by Scott Smith
The paramedics took her to the hospital, where she remained for the next two weeks. There was some brain damage, hypoxia, though the doctors weren't sure how much. They recommended that she spend some time down in Columbus, at a clinic for head injuries -- promising us that it would speed her recovery -- but our insurance wouldn't cover it. When word got out in Ashenville about our trouble, St. Jude's started raising money to help us. They ended up collecting six thousand dollars, enough for a one-month stay at the clinic. Everyone who donated signed a giant get-well card, which they gave us with the check. Both Ruth Pederson's and Linda Jenkins's names were on the card.
It's hard to tell what good the clinic did, but the doctors all seemed pleased with the results. Even now, though it's clear to Sarah and me that Amanda will be damaged for life, they still speak of a young body's resiliency, of similar cases with sudden, almost miraculous recoveries. They say we should never give up hope, but Amanda's physical maturation has slowed to the point of stasis; she still looks like the two-and-a-half-year-old I pulled from the pool that afternoon, still has the same thin arms and legs, the same large, round skull waiting impatiently for the body beneath it to begin to grow. Her speech hasn't developed, her coordination is poor, her bowel and bladder control erratic. She's still attached to Jacob's bear and won't go anywhere without it. Sometimes she wakes in the middle of the night and winds it up, so that I'll surface suddenly from a deep sleep to the sound of "Frere Jacques" drifting into our bedroom from the darkness across the hall. Amanda sleeps in what used to be the guest room, in Jacob's old bed.
Sarah takes a surprisingly fatalistic attitude toward the accident. She's hinted several times now that she believes it's a form of punishment, a way of paying for our crimes, and in the way she hovers over Jack, I can tell she thinks something might happen to him, too, unless we're vigilant and protect him.
I still work at the feedstore, in the same position. I've had some raises over the years, but just enough to keep up with inflation. Sarah's back at the library, full-time now, because we need the money. Amanda's accident used up the small amount of savings we'd managed to accrue.
You'll want to know how we spend our days, I suppose, how we manage to live with what we've done. Sarah and I never discuss the money or the murders; even when we're alone together we pretend that none of it ever happened. There are times when I want to talk, of course, but never to Sarah. It's to strangers I want to speak, people who could, perhaps, offer me an objective opinion about what I've done. It's not an urge to confess -- I feel nothing like that -- but rather a desire to go through things step by step with someone impartial, so that they might help me discover where I first began to go wrong, help me pinpoint that one moment after which everything became inevitable.
The children will never know about any of it, and there's some solace in that.
There are days during which I manage not to think of our crimes at all, but these are few and far between. Other times, when I do think of them -- of me standing in Alexander's with the machete raised above my head, or in Lou's doorway with the shotgun in my hands -- they seem unreal, like they never really happened. I know in my heart that they did, though, know exactly what I'm capable of, know it in a way that you probably never could, not unless you've been there, immersed in a similar situation, making your own fateful choices.
For a while I used to have dreams where I let the old woman escape, let her run out the door to her car and drive away, but that's stopped now.
Since we never talk about it, I don't really know how Sarah feels. All I have are hints, like her agreeing to name our son after my brother, or the time I found her sitting on Jacob's trunk in the attic, lost in thought, the old woman's fur coat draped across her knees, its collar matted with dried blood. I imagine she feels much like I do -- that we're not so much living now as simply existing, moving from one day to the next with a hollow, bewildered feeling, trying all the time, but never with much success, not to remember what has happened.
When things get especially bad, I force myself to think of Jacob. I picture him as he was the day he took me out to our father's farm. He's in his gray flannel slacks, his leather shoes, his bright red jacket. His hairless head looks cold without a hat, but he doesn't seem to notice. He's spinning on his heels, pointing out where our barn used to be, the tractor shed and grain bins. In the distance, when the wind blows, I can hear the creak of our father's windmill. I return to this moment again and again because it always makes me weep. And when I weep, I feel -- despite everything I've done that might make it seem otherwise -- human, exactly like everyone else.
About The Author
Scott Smith was educated at Dartmouth College and Columbia University. He lives in New York City.
Also by Scott Smith
The Ruins
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