Growth

by Jeff Jacobson

  She headed in for some breakfast. And maybe a nap.

  Ingrid always enjoyed these calm mornings after Kurt’s storms. She hurt, make no mistake. After the cop left, he’d trapped her in the bathroom and gone after her with one of her pots. Ingrid wedged herself in the corner between the toilet and the wall, tucking her fingers into her armpits, knees into her chest while he went to town on the backs of her shoulders and the back of her head whenever he made a particular point, hissing that it wasn’t his fault she was too dumb to understand, reminding her it wasn’t any fun having to make all the tough decisions.

  When he was too tired to beat on her anymore, he straightened, threw the dented pot in the bathtub, said, “You want to hide next to the toilet, you face the consequences, stupid bitch.” He unzipped his jeans and pissed on her.

  Ingrid didn’t see the beatings as much different from sex. Sometimes it hurt, really awful, but when it was over, Kurt was spent and tired. He kept his distance. Sometimes for days. He’d gotten whatever it was out of his system and would leave her alone for a couple of days while she healed up. He ate in front of the television, as always, but she got to eat dinner in the kitchen by herself. It was a relief, not worrying if her eating was annoying him. The rest of the time, he spent in the front room, watching TV, drinking beer, or in the bathroom, with the paper. She knew he hid pornographic magazines in the paper and sometimes she could hear him masturbating in there.

  Again, it was actually a relief. It meant he wouldn’t expect anything that night and it certainly smelled better in there when he was finished.

  She made her way down the lawn, letting gravity guide her. Her entire face was swollen, leaving just slits for her eyes, and she couldn’t see much. She carried a basket for eggs. He might be leaving her alone for now, but he still damn sure expected breakfast.

  Ingrid peered through the wire. It looked like the hens were still inside the coop. Maybe something had spooked them in the night. Usually, once the sun was peeking over the corn, they were out scratching at the dirt. She would have to remember to feed them later. She only trusted herself to carry one thing at a time, and since she had to get Kurt’s breakfast started, she would bring the seeds down later.

  She brushed the new cobwebs out of the way and opened the back of the henhouse. The hens were still in their nests, strangely quiet. They moved slowly away from her searching fingers, if they moved at all. Her aches and pains pushed any puzzlement out of her head until it was all she could do to shove her fingers under the closest hens and find the eggs in the straw. She collected four eggs, still warm, and deposited them in the basket. She latched the henhouse door, and shuffled back up the lawn.

  The chickens never made a sound.

  Bob couldn’t sleep.

  He parked himself in his chair with a pint of Jim Beam and waited for the news to report what he already knew. Belinda had spent the night in their bed, sobbing into pillows. Bob tried not to listen. It was important to them that they each grieve in their own way, independent of the other. Bob, having let all of his anguish out in Junior’s cornfield, sat silent and motionless in his La-Z-Boy. He felt his gaze bounce ever so slowly from Fox News to Junior’s high school portrait on the mantel and back to the TV, all night long.

  He rarely drank anything stronger than lemonade, and the Jim Beam went straight to his head. It didn’t help.

  Especially when the aerial footage of the smoking island hit the news networks. Bob felt lost within the blurry, shaky images, and only a few key phrases penetrated his fog of mourning. “Total annihilation . . . one hundred and sixty-four confirmed dead . . . quite possibly a result of ecological terrorism . . . the State Department is pledging full cooperation with Haitian authorities . . . Allagro stock has fallen significantly, following rumors of a failed new seed launch . . .”

  Bob was never one to sit still and wait, but now, there was nothing else he could accomplish. He wanted to go out and smash something, but he needed to listen for any breaking news. There was still a part of him that wanted to hope, hope that his son had somehow made it off the island in time, and was drifting in the ocean somewhere, just waiting to be picked up. He fought against this hope, fought against it like white blood cells fighting off an infection. Still, the hope swelled inside him like an abscess, even though he knew it was poison.

  He coughed and felt around for the bottle of Jim Beam on the floor next to the La-Z-Boy. He hoped he was wrong about its being empty. But he needed something to soften the blow. He knew his son was dead. He just needed the confirmation to kill the hope that he was wrong. And until then, he was a fish caught on a hook; doomed, but still alive, still allowed to struggle.

  Kurt was still in the bathroom.

  Ingrid thanked the Lord for small favors and set the basket of eggs on the kitchen counter. She pulled milk and bacon out of the fridge, deftly sliced a hunk of butter from the stick, and flicked it into the frying pan on the stove. She turned the heat down low, just enough to melt the butter. Her hands found a clean bowl next to the sink and set it next to the eggs. Despite being so injured that she couldn’t walk without pain, she found peace in the kitchen. Her body seemed to glide around by itself, pulling out ingredients, collecting utensils, all while an internal clock kept track of the heat and time on the stove.

  She reached out, grabbed an egg from the basket.

  Cracked it with a precise, practiced motion.

  Tiny black centipedes scurried out of the broken shell and crawled over her hand.

  Ingrid didn’t see them at first. She only felt a vague sensation that the weight of the egg was off, that the yolk should be spilling out into the bowl. A whiff of something foul and rotten invaded her nose, and the long black insects spread across the back of her right hand and slithered up her arm.

  She uttered a deep cry of disgust and whipped her hand at the floor, trying to fling the bugs away. Her left hand knocked the basket off the counter, and the rest of the eggs smashed on the floor. Hundreds of long, black insects erupted from the shattered shells and weaved and seethed across the tiles. They looked as if ropy black tissue had stolen dozens and dozens of spindly legs from other insects and was now blindly searching for more warm flesh.

  Ingrid slapped at her arm, trying to brush the string-like bugs away. Her fingers left dark gray streaks where she had crushed clusters of the centipedes, spattering them across her skin like thick droplets of oily rain. She cried out again and fell back into the fridge, clawing at her arm with her fingernails, ripping at the writhing horrors. They moved in S patterns, like tiny, frantic snakes, surging up her arm, wriggling under her shirt, and crawling up her neck.

  Ingrid went berserk, spinning and flailing. Her shoes spun in the wreckage of the infected eggs, crushing bugs, creating a blackened slime on the kitchen floor. She slipped in the mess and fell, smacking her head into the stove as she went down. One wild arm struck the edge of the frying pan and sent it crashing against the back of the stove.

  On the floor, Ingrid whipped her head back and forth as the centipede things crept over her jawbone and forced their way into any hole they could find, worming into her skull through her mouth, her nose, her ears, slipping between her eyelids and eyeballs.

  Her body flopped and thrummed against the tiles as if she were having an epileptic fit. Eventually, her legs stopped shaking. Her arms slowed and stopped. The insects on the floor swarmed across her body and disappeared under her clothes.

  For a full five minutes, Ingrid did not move.

  Her right hand fluttered and curled into a soft fist. Her head twitched. Her eyes, which had never closed, gazed dully at the ceiling. She managed to roll over to her stomach and draw her knees under her. She rocked back and forth for a while, as if getting used to how gravity worked. Moving like a toddler, she crawled toward the back door.

  Kurt’s voice boomed through the thin slats of the bathroom door, echoing throughout the empty farmhouse, “Better not be burnin’ the fuckin’ bacon again.”


  CHAPTER 7

  Bob hadn’t moved in hours. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been in the bathroom. The news was still maddeningly vague. Nobody knew anything, only that the island had suffered a massive, severe fire, and it was feared that there were no survivors. But that didn’t stop all the speculating.

  Bob couldn’t even muster the indignation that the White House had not even held a press conference yet to express their sorrow and condemn those responsible. He couldn’t understand why it was so difficult to simply provide a list of the known fatalities. A brief phone call from his son’s employer was not enough. He needed the power of television to make the death of his son final. Then he could move on. Until then, he was stuck in a sort of formless limbo, caught between knowing deep in his guts that Bob Jr. was dead, and the irrational hope that refused to let him sleep, to rest, to even blink.

  Around nine in the morning, a white van turned off the highway and cautiously trundled down the long driveway slowly, as if it wasn’t sure it was in the right place. From his chair, Bob watched through the front windows as it approached the house. It got close enough for Bob to see the logo, WGON in bright blue letters, tilted slightly to suggest movement and urgency, and the words ACTION NEWS underneath. This was a TV station out of Springfield.

  For the first time since the phone call, Bob worried he might throw up.

  He didn’t want to face reporters. Especially TV reporters. With cameras. He’d chew his own testicles off before he sent his wife outside, so he focused, planted his feet on the wool rug, and stood. The room wobbled a bit but straightened out, and for the first time in twelve hours, he felt almost strong. He suffered a moment of intense dizziness when he bent over to grab the remote, but it passed and he turned off the TV. Belinda had been quiet for a while now, and he closed the bedroom door, then went outside, hammered down the wide concrete back steps, trying to contain the rage and sorrow as he went to greet the unwelcome visitors.

  He wished he had more bourbon.

  The white van circled around the great oak in the center of the farm, taking its time, tires rolling over the smooth gravel. Bob got the feeling they were already filming and wondered how they would portray his life in the shape of the long equipment sheds full of irrigation and harvesting machines. It stopped and the young, hot reporter got out of the passenger seat while another person got out of the side.

  Bob had been to enough political and business public displays of friendliness in the form of godawful free hot dogs, bags and bags of potato chips, and endless carbonated soft drinks. All as if the public was nothing but voracious cattle, lining up to feed at the trough when dinner is called. All free. Free. That magic word. Even if only half of the people that flocked to these garish campaign events voted, and even then, even if only half of those votes went to Bob’s guy, it was all worth it.

  During these grand openings and political rallies the media had not only been invited, but required. Bob had dealt with enough PR people to know that the girl reporter was a puppet, controlled by the guy next to her. He was the producer. He had on a Chicago Cubs hat. Bob hated him immediately. This was Cardinals country, and everybody else could get the hell out.

  Bob had been used to being on their side. Today was different. He knew that the third guy to get out always had the camera. He didn’t want to be onscreen and held up his hand.

  This camera guy already had the soft light mounted on the camera lit when he climbed out behind the producer. The producer started talking fast. “Mr. Morton, Mr. Morton. I’m Allen Wilson, and WGON needs to know, sir, what have you heard about your son?”

  “No. No. This is not the time for you to be here.” He shook his head. “Stop filming. Now.”

  Allen was a go-getter. “Mr. Morton, please.” He knew when he was closest to big news and got to be first on the scene. “The American people deserve to know!”

  Bob knew they’d edit out anything they said to make it look like he was shouting nonsense. He’d seen it happen dozens of times to political rivals, and now that it was happening to him, it made him tongue-tied and he couldn’t even manage a simple “No comment.”

  “Please leave,” was the best he could get out.

  The WGON crew got closer. The producer gestured at the reporter and let her take over. She spoke in deep, sympathetic tones. “You have no doubt heard, Mr. Morton, that your son has been reported lost in what some are calling the West Island Massacre. What do you say to this news, tonight?”

  “I . . . I . . . do . . . not wish to speak at this time . . .” Bob saw, out of the corner of his eye, another vehicle coming up the driveway. This one was a rental car, small, sleek, and gray, like a seal splitting through a green sea of corn.

  The car didn’t take the scenic route like the van. It aimed for the news crew and slid to a stop uncomfortably close, leaving a few feet of skid marks in the gravel. The man who jumped out wore a deep black suit and no tie. Sunglasses. Mid-thirties maybe, but there was some bad, bad years in there. Thinning hair swept back in perpetual irritation.

  The man ignored Bob and targeted the news crew. “I’ll ask you once. Leave. Now. I’ll even be polite and say please. Just this once. Mr. Morton has just lost a son. When he is good and ready he will invite you to a press conference. Until then, understand that you are trespassing on private property and Mr. Morton has every legal right to defend his property. You have three seconds to get back in that van and leave immediately. One.”

  “I’m sorry, who are you?” Allen asked as the cameraman swiveled to take in the newcomer.

  “Two,” the man said, pulling out a thin, short-barreled 1911 handgun from a shoulder holster inside the suit. He racked the slide back and faced them.

  Allen stood his ground. “If you think you’re gonna stick a gun in our face and chase us off, you got another—”

  The man put a bullet into the oak tree in the center of the driveway. The gunshot hit the quiet farm like a nuclear bomb. Even Bob jumped. The cameraman jumped as if he’d been pinched by a pair of pliers and dumped his camera into the backseat. The reporter didn’t waste any time hopping into the passenger seat and locking the door. Allen wouldn’t meet anybody’s eye as he mumbled something about the First Amendment, but he scrambled into the van with the other two. The van pulled around, accelerating back down the driveway.

  The man put the pistol back in its holster and turned to Bob. He extended his hand. “Mr. Morton. Paul Cochran. First of all, let me extend my deepest condolences on the loss of your son.”

  “Thank you,” Bob said and shook Cochran’s hand. His head felt numb.

  “Forgive me, but I have to ask. Did you say anything about your son, anything at all?”

  “No . . . no. I don’t think I said . . . they just showed up.”

  “Good. If am going to be able to help you, I need total and complete honesty. When was the last time you spoke with your son?”

  “I . . .” Bob fought off a wave of grief so strong he thought he might start crying in front of Cochran. He bit it back and swallowed. “Last week. Maybe. I don’t know. He was excited about his trip.”

  “Okay. Did he say anything about any new products?”

  “Just that they were about to announce something . . . something big.”

  Cochran waited a moment, watching Bob closely. He tilted his head, and Bob could only see twin reflections of the blazing sun in the lenses. “Did he ever send you anything? Anything related to his work?”

  Bob said, “No . . . no,” before he realized he had just lied. He didn’t know why. It just seemed important to protect his son. So he didn’t mention the seeds he had planted and the two acres of corn he had visited last night. “No. What is all this about?”

  “Precautions. Nothing more.”

  His time outside, in the sunlight, allowed Bob to focus. He remembered this was his farm and decided to act like it. “You said on the phone you were the Vice President of . . .”

  “I am one of several acting Vice Pr
esidents of Affairs, yes.”

  Bob gestured at Cochran’s side, indicating the gun. “And what all does your job description entail?”

  Cochran gave an easy, empty smile. “Well, my duties vary. Let’s just say I’m involved in whatever myself and my employers deem necessary.”

  Bob nodded. “You’re a fixer.”

  Cochran shrugged slightly. “If there is a situation that I believe can be fixed, then yes. It depends. Right now, however, my job is to guide you through a difficult period. Look at it this way, Mr. Morton. I am your new best friend.”

  “You’re a lawyer?”

  “I have a law degree, yes. And I will be happy to answer any other questions you and your wife may have. However, at the moment, decorum prevents me from continuing. I am afraid I have pressing business we must attend to first.” He went back to the car and withdrew a leather case from the backseat. He set it on the hood and popped the latches.

  Then, with all the solemn dignity the situation required, he turned, holding up a silver urn.

  The back door slammed. They both looked over to the house. Belinda stood at the top of the steps, one hand clasping her robe across her chest, the other holding a fistful of Kleenex up to her face. When she saw the urn, her eyes widened, then rolled back. She uttered a short cry, her legs gave out, and she tumbled down the back steps.

  Kurt finally emerged from the bathroom, bowels empty, paper read, and hollered that he was ready for his breakfast. No one answered. He poked his head around the corner and started to get mad when he found the burner still on and Ingrid gone. The kitchen was a fucking mess. It looked and smelled like his wife had waded through pig shit and tracked it all over the tiles. He didn’t want to step in the congealed remains of raw eggs and whatever else was on the floor, so he leaned over to turn off the burner. He opened the fridge as if she were hiding inside. Almost disappointed, he shut the fridge door and stood for a while looking at all the shit smeared across the floor.