I hate you. I hate you, Ma.
I’m gonna tell Dad about this, too. You better believe I am. Soon as he comes up tomorrow.
The laughter stops. Now it’s quiet again.
I know what they’re doing. How can she do it with Fatso, right here in our house? How can she do it with him at all? That time I saw them, her all white and sweaty, him with his belly and hairy ass, and she was … I never thought I’d see her do anything like that….
Banging sound. Bedboard hitting the wall.
Another laugh that turns into a kind of yell.
He puts his hands over his ears, burrows down deep under the covers.
After a while he pokes his head out and listens. Quiet downstairs, but now it’s raining again. Wind howling, rain smacking on the roof and against the window. Is Fatso still here?
He gets up and goes to the window. There’s his truck in the yard. Jeez, is he going to spend the whole night here?
I hate you, Ma. You and him both.
He’s in bed again when he hears the voices downstairs. Loud at first, Fatso saying, When can I see you again, sweet tits? Her saying, Keep your voice down, you want to wake up the kid? Then he can’t hear what they’re saying because the door’s open and the wind is whistling in. Then the door bumps shut again. Outside, Fatso’s truck starts up and he guns the engine the way he likes to do. Damn son of a bitch Fatso. Then the truck backs out and roars off, and it’s quiet again except for the storm.
But not for long.
Now there’s another car in the driveway. Not Fatso’s truck, engine sound’s different—Daddy’s car! Dad’s here!
He jumps out of bed, rushes over to look. Dad’s car, all right, Dad getting out and running through the rain. Door slams downstairs. Hard footsteps heading for the kitchen. “Rose? I know you’re down here, I saw his truck.” Thump, thump. “Right where I knew you’d be, you bitch.” And then Dad starts yelling and swearing, real loud. Oh jeez, he’s pissed! I never heard him that pissed before.
And she starts yelling back at him, calling him dirty names. She sounds drunk. Sure she is, her and Fatso must’ve been drinking whiskey. They did that the last time, too.
Her: Do what I please, don’t have to answer to you, fucking bastard.
Dad: Whore, slut, right here in our house with the boy upstairs, what kind of mother are you.
Smack. Shriek. Wow, he must’ve hit her! Serves her right, the dirty whore.
Her: Leave me alone damn you don’t you lay a hand on me again or you’ll be sorry.
Dad: Had all I can stand can’t take any more.
Her: Chrissake what’re you doing with that, put that thing away, are you crazy?
Dad: Show you what I’m going to do with it.
Her: You don’t have the guts you wimp you pisspoor excuse for a man.
He’s over at the door now, opening it, looking out and listening. And then—
Bang!
Oh no, that sounded like a gun—
“Rose!” Dad’s voice, different, all moany and wild like the wind. “Rose, God, I didn’t mean … Rose!”
Little noises.
“No!” Dad again, like he’s wailing. “No no!”
Quiet.
And then—
Bang!
Dad, Daddy, what—?
And he’s in the hallway, at the top of the stairs. His heart is pounding like it wants to burst through his chest. He leans over the banister and stares down. Dark except for light coming from the kitchen, long pale wedge of light.
“Dad?”
Thud, thud, thud of his heart.
He’s afraid, more afraid than he’s ever been. He doesn’t want to go down there, he’s so scared of what he’ll find. But he has to go, he has to find out—slow and then fast and then slow again as he reaches the bottom.
“Dad? Daddy?”
Thud. Thud, thud. Thud.
Along the hall into the kitchen. It’s empty. Lights are on in the spare bedroom, too, and he keeps going that way, the floor cold under his bare feet. He’s shivering as he nears the open bedroom doorway.
Smell comes out at him and makes him stop.
Burned smell. Gunpowder smell.
Don’t go in there, don’t look!
He goes in, he looks—
Oh God oh shit!
Both of them—
Dad Daddy on the floor—
And her on the bed—
And the gun on the floor—
And bright red all over both of them, her nightgown, his head and face, wet, glistening, dripping—
Daddy’s eyes are open, staring, and her eyes—
Shut, they’re shut—
And he wants to run, but instead he goes to Daddy, maybe Daddy’s not dead, and he bends down and looks close—
Dead dead dead.
And the gun lying there—
Don’t touch it don’t pick it up!
His hand reaches down, he can’t stop himself—
And then he’s holding the gun and he hears the bedsprings squeak, somebody groaning, and when he looks—
She’s moving on the bed, groaning and sitting up.
She’s not dead!
Holding her chest with one hand, looking at Daddy, looking at him, her eyes all funny and big. Saying, He shot me hurts call a doctor call nine-eleven don’t just stand there you little shit call somebody!
He can’t think, can’t move.
And she says, Goddamn you what’s the matter with you can’t you see I’m hurt?
But he can’t make his legs work—
And she says, What’re you doing with that gun give it to me damn you give it to me!
She reaches out for him, her hand like a claw, and her fingers are on the gun, pulling on the gun, she’s saying, Give it to me! and he lets her have it—
Oh God, he lets her have it but—
His finger is on the trigger and—
The gun roars, he yells, the gun flies away, and she she she—
Mama!
She falls back, another big hole more blood, run to her run away from her but his legs won’t work and now she isn’t moving anymore and her eyes—
Her eyes, they’re—
Wide open, staring at him.
Accusing him.
No! I didn’t do it! You did it!
Accusing him with her dead eyes.
“It’s not my fault!” Yelling it. Again. Again.
And then at last his legs work and he’s running shivering running crying running back up the stairs but not into his bedroom up the attic stairs hide in the attic safe in the attic scared cold shaking all over Daddy Mama hide hide hide!
HE WAS SITTING up on the cold floor, staring stunned into the blackness. Sweat on his chilled body, his face and throat burning, the echo of his own terrified voice in his ears. And the nightmare, the memory, the truth as bright as blood in his mind.
From the mattress Caitlin’s voice said groggily, “Cameron, what—?”
And he said in a painful rasp, “Pa didn’t kill her, I did. God help me, I’m the one who killed Rose!”
71
Something woke Nick up. Yell or scream. He uncurled under the pile of blankets, shaking off sleep and listening.
Wasn’t raining and the wind had slacked off, so he could hear one or both of them moving around in the attic. Floorboards creaking, muffled noises that might’ve been voices. Still dark outside, must be middle of the night … what were they doing? Wasn’t much they could be doing. Not even a rat could get out of there, the way he’d fixed it.
One of them cracking under the strain? Caitlin … he didn’t want it to be her. Bad enough, what he was going to have to do to her. She cracked up, then she’d cry and beg and Christ knew what else, make it twice as hard for him to go through with it.
Shoot them in the head, that was the way he’d decided to do it. Make them kneel down, let them pray, then one bullet for each. Just Gallagher, like it was supposed to’ve been, he’d have thought of some ot
her way, not so quick, but now with both of them it had to be a bullet. Humane. He really didn’t want Caitlin to suffer any more than she had to.
Still moving around and talking up there. No more yells or screams, so maybe she hadn’t cracked up. Or him, either. All right. Let them talk all they wanted, didn’t make any difference. It was almost Friday. He’d know when it was and then he’d use the gun and then he could go home again. Everything was still all right.
Only it wasn’t.
Caitlin, the thing in the freezer, the brown shit getting deeper and deeper—but that wasn’t all. Something else wasn’t right, something important wasn’t right. He didn’t know what it was, but maybe he would on Friday. After the executions maybe he’d know.
Right now all he knew was that what should’ve been right was wrong wrong wrong.
72
“For God’s sake, Cameron, what’re you talking about?”
He couldn’t get any more words out right away. His throat was on fire, the inside of his mouth like hot ashes. Fever. But the nightmare hadn’t come out of delirium; it had come from the same place as all the others, only deeper, a sudden eruption from the long-dormant core of him.
Caitlin said, “What did you say about Ma?”
“Pa shot her first.” The same painful rasp, as if words were tearing membrane off his larynx. “But only once, not twice.”
“What? Cameron, make sense.”
“He didn’t kill her. Must’ve thought he did, that’s why he shot himself. But he only wounded her.”
“That’s crazy….”
The wild acceleration of his pulse was easing. He felt sick, awed, guilty—and in spite of the magnitude of his discovery, suddenly very calm again. At another time in another place, he might have been trying to deny it; would surely have struggled to come to terms with it. But not here, now, in the house where it’d happened, the attic where he’d gone to hide. The truth was irrefutable. After twenty-five years of protective self-delusion, he had been shocked into confronting the terrified ten-year-old trapped inside him.
“I thought she was dead when I went in,” he said. The words came less painfully now. “Her and Pa both. The gun was there on the floor. I picked it up … I don’t know why. And she opened her eyes and saw me. Sat up, ordered me to call for help. I couldn’t move. Then she saw the gun and grabbed for it, tried to take it out of my hand, and I … it went off. That was the shot that killed her.”
Caitlin made a moaning sound of protest and disbelief.
“I’m so sorry, Cat.”
“My God. My God!” Then, “That’s why you ran up here and hid afterward.”
“Yes.”
“And you never told anybody? Twenty-five years you lived with that kind of secret?”
“No, that’s not—”
“Why tell me now? Damn you, Cameron, why?”
“I didn’t know, until just now. Another nightmare, only this one the way it really happened. I repressed that part of it, blanked it out.”
“Bullshit …”
“I couldn’t face it, so I made it go away. Happens in trauma cases, especially in kids. You know it does.”
“I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Being here like this, what’s happening to us … that’s what brought it out. But I think it might’ve come out anyway, sooner or later. Other nightmares I’ve had recently—”
“Shut up! I don’t want to hear any more of this. You and your fucking nightmares. Crazy, mixed-up nonsense, that’s what nightmares are.”
“No.” The traveling soul, he thought, imprinted with images of hell. “That’s the way it happened, Cat.”
After a few beats, she said with sudden harsh anger, “All right. You killed her, not Pa. Then you did it on purpose. You hated her, you wanted her dead—”
“Christ, no. I hated her, yes, for what she was doing to us. But I’d never have intentionally harmed her. It was an accident. A terrible accident.”
“You said you killed her.”
“Yes, but I didn’t want it to happen, I’d give anything to go back and stop it from happening. That’s why I couldn’t face myself.”
Silence. He didn’t break it; there was not much else to say.
“Why’d you have to tell me?” Caitlin’s voice was dull, lifeless again. “Isn’t it hard enough sitting here in the dark waiting to die?”
“I had to let it out. And you have a right to know.”
“Yeah. I have a right to live, too, but that isn’t how it’s going to be. What do you want from me, Cameron? Forgiveness? Poor baby, it wasn’t your fault?”
Fault. Blame. That was really what this was all about, he thought, past and present. Everybody blaming everybody else, Nick Hendryx included, and Cam Gallagher smack in the middle blaming himself. And all of it wrong, unnecessary, like so much blame and fault, because the acts that had spawned those feelings were beyond any control of theirs. Victims, all of them, like Rose and Paul and Hendryx’s wife.
He said, “Is it too much to ask, the way things are?”
“Damn right it is. I don’t forgive you, and I won’t.”
“Will you at least try not to hate me?”
Nothing from Caitlin.
And nothing more from him. He’d shot his wad. Words, all his emotions, were used up.
After a time he heard her moving on the mattress: She’d lain down again. He lay down, too, on the floor nearby, drawing into himself. He was so cold his skin felt brittle, as if pieces of it might begin to flake off. He could feel the fever working in him. His thoughts were as raw and hot as his throat.
The closeness of death no longer frightened him. Instead he was enraged by it. Knowing the truth about the night of January 4, 1974, dealing with it at last, wasn’t half so difficult as living the lie had been. Dr. Beloit had been right after all; his only failing was that he hadn’t dug deep enough or in the right place to get at the root cause. Cameron Gallagher had had a death wish, had been indulging in a pattern of systematic self-destruction for a childhood sin that wasn’t a sin at all. The truth was like a rebirth. He’d wanted to die, and now that death was imminent, he had never wanted more intensely to live.
After ten or fifteen or twenty minutes Caitlin’s voice came again, small and empty like a child’s voice. “Cameron? You asleep?”
“No.”
“It’s so cold. I can’t stop shaking.”
He said tentatively, “We could try huddling together, the way we did when we were kids.”
He counted a dozen seconds before she answered. “All right,” she said.
In laborious movements he crawled onto the mattress, stretched his body out next to hers. The mattress was barely wide enough for the two of them, and so short their legs extended well beyond the one end. He embraced her, gently, as he had so long ago. She was rigid against him at first; then, gradually, some of the tension went away. It took a while, but what heat was left in their bodies began to rub a little of the edge off the chill.
Against his chest she said, “I don’t hate you, Cameron. I thought I did, I wanted to, but I can’t”.
“I’m glad,” he said, but he was thinking about something else by then.
He was thinking about life instead of death.
73
Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest. Up at first light, look out the window. Water everywhere, in the sky, on the ground. Walk fast to the stairs and halfway down. Brown shit higher, over the bottom couple of risers. Like it was climbing up after him, slow but steady, like it wanted to drag him down and smother him in its sewer stink.
Head hurting, belly hurting. Couldn’t eat even though he was starting to feel weak. Every time he looked at the milk and crackers and peanut butter, he wanted to puke. Couldn’t even suck on the candy, one little M&M’d make him puke, too. Drank some water in the can, but it wouldn’t stay down. Heaved it right back up into the sink.
Drive. Oh Lord, how he wanted to drive! ’56 Chevy Impala with the dumped front end an
d mag rims and bad shimmy, ’82 Ford Taurus, what a piece of shit, ’65 Pontiac GTO, candy-apple red, sweet-and-mean driving machine, ’85 Olds, ’89 Merc, ’91 Ford, ’90 Plymouth, ’94 Mazda sitting up on the hill waiting for him, and it might as well’ve been ten thousand miles away—all those safe and secure metal-and-leather cocoons where he could exercise control over his life, his destiny. Night riding to unwind, for pleasure, to keep his problems at bay. Longer the drive, the better it was—major highways, two-laners, back-country roads, unpaved mountain tracks—Annalisa beside him, warm hip touching his, soft breast pressing his arm, heat building in him until it gave him a hard-on, wanting her bad and knowing she wanted him the same way, two of them part of a missile like a huge lighted cock splitting the night, holding it apart like two black thighs, penetrating it, taking it for their own—
—but he couldn’t drive, couldn’t sleep and couldn’t eat and couldn’t drive, all he could do was prowl the hallway up here, front bedroom to rear bedroom, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth like an animal in a goddamn cage and the brown shit climbing up to drag him down and smother him and the wet outside and the Mazda so close and Annalisa so far away and Friday so close and so far away and upstairs in the attic, upstairs in the dark death cell—
—somebody screamed.
Caitlin screamed, woman’s voice thin and high like a siren going off.
He was in the hallway when she cut loose. Turned him toward the attic door, stopped him right there. And she hollered again, and then she was rushing down the stairs, heard her running in there, and when she hit bottom she started beating on the door with her hands and yelling like a crazy woman.
Yelling his name, saying “Nick! Nick, let me out of here, please let me out, he’s dead, he’s dead, I can’t stay in here with my brother lying up there dead!”
Dead? Gallagher?
“I know you’re there, Nick, I heard you walking.” Bang, thump, bang. “Please let me out, please!”
He moved closer to the door. “What’re you trying to pull? Gallagher’s not dead, he can’t be.”
“He is, he is!”
“No, it’s not Friday yet.”
“He must’ve died during the night. His heart, or the cold… I don’t know, I touched him just now and he’s not breathing, he’s dead. I can’t stay in here with his body, I’ll go out of my mind if you don’t let me out!”
Nothing but the Night Page 21