Father of Lies

by Brian Evenson

  Twelve to zero.

  “I will inform the women that they have been excommunicated by unanimous decision. I am proud of all of you. God is proud of you as well.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Drive

  The press has been calling, about the excommunicated women, about the two violated boys. We have to hide the paper from my oldest, keep the television set unplugged. I do not return the reporters’ calls. If they manage to confront me on the way to or from the office, I refer them to the lawyer the Church has purchased on my behalf.

  Feshtig keeps leaving messages on my work machine, saying he would like to speak further with me, that he felt we were making progress. He has seen the papers, he says, and knows I must be going through a difficult time. At first I have the secretary put him off gently but when he keeps calling I block his number. I know now I have told him too much.

  The twins come home from school to tell my wife what the other children are saying about me. Some say their parents know I am a good man, a provost of the True Church, and that I would never do such things. Others say their parents claim I am a devil.

  My wife tells me this later. The twins never mention it to me but only seem remarkably reserved in my presence.

  For my wife it is more difficult than for me. She has ingrained within her too much of a sense of propriety to defend me properly. She tells them that I have done nothing, but she knows too much to show sufficient enthusiasm. I try to keep her from the press but they get to her somehow, and everyone in the neighborhood is asking her about it as well. They are wearing her down. They are going to make her slip.

  She has become a liability.

  “We have to talk,” I say.

  “Fine,” she says. “Talk.”

  “Just you and me,” I say. “We need to get away.”

  She listlessly submits. We leave the children with her parents, go for a ride.

  “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “Nowhere. Just driving.”

  We drive for some time up the canyon before she opens her mouth. “I am wasting my life,” is the first thing she says.

  “No,” I say. “It isn’t like that.”

  “I shouldn’t be with you,” she says. “For my sake, for the children’s sake.”

  “You can’t leave me now,” I say. “The press would eat us both alive. You need me.”

  She starts to cry then. I keep driving up into the mountains, paying attention only to the road.

  She stops crying. “You killed that girl, didn’t you?” she asks.

  “You want to know?”

  “No,” she says. “I don’t want to know.”

  “Why did you ask, then?”

  We drive for a long time. I take the car off onto a dirt road, down through rows of pine.

  “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “Driving,” I say. “Still driving.”

  I pass one that I think will do the trick, angling out toward the road as it does.

  “Take me home,” she says.

  “I won’t take you home,” I say.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “I don’t want to be with you anymore,” she says. “Let me out of the car. I can’t stand being near someone like you. I hate you.”

  “You love me,” I say. “You can’t help it.”

  “I know you killed that girl,” she says. “I can’t prove it, but I know you did it.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “I know you did!” she yells. She has begun to shake now. “I know it!”

  I let her say it. I circle the car around and she makes no effort to get out. Returning in the direction we came from, the wheels spit chips of gravel all over the road. While she is shaking and her head bobbing about I reach over and press in the release button on her safety belt, carefully disengage the clip without her noticing. I let the road pass.

  “I will tell you the truth,” I say.

  “No,” she says. “Please, don’t.”

  “I want to tell you,” I say. “Lord knows I have to tell someone.”

  She starts screaming, her screams coming in throbs. She is shaking so hard I can feel it through the seat despite the rough road. She is half mad already. I increase the speed.

  “Don’t tell me!” she screams. “I’ll tell, dear God, I’ll tell everyone!”

  “You aren’t going to be able to tell anyone,” I say.

  I can see the angled pine. I push the gas pedal down.

  “I killed her,” I say. “God was beside me.”

  She is screaming. I drive straight at the tree, turn the wheel hard at the last moment. The car skids and starts to slide sideways. She can see it coming and I can too, and then the tree tears through the front and side of the car and the impact throws her past me and through the windshield.

  Sweet Jesus, cradle me.

  CHAPTER 17

  Hospital

  I awake gasping, my body aflame. My arm is slung out to one side, wrapped in plaster. I move my legs, feel pain tear through my back.

  There is a woman above me. A nurse.

  “How do you feel?” she asks.

  “Not so good.”

  “No,” she says. “I don’t imagine so. The doctor will be here in a moment.”

  “What happened?”

  “Lie back,” she says, pushing gently on my forehead. “The doctor is coming.”

  She stands, examines the iv in the back of my hand, prods the fluid bag connected to it.

  “What happened?” I ask again.

  “The doctor is coming,” she says. She straightens the covers and goes out.

  I swallow, find my throat aching and sore. I turn my head as far as I can to one side, see beside me, in bed a few feet away, a grinning, toothless old man. He waves slowly at me.

  “Not feeling well, buddy?” he asks.

  I turn my head straight and close my eyes.

  “Hey, buddy,” says the old man. “I am asking you a question.”

  I turn slowly to look at him, watch as he carefully pulls off the covers, revealing a set of bowed, scabby legs. He gets out of bed and onto them, teeters over to my bed, leans over me.

  “Not feeling so well today?” he asks.

  “What do you think?”

  “Me? I think you got what you deserved, probably. Everybody does.”

  The doctor comes in, pushing before him a covered table. The old man totters back to his own bed, tries to climb into it, falls to one knee, his hands flailing on the bed sheets.

  “You should stay in your bed, Mr. Jenks,” says the doctor, helping him off the floor. “You keep getting out of bed and we will have to put the straps on you again.”

  The doctor pushes the old man into the bed and covers him to the chin, then goes to the corner basin and washes his hands.

  “Fochs, is it?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I manage to say.

  “Dutch, is it? Norwegian? Originally, I mean.” He comes close to me, begins to unbutton the hospital gown. “Old French? No need to answer,” he says. “Still a little early yet for conversation.”

  Removing a stethoscope from his pocket, he presses the cold head to my chest and inserts the other ends into his ears. He sits listening, moving the stethoscope slightly, looking at something on the wall above the head of the bed.

  “Weak,” he says. “But better.”

  “He got what he deserved!” yells the old man.

  “Mr. Jenks,” says the doctor. “Please.” He stands and pulls the curtain shut, separating Jenks off.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Not at all,” the doctor says. “How does the arm feel?”

  “It hurts,” I say.

  “Good,” he says. “Your head?”

  He takes from his pocket a device for examining the eyes, examines first one then the other.

  “It’s a miracle you came out of it as well as you did.”

  “Out of what?”

&nbs
p; “The accident,” he says. He slips the device back into his pocket. “You haven’t been briefed yet?”

  “No.”

  “Automobile wreck up the canyon,” he says. “You driving, you and your wife the only two in the car. The car rammed into a tree. You were driving far too fast, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Take my word for it,” he says.

  “Does my wife remember?”

  “Your wife?” he asks, almost as if embarrassed. He stands up, palpates the intravenal sack. “She’s dead,” he says. “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “No,” I say. “Nobody told me anything.”

  “Well,” he says. “Now you know. I’m sorry to be so direct.”

  He takes a file from its rack on the door, marks something in it. He looks up.

  “Are you in shock?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  He comes to the side of the bed, looks into my eyes again.

  “Fine,” he says. “You’ll be fine.” He smiles in distracted encouragement. “You don’t care that she’s dead, do you.”

  “Care?”

  “Why did you want to kill her?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “You know what I mean,” he says.

  “I don’t,” I say weakly.

  He smiles, laughs. He reaches up, digs his fingers in under each side of his face, strips the face away. Underneath is the doctor from the courthouse, the man who took me by the nose.

  “It doesn’t matter why,” he says. “All that matters is that you killed her.”

  “It was an accident,” I say. “You said so yourself.”

  He pulls the portable table near the bed, uncovers it, reveals an array of knives and other instruments, most larger and harsher than one would expect for surgery. He runs his hands over them, selects the largest.

  “Let’s discuss this,” I say.

  “Why should we?” he asks. “You don’t know truth from lie.” But he puts down the instrument.

  “Look at me,” I say. “Aren’t I suffering enough?”

  “Enough?” he asks. “What’s enough?”

  He takes from the table a primed hypodermic. Pushing the needle into the intravenal bag, he depresses the plunger. I watch the liquid diffuse into the bag, quickly dispersing, the clear liquid tainted darker.

  He puts on rubber gloves. He folds over the face he has torn off and ties it at the back in a knot, slips it over his mouth and nose, breathes through it. I feel my body falling slowly numb.

  “Wait,” I say.

  “You know,” he says, “it still is not too late. You can still survive.”

  “I admit it,” I immediately say, my words thick and distant. “I killed her. I shouldn’t have done it. Leave me alone.”

  He stays motionless for some time, then slowly shakes his head.

  “I was mistaken,” he says. “It is too late.”

  He takes up two knives, advances on me. He grabs me by the collarbone, begins to saw the blade through my chest. I can hardly feel it, but can hear it, the wet crunch of the blade as it breaks through. I pass out.

  A hand and a curved needle rise and fall over my body, a length of dark thread attached to the needle grows shorter with each circuit. A length of stitching runs from my neck to my thigh. The needle knots the thread off, a face descends to sever the thread with its teeth.

  It is a man whose head has been shaved, the skin below gashed and bruised, peeled back along the temples to reveal a rich, damp underflesh. He is wearing a smock. He keeps rubbing the top of his head with his free palm.

  “I think we got it all back in,” he says.

  “What?” I ask. My voice is weak and catches on the words.

  “Most of it anyway,” he says. He lifts up a pan full of viscera, the integument sodden with blood. “I wasn’t sure where these went. And some of them you are better off without.”

  I close my eyes. When I open them, he is still there.

  “Remember me?” he asks. “Your old friend?”

  “I took care of the doctor,” Bloody-Head says. “Don’t worry about the doctor. You won’t be bothered by him again.” He stands up and my eyesight begins to grow dim. “God loves you,” he says. “Don’t sell yourself cheap.”

  The window is open, two men in business suits peer out of it. The curtain next to me is torn down and the old man’s bed is empty, his sheets spotted with blood.

  I try to sit up, find the blankets have been tightened around me and tucked under. One of the pair at the window hears me struggling and comes over to place his hands on my shoulders.

  The other, when he notices, takes a coil of twine from the bedside table, ties me down.

  “Comfortable?” he asks.

  “People are taking a special interest in you,” says the other. “People in your congregation are praying for your welfare.”

  “What?”

  “Remember me?” asks the first. He takes out a notebook and holds it up.

  “No more questions,” says the second. “We promise.”

  They take their suit jackets off and lay them on the bed, over my belly. They start rolling up their sleeves.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “Going?”

  “We’re saving you,” says the second. “To the degree to which that is possible.”

  “Mainly we are just getting you out before you do any more harm.”

  They kick the brakes off the bed’s coasters, begin to wheel me out.

  “Wait,” I say. “I’m not feeling better.”

  They tear off a corner of the sheet, stuff my mouth full with it, keep on. We pass through the halls, overhead lights flashing by.

  “You are lucky,” the first says. “Most people live to ruin themselves further.”

  “You won’t feel a thing.”

  A doctor stops us in the hall, asks them where they are taking me.

  “Room transfer,” says the first.

  “Room transfer?” asks the doctor. “That is unusual, isn’t it?”

  “Very unusual,” says the other man. “Very unusual indeed.”

  “We have the papers right here,” says the first, patting his pocket.

  The doctor nods, watches them pass by. They push my bed forward in silence. Enter into an elevator.

  “What if he had asked to see them?” asks the second. “What then?”

  The first reaches into his pocket, mimes surprise. “I had the papers here a moment ago,” he says. “They are around here somewhere.” He smiles at the second, then down at me. “I thought it through in advance,” he says.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” asks the second.

  “What?”

  “Lie.”

  “I don’t know,” says the first. “Picked it up somewhere. It comes in handy.”

  “How are you doing?” the second says loudly, shouting down at me. I shake my head.

  “He’s doing fine.”

  “He doesn’t look fine.”

  “Doesn’t matter, where he’s going.”

  The elevator opens and they push me out toward the sliding glass exit doors. The sun is setting and the doors seem swollen with light.

  “One more thing,” says the first. “We need you to formally agree to this.”

  “Just a technicality.”

  “We can’t let you die unless you agree to it.”

  “Which of course you will do.”

  “There is no advantage to saying no, every advantage to agreeing.”

  “So how about it?”

  They unfurl the sheet from my mouth, like some sort of magic trick. They stand crouched above me, people streaming all around us. They seem to be waiting for something.

  “So, how about it?” they ask again.

  I look at both of them, turning my head from one to another. I look out the door, squinting.

  “No,” I say.

  I choke, cough, see doctors in bloody surgery scrubs, a nurse rus
hing about turning knobs until the machines fall silent. I feel fingers in my mouth. There is a long hesitation as a doctor strikes my chest with a fist, and then I hear my lungs begin to breathe.

  “Mr. Fochs,” the nurse says. “You made it. Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Recovery

  I am holding my youngest on my chest, my plastered arm preventing her from falling off the bed, my unbroken arm’s hand wrapped tightly around her ankle.

  My eldest is there as well, sitting in a chair beside the bed, swinging her feet, wearing her Sunday dress. The twins are beside, their hair slicked down, wearing tiny three-piece suits.

  “When will you be out, Daddy?” my eldest asks.

  “Soon,” I say. “Very soon. The twins have been good?”

  She looks up, remembering. “They were pretty good, I guess,” she says.

  “We were real good,” says Mark. “We listened the whole time.”

  “Grandad spoke at the funeral?”

  “Yeah,” says Jack. “But he forgot what he was saying.”

  “He didn’t forget,” says my eldest. “He was crying.”

  Jack shrugs. “Whatever,” he says.

  “How did she look?” I ask.

  “Grandma?”

  “Mom.”

  “How do I know,” she says. “They closed the lid.”

  “They had a picture of her on the top,” says Mark. “The picture looked real good.”

  I pull my youngest back as she topples off the bed.

  “Aren’t you sad about it?” asks my eldest.

  “Of course I am sad,” I say.

  “You don’t seem very sad to me,” she says.

  “They have me all shot up with drugs.”

  “Drugs are bad for you, Dad,” says Mark.

  “Don’t do drugs, Dad,” says Jack.

  “Medicine,” I say. “It’s okay. I am so crammed with medicine I can’t think straight.”

  “When are you getting out, Daddy?” my eldest asks.

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “A few days.”

  The nurse comes and helps me get my legs out of bed and onto the floor. She helps me walk to the bathroom, leaves me inside for some time.

  When she returns to retrieve me, she says, “You have a visitor.”

  She helps me out of the bathroom. In the chair nearest the bed is the area rector.