Intended for Harm

by C. S. Lakin

  With that resolved, Rachel put the empty saucepan and mug in the sink, ran some cold water, then wiped her hands and headed back to her bedroom, to Jake sleeping undisturbed in their big bed, to night’s lure of erasure and promise of a new day. To little Joey, sleeping in his bed, unaware of the problems boiling and erupting in his house. How she wished all her children could be just as carefree and innocent.

  1985

  Angel

  Why am I standing on a cloud

  Every time you’re around

  And my sadness disappears

  Every time you are near?

  You must be an angel

  I can see it in your eyes

  Full of wonder and surprise

  And just now I realize

  You’re an angel

  You’re an angel, baby

  You’re an angel

  You must be an angel

  Now I believe that dreams come true

  ‘Cause you came when I wished for you

  This just can’t be coincidence

  The only way that this makes sense is that

  You’re an angel

  You’re an angel, baby

  You’re an angel

  You must be an angel, baby

  —Madonna

  “Levi, hand me that board over there—the one on the bricks.” Levi looked up and Jake pointed. He set down his sketchpad and retrieved the rough fence board. “Hold it here, like this, for me,” Jake instructed. As Levi positioned it, Jake nailed it off top and bottom with his nail gun. “What’re you drawing?” Jake pointed to Levi’s spiral-bound notebook.

  “Stuff. Cartoons. Superheroes.”

  Jake nodded. He rarely got more than one- or two-word sentences out of Levi, but at least they were talking. Rachel had been bugging him lately to spend more time individually with his sons and he was trying. Getting Simon to engage in conversation was next to impossible, and Levi was so quiet, always had been, he was hard for Jake to plumb. In some ways Jake felt he was a lot like himself, tending toward solitude and thinking, finding it difficult to air publically the private things in his heart. Leah had tried getting Jake to share his inner turmoil of feelings, called him uptight, wanted him to smoke pot to loosen up, let it all out, whatever “it” was. So Jake didn’t like to pry his boys; he respected their space and need to mull life over on their own, find their own way.

  But Rachel disagreed. Claimed the trouble brewing was due to his disconnect with them. They were drifting away and he’d better reel them in before they disappeared over the horizon, irretrievable. But how? His boys weren’t fish. You didn’t just bait the line with shiny silver lures and dangle them before their eyes. He wished he could afford to buy them the things they wanted; maybe their esteem for him would ratchet up a notch or two. But buying your children’s love never worked; this he knew for fact. Plenty of spoiled-rotten kids grew up to be thankless adults.

  Familiar ripples of guilt lapped against his heart. Guilt that he struggled to feel affection for the children he’d made with Leah. Guilt that somehow when he looked at them he saw her and all the hurt she’d meted out, to all of them. He knew he didn’t, couldn’t, love them enough, love them the way they needed, the way they deserved. Guilt that he copped out, let Rachel shower them with attention and affection, what they needed more from him but got from her in his stead. Jake would look at each of them and flounder, helpless. His failure evident in the unhappiness they exuded, the restlessness in their movements, the looks they gave him.

  “Your birthday’s coming soon. Thought about what you want? Ten’s a big number.”

  Levi shrugged. Jake could see his mind spin with ideas, but Levi just shrugged.

  “Aw, come on, buddy. Surely there’s something you’d like.”

  “Well . . . maybe a new bike?” He immediately closed his mouth.

  Jake nodded, hoped Levi wasn’t talking fancy and expensive. “Guess you get tired of inheriting all the cast-downs from your brothers. That one you’ve been riding to school has seen a few years of weather.” And Simon’s abuse. Been crashed a few times and a bit dented up. Jake had taken it into the bike shop twice to replace the back fender, the busted pedals. “There one you particularly like?”

  Levi nodded again, back on the bricks drawing, his eyes focused on his pen.

  “Well, maybe when I’m done here, we can go check out that bike you’re keen on.” Jake picked up the Skilsaw, moved the extension cord out of his path, laid a two-by-four across his boot, the way he always did when cutting boards, the top plate to go across the fence. He only needed two quick cuts; no sense adjusting the blade.

  As he depressed the button on the saw and started working the blade steadily through the wood, a flash of light caught the corner of his eye. He turned his head for a fraction of a second, mesmerized by the odd quality of light, then realized it was Joey bounding down the back steps toward him, the hot summer sun playing with his hair.

  The saw snagged in wood, skipped up, danced across his calf. Pain seared like burning metal and Jake loosed a curdling scream.

  Levi threw down his notebook, ran to Jake as he doubled over, flung the saw somewhere, fell hard on the grass. Lungs shocked, Jake couldn’t suck in air; pain barricaded the entrance to his throat. He stared at the ripped-open flesh below his shorts, meaty, mangled, blood gushing in a throbbing fountain of dark red. His mind slowed, then stalled.

  Something. He knew he had to do something. Stop the flow. Before his life emptied out on the grass.

  Black shapes dotted his vision, black mixed with blinding sparks of light. He sensed Levi moving over him, arms waggling, eyes searching for something to give him to help him.

  Jake laid his own hands over the foot-long gash that ran from his ankle up to his knee on the inside of his left leg, blood drenching them, sticky ooze coating them. “Go . . . get Mom . . . call 911.” He pushed the words out; like rocks in the back of his throat, they tumbled out, hit Levi like an avalanche. Levi spun, ran into the house.

  Jake clenched his eyes, reeled in pain so acute he wasn’t sure he could stay conscious. Through blurred sight he saw movement; he turned his head to avert his eyes from the glare, then the shape refocused through the pain—Joey, with the sun glancing off his shoulder, like the eye of God burning into him and heating Jake’s sweat-drenched face. Wet grass stuck along the length of his side, his shoulder. He concentrated on gathering a breath, another, tried to look up.

  Joey’s face disappeared with the sun scattering rays of renegade light in an array around his small body, making him look eerily like some alien stepping off a spaceship.

  “Daddy,” Joey said, lowering down next to him.

  Jake wanted to push him away, out of sight and away from the trajectory of the blood, knowing what a horror this was to witness, a shock, something terrifying to his five-year-old son. But upon closer inspection, Jake noticed between waves of anguish Joey’s beatific smile and all he could think was, why is he smiling? Maybe Jake looked funny, lying there, covered in blood. Maybe Joey just didn’t understand the severity of the injury, or thought Jake was playing, that the blood was red paint.

  “Joey . . . move back, Daddy’s hurt.”

  “I know.”

  Joey squatted close, reached out a hand to Jake’s leg.

  “No,” Jake said. “Don’t—”

  Jake felt pressure along the gash, then a thousand needles biting into flesh, skyrocketing the pain. Jake squeezed his eyes, frantic, confused.

  “Joey, stop!”

  Did his son even hear him? Maybe the words were coming out garbled. He tried to move, inch along the grass.

  “Wait,” Joey commanded. Jake froze at the authoritative sound of his son’s voice.

  “Almost done,” he added.

  Done? Done? Surely Jake was hallucinating. His child leaning over him, the sun wheeling above in the sky, birds winging around the tree, cackling, laughing. His lifeblood rushing out of him in a glorious stream to soak into the earth,
as his spirit deflated, the ambulance too late, not a siren riding on the suffocating summer air, only heat waves rippling, rippling along with the pain, which even now began to ebb with the tide of his life, fading, dissipating, easing, his last moments alive, here in his backyard.

  Suddenly, Jake inhaled a deep breath, pulled it with force deep into his lungs, felt them inflate with life, with renewal. He managed to turn his head; time hurrying to catch up to present speed, seconds no longer hours. Jake now knew he was surely hallucinating. Joey’s hands drenched in blood, red gloves up to his wrists, and his son’s beatific smile, shining down upon him in such innocence and incongruence. Was Joey addled? Jake couldn’t reconcile that smile with this event, the two elements clashing, jarring Jake’s heart, saddening him beyond measure.

  Joey stood. Rachel came running out the back door toward him, shrieking, Levi at her heels, carrying towels. Not until Rachel pushed past Joey, knelt, tugged on him did Jake realize he still had his hands riveted to his calf, trying to staunch the flow—what was left of his blood. Jake couldn’t bear to look at his leg; instead, he rested his eyes on Rachel’s face, waiting for the shock and horror to register.

  Rachel’s face went pale. She flicked her head to Levi, whose mouth hung open. Jake wondered at the odd sensation moving down his leg, now that the pain had eased to a dull throb.

  Levi spoke. “Dad, your leg—”

  Jake nodded, closed his eyes again. Finally, the piercing mourning cry of a siren carried in the air, grew louder as it approached. He waited for Rachel to wrap his leg in a towel, elevate it, something. When she didn’t move, he opened his eyes again, followed her gaze to his leg, sat up with a start.

  “Wha–”

  Rachel took Joey’s bloodied hands in her own, blood dripping onto her tan skirt, Jake’s eye’s caught by the sight of each drop splashing, one after another, polka-dotting the fabric. His blood.

  “Joey,” Rachel said, her voice startlingly solemn, “what did you do? Where did all this blood come from? Are you hurt?”

  Levi practically whined. “Mom, I told you—”

  “Levi, hush!” Rachel searched Joey’s body, up and down, front and back, then turned back to Jake, eyes wide, unblinking.

  What did he do? Jake wrenched his eyes from his leg to Joey’s face, then back to his leg again. He puzzled at it, like one of those scrambled pictures, all the wiggly lines tangled, making no sense. He looked at his right calf, then his left. He was going mad; that was the only explanation. He felt with his fingers along his left leg, the flesh unmarred except for a tiny barely perceptible scar running from his ankle to the inside of his knee. The skin twinged, sensitive, like new skin that grows over a wound. Jake’s head spun; sweat drenched the collar of his T-shirt, the shirt splattered with blood, but his leg clean as if washed, although blood stained the blades of grass, the saw blade off to his side, the bottom edges of his shorts.

  Jake heard the ambulance screech to a stop. Rachel pointed. “Levi, go run and tell them everything’s okay. But bring them back here.”

  Levi ran off. Only now Jake saw that Joey still stood over him, with Rachel wiping Joey’s hands with rough strokes, turning the towel, working it between Joey’s little fingers, the pale yellow cloth splotched with red.

  Jake tried to sift through the confusion, but it muddled and mired his brain. Nothing made sense.

  “I don’t understand.” His words sat heavy in the air, expectant, pregnant with speculation and a thousand unvoiced, unformable questions. He looked at Joey, sensed the moment slipping, like if he didn’t make sense of it now he never would, as he heard voices coming toward him, footsteps on the bricks.

  “Tell me, Joey. What did you do?”

  “God told me to.”

  Jake blinked. Rachel stopped moving, the towel suspended midair.

  “Told you to what?” Jake asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  “To touch you. To make it all better.”

  Jake marveled at the even, confident tone of his son’s voice.

  Jake opened his mouth to say something else, but two men ran over to him, grabbed his attention, began tossing him questions he was forced to catch. Jake managed to glimpse Rachel, who took Joey’s hand, whose eyes told him they would talk—eyes that knew something he didn’t, hid secrets undisclosed. Had answers that, in that moment, Jake wasn’t sure he wanted to hear, could bear hearing. He watched, numb, as Rachel walked with Joey in through the back door, then he turned back to one of the paramedics, who had a blood pressure sleeve strapped around his upper arm.

  The man asked. “What happened here?” He pumped air into the vinyl sleeve, inflated it, eyed the gauge, then let the air slip out, as the question, in contrast, inflated to massive proportions.

  Oddly, Jake shivered in the hot sun. He looked into curious, waiting eyes, answered the best he could.

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Simon grumbled as he tromped into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. “You guys make too much noise. It’s Sunday.”

  He dodged Rachel’s look, not wanting a dose of chastisement before he even put one spoonful of cereal in his mouth.

  Dinah bounced in her seat and Simon narrowed his eyes at her, his sister already primped and polish, ready to be paraded around church so Rachel could gloat over her. Dinah wiped her mouth daintily with a napkin. Simon grunted. Little Miss Polite Manners.

  “Well, we have to get to church,” she said, “and Daddy has chores for you, so you have to get up anyway.”

  Simon sneered at her but she’d already turned away to read the back of the Cheerios box.

  He reached over and grabbed the pitcher of OJ, poured himself a glass and drank it down, spilling some on his T-shirt.

  Rachel clucked her teeth. “Simon, be careful.”

  Reuben slipped into gear, not unexpectedly. “Yeah, slob. Can’t you just pretend you’re human for a change?”

  Simon reached across the table to punch his brother, knocked the pitcher over, which ejected juice across Rachel’s shiny white blouse. She jumped up and screeched.

  “Simon!”

  “What’s going on?” Jake asked, walking into the kitchen, smoothing down his hair, wet from the shower. Rachel threw her words across the room as she hurried toward the bathroom.

  “Ask Simon.”

  Simon waited until Rachel was out of earshot. “Just spilled the juice. No big deal.”

  “Daddy, he was trying to punch Reuben,” Dinah declared.

  Simon seethed. “Yeah, well he called me names—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” Jake looked at Reuben. “Look, you guys need to finish your breakfast. Simon, I’m going to have you mow the lawns this morning.”

  Great. With that stupid push mower that barely turns. “When are we going to get a power mower, Dad? Mowing with that thing’s like . . . torture.”

  Reuben burst out with a laugh. “That’s the point, bro. to make you suffer. Penance—remember? For trying to burn down the church.”

  Simon kept his ire in check. You’ll be sorry you said that. He yanked the box of Cheerios out of Dinah’s hands and poured them into his bowl. Dinah only frowned and waited until he was done, then grabbed the box back. He cast a quick glance at Levi, who sat eating, staring in his bowl, clearly ignoring him.

  Joey ran to the table and clambered into his seat. Their dad scooted over, then ruffled Joey’s hair. Simon gritted his teeth. Joey, all dressed up, looking like a little doll, with his shining smile and sparkling eyes. He could swear Rachel used some sort of styling gel on his brother’s hair—to make all those cutesy little curls stay in place. He wanted to barf all over the table.

  “Hey, sport. You’re late for breakfast.”

  Joey sat up straight in his chair, held a spoon high in the air. “I had a dream!”

  “So what?” Simon mumbled between bites. “Everyone has dreams.”

  Joey turned and faced Simon. “God gave me this dream.”

  Simon laughed along wit
h his brothers. More stupid God talk. Rachel was really brainwashing poor Joey with all that religious garbage. He even believed God was talking to him in his sleep. And his dumb dad—looking at Joey with wide eyes—like he was waiting for some kind of divine message to spew out of Joey’s mouth.

  “What was your dream?” his dad asked.

  Joey squirmed and stood on his chair, still waving the spoon in the air. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. Simon shook his head at Joey’s melodrama.

  “I was a star in the sky—the brightest star shining and the night was really black. Then, three stars came over.” He pointed at Simon, then his other brothers. “You, you . . . and you!”

  “What a dumb dream. Why would God make us stars?”

  “Simon, shh! I want to hear the rest,” Dinah said.

  “And then the sun came out, but the sky stayed black.” Joey frowned, either trying to remember or confused over the sky being dark.

  “Daddy was the sun, and he was really big.”

  “Duh,” Simon added.

  Joey ignored him, like he always did. “But when Daddy came over to me, the three other stars came too. And then you all bowed at my feet.”

  Simon jumped up from his chair. “Okay, I’m not listening to this crap.” He pushed the chair out, turned to Joey. “Next you’ll tell us God’s going to make you the king of the universe.”

  “Of course not!” Joey retorted. “Jesus is already the king of the universe. Everyone knows that!”

  Joey laughed and sat back down. Clueless, Simon thought. No matter how much I ride him, it slides right off his back. What a stupid kid.

  Enough! “I’ll get dressed and tackle the mowing,” Simon told his dad. “Dad?”