Our Lady Chaos, page 28
part #5 of Bloodletter Series
The chief pulled into a space and got out of his car. His gaze strayed to Eddie in the back of the police car and then snaked away toward the knot of school officials. As the ambulance pulled away, Chief Morton approached the principal and said something.
At the end of the sidewalk, the scary lady and her red-headed friend stepped behind the brick pillar, as if John Morton’s presence scared them. She’s not real, he thought. Neither is the new one.
Yes, they are! insisted a small voice inside him.
No, neither of them is there. Erikson said she sprang from my mind’s attempt to deal with unmanageable stress. He wondered what Doctor Erikson would say about the day’s events.
He’d looked the terms up in the library. Hallucinations. Schizophrenia, maybe. Though with what he’d just done to Jack, maybe there was a psychotic component as well. He supposed his father had had to be psychotic to have murdered his mother, so at least he came by it naturally. And judging by the appearance of a second smoke-woman, he was heading in the exact opposite direction of a healthy, normal teenager.
The principal shook his head, and Coach Randall turned and spat onto the asphalt. Morton spared the football coach a dark glance, and his expression was blank, but Eddie read the glance as evidence the chief thought little of the coach. The principal shook his head again, in response to something Chief Morton said and then crossed his arms over his chest. Morton gazed at Eddie and heaved a sigh before walking toward the car in which he sat.
Shaking his head, Morton opened the door closest to Eddie. “Well, Eddie, you’ve kicked over the shit bucket this time. Come on out of there.”
For the briefest of moments, Eddie considered not getting out, but he knew that wouldn’t solve anything, and he’d have to face John Morton one way or another. He slid out of the car with all the grace of a drunken baby elephant, and Morton studied him as he stood.
“If I take off those cuffs, you’re going to act like a gentleman, right?” Eddie nodded and Chief Morton spun him around and removed the cuffs. “What got into you, son?” he asked as Eddie turned to face him.
Eddie’s hands tried to kill one another in front of him, his face set in a sullen rictus, and he stared at Chief Morton’s shoes.
“No, no, son. You don’t get to play that with me. You’re better than that.” Morton sighed and raised his hands out to his sides before letting them drop. “You’re better than all this…this bullshit you pulled today. You and I both know that.”
Eddie shook his head. “No, I’m not.”
“Oh, I see. It’s time for self-pity. I wasn’t aware. And here I didn’t bring my violin. Should I let you get back into the car where you can have your own little pity-party?” A little heat had edged into the chief’s voice. “Or maybe you can just tell me what got into you.”
“I don’t know.” Eddie kept his gaze on the asphalt.
“You don’t know if I should put you back into the car and let you have your little pity-party all by yourself, or you don’t know what got into you today?” Morton shifted his weight, and the boots he wore scuffed across the black asphalt. His voice had a snap to it that Eddie had not heard in their earlier conversations.
Before he could stop it, a sigh erupted from Eddie. This is it, he thought. This is when Chief Morton washes his hands of me. His chin trembled. It’s what I deserve. He glanced at the students lined up on the bus ramp and then turned his gaze back to the asphalt. “They think I’m weird. I am weird.”
Morton waited for Eddie to continue.
Eddie opened his mouth and closed it without saying anything. He shook his head.
The chief took a step closer. “You hurt that boy, Eddie. Hurt him bad. You might’ve broken his cheekbones, his orbits, and you broke his nose for sure. Knocked out two teeth, too, according to the nurse.” The snap had left Morton’s voice, replaced with something that seemed like concern.
Eddie shoved his hands into his front pockets to stop their eternal war.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” The snap was back. “Why in the world would you attack that boy?”
“He attacked me,” Eddie murmured in a sullen voice. “I only fought back after he started it.”
“Self-defense, is it?” Chief Morton grasped Eddie’s chin and lifted his head, turning it to the left and the right. “Let’s see…no broken cheekbones, no broken nose, no split lip, no missing teeth.”
Eddie jerked his head away. “Then arrest me!” he growled.
Morton took a deep breath and let it out in a slow stream. “Is that what you want, son? Do you understand what would happen to you? Something as serious as this?”
Eddie shook his head.
“You might catch a serious charge for this, Eddie. Fourteen or not, that boy is seriously hurt, and there’s no question that you did it.” Morton took another deep, slow breath. “My question is why. You’re not that type of kid.”
Eddie’s feelings threatened to come surging out of that hole in his middle, and he had to fight to keep them contained. In the meantime, he just stood there, not moving, not talking.
“You want my help or not, son?” asked the chief, irritation creeping into his voice. “Because if you do, then you’d better stop with the hard, silent routine. I’ve seen it from tougher men than you, and it didn’t impress me then, either. You’d better talk to me, Eddie.”
“I’m sorry,” said Eddie in a voice just above that of a whisper. “I have to… It’s hard… I have to fight so hard, just to keep everything inside me. I—”
“Keep everything inside? What makes you think you have to keep everything contained? What kind of idea is that?”
Eddie shook his head. “Anyway, Jack is a big bully. Always has been. He—he—he ripped my backpack!” As he spoke, Eddie’s voice gained volume, gained heat. “He flung my collection, my Hot Wheels, all over the place. When I went to…when I tried to pick them up he…he…he—” Eddie snapped his mouth shut.
They were out. His emotions were out, and they almost drowned him. He looked around, expression wild, fighting the lump in his throat, fighting the burning and itching in his eyes, looking for a place to run, a place to hide.
Morton put a big hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, son. It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t,” hissed Eddie. “It’s not okay. It’s never okay. It’s never been okay, not since…not since—”
“Shh, now, son.” The chief sighed, eyeing the students ogling them from the bus ramp. “Let’s get you out of here. They’ve gotten enough of a show this afternoon.” He guided Eddie to the front seat of the chief’s cruiser and opened the door. “I don’t need to put you in back.”
It wasn’t a question, but Eddie felt compelled to shake his head. “No, sir. Never.”
“I know, son.” Morton applied subtle pressure to Eddie’s shoulder, and he sat and pulled his legs in the car. The chief closed the door with a solid sounding thunk.
As the chief walked around the front of his cruiser, the principal shouted something Eddie couldn’t make out, and Chief Morton replied, “I’m the goddamn Chief of Police, Terry, not you. Mind your business!” He got into the driver’s seat and started the car. “You’ll have an uphill fight, son.” After a brief staring contest with the principal, Chief Morton piloted his cruiser out of the high school parking lot. “The principal wants me to arrest you. He wants me to take you to jail and throw away the key. That isn’t what you need, Eddie.” He turned to Eddie. “Am I right?”
Eddie looked down at his lap and nodded.
“No, Eddie, that’s not good enough. You need to tell me. Right out loud. You need to make me a promise.”
Without lifting his head, Eddie peeked at the chief’s face. Morton kept darting glances at him, splitting his attention between the road ahead and Eddie. “What promise?”
“You need to tell me that what happened today won’t happen again. You need to promise me you will keep your temper in check. That you will ask an adult for help if someone is bothering you.”
“And if I promise you that, where will you take me?”
The big police chief flashed a thin smile at him. “Home. Where else?”
Uncle Gil will love this. Eddie sighed. “Okay, Chief Morton. I promise.” As they passed the brick pillar that the scary lady was hiding behind, Eddie looked for her, but she had disappeared again, and so had her friend with the Kool-Aid red hair.
Gil kept his act up until Chief Morton left, backing down the long gravel drive to the macadam of Salt Road. Then, Gil glared at him and fingered his belt buckle. He shook his head and glanced at Margo. “Well? You going to defend the brat this time?”
Auntie Margo shifted her gaze from Eddie to her husband. Her face came over white, and she pressed her lips into a thin line. “I…” She shook her head. “No, Gil. I can’t defend this behavior. Anyway, I’ve got dinner to start.”
Gil grunted, sounding like a primate at the zoo, and Margo blanched. She turned her head and met Eddie’s gaze. “Brutish behavior like that is unacceptable. You need a lesson in how to act.”
Eddie’s gaze and his stomach raced to see which could get to the ground fastest. Don’t know why I ever expect anything different from her.
“Ayup. Fighting is one thing, but to keep beating the boy after he’s beaten, well, that just don’t sit right.” Gil turned his blazing attention to Eddie. “Well, brat? What do you have to say for yourself?”
Something inside Eddie turned over, something hot, something angry. “Will it matter?” he demanded. “Does anything I ever say make any difference to you? Does it matter to you that Jack has been picking on me for years? Does it matter to you—”
A stinging slap rocked his head to the side, and he staggered a step. “I don’t understand why you believe that lip will help you, brat,” said his uncle. “But, hell, you just keep right on going.” He sounded almost pleased. “Lord knows, I can keep right on going, too.”
“Gil…” said Auntie Margo. The man scowled at her, and that’s all he needed to do. She turned and walked into the kitchen, letting the swinging door close behind her.
“Now that Margo has had her whine and I’ve dealt with it, we can get back to the bullshit you pulled in school. Oh, and keep on cracking wise, we can make this lesson a twofer.” Gil took a step closer, breathing loose and carefree, his hands hanging at his sides. “You know what, rug-rat? You and I should go on out to the barn. Yeah, our talk might go over better out there. Any objections?”
Eddie just stood there, staring at his toes, his cheek burning.
“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d object. Let’s get on out there.” Uncle Gil’s hand fell on Eddie’s shoulder like an axe blow and spun him toward the barn. “What? Nothing more to say?”
Eddie opened the door and looked out into the cold November afternoon. He stood, waiting in silence.
“You might be learning, brat.” Gil shoved him, and Eddie sprawled in the gravel that covered the dooryard, face first into the hard, cold ground. “Get your ass up, boy. Get your ass into that barn.”
Suppressing a sigh, Eddie got to his feet and trudged toward the barn. Gil followed close on his heels, undoing his belt buckle as he walked.
Once Uncle Gil got started, he went on and on and on, until Eddie thought Gil was going to beat him to death. The beating began with the leather strap of Uncle Gil’s belt, then progressed to the belt buckle, and ended with Gil’s fists. Gil took occasional breaks, breathing hard with his hands on his knees while he glared at Eddie. After an eternity, nursing his skinned knuckles, Gil hawked and spat, then turned and walked back into the house. “No supper, brat. Not for a week or two.”
Eddie didn’t respond, wasn’t able to respond.
But three hours later, with his left eye swollen shut and a path of dried blood reaching from his nostrils down his chin, Eddie stood in his dark room, shoving clothes into his old backpack.
Margo had stayed in the house during the entire beating. Of course she had.
But as the blows had rained down on him, Eddie had promised himself something. He promised that as soon as he had recovered enough, he would get the hell out of there. He would leave Uncle Gil and Auntie Margo in his dust.
They deserved each other.
The black rage had quivered inside him during the entire beating, but he knew he was no match for Uncle Gil, rage or no rage. He kept it contained, hidden far away from Gil’s sharp eyes, but now his hands shook with it.
Can’t go to the house, he thought. Not after last time. That will be the first place Chief Morton looks. Eddie shook his head and walked to his closet. He squatted and pried up the floorboard under which he’d hidden a few dollars.
It wasn’t much, not even thirty dollars, but it was all he had. He inspected his closet, looking for anything that he had to have, but the things he really wanted were inside a brown grocery bag in the back of the policeman’s car. Can’t stay here—not even one more minute. I’ll start a new collection when I get where I’m going.
Eddie pushed to his feet, grimacing at the ache in his mid-back. Gil called it a “kidney punch,” and it hurt like hell for days. He looked around his room, his gaze roving over the top of his dresser, his bedside table, the straight-backed wooden chair draped with dirty clothes. He shook his head, feeling nothing. It was amazing how much stuff he had that he cared nothing about.
Slinging his backpack over his heavy coat, he strode to the window and pried out the nails Uncle Gil had put in after he ran away the last time. He’d already loosened them, but he put them back just in case Gil looked. He couldn’t stop himself from glancing over his shoulder when he thought of Gil, half sure his uncle would be in the doorway glaring at him.
But his door remained closed. He slid the window open, grimacing at the grating noise it made. Frigid air invaded the room, stinging his cheeks.
Unbidden and unwanted, the memory of his hallucinations invaded his mind. The scary lady. He remembered how the caress had left his cheek numb when Chief Morton had been down in the basement of his parents’ house lighting the furnace, how the cold had swarmed over his teeth across his tongue and down his throat into his chest and shivered, imagining her arm down his throat. Maybe the one with hair the color of a cherry snow cone and eyes the color of fire would be hot.
Shaking his head, Eddie swung his leg out the window and then ducked through. He pulled his other leg through the window and lowered himself to the ground. Looking up, he wished he could close the window, sure that Gil or Margo would feel the chill and come to investigate, but there was no way he could reach it from the ground.
With a blank expression, Eddie turned his back on the house in which he’d spent the last four years. He turned his back on Auntie Margo and her failure to protect him from her monster of a husband. He turned his back on Gil’s sadism and abuse. Eddie turned his back and walked away, vowing never to set foot on that farm again.
He seemed to grow lighter with each step he took. He remembered his thoughts from a few moments before, the thing about starting a new collection as soon as he got where he was going
All well and good, but where am I going?
Where should an almost 15-year-old boy go? Obviously, nowhere in Cottonwood Vale. There had been a place in Oneka Falls, something for kids, but he didn’t remember what the place was. Might be a church for holy rollers, he thought. Or maybe a reform school.
It didn’t matter. After what had happened to those four or five kids in Oneka Falls a few years back, no kid in their right mind would go near that town, even if the place for kids hadn’t closed. He believed they’d caught the psychopath who’d caused all the trouble, the guy that shot up the town, but the memory of the spree still made him uneasy. No, somewhere else.
He needed a place big enough that he could disappear. Someplace where no one would look twice at a kid on the street.
Someplace such as New York City.
He nodded once to himself. New York City. The Big Apple. Plenty of room for me there. Plus, there were a lot of stores there, and a lot of dumpsters behind them. Bet I can find a lot of great stuff there. He started walking, head down, stride determined.
2
1982
Two days and thirty-eight miles later, Eddie’s grand escape ended in a town named Hornell. The cop—Officer Ray Quinlan—had caught him sleeping in the park at the center of town.
Eddie closed his eyes and tuned out. It’s finished. I’m not going to New York City. I’m going right back to Gil. Wonder if he’ll kill me this time.
If I’m lucky.
He might’ve dozed, or he might’ve been so zoned out that he didn’t hear Quinlan, but when the cop’s hand came to rest on his shoulder, Eddie jumped.
“Sorry, kid. The chief wants to talk to you.” Quinlan held the phone receiver toward Eddie.
Eddie considered refusing, but Morton had always been kind to him, and it wasn’t his fault Eddie’s life sucked. He reached for the phone with his handcuffed hands and grimaced.
“Oh, let me get those off you.”
Eddie held the receiver to his ear as Officer Quinlan unlocked the cuffs. Something had changed in Quinlan’s demeanor. “Hello?”
“Eddie? Eddie, is that you?”
A dank, dark depression stole over Eddie as he heard the chief’s voice. Probably should push that into my pit. Somehow, Eddie didn’t have the energy. “Yeah, Chief Morton. It’s me.”
“Good, good. You okay? You don’t sound yourself.”
“Tired is all.”
“I’ll bet. Did you walk the whole way?”
“Most of it. Nobody wanted to give me a ride. I’m a bloody, beat-up mess.”
The line hissed and popped. Eddie could hear Chief Morton breathing on the other end.
“Bloody? Beat-up?”
“Yeah.” Eddie squeezed his eyes shut, wincing at the tight, painful way the skin around his eyes stretched. “It is what it is.”
