Fear Itself

by Duffy Prendergast

  The truth was that as much emotional pain as I was experiencing at that time over Catherine’s betrayal I managed to recognize that without Catherine’s affair I would never have had Sarah: my little Lizzy Borden. It didn’t matter to me that Sarah might have killed Catherine. It sickened me that it might be true; that Sarah might be a monster disguised as a sweet innocent child, but I loved her too much to let a little thing like matricide come between us. In light of the fact, and you must understand my morbid sense of humor masked my true horror at the possibilities, that Sarah, the product of my wife’s betrayal, might have killed my betrayer, Catherine, I found the whole affair sadistically amusing. Please don’t judge me for this; we use humor to mask our true emotions. I was horrified. But the whole scenario, if proved to be true, would have been nothing less than ironic.

  Of course the final joke was on me. I was wanted for a murder that I hadn’t committed.

  If Sarah had killed Catherine she surely could not have predicted, with her seven year old brain, that I would be implicated for her murder. I knew that Sarah loved me and that the last thing in the world she would have wanted was to be separated from me. If she had killed Catherine she had killed her in an oedipal attempt to eliminate the competition. And as far as I could tell, if Sarah had done the deed, I was quite culpable. I had espoused Sarah in many ways and on many occasions. When Catherine and I were not getting along I smothered Sarah with my affection. When Catherine and I made up I withdrew the extremity with which I displayed my approbation. That is not to say that I abandoned Sarah altogether. But my time with the two women in my life was more equally divided when my relationship with Catherine was harmonious. However Catherine sometimes managed long mood swings in which she would not talk to me for days, weeks, and on a few occasions for as long as a month or more. And I called upon Sarah to fill my vast emotional void; and I fed the fire even more so by allowing Sarah to call me lover. And when Sarah and I ate out at restaurants I fed the fantasy even further by acquiescing to her reference to our dining alone as dates. Once after Sarah had asked me for what must have been the hundredth time if she and I could be married like I was to Mommy I told her “Sure honey” in an absent minded attempt to dismiss her question without further persistence.

  “I mean like in a church.”

  This got my attention. She was serious. “Well how about we just pretend we’re married.”

  “No, I want to marry you in a church, like I saw on television.”

  We were not church-goers. In fact Sarah had never seen the inside of a church before. And one day, just to appease her unrelenting childish want, I took her to a church. It was an old majestic Cathedral style Catholic Church that I had been forced to go to every Sunday as a child. The neighborhood had changed dramatically from the time when I had attended both school and mass there. Blight had crept from the inner city to the outskirts of East Cleveland. Graffiti covered the walls of the street signs bridges and buildings nearby with proclamations as profound as “Sandra is a Hoe” and calls to action such as “No Excuses! Time to Fight!” Most of the houses of my old neighborhood were decrepit; paint peeling, roofs rotting, yards unkept. But the old stone cathedral was still as awe-inspiring as ever. It was the type of building which, had God actually wanted to live in the confines of man-made walls, he would have likely chosen over the simple modern structures they called churches in more recent times. We stopped in on a late Sunday afternoon and the sun was shining casting long colorful shadows across the dark old oak pews. The two story mosaic of Jesus on the cross, with its gold and beige and red hues, towered behind the altar covered in white. Behind the altar stood the gold sacristy which housed the gold challises from which the wine was drunk and the unleavened bread was served. To either side of the altar stood statues of the Virgin Mary and of Saint Peter and a large table with lighted candles in red glass decanters. Along the walls, stone carvings depicted the Stations of the Cross. The floors were white and brown terrazzo. Behind us and above us was a wide and deep choir loft with a monstrous organ with hundreds of brass pipes and a passageway which led up to a set of winding steps to the bell tower. The church was truly glorious and I could tell by Sarah’s reaction (eyes as wide as the white wafers of bread in the sacristy) that she was awed.

  Sarah and I sat on a pew and I told her about the statues and the stages of the cross and the mosaic of Jesus on the cross. I told her how I used to have to go to mass every Sunday with my family and how the priest would go up to the altar and tell stories about Jesus and about God and Adam and Eve.

  Sarah and I never actually enacted a marriage ceremony. We just talked. After about fifteen minutes I was all talked out and I suggested that we leave.

  “Does that mean that we’re married now?”

  “Sure honey.” I said to appease her.

  As we left the church Sarah was beaming with joy at having equaled my relationship with Catherine. That night Sarah became upset when I told her that she could not sleep in my bed.

  “But we’re married now. I want to sleep with you like mommy does.” She pouted her bottom lip while genuine tears began to trickle down her cheeks.

  “No honey. You have to go to school tomorrow. You have to sleep in your own bed.”

  “Why can’t mommy sleep in my bed?” “Because I’m the mommy, and mommies sleep with daddies.” Catherine intervened, having grown impatient with my attempt at reasoning. “Now get into your bed young lady.” Looking at me now with a frown of disgust Catherine said, “I told you not to do the marriage thing with her. It’s going to screw her up in the head!”

  Sarah sulked away in disappointment. She thought that once we were married that she would be, at the very least, Catherine’s peer; a Mormon wife perhaps? So I was in fact as guilty for leading Sarah to an act that must have seemed to her logical and necessary. How could I hold such an act of love against her?

  8

  We approached Louisville Kentucky as the sun was falling fast below the landscape of tobacco fields and barbed-wired cow pastures. The pungent odor of freshly produced fertilizer filled my nostrils. We needed gas and the darkness in my spirit from speculating about Sarah’s tainted soul and the deed she may have done caused me to tingle with fear, my phobia having infected my nerves at the prospect of darkness without shelter. I pulled into the flickering neon labeled Louisville Motel, an obscure one-story hovel of white-washed cinderblock, single-paned checker-board windows and a tin roof patched with tar so many times that there was more exposed tar than tin. A second neon sign the size of a clipboard flashed ‘VACA_CY’ the flickering

  ‘N’, refusing to fully illuminate. There were two vehicles parked outside of the building: a faded blue mini pickup truck which sat outside a room at the northern-most end of the building and a silver full-size late model SUV which guarded the entrance to the office.

  The young girl behind the front desk had piercings in her eyebrow, nose and exposed naval. She sat behind a maple-stained and varnished plywood topped jewelry case. Her rump rested on an uncomfortable looking metal folding chair while she played a hand-held video game. Her hair was brown short and straight. She was not excessively heavy but she wore no braw and her large chest pushed sidelong against her plain white t-shirt (cut short just below her breasts) making her look so. She didn’t bother to look up from her video game.

  “Need a room?” She said with a surprisingly northern accent.

  “Yes.”

  “Single or double bed?” “Twin?”

  “How many nights?” “One.”

  “Sixty dollars,” She closed her video game, a pink plastic box about the size of a makeup compact, and stood up. She opened a frayed and faded lime-green signature log and pointed to a line. “Sign here; and I need to see your driver’s license.”

  “I lost it.” I said almost too quickly, having anticipated her request.

  She looked up at me suspiciously,

  “Well do you have any other ID?” She sassily shook her head.

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nbsp; “No, my wallet was stolen. All I have is cash.”

  “I’ll need your license plate number from your car then.” She said with a sigh.

  I peered through the window past the neon sign and then wrote the number from what I assumed to be her SUV on the form and handed the girl sixty dollars. From there I drove to a gas station-convenience store combination less than a mile further down the road. The sun was still a complete sphere above the horizon but it was pressed to the tree- tops and I estimated that we had no more than one-half hour before dark. Sarah stood on the end of the shopping cart while I deposited a pair of scissors, a box of auburn and a box of black hair-dye, a child’s baseball cap and shirt with the Louisville Mud-Hens logo, a pair of low powered reading glasses, a bag of corn- chips, two cans of cola and a pouch of beef- jerky.

  At the counter a teenaged girl with brown hair, a blue smock and an innocent looking freckled face crowned with a long pointed nose and thick eyebrows smiled as she scanned our purchases including the nineteen gallons of gasoline. I paid in cash and I stepped toward the front exit when I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I turned and looked to find a dark skinned black-bearded Arab man holding up a faxed photograph in his free hand. He looked down at Sarah and back up at me.

  “Amber Alert.” He said with a stern look. “It is you, this man!”

  I looked at the picture and sure enough it was a picture of Sarah and me. There was no denying it. I wondered what my good friend

  Tommy Sullivan would have done in that situation. Strange to think of a childhood friend at that moment, I’ll admit, but Tommy was my protector as a child and the only thing I could think to do was to try to imitate him. He was as tough as nails and I wished at that moment that I could have invoked his spirit but instead I was resigned to act as I thought he might act. I smiled at the man and removed his hand from my shoulder with the gentleness of a kitten and I looked down at Sarah and said, “Honey can you wait for me in the car.” I watched as Sarah obediently walked out to the car toting the plastic sack of items we had just bought and climbed into the passenger seat. I turned back to the bearded gentleman whose hand I still held and I twisted his arm behind his back, slowly spinning him around, the power of desperate adrenaline coursing through my capillaries and I reached into the man’s back pants pocket and I removed his wallet. Pulling his body close enough for my lips to touch his ear I whispered to him “If you do anything at all to fuck-up my day I will come to your house and I will kill your family!” I wrenched his arm a little tighter until I heard him grunt, “I have your wallet and I now know where you live!” and then I released his arm and exited through the front door as though I were in no hurry at all.

  I climbed into the car and I saw a flash and a loud echoing-clap, as if a firecracker had been detonated inside a metal drum, and a dull metallic thud, as of a rivet being driven into a steel girder, and I turned to find the bearded man standing in front of the glass doors aiming a pistol at me.

  I found, in that moment, that my bodily fluids were gathering and swirling like a toilet that had just been flushed. I clenched my butt cheeks together to hold back the impending conflagration as I dropped the gear-shift into reverse and pressed the accelerator to the floor. I heard the same succession of sounds, clap- thud, twice more. The Mustang fishtailed as the torque of the tires caught up with the friction of the pavement and the engine’s cylinders fired in greater succession than the bullets of the revolver that pursued us.

  “Daddy…it hurts.” I heard Sarah say as if from far away.

  “Not now baby. In just a minute I’ll look at it.” Though Sarah was holding her head I thoughtlessly dismissed her words.

  An Amber alert? She was my own daughter! Or had Uncle Henry come forward and claimed possession of her? Or was it just an excuse, an exploitation of the Amber alert program, the police were using to find me? They obviously knew that I posed no threat to my own daughter. I was mad as hell; my blood was pumping like water through a sprinkler head. My mind was racing. I had wanted to make some kind of splash in Louisville but I had not anticipated bullets and alerts and police. I suddenly heard multiple sirens whining like a host of babies in a hospital nursery somewhere off in the distance. I couldn’t tell if I was heading toward them or away from them. Up ahead in the fast fading light of dusk I saw the dumpy little motel I had just checked into. I shut off my headlights and killed the engine and coasted into the parking lot and around to the rear of the building where I let the car glide to a stop between a heap of rusted metal drums and a patch of woods. It was growing dark outside and I could barely see through the windows in the shadow of the building.

  I looked over at Sarah. She was crying and had an incredibly pathetic expression on her face.

  “It hurts daddy.”

  Then it donned on me: the bullets had struck the car. One of them had hit Sarah. When she first said “It hurts” Sarah’s voice had seemed to come from somewhere far off, as if emanating from the car’s radio speakers. But that was before my scrambled mind could decipher the bombardment of information that had come crashing like a computer virus into my brain. I grabbed Sarah and pulled her to me. It was dark in the car within the cast of the hotel’s shadow. I searched Sarah with my hands; her chest, her legs, her arms: for blood or holes or ripped bone and flesh, but I could find none of these. Without hesitation I turned the dome light on and I searched for blood; for an exit would.

  “Tell me where it hurts baby. Are you bleeding?”

  I flipped her over onto her stomach and lifted her shirt and felt her back for gushing wounds; torn and severed tissue. I was crying myself now.

  “Where does it hurt baby. Tell daddy now.”

  “Right here.” Sarah said, pointing to the top of her head.

  “Oh my god!” I pulled her back into my lap and gently felt the top of her head.

  “I can’t find any blood honey. Show me again!”

  “Right here daddy.” She pointed again at the side of her head, “Am I gonna die like mommy did, daddy? Am I gonna die?” She said as the contagion of my panic took hold of Sarah.

  “No baby no. You’re not going to die.” I felt again for blood or wounds and I found only a small bump. “Is that it honey, right there?” the thumping strokes of my heart beating against my chest commenced to subside.

  “Yes.” She cried, “Am I gonna die daddy?”

  “No honey. Is that it? Is that where it hurts?” I turned her head so that I could read her eyes. They were filled with tears and wild with hysterics.

  Sarah nodded.

  “How did you get that ouchy honey?”

  “I bumped my head on the door, am I gonna die?”

  “No honey, you’re going to be fine honey. It’s just a bump.” I held her to my chest and squeezed her with a long hug and then kissed the little lump on her head. What had I done? I had exposed my baby to gunfire; how utterly stupid of me. I could have gotten her killed. I should have just walked out. Everything would have been fine if I hadn’t panicked. I should never have threatened that man’s family. The Arabs, they have a different way of thinking. Most men would have stayed out of it. They would have waited, at least, before they called the police. They would not have shot at me.

  I sat there listening as unseen police cars, the strobe of their red and blue lights bouncing off of the buildings, with their sirens streaming, passed us tearing west toward the convenience store and then back east; some going north and south on the interstate, all of them flitting about like a swarm of fireflies in the woods. I kissed Sarah on the forehead and I looked up to the sky and wondered if someone up there were not looking down on me; guiding me, as in back to the hotel instead of risking the exposure of the open road where I surely would have been caught and possibly exposed Sarah to more serious injury; looking down on us, Sarah and I, and giving us the good fortune not to be struck by flying bullets. But I refused to put my faith in the someone who was now looking down on us. I would put my faith only in myself. I would not entrust
our lives to fate, or the hope that Catherine was remorsefully lending a hand from someplace beyond. I gathered the items that Sarah and I had purchased at the convenience store and on unsteady legs I walked Sarah over to our hotel room, making haste at our exposed door, to get out of sight.

  Once inside I took a closer look at Sarah’s little pink skull buried beneath thin blond strands of hair and I rubbed the knot gently and kissed the little bulge that had grown like a mump on the side of her head.

  “All better?” I asked.

  Sarah forced a smile and nodded, still a little shaken.

  I turned the television on and tuned into a local news channel. A picture of Sarah was captioned at the top right corner of the screen.

  “Daddy, it’s a picture of me.” Her eyes were excited and cheerful, “I’m on television!”

  “Yeah honey, swell. Be quiet now and let me hear what they’re saying, okay?”

  Sarah and I watched intently as the newscaster spoke of me, the villain, who had killed my wife and absconded with my daughter:

  “There is concern that Mr. Derrick may be distraught and might harm his daughter.” said a husky black reporter, a stern and dire expression blanketing her face. “And the search will continue well into the night if necessary.”

  “Is there any indication, Paula, of the direction they were traveling?” Said a voice from the studio.

  “All indications are that they were heading south on interstate sixty-five.”