Savage

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  The wind was picking up, and rain had started to spatter him and the docks. Cody pulled the hood of his Windbreaker over his head and reached into his back pocket for his phone. He’d promised himself he wasn’t going to do this—constantly checking to see if Sidney had called or texted—but he did anyway. She hadn’t, and it made him feel all the more terrible.

  All he wanted was a chance to explain his side, how he would do anything to be with her. Things didn’t have to change so dramatically just because she was heading off to college. He wanted an opportunity to be a part of that life, for them to experience it together.

  He looked around the marina. His father expected him to take over as harbormaster once his dad retired, but if he had the opportunity to leave the island with Sidney . . .

  His father opened the door of the office at the end of the main dock and motioned for Cody to join him. The young man slipped his phone back into his pocket and jogged over.

  “Everything all right?” his father asked, squinting into the rain-swept wind.

  “Yeah, everything looks good,” Cody answered.

  “I was watching you from the window, just standing there in the rain. You sure you’re all right?”

  His father knew the situation. Sidney hadn’t been one of his favorite people even before the breakup, and now . . .

  “Yeah . . . just thinking.”

  “I’m sure.” His father stared at him for a moment with those eyes that always seemed to know more than they should. “Hungry?” he asked finally.

  “No,” Cody answered. His stomach hadn’t felt right for days. He had no interest in eating.

  “You need to eat.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you have anything for breakfast?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re lying,” his father said matter-of-factly, pulling his wallet from his back pocket. “Go on to the diner and get us some lunch. Cheeseburger will do it for me; get yourself whatever.”

  “I’m really not hungry,” Cody said as he took the money.

  “You’ll be surprised when you have something.”

  “Maybe.” Cody shrugged.

  “I’ll hold down the fort till you get back,” his father said as he shoved his wallet back into his pocket.

  Cody was already heading toward his truck when he heard his father’s voice again.

  “Has she called you back?”

  The young man stopped but did not turn. “No . . . not yet.”

  He braced himself, waiting for what the man would say next: Maybe it’s all for the best. . . . You can do better anyway. . . . You were always more serious than she was. . . . But he said nothing, which in Cody’s mind was the best thing he could have done.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Isaac’s mother had found some walnuts.

  She had been moving a box of cookbooks that she’d bought at a church flea market a few years back and knocked a plastic bag that had been wedged beneath a pile of aluminum pie plates and plastic take-out containers onto the floor. When she bent down to pick up the bag, she’d found the whole walnuts inside.

  She had no idea where they’d come from or how long she’d had them, but she couldn’t imagine that they weren’t still good, and the perfect treat for her squirrel friends in the backyard.

  Isaac did not want to go outside. He could hear the wind pounding at the house, the rain spattering against the windows, but his mother insisted.

  “Our friends need their treat,” she told him as she put on the yellow slicker that she’d found beneath ten other coats hanging over the back of a dining room chair.

  Isaac knew enough not to argue with his mother, especially these days, especially since his sister Barbara had come back into their lives. Instead, he went to his room and grabbed his own raincoat from where it hung neatly in his closet.

  His mother called for him again, and Isaac pulled on his coat as he hurried down the hallway to the kitchen, careful not to slip on any of the debris that was in his path. She stood at the back door, hood over her head, plastic bag of walnuts in her hand.

  “Hurry up,” she ordered, turning to open the door. There was a rush of wind into the kitchen, and it picked up stray pieces of paper and debris to create a mini tornado of trash.

  “Hurry! Hurry!” she repeated. “Before the wind messes everything up!”

  Isaac thought things were pretty messy already, but he did as he was told, passing through the swirling litter and closing the door firmly behind him as he joined his mother on the stoop.

  From where he stood, Isaac could just about see Sidney’s yard and house. He craned his neck to see if she might be out, but then quickly chided himself. Why would she be outside on such a horrible day? Sometimes, like his mother often said, he just wasn’t thinking straight.

  The backyard was as chaotic as the house. They picked their way over toys and flowerpots as they descended the steps into a large yard overgrown with weeds and wildflowers. Rusty bicycle frames, old tires, car rims, and garden statuary were nearly swallowed up by the overgrowth, and there were enough birdbaths to keep all the birds that called Benediction their home very clean indeed.

  Isaac found that thought amusing, picturing cartoon birds scrubbing their backs with tiny brushes as they took their evening baths, but his musings were interrupted as a gust of wind picked up a blue kiddy pool and sent it hovering across the high grass toward them like a UFO.

  “You should probably put some rocks in that,” his mother said. “Don’t want it blowing away.” She was holding on to the back stairs’ metal railing so she wouldn’t lose her balance in the wind.

  Isaac looked around and found a stone cherub lying on its side in the grass beside the house. One of its wings had been broken off, something his mother was going to fix, but never quite got around to. He walked over to the stone angel, lifted it up, and placed it atop the pool, looking up to see if his mother approved. But she’d already moved on, making her way through the grass to a metal bench just beside the run-down garage.

  “Come over here and help me,” she called to him, motioning with a hand. “We’ve got a lot of hungry mouths to feed.”

  He carefully navigated the yard, not wanting to trip on something hiding in the brush. But as he was concentrating so hard on his feet, another powerful gust took him totally unawares, and he stumbled after all, his shoe catching in the metal frame of an old bike and sending him to all fours in the high grass.

  “Isaac!” his mother called out with concern.

  But he could barely hear her, for the sound—that strange sound that he had heard primarily in his Steve ear—had come back and was louder now, making his head hum and his teeth rattle. He brought a dirt-covered hand up to his ear to turn down the sound, but only managed to make it squeal and crackle all the louder.

  “Don’t play with your hearing aids!” his mother yelled. “Come here and let me take a look at you.”

  He wanted to do as she asked, but the sound had frozen him in place, stealing away his ability to act. The sound had become like a voice, but a voice he could not understand, drifting in and out among the static, like a bad radio station. It was just as much inside his head as it was in his bad ear.

  It was like the sound was trying to tell him something, but no matter how hard he listened, he could not understand.

  The rain was starting to fall harder now, the moisture of the damp ground under his knees soaking into his pants. He didn’t like the fact that he was getting wet, but he could not concentrate enough to move. Even though he knew he was not supposed to touch the hearing aids, Isaac decided that he couldn’t stand it anymore. He reached up to his Steve ear to tear the device from his head.

  A hand wrapped around his wrist, stopping him. He looked over and saw that his mother now stood there.

  “What did I tell you?” she asked, annoyed with him. “Do you know how much those hearing aids cost us?”

  He wanted to apologize, to explain what was happening, but he was unable
to speak, the sound inside his brain stealing away his ability to communicate. His mouth moved noiselessly as he tried to tell her. She continued to hold on to his wrist, preventing him from reaching his Steve ear.

  The sound was growing in his brain, making him feel wrong.

  It made him feel angry. The kind of special angry that he felt when one or more of the cats got into his room and messed things up. The kind of angry that made him want to hurt things. The sound continued to fill his head with bad feelings, and he could stand it no more.

  With a cry of desperation he tore his hand from his mother’s grasp, grabbed at his Steve ear, and pulled away the hearing aid. The sound coming over the hearing device was silenced at once, and he could move again, his mind no longer filled with such angry, horrible thoughts.

  “You better not have broken that,” his mother snarled.

  Isaac looked at his hand, and at the hearing device that he was holding, and hoped that he had broken it.

  He never wanted to hear those horrible sounds again.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Janice Berthold held her breath as she ran her still-bleeding hand beneath the cold water from her bathroom sink. She could feel her heart beating in the wounds, as if the powerful muscle had somehow relocated from her chest to her hand, each pulse accompanied by sharp, stabbing pain.

  She squirted liquid soap into her good hand and gently rubbed the antiseptic around and into the wounds. That would be all that she would need, for the bite to get infected. Janice looked through the doorway of the bedroom bathroom at Alfred sprawled upon the floor, gnawing relentlessly on one of his toys. There was a part of her that felt a spark of anger toward the dog, but another that felt bad. The poor thing didn’t know he had bitten her. He thought he was protecting himself.

  Didn’t he?

  The French bulldog saw that she was watching him and locked eyes with her. She tried to find a sign that the dog was concerned for her, sorry for what he had done, but she saw nothing. It was like looking into the blackness of a doll’s eyes.

  But she knew that he loved her in his special way.

  A faint noise from somewhere downstairs made Alfred bark, and she started, whacking her injured hand on the faucet. She swore at the explosion of pain, removed her hands from beneath the water, and turned the faucet off. Alfred had run off to investigate the sound, but she had already guessed what it was.

  Who it was.

  She could feel herself getting immediately angry, the anger using the pain of her hand to fuel its severity. Grabbing a towel, she wrapped her throbbing hand, listening for the sound of his approach.

  “Honey?” her husband called from downstairs. “You up there?”

  No, I’m not. . . . I’ve gone away someplace where I never have to hear your awful voice again, she wanted to scream, but instead—

  “Yeah, I’m in the bathroom.”

  She dried her hand while listening to hear if he would come up to bother her further. First there was the sound of multiple paws coming up as Alfred returned, followed by Ronald’s heavier footfalls.

  Janice didn’t want him to see her like this—injured, in pain. She could just imagine the indignities she would suffer because of it.

  From a cabinet in the corner of the master bathroom, she removed some bandages and antibiotic ointment.

  “Honey?”

  She didn’t answer, willing herself invisible—NO, willing herself to another part of the world. Another planet, if it were possible.

  Ronald pushed the door open wider with a creak. She could sense him standing there, hear the sound of Alfred breathing alongside him, and again she wondered how she could have gotten here.

  How she could despise another human being so much.

  She must have loved him once, but in all honesty, she could not remember. The hate was so strong now it had burned away all memory of their past life, but what she did remember was what her life wasn’t.

  It wasn’t what it was supposed to be like in the fairy tales, or in the movies. Love so satisfying that you didn’t even need to eat to continue to live. He was supposed to give her that, but she came to eventually learn that it was all a lie. Ronald was supposed to give her this fantasy, but instead he gave her the monotony of life.

  He wasn’t a prince, or an action hero, or even a college professor.

  He was a middle-aged, balding, certified public accountant, and he had tricked her into giving away the best years of her life.

  Janice closed the cabinet door, catching a reflection of herself in the mirror over the sink, and wondered who the old lady was looking back at her.

  “It’s really starting to blow out there,” Ronald started. “Got the lawn furniture into the shed before it could blow away.”

  “That’s good,” she said, watching the old woman’s mouth move as hers did.

  “Everything go all right at the vet? Alfred’s teeth look good—nice and clean. Did he behave himself?”

  She must’ve moved a certain way to show him her wrapped hand.

  “What the hell’s wrong with your hand?”

  “Nothing,” she said, tearing her eyes from the old woman in the mirror. “Just a little accident.”

  He was suddenly there beside her, taking her hand in his, unwrapping the towel. His nearness made her flesh crawl, the painful throbbing of her hand becoming almost unbearable.

  “It’s nothing,” she told him, trying to pull her hand away.

  “It’s not nothing,” he corrected her. “That’s a bite. Who bit you? Did one of the dogs at the vet . . . Did Alfred bite you?”

  Alfred was sitting on the bathroom rug, watching closely with his dark doll’s eyes.

  “It was an accident,” she said, getting away from him before she started to scream. “There was a fight, and I got bit as I was trying to break them apart.”

  She left the bathroom as quickly as she could, the closeness of him like poison to her body. Alfred followed her into the bedroom, as did Ronald.

  “Did you call the doctor? Maybe you should go to the emergency room . . . you’re probably going to need a tetanus shot, and maybe rabies.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, even though the pain was worse now than before. “I’m just going to bandage it up and keep it clean.” She hoped that her assurances would get him to leave.

  She had put the bandages and tube of antibacterial ointment down on her makeup table and thought she saw him leaving the room—

  But he came up suddenly behind her.

  “Let me help you with that,” he said, taking the ointment from the table and grabbing her wrist.

  And that was when she knew it was going to happen.

  That was when Janice Berthold knew she would kill her husband.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The poor weather conditions were starting to intensify. Sidney held tightly to the wheel of her Jeep, struggling to keep control as the wind and rain threatened to push her from the road.

  Snowy whined in the backseat, and Sidney reached back to scratch her nose, keeping her eyes on the road ahead of her. “It’s all right, girl,” she said, as much to reassure herself as the dog.

  The visibility was bad, but Sidney finally spotted the turnoff for the marina through the driving rain. The lot was nearly empty; she didn’t even see Cody’s truck. Had she come all this way for nothing? The lights were on in the main office, and since she was there, she decided she might as well find out.

  Throwing the hood of her light jacket up over her head, she opened the door and motioned for Snowy to exit, and the two of them ran across the puddle-filled lot to the front door of the office and quickly entered.

  Cody’s dad looked up from a stack of papers on his desk.

  “Hi, Mr. Seaton,” Sidney said, removing her dripping hood. “Is Cody around?”

  “No,” he said, standing and taking the papers to a file cabinet on the other side of his desk up against the wall. He pulled open the first drawer and dropped the stack of papers into it.r />
  Snowy walked across the room to greet the man who slammed closed the drawer and turned, holding his hand out for the shepherd to sniff.

  “Anything I can do for you?”

  “That’s all right,” Sidney answered, feeling very uncomfortable. Cody’s father had never been one of the most talkative of people, and he gave off an air of sternness that by instinct forced her to be on her best behavior. “I’ll try and get in touch with him later.” She motioned for Snowy to follow her as she flipped the hood back onto her head.

  “Are you here about the two of you?” Mr. Seaton asked.

  Sidney froze as she was reaching for the door. “Excuse me?”

  “About the two of you,” he repeated. “I know that you ended your relationship with my son the other night, and I’m wondering why you’re back.”

  Sidney had never felt more on the spot, as if a bright light shone directly on her and alarms wailed in the distance.

  “It’s nothing about that,” Sidney said, pulling her hood back down and playing with her hair. She wished she didn’t do that when she got nervous and quickly took her hand away. “I’ve just got something that I need to ask him. A favor for—”

  “Maybe that isn’t such a good idea,” Mr. Seaton interrupted.

  “What do you . . .”

  “Maybe it isn’t a good idea for you to see him . . . talk to him, right now.”

  She didn’t know how to respond.

  “Cody was pretty broken up,” Mr. Seaton explained. “He actually talked to me about it when he came home late the other night.”

  Mr. Seaton was standing very stiff in front of the file cabinet, as if attempting to keep everything that he was feeling from leaking out of his body, but she could see it on his face. He was angry.

  At her.

  “My son and I don’t talk about things,” he continued. “Especially things like this—personal things. It was probably something better suited for his mother, but . . .”