Transcription (27 page)

“Power’s out,” Chloe said, coming through the arch that led to the kitchen. “That means we’ll have to haul water by hand.”

James nodded.

“What was that?” Bo asked. He and Danielle appeared at the door.

“She said that the power is out.”

“See? Society is breaking down already,” Bo said.

“Maybe,” Chloe said. “Sometimes my folks shut off the power when they leave town. They were on a two week cruise, and staying in California for another two weeks, so they might have shut it off. The refrigerator is defrosted and propped open, so that might be it. There are two rooms upstairs, and Danielle and I can share my parents’ room.”

“Neighbors?” James asked. “Anyone we should check on?”

Chloe squinted and frowned. “There’s someone who lives on the other side of the pond, but I don’t know him. He’s usually only here in the summer anyway. I’m guessing we’re all alone.”

James nodded.

“I need someone to help carry water,” she said. Chloe moved towards the kitchen again. They all followed. “We need to fill these with spring water.” She said, pointing at a set of plastic jugs. “And these buckets we can fill from the old well and use for flushing toilets.”

Between them, they grabbed the vessels.

Bo and Danielle stayed to lower the buckets into the well near the house. James carried two jugs and followed Chloe up the path into the woods. The path took them up a slow incline through tall trees.

“How long do you think we’ll have to stay up here?” Chloe asked.

For a second, James didn’t answer. It seemed like a question for someone else, but they were alone.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Do your folks have a radio with batteries?”

“Probably somewhere. We can always use the car radio if need be.”

“I guess we could listen to the radio for news. As soon as the emergency is over, the stations will return to normal.”

“Even this morning, it seemed like they were reporting that the number of Torture-cise attacks had fallen off. I don’t understand why people were still so crazy.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” James said. He wasn’t concerned about the attacks from the original story at all. Given that everyone was cutting themselves off from the world, he suspected that the story’s ability to influence people would have already expired.
 

“Why were you so concerned about getting away from the building once you learned it was on fire. You said something about the stories burning?” Chloe asked. She stopped. She was standing in front of a rock ledge. Someone had fashioned a little metal trough that stuck from the rocks. A steady stream of clear water ran from the trough and collected in a pool below before it continued downhill.

“Is this it?” he asked.

Chloe nodded. She uncapped one of her jugs and squatted to put the mouth of it under the water.

James drew alongside her and knelt down to prepare his own jugs. When she was finished, he put his first one under. The water was freezing cold. It was almost painful to hold his hand under it.

“What are you not saying?” she asked.

James looked at her. There was still a little sadness at the corners of her eyes, like she hadn’t yet finished crying for the Macombers. Or, maybe she was sad about the state of the larger world. James didn’t want to add to her concern. He didn’t want to heap more worries of things that she couldn’t control.

“I’m going to need a place to write tonight,” James said. “As long as I can write, I should be okay.”

Chloe nodded.
 

His jug was full. She slid her next one in while he capped his.

“My parents are a little crazy,” Chloe said. “Which is a good thing for us. My dad can’t pass up a deal on bulk items, and my mom likes to keep a lot of provisions. They’ve got canned and dry food in the house that will last a week if we’re frugal with it.”

“That’s good,” James said.

“And there’s wood for the fireplace. It gets cold up here at night.”

James nodded.

“When I was a kid, this spring water was all we drank when we stayed up here. My brother said it tasted better than soda. He’s out in California now. That’s who my parents are visiting.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have any family at all?”

“Not anymore. Not for a long time.”

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James kept busy through the afternoon. He was growing tired, and the idea of accidentally slipping into a nap before sundown terrified him. If he didn’t wake up, something awful would happen. So, to stave off his fatigue, he put his body in motion. Once he sat down to write, the story would carry him through until dawn. It always did.

He hauled an armload of wood over to the fireplace and turned around to see Bo, Danielle, and Chloe standing behind him.

“We want to know about the fire,” Bo said. “You’ve been cagey about exactly why it was so frightening to you.”

“Oh,” James said. “You don’t need to be concerned, really. We’re far enough away.”

“No,” Bo said. “We want to know.”

James looked at the floor. “I’m afraid it’s a little disturbing.”

“Since it’s a threat—even if you think we’re out of range—we need to know about it,” Bo said.

“Yeah,” James said.
 

Bo motioned towards the couch. James sat on the edge, reluctantly. They all sat, turned towards him, and waited.

James nodded.

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My father was very strong. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he was able to compartmentalize his burden, and he kept it away from me. By the time I woke up, his typing was finished and he had drunk enough alcohol to interact with me like it was going to be just another day.

But one percent of the time, I could see his sorrow. I chalked it up to mourning for my mom, but I knew there was something deeper that bothered him. When I thought about it carefully, I knew that his obsession with writing all night had begun before my mom even died. And, I knew that his obsession was connected with the sorrow. I just didn’t know why.

One morning, I heard him crying. Instead of going to him, I lurked near the doorway to his office, listening for some clue about what had upset him. I didn’t hear much. In between mumbling, he would say things like, “I can’t keep it. It’s too awful.”

I ducked back when he stormed out and I watched him through the window. The sun was up over the fence as he took the lid off the grill and tossed the papers in. He used a wooden match to start the papers burning. The smoke was black and it was ripped away by the breeze. My father watched it until it was completely burned.

By the time he came back in, he had dried his face, but his eyes were still red around the edges.

I don’t know what year it was, but my mother had been gone a couple of years, so let’s say it was mid-eighties. If we had a library, or the internet, we could find out pretty quick when it was, because what happened next filled the news.

The day of the burning wasn’t notable. The next day was.

My father seemed happy that morning. He hadn’t read the paper yet, I guess. I didn’t hear about anything until I went to school. A number of kids were absent, and it didn’t take long for the story to get around.
 

It was the kids with little brothers and sisters who were absent. Specifically, it was the ones who had siblings who were young enough to still be in cribs. One guy who sat in the row next to me said that he saw an ambulance pull up in front of the neighbors’ house. He said that the ambulance guys carried out a little tiny board between them. He said the mom was crying on the front porch the whole time.

School had a funny vibe that day. Everyone seemed antsy. When I walked down the hall to the bathroom, I heard someone crying in the teacher’s lounge.

It was a nice day though, and by the time I got home, I had almost forgotten about all that. It came rushing back when I walked in the house though. The living room stunk of cigarettes and beer. There were newspapers around. My dad was in the corner of the living room.

“Hey, Dad,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

The phone rang. He didn’t move, so I walked to the kitchen and picked it up. It was my friend, Bobby.

“You want to come over tonight?”

“What do you mean? It’s a school night,” I said.

“No. School is cancelled. You didn’t hear? There was an announcement.”

I must have left before the announcement was made.

I heard Bobby cover the phone and have a brief discussion with his mother. Bobby was using his pleading voice, so I was pretty sure his invitation would be rescinded. It wasn’t.

“She said it’s okay, but we don’t have enough for dinner. You want to come over after dinner?”

I looked towards the living room. I couldn’t see my dad from where I was standing, but the image of him was burned into my head. As much as I wanted to get out of there, I couldn’t abandon him when he looked like that.

“No,” I said. “I better stay here.”

After I hung up with Bobby, I went back to the living room and started to pick up the mess. Parts of newspapers were everywhere. I paused on one that had a picture of a baby.

The headline was small, like the paper was ashamed of it. “A Dozen Dead, Police Fear More.”

I began to read the article, and I pieced together the clues I had heard all day. During the night, mothers had turned on their infants. As the babies slept, the mothers had gone to their kitchens and prepared bottles. Instead of warming up formula, the mothers had concocted fatal brews of household cleaners. Bleach, ammonia, drain cleaner, and even pureed rat poison were heated and then used to fill the bottles. Once they had prepared the bottles, the mothers then forced the infants to drink it.
 

The lucky ones didn’t get far. Screams awoke siblings and husbands. Babies gagged and vomited. Only the most persistent mothers were successful at getting their children to take in the liquid.

A dozen dead. The newspaper didn’t dare estimate how many mothers had tried to kill their children. There was no report on how many had been jailed so far.

It didn’t seem real. I picked up another paper and read a different version of the same story. This one had a map, where the incidents had been marked with gray stars. I understood why school had been so empty. The stars were clustered right in our neighborhood. These mothers were people I saw at the playground and grocery store.
 

I gathered all the papers together and put them on the dining room table. When I went back to the living room, my father was trying to light a cigarette with a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking.

“You want me to make dinner?” I asked.

He shook his head and looked at me with heavy eyes. I took the lighter from his hand. I had to use both hands to get it lit, and then I held the flame out for him. He was looking down at the floor. The cigarette was hanging from his mouth by a line of spit. I put the lighter down and turned. His answer about dinner hadn’t suggested what I was supposed to eat, so I figured I would make a sandwich. I started to walk in the direction of the kitchen.

“Jimmy,” he said.

“Yeah?” I turned back to him.

“I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?”

“Don’t ever burn them, okay?”

“Burn what, Dad?”

“There was a breeze. I knew that there was a breeze. I stayed upwind almost instinctively, but it wouldn’t have mattered. I was already inoculated. All those women who breathed the smoke… But if I didn’t know, why did I hold my breath? Why was I so careful about staying upwind?”

“Dad, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
 

I really didn’t have any idea at the time, but I could sense the gravity of his confession. Those few sentences rolled around in my head for hours and days. He was admitting something terrible to me, and I couldn’t ask him to explain. He seemed barely capable of communication.

I began to back away. I was too frightened by him to stick around and listen to more.

“When I wrote it,” he said, “I was so jealous of the mother. She had the perfect life. I almost wanted her to tear it all down, but not like that. Never like that. That’s why I burned it. It was too horrible to file away in a box. But now…”

He broke into tortured sobs. I backed into the kitchen.

It was terrible to hear his sorrow as I made my sandwich. I went on the back porch to eat it. While I did, I stared at the grill. Some part of my brain must have locked in. Years later, when I read his explanation of his ritual of writing, I remembered the burned story and knew precisely what had happened. My brain had formed a conclusion and never bothered to inform my conscious thoughts.
 

When my mother died, and then later when Ron died, my father was shaken to his core. But the babies—those twelve innocent babies—they’re what really broke his spirit.
 

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James finished his story and hung his head. He focused all his attention on keeping his own tears inside. Once he started mourning again, the tears would be difficult to put away. At the time, James couldn’t escape the sorrow. His father carried around the burden at home. At school, some of his classmates walked through their day like they were hollowed out. There was no spark behind their eyes. Virtually the whole town was living with the grief.

“That’s horrible,” Chloe said. She turned to Bo and Danielle. “Guys—I think we should have a quick chat. Will you excuse us, James?”

He nodded.

They stood and moved to the kitchen. By some trick of the acoustics of the building, he could hear almost every whisper.

“If he had a virus, or any other type of infection, we would politely ask him to leave,” Chloe said. “I don’t see the difference.”

“It’s not his fault,” Danielle said.
 

“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” Chloe said. “He’s infected with murder.”

Bo’s voice sounded calm and even. James didn’t catch a word of it.