Savaging the Dark

by Christopher Conlon

  After a long time Connor coughs suddenly and I go to him.

  “Hey, baby,” I whisper in the semi-darkness of the room. “How you feeling?”

  “I’m thirsty,” he says, not opening his eyes.

  I tilt up his head, offer him some water from the cup. He drinks, coughs a little, swallows. Then again, and again. Finally the coughing stops and he’s able to drink without trouble. He opens his eyes and looks at me.

  “Where are we, Mona?”

  “I think we’re still in Ohio. But I’m not sure what this town is called. The middle of nowhere.”

  “When are we going home?”

  I think about how to answer this sleepy, sick boy. “Soon, sweetheart.”

  “Where’s Kylie?”

  I look at him. “She’s not with us on this trip, Connor.”

  “Oh.” He swallows a little more water. “I thought she was.” His voice doesn’t rise above a whisper.

  “No, sweetheart.”

  He rests his head on the pillow again, bunches the blankets up to his neck. “I’m cold.”

  He shouldn’t be cold; it’s actually quite warm in the room. I stroke his forehead again. “I’ll run you a hot bath, Connor,” I say. He doesn’t object, so I get up and do it. When it’s ready I return to him. “C’mon, sweetheart. A bath will warm you up.” I pull at him gently, get him out of bed, guide him to the bathroom, take off his things for him, help him in. He trembles as I trickle the hot water over his head with a washcloth.

  “Good?”

  He doesn’t say anything. I wash his unresisting limbs and face, watch him soak for a while. His body calms.

  “Okay, honey, c’mon,” I say at last. “Time to get out.” I hold out the biggest towel I can find, ready for him to step into it. He does. I rub him dry, lead him back to the bed, help him get in between the covers.

  “Okay?” I ask.

  He nods.

  I take a quick shower, dry myself, climb into the bed. He’s facing away from me. I spoon him, wrap myself around him as tightly and as warmly as I can, try to will some of my strength into his frail body. After a while he begins to shake again.

  “Are you cold?” I whisper.

  “No.”

  But he keeps shaking. The shaking becomes violent, frightening, wild thrashings. I hold onto him, feeling that if I let go he might completely fly apart. “Shh, Connor, shh.” I hold him, hold him. He begins to cry, first quietly, then wildly, without any reserve, terrible agonized wailings. I hold his forehead, kiss his hair, tell him it’s all right, everything will be all right. When he gets too loud I place a pillow gently over his mouth. He screams into it, weeps, hiccoughs. I know I have to stay here, hold him, not let him go, not ever. It suddenly occurs to me that he could die without me, that if I were to get up and leave him now he might literally shake himself apart, cry himself to death.

  “Connor,” I whisper into his ear, “come back. Come back. Bring yourself back to me. Come on. Come back, Connor.”

  It goes on for a long time, the weeping, the screaming. But I ask him over and over, hundreds of times, to come back, come back to me. Finally it all slows. Quiets. The shaking fades to occasional tremors. The crying stops. He sucks his thumb.

  He whispers something. I don’t catch it. I lean to his lips. “What, sweetheart?”

  “I want,” he whispers hoarsely, “my mom.”

  “I’m here, sweetheart,” I whisper in return. “I’m right here.”

  ***

  He sleeps. In the middle of the night he wakes again and says he’s thirsty, thirsty and a little hungry. I give him more water, give him half of a giant cookie I bought from the vending machine. I eat the remainder and we get cookie crumbs in the bed. I almost think he smiles, just slightly, a mere shadow of a smile, when I say what a couple of pigs we are and make an oinking sound at him. He rests again, falls asleep again. I do too. Toward morning, my arms still wrapped tightly around his narrow shoulders, my breasts on his back, my legs pushed against his, I see he’s gotten an erection. I reach over, stroke it gently. He’s asleep, I can tell from his deep breathing. After a few minutes he moans softly and ejaculates into the sheets. He never wakes, not really, just sighs a little. After a while he turns over, his body relaxing into mine, and we sleep that way until the sun’s up. Face-to-face. Soul-to-soul.

  21

  The problem is that I’m running out of money. My own account is nearly depleted and I’m worried every time I make a withdrawal, make sure that we’re moving on immediately afterward so that we’ll be hundreds of miles away by the time anyone could trace the account activity. I have credit cards but these seem even more dangerous to use. Yet we have to have something. It’s amazing how quickly motel rooms, food, gas add up. We drive, drive, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, the interstates all bleeding into each other, one endless gray-black ribbon of road stretching endlessly before us, endlessly behind us. I have no idea if anyone is following us, if anyone has the slightest idea where we are. I keep us moving, driving all night sometimes, into the following day. We follow no route, just drive, take exits impulsively, get back on the freeway for no reason, change direction, zigzag across counties and states. Connor rarely speaks. He eats when we go to a drive-thru, occasionally he fiddles with the radio, but mostly he just stares out the window. When we get to a motel, invariably out of the way, well off the freeway, he steps into the room and turns on the TV. I always initiate the lovemaking. He never says no, never says yes, just does it with a dispassion I find disturbing but that there’s nothing I can do about, at least not now. I understand that he’s adjusting to this new life, new reality. I don’t want to push him, don’t want to frighten him any more than he’s already been frightened. I know he’ll come around fully, be the apple-cheeked boy I once knew, the sweet bright boy who couldn’t wait to be with me under the Christmas tree all those years ago—no, not years, months, it only feels like years. I just have to be patient, let him adjust in his own way. I try to josh him along, point out interesting landmarks, stop once in a while if something looks worth stopping for. Yet I’m nervous about letting him be around people. I’m very aware that he could walk up to any one of them, say My name is Connor Blue, please call the police, I believe they’re looking for me and it would all be over. Yet I can’t believe he would really do that, not Connor, not my Connor. But he has odd moments, sometimes in the car, sometimes in a room, when his eyes grow strange and he says something disconnected like “Do we have any homework tonight?” or “Where’s Kylie?” There’s nothing I can do but go along, say, “No, no homework tonight, Connor,” or “She’s not with us now, Connor.” My answers always satisfy him, for that moment. But then the next moment comes. And the next.

  Once upon a time in a dream I was Mona Straw and I lived in a lovely middle-class home in Silver Spring Maryland with my husband Bill and daughter Gracie and I taught children at Cutts School and my life was all anyone could ever ask of a life. Billions of people look for food and water and shelter every day on this planet and they go to bed hungry and their children die with their stomachs bulging and flies on their cracked lips and that’s when they’re not rounded up by armies, by juntas that haul away the boys and force them to carry guns and murder and pillage and line the rest up against a wall and shoot them or hack off their heads except for the pretty daughters, of course, who get raped by a dozen soldiers or two dozen and spat on and beaten and finally wind up with a bullet in the brain or a bayonet in the chest and by that time they welcome it as a blessed relief. That’s how people live in this world but it was not how Mona Straw lived once upon a time. In a dream Mona Straw had everything anyone could want or need, far more than she deserved, than anyone really deserves. But it wasn’t real. Reality is only Connor, Connor Blue, my love, my life. The rest is fantasy. Bill never existed. Gracie never lived. There is no house in Silver Spring Maryland, no Cutts School. There couldn’t have been, because there had been no Mona Straw, not that Mona Straw, that half-girl, one
leg, one arm, half a head. She never existed. Nothing else ever existed except what I see before me right now, the road, the car, the steering wheel in my hands, and Connor, Connor, Connor.

  ***

  One night we lay in bed with Cokes and potato chips and watch Gun Crazy, an old ’50s film noir. We’re both enraptured, Connor leaning toward the screen and shouting “Wow!” every time something new happens. It’s just like it was once, only better, now Connor and I don’t have to hide behind a veneer of respectability, appropriateness, we can do what we wanted to do then, be naked together, crawl into bed, touch each other, fill the bed with crumbs if we want to, and just escape into movieland, watch, watch, then make love afterward, make love all night long. I’ve not seen Connor like this in a long time. I’ve never been more joyful, more ecstatic, life is everything I want it to be, I have everything I’ll ever need in this room, this bed. We laugh, we wrestle with each other during the commercials, we play silly games with fingers and toes, we kiss, then the movie pulls us back, again and again, always the movie, the movie on the screen, the movie of our life. It occurs to me that I don’t know what town we’re in or even what state. It makes no difference. My state is Connor Blue. My life is Connor Blue. This night, I think, he’s finally better, he’s committed to me again, to us, his life is my life. He laughs, the color comes back to his cheeks, he’s a boy again, a happy boy with his first love.

  ***

  It doesn’t last. That night in the middle of the night I awaken to the sound of his crying and when I touch him he pulls away, yanks his shoulder from under my touch. I don’t ask him why he’s crying. I don’t say anything. I can’t think of anything to say. After a while he says, “I want to go back to school.” Later still he says, “I wish Kylie was here.” After that he says, “Mona? I want to go home, Mona.”

  ***

  And so I watch him, watch him carefully. I don’t allow him in public places without me. He doesn’t resist, doesn’t fight. Many times he’s quite affectionate, holding my hand as we wait for our fast food to arrive or wandering around a park or on a street somewhere. He laughs, he swings our hands high together, he runs ahead and says, “Catch me!” At night we can still love, be in love, watch old movies on whatever local station the TV picks up. One night it’s You Only Live Once, another it’s They Live By Night, wonderful dark stories, lovers on the lam. He’s Connor then, the old Connor, the Connor I love, will love until death.

  ***

  But somewhere outside Oklahoma City in a dry dusty town, not even a town, just a scattershot collection of rundown buildings of which the biggest is the Tumbleweed Motel, where we stay, it happens, the moment I’ve feared. In the dark after TV and a vending machine dinner and lovemaking for hours I nod off to sleep and when I wake he’s not there. Connor is not there. The bed is empty, the bathroom is empty. I slip on my shirt and jeans and look outside, walk over to the ice machines, look toward the office (dark now, closed). Nothing. Nothing, nothing! I try to breathe, try to think. He’s gone. He’s gone. But he can’t have gone far, on foot. And what’s around here? Nothing. The town is lightless, everyone asleep. There are hardly any streetlamps. Only one road in and out. He couldn’t have knocked on anybody’s door, I’d see the light from here, there would be cars and police lights bearing down on this motel. I can’t call out, can’t let the owners know I’ve lost my son, can’t wake the occupants of the other rooms—there are two or three, judging from the cars in the lot. I collect my keys, get in the car, gather up my bag which I always leave in the locked vehicle when we take a room. He can only have gone one of two ways. I take a left, headlights sweeping over all that endless Oklahoma dirt, drive for four miles. I’ve gone the wrong way. He couldn’t have gotten this far. Unless, of course, he didn’t stay on the road at all, instead wandered off into the desert. But that would be crazy. He must be on the road. I turn around, gun the engine and drive as fast as I dare to in order to make up the four miles I’ve wasted. At last I’m back at the motel. I pass it by, slow down and keep driving, driving. He’s about two miles from the motel. When he sees the lights he turns around and begins to wave but then realizes that it’s me. He runs then, runs into the dirt, past all the thorny brush. I pull up, take the gun from my bag. I don’t point it at him. I just stand there in the glare of the headlights.

  “Connor, come back here.”

  He squints in the light that’s aimed straight at him. He looks at me.

  “I don’t want to, Mona.”

  “Yes, you do. Come back, sweetheart. Come back to me.”

  He stands indecisively, looks over his shoulder at the desert dark.

  “There’s nothing out there, Connor,” I say. “Nothing but dirt and tumbleweed and rattlesnakes.” I smile. He can’t see it but I’m sure he hears it in my voice. “Back at the motel you can watch TV all night long if you want. And you can make love to me all night long if you want.”

  “Mona…”

  “Come back to me, sweetheart. Now.”

  Finally he steps slowly toward me, gets obligingly in the car. I get in as well, return the gun to its bag, turn the car around and return to the motel. When we get to the room and close the door behind us I hug him gently and say, “I meant what I said, Connor. Do you want to watch TV all night? Or make love? Or both?”

  “I just want to go to sleep,” he says, not looking at me. He removes his shirt and pants, climbs into the bed wearing only his shorts. I follow him, take off my things, get in with him, stroke his warm shoulders.

  After a minute he says, quietly: “Please don’t touch me.”

  I withdraw my hands. I watch him in the darkness.

  ***

  Another county, another state. I’ve nearly maxed my credit cards. I know I should be thinking of how we can have a life together, really live as opposed to this fugitive quasi-existence. Back at the beginning with Connor I’d hated the furtive quality of our encounters, hated having to rent dirty motel rooms when what I really wanted to do was announce our love to everyone, to have Connor make love to me on the street, the lawn, in front of my classes, boldly, shamelessly. Back in that other life, that fantasy life, that dream. But the furtiveness never stopped and it hasn’t stopped now, we’re still running, still hiding. But I can’t trust him anymore. I keep the bag with the pistol with me all the time now. I see his wandering eyes when we’re in public places. I notice how he looks around, maybe checking where he could run if he decided to. I see. It will end, whether they are close upon us or not. It will end. Connor’s going to end it. I know it.

  But I can’t let him.

  22

  Connor’s green eyes watch me. He’s handcuffed to the bed, arms raised above him. I’ve used one of his white T-shirts to make a gag I’ve tied around his mouth. We’ve been like this for nearly two days. When I checked into this motel by the sea I paid for several days in advance, asked that we not be bothered, placed the Do Not Disturb sign on the outside doorknob. We haven’t been disturbed. The maid leaves towels outside the room.

  I don’t know where we are except that we’ve arrived at the ocean. Oregon? California? Everything blurs. I can hear the sea close by when I turn down the volume on the TV, but mostly I leave it up so that Connor can watch. I try to keep him as comfortable as I can. I know the handcuffs must be awkward. I locked his wrists into them when he was asleep, locked the cuffs onto the heavy metal bedposts. He woke as I wrapped the gag around him. He tried to scream, shook the bed violently, again and again, for hours. “Sweetheart,” I kept telling him, “this will really be easier if you just calm down.” I brought the gun from my bag, held it at my side. “It’s not like you can get away. You don’t want to anyway, do you? I know you don’t. I know you love me. I know you’re just scared now, that’s all. Shh. Settle down, Connor. Quiet down.” I don’t like it but it was the only way. I could see in his eyes that he was going to run, he was going to leave me.

  It does create practical problems. There’s no way for Connor to go to the ba
throom. I tried to use a towel, to put it under him, and it worked somewhat but not really. Now there are yellow streams on his shorts, which is all he’s wearing. There are yellow streaks all over the bed. I still sleep with him, I don’t mind. But I’m afraid he hasn’t eaten anything in a long time, or had anything to drink. He’ll start screaming if I loosen the gag, I know. My only option is to let him weaken to the point that he can’t scream, then I’ll take off the gag and feed him, give him water, nurse him back to health and strength and by doing that he’ll realize again how much I love him, how I’ll never stop loving him.

  We’ve been in this room forever, but we’re not in this room at all. Nothing is real now. I wander around as in a dream, as if I were in a film, both of us. The other life wasn’t my life, but this room with Connor is just as fantastical now. Once upon a time we were in love, once upon a time Connor didn’t think it dirty and it wasn’t. Once upon a time it was the two of us against the world and it can be again, I know it can, if only I can prove to him my love.

  In my endless pacing in the room I occasionally get a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror and this reinforces the idea that this isn’t my life, this isn’t me. The person looking back at me is clearly mad, her hair every which way, her eyes skittish and wild, black pockets under them. Her expression is somehow different than the old Mona Straw, from that other unreal life, somehow lopsided, unbalanced. Feral. Her movements are sudden, graceless, erratic. Her skin is greasy. Her clothes are soiled. Who is it that can tell me who I am?

  Day collides with night and then suddenly it’s day again. Once or twice someone knocks on the door and I tell them thank you, we’re sleeping, just leave the towels and sheets outside the door. They do. We’re paid up, after all, we’re not bothering anyone. The Sea Breeze Inn, that’s the name of this place. Ocean outside but no beach, nothing but rocks and gray skies. Salt air. A four-lane road a short distance down the hill, surprisingly busy day and night. The traffic makes me feel nervous, vulnerable, but there’s no changing now. No going back.