You don’t answer because you don’t know what you mean.
“Evil,” Mrs. Lovejoy says. “There is such a thing as evil, you know. True evil. Pure evil. That’s what the death penalty is for. To exterminate true evil. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
“Newton’s third law.”
“Right. If you create evil, society’s reaction is to exterminate it.”
“What about chaos theory?” you say. Because you feel that evil has influenced your life since day one, but you did not invite it into your life. “What if you created evil unintentionally?”
“What do you mean?”
“If your actions cause reactions that you have no control over. If you try to do something good but end up with something bad.”
“That’s bullshit, we’re all responsible for our own actions. Look, there’s been an accident.”
Up ahead you see Chandler’s obese body sprawled along the roadside, next to the Cutlass, which is stopped at an odd angle. Frank is waving his arms, obviously in distress, trying to flag you down. Your foot depresses the brake pedal and the car slows.
“What are you doing? Don’t slow down. Keep going. What are you doing? Don’t stop.”
“I have to. I think that man’s hurt.”
“No. I’ll call on my phone. I’ll call for help.”
What is wrong with Billy? Why is he stopping? You told him not to stop. You never stop for strangers on a road. That fat man must have had a heart attack. You’ve never seen anybody so fat. You’re in an Escalade. Might as well have a carjack me bumper sticker. But this is the mountains. People in the mountains don’t carjack each other. That’s Atlanta. People here help each other. People here are different.
Billy stops the SUV, cuts the engine, and takes the keys with him when he gets out. You wish he had just left the engine running. That would have been safer.
He walks up to the man who waved you down. The man is wearing long sleeves even though it is far too warm to be dressed that way. They talk for a minute. The man points at the fat man lying on the ground and nonchalantly pushes his sleeves up (because it really is hot out there), and you clearly see that his arms are covered in tattoos. That alarms you. Tattoos are so commonplace today, but still it disturbs you. Heightens your sense of concern. Something seems off here.
Billy points back to the car and the tattooed man points back at his friend on the ground like his friend is not an injured human being but simply some prop on a stage. It just seems so weird. Like this is a little play put on just for you. And the actors are unconvincing. Then the man lashes out. He strikes Billy in the face. You see blood pour from Billy’s nose, shockingly red in the mountain sunshine. And then the fat man is up. Surprisingly limber, surprisingly quick for such a large man. Through the windshield you watch him coming at you. It’s like you’re watching a movie at one of those drive-in theaters. And finally you move. You move.
Your purse. You need your purse. You claw through it looking for your phone. Where is it? Where in the name of God is it? Every time you look up, the fat man has stuttered closer like a strobe light at a spook show. You look back down and there it is. There is the phone. It is in your hand. And you look up and the fat man has strobed right up to your window. He is there leering at you. And you forgot to lock the doors after Billy got out. And just as the fat man pulls at the outside handle, you reach and hit the lock button. You are in time. You hear the satisfying sound of all four door locks engaging. And then the sound of the fat man pawing at the handle that won’t open the door.
Through the passenger window you look the fat man in the eyes and there is nothing there. There is determination. Frustration. Anger even. But behind those surface emotions is a vast emptiness that horrifies you. Then he drops from view, and you know exactly what he’s doing. Looking for a rock to break the window. This is the mountains. There are rocks everywhere.
You drop the phone, because it’s too late for the phone. You could call for help, but that would give the fat man time to break the window, and by the time the responders got here, all they would find is three dead bodies. You, Cris, and Billy. You’ve got to get away. Escape. You turn the purse upside down and the contents spill out over the seat. All of the silly useless crap you stuff your purse with. The tissues, the pills, the gum, the makeup, the wallet, the loose change, the lotions, perfumes, the keys. The keys. The extra set of car keys. Right there. Right there on top. You are saved. You have saved yourself.
Then the passenger window explodes. Thousands of tempered-glass granules shower you like violent New Year’s Eve confetti. If you had time to think, you would realize the safety glass is harmless, but you are not thinking—you are moving. The fat man reaches through the window frame, unlocks the door, and opens it. He reaches for you, but you are already on the other side of the seat behind the steering wheel and you stab the key into the ignition and it slides right in—just like God wants you to get away. God wants you to win because the car starts right up and in the movies it never starts right up. In the movies the battery is always dead.
The fat man has climbed most of the way into the vehicle. He grabs your right arm and wrenches it. He says, “Going somewhere, Sweet Pea?” You can smell his breath. It smells the way a puppy smells. And with your awkward left hand you reach across yourself and drag the gear shift into drive and simultaneously push the gas pedal to the floor. You turn the wheel to the left and keep the gas floored and the force of acceleration pulls the fat man out of the car, through the open passenger door. Except he still holds on to your right arm so he is pulling you out with him. You straighten up the vehicle and the Escalade lurches into a field. You see Cris in the rearview and wonder how she can still be asleep and you thank God she is strapped into her booster seat because the field is rocky and jerks the SUV violently. Then the front wheels roll in and out of a drainage ditch and the vehicle reverberates so hard that it almost throws the man from the car. But he has your arm as an anchor. And you feel your shoulder dislocate. You hear it too. The pain is beyond anything you have ever felt, but you can not indulge it. Not now. The lower half of the fat man’s body dangles out the open passenger door, and he has pulled you so far that you are no longer behind the wheel. You are no longer in control of the vehicle.
And it all comes to a sudden violent stop when the Escalade hits a sweetgum tree head on. The fat man loses his grasp on your now floppy arm, because it is not really attached to your body frame anymore, it is just kind of hanging there in a sack of flesh. He rolls out of the vehicle. Both air bags have deployed with an explosive stereophonic pop, and that is probably what saved you. The horn emits a continuous monotonous note. And in the backseat, Cris screams.
Like a zombie, the fat man crawls back up through the passenger door, over the deflated air bags, and you wonder what is propelling him, giving him this strength. You use your good left arm to pivot yourself around. You ratchet your leg back and strike the fat evil man full force in the face. He screams but holds on. And what is fueling him, you wonder. Hatred? That vast emptiness?
You turn your head because Cris’s screaming is too much to ignore and then the evil fat man has your leg and he is pulling you, dragging you from the car. Your right arm is useless to you. But you are not quite ready to give up. No. You kick him again in the face. And he screams. His grip lessens enough for you to reach down to the floorboard and scoop up your phone. You scoot your body away from his mindless grasp. You open the driver’s-side door and tumble out of the SUV. Your useless right arm (throbbing with the pain you refuse to indulge) ends up under you somehow and the weight of your falling body breaks the bone. You hear it snap. Sounds like a tree branch. No, it sounds like the snap of a really good chocolate bar. One with high cacao content. Quite crisp. There is no pain. All pain has vanished. You are lying in a field under a sweetgum tree, your arm broken, your shoulder dislocated, and you can feel spiky prickly sweetgum burr balls digging into your cheek. This is your reality.
And 911 is such an easy number to dial, but the horror-movie reality catches up with you now, because your stupid panicked fingers keep pressing the wrong numbers and you have to clear it and start over. And by then the evil fat man has crawled through the Escalade and is about to pour out of the driver’s side door on top of you. You roll out of the way and stagger to your feet and you start to run. Not only can you feel your broken dislocated arm dangling and bouncing like a rubber toy as you run, but you feel a sweetgum burr stuck to your cheek like Velcro. You are about to wipe it off when you run right into the tattooed arms of the man who beat up Billy. He’s wearing some kind of flesh-tone latex mask. He plucks the phone from your hand and tosses it over his shoulder. He looks you in the eyes and you are so grateful to not be met by a vast emptiness there. He holds you at arm’s length. For a second you think he is going to kiss you. But instead, his rough fist hits you in the side of the head.
Losing consciousness is not the fast lights-out sensation you always imagined it might be. Instead, it is very slow, like a dimmer switch on a chandelier. The last genuinely conscious thing you feel is the spiky hurtful sweetgum burr detach from your cheek. And the last genuinely conscious thing you hear is the braying car horn and you also hear Cris’s hysterical screams. And you hear them for a very long time. Until that dimmer switch fades and mingles them into a single sibilant sound that is quite a bit like a telephone dial tone.
You rub the ointment onto Billy’s side. He fell on a sharp rock when you hit him. It looks bad. Deeply bruised and seeping blood and watery plasma at the center.
You are weaning yourself off the speed. It has to stop. Your mind. Stardust. Ha-ha. But you still have some in your front pocket in case things get bad.
Here you sit in a filthy trailer with no running water and a propane electricity generator. Here you sit as an adult in the home of the man who molested you as a child. Here you sit, taking care of Billy and you are asking yourself why you are drawn to him. Why have you burned and maimed and murdered others in the name of protecting Billy. You rub the salve into his side, your fingers greasy slick.
Why? Why have you abducted a child for ransom money? To take another child to Canada? What will you find there? What will you do to Billy there? Who are you? What is inside you?
Here you sit in the aftermath of what just might be the worst-planned kidnapping in the history of kidnapping. Like those criminals you see in the Weekly World News. Criminals so genetically stupid it’s a wonder they can tie their own shoes. The punk who holds up a bar and it turns out it’s a cop bar. The bank robber who catches a city bus for his getaway car. The dealer who calls the cops to report that his stash has been stolen. That’s what this is.
Your slick fingers probe the wound and Billy winces. You look up at him. His eye is purpleblack and swollen.
“Sorry. I know it hurts.”
“Not too bad.”
You lightly apply more ointment, more than is needed, and Billy winces again.
“Sorry.”
You stare at the wound. The abraded skin. The dark pucker at the center. And you remember when you were the boy sitting in the chair. When your eye was purpleblack and swollen. When Chandler anointed you. When you had cuts and bruises and cigarette burns on your body. Your father’s punishments. And Chandler’s love. Maybe he was a predator, but you were hurt and scared and had no one else to turn to. You were grateful for Chandler, for his affection, his protection, his love. And if there was some way for you to show him that you loved him too, that you valued him, that you wanted to make him glad to have you around, well, you did it.
And you rub the ointment and Billy is moaning, hot tears spill down his face. You should stop but you don’t. You are hurting him. You whisper:
“I’ll take care of you.”
And Billy cries even harder. Except he is you and you are him and you are Chandler and we are stardust.
“Don’t you worry, Frank,” you say. “My little Frankie.”
And your hand drops lower, an oily slimy trail of blood and grease.
“Little Frankie. I’ll take care of you.”
And you are Frank, and you are Chandler, and you are Billy.
For the first time ever you are glad to see Chandler.
Frank moves his hand away when he hears Chandler coming through the door, but not quite fast enough.
Chandler says, “Well, what a Norman Rockwell this would make. Oh my. My, my, my, my, my. Frank, I do believe you’ve got the fever for the flavor.”
Frank tapes a rag to your side and you just don’t know what is wrong with him. You wipe the tears from your face, careful of your black eye. Frank called you Frankie and his voice sounded like Chandler’s and it was scary like a bad dream. And he hurt you. And touched you. You wonder who is Frank.
“I drove into Atlanta and put it in a public mailbox. I wore gloves. They should get it in two days. Maybe one.”
Frank says, “Why don’t we just buy one of those disposable cell phones?”
“Think, Frankie. It’s not that hard. Those little phones have transmitters in them. It’s not that hard of a concept. They transmit. Get it? They’re phones. We’d have birds in the air all over this mountain. Just let me handle this. Stick with the plan, sugar britches.”
The plan, from what you’ve been able to piece together listening to Frank and Chandler talk about it in that funny lip-smacking, throat-clicking, jaw-clenching way they talk is this: The note will ask for money for the safe return of “the boy and the girl.” The idea is that the Lovejoys will think the kidnappers took you, too, because they mistakenly believe you are the Lovejoys’ son—thus clearing you of suspicion. There are the usual threats about not contacting the police. The note tells them to put the money in a McDonald’s bag (that’s all Steven Spielberg and shit, Chandler has said about fifty times) and drop it in a public trashcan at Riverside Park Pavilion in downtown Helen at noon during the Indian Cultural Festival. The exact trashcan will have a red dot painted on it, and the McDonald’s bag is supposed to have a red dot on it, too. Chandler will pay one of his kids to pay another kid to retrieve the bag. “It’s a double buffer, Frankie. Double. Analog. Old school.”
* * *
“That little girl is sick,” Frank says. “If we had a phone, we could wrap this up and have her home by tomorrow.”
“Frank, are you listening to me? No phones.”
Like a gangster in an old black-and-white movie, Chandler parts the ratty curtains and peers sidewise through them. “Hell, I saw a transponder over the hill there.”
“She still hasn’t woke up. We need to hurry and get her back to her people.”
You speak up, hoping you can bring some peace to this. “Mrs. Lovejoy said that the interferon treatments make Cris tired and sleepy, but she should be stronger when she wakes up.”
“See, Frank? She’s fine. It’s all good in the hood. Stop being such a worry wart. Bump up and chill out.”
“But she shouldn’t be staying in Chandler’s bedroom,” you say.
“Look, Billy-Boy, you mind your place or Bessie’ll mind it for you.”
“Chandler won’t hurt her, Billy. He loves kids. She’s gonna be all right. You don’t have to worry. We’ll get the money, and before you know it we’ll be fishing off the side of a glacier. Hunting elk and walking on snowshoes.”
And then you cough. It comes out of nowhere. You don’t feel a need to cough, you just cough. And blood splatters Frank’s shirt. Like someone flicked a paintbrush, wet with red paint, at him.
“My stomach,” you say.
Frank just looks at you. Then he reaches in his pocket and pulls out a little plastic bag. He blinks at the blood on his shirt and taps a tiny mound of dirtywhite powder onto the back of his fist and bumps up.
It’s all good in the hood.
Your sergeant gives you a lot of freedom. He knows your history and knows you won’t embarrass the department, so he secured permission for you to poke around outside your juri
sdiction. He understands that we’re all on the same team. The drive out of Atlanta is a nice one. Peaceful. You and Burdick do not talk during the drive. You sip your coffee and relish not giving in to the burden of conversation.
She was asleep when you left the house this morning. She’ll sleep until at least noon. You left a note saying that you had to leave the house early to drive to Stockmar County. You had told her as much the night before, but her memory is bad. You don’t know if it’s the depression that causes that, or the pills she takes to treat the depression.
It is only thirty minutes since dawn, but when you pull into the Stockmar County Sheriff’s Office, it is busy with activity. Something is wrong.
Inside, you and Burdick wait at the front desk and listen while a deputy finishes up on the phone.
“Yes, ma’am. We appreciate the call. Anything at all. A terrible— I know you are, and we appreciate it.” The deputy hangs up and his phone starts beeping just as soon as he does. He looks you and your partner up and down. “Thought the GBI was too busy to make it today. What with that fella putting people’s heads in jars and all you got goin’ on.”
“Excuse me?” you say.
“You two with the state bureau, ain’t you?”
You pull out your shield. “I’m Detective Joseph Jernigan with the Atlanta Police Department, and this is—”
“Detective Mike Burdick,” Burdick says and flashes his own badge because he likes to have his voice heard and not appear subordinate.
“We’re here on a courtesy visit. Just wanted to alert you to our presence. There’s a man—”
A door behind the front desk flies open and out of it bursts the sheriff.
“Hal! Why don’t you answer the goddamn phone? When will you have the results from the vehicle? Guy’s prints probably all over it.”
Hal, the deputy you’ve been talking to looks back at the sheriff and says, “All the prints lifted from the Escalade are at the GBI lab. They said four p.m. today. Maybe later.”
Abnormal Man: A Novel Page 9