “Is he out there somewhere?”

  “No,” Didi said. “He’s dead.”

  The man stared at her and then nodded. “Good,” he said.

  She felt Rich hold her tighter. “Oh God, Didi. Oh, God, oh, God. OHGOD.”

  She said, “Rich?” and then forgot the rest. “I called for Him too. I called for Him the whole day.”

  “He came.…”

  Didi looked at the man in front of her and saw understanding in his eyes. She whispered to him, “Lyle—he was going to kill me and take my baby. I had to kill him. I stabbed him with his own knife.”

  The man said, “Good.”

  She saw Rich staring at her from the side and then staring at the man dressed in black with an expression Didi could best describe as disbelief. The man nodded to Rich, and said comfortingly to Didi, “Shh, shh, don’t worry. You’re safe. You’re all right. The ambulance is right here. We’re here to help you. You don’t have to worry about anything.”