by J. D. Palmer
I don’t know.
I know that if Jessica is alive, and alone, then she’ll have to make room in her life for Beryl as well as me. I can’t give up on her. That would be giving up on myself. Or, giving up on what we have gone through together.
I am in love with Beryl. I’ve always known that I loved her. Told her I loved her once, twice. But I admit this to myself, at this final hour, that I am in love with her. A love just as profound as the one I have for Jessica.
Is it possible to be in love with more than one person? Why not? I can’t find any reason that a heart should have only room to encapsulate one person at a time. Love shouldn’t be a pool with a deep end. It should be an ocean with storms and tides and untold depths that maybe, just maybe, only see the sun once in their life.
Or, a voice nags at me, you’re not the same person. Maybe your love for Beryl is only possible because of who you have become. What you have become.
A scary thought.
Beryl takes a deep breath, as if she’s about to make an admission. We halt in the middle of the road.
“I don’t want…” she chews her lip. Pale cheeks red from the cold, freckles a dusting of the universe beneath eyes that are too sad for tears. “I don’t want you to feel obligated to me.”
I bark a laugh. I can’t help it.
“Shut up Berly.”
It has never been fully vocalized, really, the feelings between the two of us. And I wasn’t absolutely sure, I guess, that she felt the same way. But silence is our language, and more poems have been read in the empty space between us than there are leaves on the broken road on which we walk.
The final quarter mile. My feet get soaked in the slush that coats the road and start to drag through the leaves and branches only just recently released from the icy grip of winter. Beryl grips my hand as we walk together towards an uncertainty.
Around the last loop. The yellow house on the hill. It’s early, and I doubt I’ll be able to see the smoke coming out of the chimney through the trees, but I still try.
We turn and walk along the fence that lines our property. Past the garden. The apple and apricot trees, branches still barren of leaves. The large glass windows gleaming in the sun and no way to see if there is anyone on the other side, watching. Waiting.
We walk and I take baby steps and then large strides. I walk like a drunkard. Torn between wanting to get it over with and wanting to abandon the whole thing.
The back door opens.
I halt. No, I freeze. I am petrified stone, and Beryl releases my hand and takes a step to the side. For it is Jessica who has walked out. Thin, and smaller than I remember, but it is Jessica who stands on the small deck and is also still. Two statues frozen in some representation of hope and fear.
An old man, hunched and unsteady and leaning on a large staff, stumps out of the door to take a place behind her. A hand raised to his own face, as if shielding it from the sun. I don’t know who he can possibly be, but I’m glad that Jessica was not alone. And it was ever in her nature to take care of people.
She’s alive…
A step to break me free. Then I’m walking again. Hand raised because my voice has been taken from me. I feel that Beryl is walking with me, following just a stride or two back. Present, as she should be, and respectful. And here.
Then she grabs my elbow.
A desperation there. Nails digging deep as she jerks me to a halt. I turn, confused, and the look on her face is enough to make me whirl around, to face up the hill again.
At Jessica. At the length of chain attached to her ankle that extends back into the house.
Hur hur.
A low, ghastly, dark and dry chuckle fills the air as Stuart raises his hand in what can only be called a greeting.
We are paralyzed. Strength drained from our limbs. How can this be? Have I lost my mind?
“I killed you,” I hear Beryl say. And this makes Stuart laugh. He laughs until it turns into a cough, and he shuffles a few paces closer. Unafraid. Undaunted by us.
“It was not His will.” And he smiles. Or he tries to smile. The man, if he truly is alive and not some ghost come to haunt us, is a shadow of his old self. His teeth are jagged, one canine completely gone. Face shrunken, eyes wide and manic in a visage that resembles a skeleton. His hair is long and wild, with dreads of it reaching to his shoulders. His right hand is a claw, the fingers and knuckles broken and healed into something resembling a club.
And each step seems to cause him pain. Air hissing through the shards of his teeth as he brings himself closer to us. The claw of his hand clutched around his abdomen and the other gripping the tall, curved staff to support his weight.
Beryl breaks free of the shock. Of the spell his presence has woven over us. She snarls as she fumbles for her gun, pulling it out and rapidly cocking it, her arm extending towards his head.
Only then does Jessica move. Only then does she take a step forward, brought short by the chain around her ankle. “No! Don’t! Please don’t!”
I think Beryl is going to do it anyways. Do it. I fumble for the gun at my side, pulling it free to swing in a slow arc towards this broken figure before us. The man who, besides the obvious pain he is in, won’t stop laughing.
“He has my baby! He has my baby!”
Jessica breaks down into sobs, her arms imploring us to hold back our violence.
How?
How?
HOW?
I drift, mind reeling, back to that house. That fucking house. The small smiles. The smell of Stuart cutting up food. The beer he offered me. “Whereabouts in Montana?”
“Somers. It sits on top of this huge lake. And my home… Sorry I… It’s been awhile since I’ve seen anyone. Somers… My home is by the school. Nice land. An orchard. A garden. My mom, she… She’s a badass. You’d like her…”
I did this. I told him. And amongst the crashing waves of incomprehension comes a crushing, all engulfing tide of guilt. And the sea of nothing beckoning beyond.
I slowly lower my gun and this only makes Stuart smile even more.
“How?”
That’s all that I can think to say. There is no air left in my lungs to speak anything else.
“It was not His will. Not yet, Burden. Not yet.” His face brightens up and he stumps another foot closer, the staff banging on the wood of the little porch. “But I learned… So much. Of pain. Of God. Of my role as the Chosen.”
He turns and shuffles his way back towards Jessica. Pausing to lift her chin with the club of his hand. Wiping her tears as she stands there swaying, hands still held out towards us.
“I thought I was going to be the father of mankind. I would usher forth a new era of prosperity. And my child would carry on the legacy. MY. CHILD.” And for a moment his face contorts, eyes closed at the memory of a distant pain. “But I should have known that you were brought into my life for a purpose, Burden. For His purpose. I… Cannot have a child. But you have provided for me. You were always meant to give me my first pupil.”
He grins. Relishing the silence as my leaden mind seeks to understand. To make sense of this speech.
“Har, he has our child,” Jessica says. A whisper to break the silence. A whisper to try to make clear to me what has happened.
“Why?”
He doesn’t pay attention to my question, instead turning his gaze to Beryl. She hasn’t shifted, arm still outstretched and the instrument of his death held at the ready.
“My… Wife. My love. Are you ready to come home? I forgive you… Without you I never would have divined His will. And I’m so thankful for that.”
There is no answer. Nothing but the sound of the wind and a clink of a chain as Jessica slowly sinks to her knees.
“Where is our child? Where?” I say, my voice unsteady. Unsure of itself.
“My child? Not here. Not anywhere you can find it.” He looks to Beryl again. “If you kill me, my love, then the child dies also.” He looks to me. “She comes with me. She comes back
to my side, or the child dies. That is the price.”
Beryl trembles, shaking like a leaf. And I think that she is going to pull the trigger. I think she is going to end this man for good, and I want her to. Regardless of the pain. Regardless of the cost. It does not matter.
But then the gun falls to her side and from there to the ground. And then she looks at me and raises her chin. “I love you.” And before I can say anything, do anything, she is striding forward towards Stuart. Head raised. Her willpower almost something tangible, something that you could reach out and touch as she walks by.
The strongest person I know.
What is happening? What is happening? What is happening?
I take a step towards them. “No,” I say, and they stop. But there is no real change. Either I kill Stuart or I let them go. I raise my gun. I point it at Stuart. “Tell me where the… where the baby is.” And he only smiles. Only leans into his crook and turns his face to kiss the wood.
“This is my crutch. Without it I am a cripple. Without your child… There is nothing.”
Jessica is saying something. She is yelling at one point. And I don’t realize that I’ve walked forward, slow steps, escalating steps, until my gun is pressed to his head. The animal in me knows he must die. That the cost is too great to let him live. That my progeny is a sacrifice for the safety of the herd.
Then I see Beryl. No, I feel her. I feel her hand on my shoulder. I feel her eyes seeking mine and I can’t help but look into them. Into the truth. A million words and one. Promises. Oaths. A message to try for hope. To try. To try. Because if not… What was all of this worth? Why did we do what we did? Why did we become what we are?
“Good,” Stuart says, as my gun drops to the ground. “Good Burden.”
And with those words the chain binding Jessica goes taut, jerking her back towards the house. A man emerges holding the end of it, and two more file past him towards Beryl.
“Gentle. She is misguided, but she is my wife.” My world moves in slow-motion. I see Beryl leaning down for her knives, then reconsidering. I want to yell at her to run. To save herself. But I cannot. I cannot voice the death of my child, of any child, not now.
They grab Beryl, and she does not fight. But she flinches at their touch. Eyes closing. And behind them a man and woman come from the front door, letting it slam behind them. They pass Jessica and Beryl as they are led towards the driveway, both looking back over their shoulders towards me. I look into Jessica’s pleading eyes and see a reflection of my own hopelessness.
And then they are gone, disappearing around the garage as the couple approach me. I stoop, thinking to retrieve my gun, but the woman brings her own pistol up. “Not a chance. Not a fucking chance.”
An engine starts in the driveway, and then the slamming of doors. Sounds of a struggle. A curse. Another slamming. Someone is here to help them. Someone… else. Who are these people?
“It is your turn, now.” I don’t know if Stuart is speaking to me, or to the man, but it is only the man who responds. Quick steps forward and then a knife is plunged into my abdomen. He steps away, leaving the blade inside me, and puts his hands on top of his head. He spins in a slow circle, chest heaving, eyes wide and wild. It almost seems an afterthought when he turns back and pulls the knife out.
At first there is no pain, and I just stare back at the man who stabbed me. Pale, and shaking. He looks horrified.
Then white-hot bolts of lightning lance into my core, sending a shock-wave of excruciating agony out from my stomach to encompass every nerve in my body.
Oh God, please, no, please.
I’m on my back, staring through the branches of the tree I grew up climbing, into a sky suddenly too bright.
No. No. No.
I hear Stuart laugh, and then the sound of his awkward walk as they leave the yard. A door opens, and closes. And then the sound of a vehicle driving away. Of my life driving away. Of everything I have departing me as fast as the blood is flowing out to coat my side, my hands, and the green grass of my home.