The Cure

by Glenn Cooper

  Kyra laughed as she pushed her way in.

  “I guess I’m not hurting you,” Connie said, palpating her cervix and her uterus.

  “It tickles. That’s what Jeremy does!”

  “Good to know,” Connie said, pulling out.

  “She’s pregnant,” Connie told Jamie when they were alone.

  “For fuck’s sake, no!”

  “She told me that Jeremy’s been into her lady parts.”

  “The only time they were alone—and that was only for a short time—was a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I remember,” Connie said. “It was when both of us were called to see the gal who slipped on ice and hit her head and we asked Jeremy to keep an eye on them.”

  “How can you pick up a two-week pregnancy on a pelvic exam?”

  “I can’t. She’s at least six weeks along.”

  He collapsed on the armchair. “Christ. It’s Joe Edison. I need a drink. At least Emma didn’t get knocked up by that fucker too.”

  “Want me to tell her what’s in store for her?”

  “I don’t see why not,” he said glumly, then headed to Holland’s house to see if, after her incident at assembly, Gloria Morningside was still getting supplied with wine.

  After an hour, Jamie hadn’t returned. Connie tucked in Dylan and dutifully locked him in. She did the same with Emma and Kyra, snuffed the candles, and went to bed herself.

  *

  In the dark, Kyra touched Emma’s cheek and said, “I’m going to have a baby.”

  “What’s a baby?”

  “Connie says it’s a little boy or girl who grows inside you.”

  “Where?”

  Kyra moved her hand to Emma’s belly.

  “In there.”

  “Why do you have a baby?”

  “Do you remember when Joe used to hurt us in the lady parts?”

  “What are lady parts?”

  Kyra slid her hand lower.

  “I remember,” Emma said. “I didn’t like that.”

  “I liked it when Jeremy touched me in the lady parts,” Kyra said. “He was nice.”

  “Is that why you have a baby?”

  “I think that’s why.”

  “Will Dylan touch me in the lady parts?”

  “I don’t know. Ask Dylan.”

  “Okay.”

  Emma got up and quietly opened the door. The common room glowed from the small fires in the hearth and the stove. She was wearing her heavy socks and slid over to the cabinet where she had seen her father stash the key under a cup.

  Dylan awoke with a start.

  “It’s Emma,” she said.

  “It’s not morning,” he said.

  “I know. I want to come into your bed.”

  “I want you to!” he said.

  She got under the covers and said, “Kyra has a baby. I want a baby.”

  She told him what she knew about the process of acquiring one and put his hand between her legs. “That’s where you have to put it.”

  “Put what?” he asked.

  She remembered every detail of what Joe Edison had done to her and talked Dylan through the procedure.

  When they were done, she kissed him and said, “I love you, Dylan. That was nice!”

  “I love you too, Emma. Will you have a baby now?”

  “I hope so.”

  56

  February came, and with it came a killing cold.

  A daylight hour didn’t go by without the sound of chainsaws felling trees for firewood.

  Jamie and Connie soldiered on like a divorced couple forced to live together as a matter of convenience. They had more important things to do than squabble, such as trying to keep everyone warm, and making their limited rations go as far as possible. Everyone was losing weight, including the golden retriever, although Arthur was getting pretty good at finding his own rabbits. They made sure that Kyra—she with the nascent baby bump—got extra food, and prenatal vitamins appeared after one of Streeter’s foraging trips. For better or for worse, the three teenagers were part of one family unit with Jamie and Connie as ersatz father and mother.

  The routines remained the same. Their days were occupied with medical rounds, splitting wood with an ax they had to return to Rocky when they were finished, cooking, and cleaning. At night they schooled Emma, Kyra, and Dylan around the fire. They fell into the practice of telling a story based on Jamie or Connie’s experiences, or reading a passage from a book in Holland’s library and using it as a jumping-off point for a lesson. So, a reading of Little Red Riding Hood precipitated a host of teachings that stretched on for several days. They knew the color red, but what about all the other colors and shades? What is a grandmother and how are families structured? What is a hood and what are other garments called? What is a wolf? Why did it want to eat grandmother? Why do we eat? What is digestion? What other animals besides wolves live in the forest? What is a zoo? What is the difference between a fairy tale and a true story? What is a writer? Why do people read books? How is paper made? What is an invention? What is an idea? And in the process, the kids sponged up information, laid down new memories, and developed an expanded vocabulary and linguistic fluidity.

  In contrast, Holland’s recruits, were learning only the Bible and Holland’s simplified and sanitized version of American history. It was as if there were two schools in the same neighborhood, one, sophisticated and progressive, the other, rooted in a narrow, hide-bound curriculum.

  Streeter’s men kept busy cutting and stacking wood, hunting for fresh meat, ice-fishing on the lake, and patrolling the camp at all hours. Once the lake froze solid, it occurred to Streeter that Jamie and the others could pull an escape by walking across the ice to an adjacent plot, so the men installed lakeside fencing and razor wire. Sinking post-holes in the frozen ground was back-breaking, punishing work, and Jamie and Connie treated some of them for bleeding blisters and frostbite.

  Out of necessity, Holland was sending Streeter outside the camp on ever-more-frequent and farther-afield missions to find canned goods, dried foods, soap, vitamins, disinfectants, candles, batteries, and toilet paper. Streeter usually took Rocky and Roger with him, and sometimes they were gone for two or three days at a time. When they rolled back in, their breaths stank of alcohol, and their supply sacks, clinked with bottles of booze. Holland looked the other way because Streeter was a provider. And because he was scared of him.

  Jamie tried to keep out of Streeter’s way. He was getting more and more erratic. He always verbally lashed out at the recruits, but now he was threatening his own men too. And whenever he saw Jamie, he cocked his hand into a gun and said, pow. An emaciated guard with a perpetually running nose named Jake sought out Jamie one day with a cough and a pain in his chest. He had him lift his jacket and shirt and saw that half his back was black-and-blue. He felt along his ribcage and found a broken rib.

  “How’d it happen?” Jamie asked.

  “I fell, I guess.”

  “You fell. You guess. I don’t think so. Who hit you?”

  “Can you just fix me, Doc?”

  “It was Streeter, right? Why’d he hit you?”

  Jake looked around, nervously. “I forgot to shovel out the path to his outhouse after it snowed day before yesterday.”

  Without running water, the toilets froze up, and Rocky had built outhouses all over the camp.

  Jamie couldn’t prove it, but he had a theory about Streeter’s behavior. For the last month, he hadn’t seen any signs of opioid use. He suspected that Streeter had run out. He did seem to have plenty of meth, and now he was always flying high. His eyes darted like a rabid beast, his pupils were always big as peas, his teeth looked rotten, he was always picking at his dry skin.

  One day after her rounds, Connie came back to the cabin and took Jamie into their bedroom.

  “I just examined a kid in Bunkhouse Four—Chrissie, know her?”

  “Kind of short, brown hair?” Jamie said.

  “Yeah, that’s her. She was ha
ving some sort of pain that was hard to nail down—you know, they don’t have the language skills our kids have—but I finally figured it out. She’s got a small anal tear.”

  He got very angry, very fast. “Was it Streeter?”

  She nodded. “I got her to admit it. She’s scared shitless of him.”

  “I’m going to see Holland,” Jamie said.

  “Fat lot of good it’ll do.”

  She was right. Holland listened to him, his face contorted in psychic pain. He sighed a lot, even moaned, but in the end, he was non-committal about doing anything, or even speaking to Streeter about it.

  “What are we supposed to do, Jack?” Jamie said, “Anal rape isn’t enough for you? Are we supposed to wait till he kills someone?”

  Holland had a book in his lap. He closed it and gripped it so tightly his hands shook. “It’s the dead of winter. Chuck is the best hunter. He puts meat on the table. Chuck is the best gatherer. His trips into the surrounding towns are always productive. I’ll deal with him in the spring. I promise I will. Things will be easier in the spring. Until then, I’m going to pray that he can control himself. God bless you and Connie for the work you do here. The camp would be in trouble without you. Now could you go up and see Melissa? Gloria’s with her. She’s doing poorly today.”

  Mrs. Holland had lapsed into a semi-vegetative state a month earlier. She occasionally opened her eyes and seemed to search the room, but she no longer responded to verbal commands. Connie had a single nasogastric tube in her kit that they cleaned and kept reusing to push sugar water into her stomach. Holland insisted. He wanted everything done to keep her alive as long as possible. Morningside also had a need to sustain the woman. She had become her full-time nurse. She fed her, cleaned her, turned her to prevent bedsores, and talked to her in long monologues, mainly about her life before politics. The invalid had become her raison d’être.

  “I didn’t like her when she could talk,” Morningside told Jamie one day. “I detest her politics, I detest the way she twists religion, I detest the way she became our jailer. But now that she’s helpless, I can deal with her. It’s silly really, but she’s given me a purpose.”

  *

  Jeremy was a welcome visitor at Jamie and Connie’s cabin. The mullet-haired young man had a smile that brightened the gloomiest days and a warm self-deprecating sense of humor. It was a wonder that he was Streeter’s nephew.

  “I hate my uncle,” he told them. “I was always scared around him, even when I was little. I broke his window once playing baseball in his yard, and he waved his police gun at me. I swear to God he did that.”

  Around them, Jeremy was apologetic. He told them he was basically a prisoner too. If he tried to leave or if he helped them escape, he feared that without his aunt’s protection, Streeter would kill him. Family ties meant little to him. Jeremy insisted that he didn’t care two wits about religion or politics. His only job was to lead the recruits in physical fitness. He had been a summer-camp counselor for the Hollands and thought he was going to be a gym teacher and maybe coach high school soccer. Given the state of the country, he felt fortunate to have the camp as a haven, and his compassion for the recruits seemed sincere.

  From the moment he first laid eyes on Kyra, he was head over heels. Jamie got comfortable with the kid early on. He thought he was responsible and respectful, and he let him into the cabin to keep an eye on the kids when he and Connie needed to double-team a medical emergency or procedure. He played board games or worked on jigsaw puzzles with Kyra, Emma, and Dylan.

  Up to the point when Kyra told Connie about Jeremy touching her lady parts, Jamie had no idea they’d been fooling around. When Kyra gleefully told Jeremy she was going to have a baby, the kid assumed he was the father, and Jamie decided not to disabuse him of the notion. It was not a decision he would have taken in normal times, but he figured it was better for everyone for Kyra to believe and for Jamie to pretend that Joe Edison had nothing more to do with their lives.

  One afternoon, Jeremy was hanging around the cabin while Jamie was cooking a stew with the limited ingredients on hand. Connie was reading a book. Kyra suddenly lifted her shirt to show Jeremy her belly.

  “Look at my baby!” she exclaimed.

  “Getting big,” Jeremy said.

  “Put your shirt down, Kyra, now,” Jamie said like a dad.

  “What should we call it?” Jeremy asked.

  “Call it, baby,” Dylan said, looking up from the puzzle.

  “It needs a proper name,” Jeremy said. “You can’t call it baby!”

  Kyra frowned and said, “I don’t know what to call it.”

  “You can call it anything you like, honey,” Connie said. “It’s your baby.”

  Kyra went into deep-thought mode and said she would call the baby Jeremy.

  Jeremy grinned and said, “What if it’s a girl?”

  After more thought, Kyra declared, “Emma.”

  Emma was pleasantly startled. “That’s my name! I’m Emma.”

  “Excellent choice,” Connie said.

  They heard someone crunching through the snow followed by a rapping on their door. It was Roger in a lather, telling them that Mrs. Holland was in a bad way. “Mr. Holland wants both of you. She’s not breathing right.”

  They grabbed their kits and told Jeremy to mind the fort.

  They found what Jamie had been expecting. The tumor in her brain had been slowly growing and was pushing on her brainstem. At an inevitable point, her breathing would stop.

  Holland was wedged in a corner, looking small and meaningless. Morningside was the one in charge of the sick room, and she was the one to describe the new problem.

  “She started having spells of very deep breathing followed by periods where her breathing almost stops.”

  “It’s called Cheyne-Stokes respirations,” Jamie said. “The pressure inside her skull is pushing the brain against her breathing center.”

  “Is there anything you can do?” Morningside asked.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Holland’s voice was wispy. He could barely be heard. “You can’t operate, Connie?”

  “We went over this before,” she said. “It wouldn’t help.”

  “Dear God,” he said.

  They didn’t have long to wait. In five minutes, she was dead. Morningside smoothed the bedclothes over her body and slowly left the room. Jamie heard her walk across the hall and shut her bedroom door.

  Back at the cabin, Jamie and Connie had a fright. The common room was empty, the jigsaw puzzle unfinished on the floor. The bedroom doors were closed. They barged into the girls’ bedroom where they found Kyra and Jeremy under the covers.

  “Jeremy, get the hell up and get the hell out!” Jamie shouted. “You were supposed to look after them, not—well you know what.”

  Jeremy fell out of bed in a fright.

  “Sorry, sir. One thing kind of led to another. We’re in love.”

  “So I see. Now, get out.”

  “Can Jeremy stay?” Kyra asked with a pout.

  Jamie had one word for her. “No.”

  With considerable trepidation, they cracked open the door to Dylan’s bedroom and found him and Emma, locked in a half-naked embrace.

  “Don’t lose your temper,” Connie said. “It’s only natural.”

  “So is pregnancy.”

  Jamie entered the room and cleared his throat.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Emma said. “Dylan and I are having fun!”

  “Yes, we are!” Dylan agreed.

  “I can see that,” Jamie said. “How’d you like to get dressed and come into the living room?”

  “Okay,” Emma said cheerfully. “Should we stop?”

  “Yeah, you should stop. Have you guys done this before—you know, what you’re doing?”

  “Putting my penis in?” Dylan asked.

  “Exactly.”

  Emma said, “Yes, Daddy! We do it all the time.”

  Jamie was dumbfounded. They hardly had a
ny time alone. “When?” he asked. “And how? Dylan’s door is locked at night.”

  “I know where you put the key!” Emma said brightly.

  *

  A few days later, they were in the cabin having an early supper when Jeremy barged in with an urgent plea.

  “I know I’m not supposed to be here, but my uncle’s beating the crap out of Darren. I think he’s going to kill him.”

  Jamie left Connie with the kids and followed Jeremy through the twilight to the all-male, Bunkhouse One. Outside, he could hear shouting and screaming. Inside, there was a chaotic scene. Roger was keeping the crying and shouting recruits at bay with the aluminum softball bat he liked to carry, while Streeter, his nostrils flaring, was lacing into one of the older recruits, pudgy and middle-aged Darren, whose face was a bloody mess.

  “Stop!” Jamie shouted. “Stop right now!”

  “Fuck off,” Streeter shouted, punching Darren again.

  Jamie got closer. “Leave him alone! What did he do?”

  Roger said, “I seen Darren kissing Marty. He had his hands down his pants.”

  “That’s why you’re beating this man to death?” Jamie shouted.

  “I hate fags even more than I hate you,” Streeter said, getting ready to land another blow.

  Jamie had had enough. He charged Streeter and toppled him to the floor. Streeter grunted and swore and managed to get on top of him. Jamie tasted the salty sweat dripping from his face. Then he felt the first punch slam into his side. He fought back, but thinking about it later, he doubted he landed many blows. Streeter was juiced up, straddling his chest, whaling away at him, a drug-fueled destruction machine.

  The last thing Jamie heard was Jeremy shouting at Roger to give him the bat, then shouting at Streeter to stop or he’d bash his brains out.

  *

  Jamie woke up in his own bed with Connie at his side. He had a general sense of what had happened.

  “Did I get knocked out?”

  “You did. I don’t think anything’s broken.”

  His head throbbed and he hurt all over. “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m the best surgeon in these parts.”

  “I’ll add a five-star review to Yelp.”