by Regina Doman
Rose gave a deep sigh. “I suppose this waiting cultivates all sorts of virtues that help you when you’re actually married, right?”
“Yes, it does,” Mom put her chin on her hand and smiled at her. “The man who marries you is going to be very lucky indeed, Rose,” she said softly.
Rose had to smile at her. Mom, so sentimental. She scraped her plate of the extra syrup and wondered what kind of appointment Fish had today that was so important.
HIS
Fish sat in the courtroom beside his lawyer, Charles Russell, waiting. Presently the door to the courtroom opened, and the prisoner came forward.
There was a chill in Fish’s spine, seeing him. After all, you can’t look at the man who kidnapped you, tortured you, and tried to murder you without some feeling of repulsion. Fish kept his gaze set, and attempted a professional detachment. The man was shrunken, older. He had not weathered well in prison. His eyes were sunk into their sockets, and they were vacant.
Fish swallowed, but didn’t move.
The prisoner shuffled to the stand, his shoulders slumped, and gazed around the courtroom before turning to face the judge. His eyes swept over Fish, and for a moment, the two of them locked gazes.
A brief, savage smile flitted across the old man’s face, and Fish felt his palms sweat. He despised himself for the weakness, and did not move.
The judge, business-like, took his seat and the bailiff called for the opening of the hearing. “This hearing is to establish veracity for the defendant’s request to transfer from the federal maximum security prison facility to a minimum security prison for health and medical reasons. Opening statements.”
The lawyer of Edward Freet stood up and explained the reasons for the request. His client was ailing. His client was advancing in years. He pointed out that he would not be eligible for parole until he was ninety-three, and that in his current condition, he wasn’t likely to live that long. He read a statement from the prisoner’s brother, former principal of a Catholic high school, stating his belief that the change would benefit the prisoner’s health.
Charles Russell rose, a high color in his face. He reiterated the crimes of the prisoner, including but not limited to three counts of kidnapping, two counts of assault, two counts of attempted murder, trafficking in controlled substances, and burglary. Fish listened intently to the statement, which he and the lawyer had prepared together. Mr. Russell also made a skilled aside to his client, Mr. Benedict Denniston, drawing the judge’s attention to the fact that at least one of the prisoner’s victims thought it was important enough to come to the hearing to make sure Mr. Freet stayed where he was for the rest of his life. When Fish’s legal name was mentioned, the old man turned to look at him again, this time, his glance lingering. Fish met the gaze stolidly, without moving a muscle.
The hearing was short, but to Fish, each step seemed to take unnaturally long: for the prisoner and his doctor to be questioned about health issues, for Charles to derisively make little of their answers in his cross-examination, for the judge to recess and consider, and, at last, for the decision to be read. The judge found no substantial reasons for a transfer, and Edward Freet was returned to maximum-security prison for the duration of his fifty-year sentence.
As Mr. Freet was led out of the courtroom by the prison guards, he turned his head to Fish.
“Benedict,” the old man rasped his eyes glinting, “Given in yet?”
When Fish didn’t respond, Freet emitted a cackle that continued as he exited the room, only ceasing as the door shut behind him.
Charles glanced at Fish in some surprise. “What was that about?”
Fish attempted nonchalance. “Nothing important.” He picked up his trench coat. “Freet was always convinced I was going to end up just like him,” he added as an explanation. Feeling he was saying too much, he shouldered on his coat. “It’s just a broken man’s malice.”
The older lawyer grimaced. “I’m sure,” he said quietly. “Psychos like him are best kept locked away from society. I appreciate you coming down. Don’t think it didn’t help the judge’s decision. When victims show up at these hearings, it seems to make an impression.”
He and Fish exchanged some further pleasantries, then Fish got into his car, and drove out of the City. The entire courtroom ordeal had been less than an hour.
But seeing Freet again had jarred some tectonic plates within, setting in motion some repercussions that he was going to have to endure for a while. He knew it.
Hers
Rose loved the house that Bear and Blanche had bought. It was a small, run-down stone farmhouse on thirty acres of wooded land, with outbuildings that were just big enough to house Bear’s budding stonecutting school. Right now the interior of the main house was still being renovated, and for the visit, Blanche had draped the studs with leftover bolts of old fabric to disguise the barrenness. It was very much like sitting in a tent inside a house.
Fish didn’t show up at the house until evening. “Welcome!” Bear said to his brother, who slipped inside the door wearily, dropped his hat and trench coat on a chair, and fell into it himself. “How was the day?”
“Trying,” Fish said shortly. “Have you all eaten yet?”
“We were waiting for you,” Blanche said, getting up and pushing back a strand of black hair that had fallen from her bun. “Hungry?”
“Starving. Haven’t eaten all day,” Fish said.
“That was silly of you,” Rose chided him. “Mom said she offered you breakfast this morning.”
“I didn’t feel like eating until now,” Fish said, still brief. He seemed barely civil, so Rose, puzzled, let him alone.
He ate his meal in silence, refusing attempts to draw him into direct conversation. After dinner, Bear, Blanche, and Rose took up the Scrabble game they had begun before, but Fish picked up a book and sat in a corner chair reading. In a little while, Rose saw he had fallen asleep, but with a troubled expression on his face.
Though a bit concerned, Rose focused on the game. She was very close to beating Bear, who was an experienced player, and that was enough to absorb her for the rest of the evening. In the end, she won.
“Two out of two games,” she gloated as the three of them picked up the tiles and tossed them back into the bag.
“Rematch tomorrow night,” Bear reminded her. “Pride goeth before a fall, Miss Brier.”
“I’m not prideful,” Rose protested. “Just pleased.”
Fish rose from his chair and stretched fitfully, rubbing his neck. His brown hair was more askew than usual.
“We’ll see what tomorrow’s game brings,” Bear winked at Blanche. “Fish, do you want to drive Rose home or should I?”
“I will,” Fish said abruptly.
“Sure you’re not too tired?”
“I’m fine. I need to get out.”
Rose hadn’t expected this, and put on her coat with a touch of too-familiar anticipation. Great, she thought mournfully. I’m falling for him again. If only I didn’t get so excited every time he does something for me.
She had expected him to be morosely silent in the car, but instead he was talkative, inquiring about how her day had been, asking about her studies, and even brought up some topics from his own classes, complaining about deconstruction in literature, something she had been spared in her own English classes at Mercy.
Rallying to the challenge, she entered into the repartee, wondering what was going on. But perhaps he had just regained his equilibrium.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” he said as he pulled in the driveway. “Will you be all right at home, alone?”
“Oh, definitely,” she assured him, getting out of the car. “Goodnight!”
He threw his car into gear. She noticed that he hadn’t said goodnight in return, and that his face was tense. Troubled, she watched him drive away.
8
…she said, ‘the year the princess comes of age, she shall prick herself on the needle of a spindle and fall down dead.�
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HIS
He needed to do something. While driving Rose home, he had kept talking in order to stop her from asking questions, and his tactic had succeeded. But when he was left alone with silence in the car, the turmoil he had managed to squelch all that day began churning inside him as he drove through the countryside to the remote area where Bear and Blanche lived.
Finally he pulled over at a deserted part in the woods and sat in his car. He turned on the light and pulled out his journal, something a psychiatrist had recommended to him once, and tried to write. But as he pushed past pages of his previous tormented writing, he couldn’t stand it any longer.
Possessed with a sudden destructive urge, he got out the car, grabbed the can of gasoline he kept in the back for emergencies and headed into the woods once more.
Gasoline wasn’t as effective in starting a fire as he had hoped. In movies, as soon as a match went to something covered with gas, there was inevitably a huge explosion and total annihilation rapidly followed. But when he threw a match into the small pile of brush and journal pages, which had been doused with gasoline, nothing so very exciting happened. There was a moment where it blazed up readily, but the flames didn’t catch on the wood. After a few seconds, they went out.
Disgusted, he tried the process again. Maybe the wood was still damp. Maybe the paper was too synthetic. Maybe fire-making was more high-tech than he had thought. Obviously, I’m a city kid, he thought dourly when he failed to start his mini-inferno. He dug around in the woods, found some dry leaves and added them to the pile, sloshed gasoline on the whole, and lit a match. Finally, grudgingly, the pile began to burn.
He set the can down behind a tree and sat on the edge of the circle of ground he had cleared. But after a moment he got up and began to wear a restless circle around the flaming mementos of his past.
Evil. It was evil. The stench, the smell, the apparent delight in inflicting suffering. The twisting of natural desires into monstrosities. The deforming of a human soul. The disease had taken hold of him long ago, and he had been trying to rid himself of the infection. Father Raymond had said there would be victory, good holding sway over evil in the end. Father Raymond had told him it would pass. But Father Raymond had bled and choked to death behind the altar in his own church, at the hands of evil.
Now the flames burned higher and Fish, pacing around them, saw the world around grow blacker around its blaze. Evil hadn’t left him alone, knowing it had a hook buried deep in his soul, and every once in a while, he could feel the insidious pull. Usually it fed upon his loneliness—not his solitude, because he had always preferred to be alone—but the sense of desolation, of abandonment. That mostly happened when he began to remember things. Like losing his mother when he was thirteen. Losing Father Raymond when he was sixteen. And what had happened afterwards...
The musty leaves and ink-stained paper and cardboard gave off an evocative smell. He looked away from the fire towards the darkness as it came back, inexorably. The images were lodged deep in his memory, and he didn’t know how to get rid of them without doing violence to his brain.
His kidnapper might be in prison, but he was still in bondage. The captivity, the deep-set pain, the twisted torture went on. He recognized that part of it was self-inflicted, because of the shame he felt. And he wasn’t sure that there was a real escape. All he could reasonably hope for was to get further and further away from it in time. And to avoid getting put into that situation again in the future.
He often felt that he had survived the first time through ignorance, youthful zeal, pig-headedness and sheer dumb luck. If it happened again, he couldn’t count on any of that to help him. As Rose had experienced, it would be much worse a second time.
Of course, God had been there, he reminded himself. But he knew now that God didn’t look at human suffering the way he did, and that He sometimes allowed it. Fish wasn’t interested in suffering again. After years of trying so hard, with all he had in him, and getting crushed down—Sorry, God, but Your approach to suffering is a bit too nuanced for me.
Suddenly, he was aware of a sound in the trees near him. Someone was coming. Instantly his hand went to his gun—only to remember that he had left it locked in his glove compartment when he went into the courtroom.
It was just as well. The man who had found him had a gun of his own, a rifle, pointed at him. “What are you doing on my land?” a gruff voice came through the trees. “You’re trespassing.”
With a groan, Fish raised his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I was in the State Forest.”
“That’s a few miles back from here,” the man said. “You can’t come onto a man’s land and build yourself a fire. Might have burnt down my whole lot. I’m calling the police.”
“Suspicious looking character sneaking around my land buildin’ fires,” was how the farmer had described him. The man’s paranoia and Fish’s explanation notwithstanding, the police thought it worthwhile to take Fish down to the station for questioning. Hadn’t realized it was against the law to build a fire in New Jersey, Fish thought as he rode in the police car, twisting his cuffed hands behind his back restlessly and suppressing a groan.
He hated being cuffed. In this situation, he knew the police didn’t need to handcuff him: he had come along quietly. But he knew he had the sort of face that looked like a criminal’s, and that made policemen cautious. He had found that out the first time he had been arrested: whatever the “criminal type” was, he definitely resembled it. Maybe just because I’m dog-ugly, he thought with a grim smile.
In the holding cell at the station house, he called Bear, waking him up.
“Fish? What time is it?” his brother asked in sleepy surprise.
“Two o’clock and all’s hell,” Fish said gloomily. “I just got arrested. I’m down at the police station.”
“What? All this time I thought you were downstairs sleeping on the couch.”
“Yes, you might have thought. Instead, I was trying to defuse my pent-up psychological aggression in what I thought was a socially acceptable manner, and ran afoul of the ‘no-burning’ laws in New Jersey. This is the last time I see a psychiatrist and take his stupid advice. I’m afraid I need you to come and put in a good word for me.”
Bear chuckled. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”
Forty-five minutes later, Bear was driving him back out to the woods to retrieve his car. “So can I ask how all this happened?” he queried, rubbing his eyes.
Fish heaved a sigh. “I saw Freet at the hearing today.”
“Ah,” Bear said. “You didn’t tell me that was going to happen.”
“And it was tougher than I expected.”
Bear frowned. “You should have let me go with you. I could have taken off work.”
“I know. I was just trying to be tough, that’s all. But apparently I’m not healthy enough for that.”
The brothers drove in silence for a few minutes.
“You ever talked to anyone about this?” Bear asked at last. “Besides me?”
“Oh, a couple of priests, in confession. And that blasted counselor, although I barely told him anything. I quit after the first session.”
“I didn’t mean professionally. I meant someone like a friend,” Bear said. “Have you tried talking to Rose about it?”
Fish blew out his breath. “That’s the last person I’d tell. She probably doesn’t even know evil like that exists in the world. I don’t want to be the one to disturb her universe.”
Bear shook his head. “But she was down there with you.”
“Yes, after the worst had happened—thankfully.”
“So she might understand better than most people.”
Fish glanced at his older brother. He had always suspected Bear of trying to set him up with Rose, and wondered if this was another ploy. But Bear looked completely serious.
“Just consider it,” Bear said.
Hers
Saturday, Fish seemed to be
in better spirits. Rose and Jean came to help Blanche and Bear do work on the house in the morning. In the afternoon, they all took a lazy ramble over the property.
“So what’s this Blanche told me about you becoming ‘Sacra Cor Lady Rose’ or something?” Bear said humorously as they started off. “I didn’t know they awarded titles like that at Mercy College.”
“I’ve become an honorary female member of the ‘knights of Sacra Cor,’” Rose said solemnly. “Don’t laugh! They really are a lot like knights—well, warriors of some kind. They’re all very different from one another.” She chattered on about Paul, Alex, James, Leroy, and the other various characters who inhabited Sacra Cor dormitory. She recounted with delight the battle between Lumen Christi and the smaller dorm, not mincing her part in it.
“So I’m now one of their ‘ladies’ they’ve sworn allegiance to protect,” she finished.
“Good. Then make sure one of them walks you home from play rehearsal from now on,” Fish put in, a bit shortly. Rose hadn’t realized he had been listening—he had been lagging behind the party.
“That’s not a bad idea,” she said.
“I remember telling you before to have someone walk you home after rehearsal,” Fish said, cocking his head at her. “Have you ever done that?”
“Well, I made sure I always left with someone else, even though I haven’t had to ask anyone specifically,” Rose said. “I haven’t walked alone since that one night I called you.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Rose resented his nearly-parental attitude, but Bear, who seemed to understand better than she did what was bothering his brother, smoothly asked her another question about college, and the conversation continued.
After dinner, Fish consented to join their weekend tournament of Scrabble, and proceeded to crush Rose’s lead soundly and vie with Bear for the winning title. Rose was resentful when people beat her too easily at games, and was deciding that, rescuer or not, Fish was too annoying to put up with. She curled up in an armchair with a cup of herbal tea and resolved to ignore him and talk with her sister. Then he and Bear started talking literature and lost interest in the game (which Bear won), and they both started to pull books from the shelf and read passages aloud. When Fish began, somewhat reluctantly, to read poetry, Rose’s heart started to melt within her again.