Chapter Ninety-Six Dottie
Chapter Ninety-Six
Dottie
The pounding gets louder, goes on for a long time. And now that little hole in the corner of the ceiling is bigger. That damn hole I asked Dickie to fix so many times.
Eventually someone in the garage above pokes a screwdriver through the hole, then the shaft of a hammer, like they’re measuring the size of the opening.
Then everything goes silent. It’s silent for a long time.
Then I hear the bolt pull back. The door swings open.
Peggy.
Standing in the doorway, wearing an old dress, legs streaked with blood.
She carries a bundle of towels. Then she steps into the room, gets closer. I look down.
It’s a baby. Beautiful. Newborn. A tiny, pristine person.
“Richard wants to name him Richard . . . and call him Chip—Chip off the old block—as a nickname.” She shakes her head vehemently. “But his name is Daniel.”
“Daniel.” I repeat the name as she transfers the bundle into my arms. The baby blinks up at me. Enormous blue eyes. Perfect rosebud mouth. My eyes burn as I fight back tears.
“I sent Richard to People’s Drug to fetch talcum powder for the baby.” She looks ravaged, terrified. “We don’t have much time.”
We leave the shelter and creep up the basement stairs. Peggy grabs the doorknob at the top of the steps.
And then it’s like God presses a button and sets everything in slow motion.
The door swings open . . . and Dickie is there.
A scream rips from my throat as he looms at the top of the stairs, eyes gleaming, my dad’s shotgun . . . the one he uses for skeet shooting . . . cradled in his arms.
I clutch the baby tighter with one hand and reach for the handrail to keep from falling backward with the other.
“Where do you ladies think you’re going?” His voice is smooth, like water. Then he smiles. I almost throw up.
“I was just . . . checking on her.” Peggy’s voice quivers.
“Just checking on her,” he repeats in a mocking tone.
Then he descends, shotgun in the crook of his arm. Each step slow. Deliberate. Dangerous.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Peggy reaches back and grasps my hand. We retreat backward, one step at a time until we reach the bottom.
“Get back in the fallout shelter, Dottie.”
I shake my head and clasp the baby tighter.
He points the shotgun at my chest. “Give the baby to Peggy.”
My body shakes, but I force myself to lift my chin, look him straight in the eye, to pretend I’m not afraid. “You can’t shoot me. How do you explain a gunshot wound on a woman who died in childbirth?”
He seizes Peggy by the hair and jerks her close.
“True. But I can shoot her. I can dispose of her body. And no one will ever know.”
I can hardly breathe, much less speak. I inhale a slug of air, then force the words out. “Calm down, Dickie.”
“Put the baby down or she dies,” he repeats.
“Let her go.”
He shakes his head, eyes glowing, mouth set in a grim line. “Put the baby down or I kill her. Now.”
“Please, Richard,” Peggy begs, tears streaming down her face.
Still gripping Peggy’s hair, he raises my dad’s shotgun with his other hand.
He points it at me.
My thoughts ricochet around the basement, searching for a weapon, a way out. Then they ping back . . . to the baby in my arms, to the gun in Dickie’s hand. And to Peggy, whimpering beside him.
No choice. I have no choice.
I set the baby on the floor. Little Daniel starts to cry, a terrible, urgent, siren-squall and I feel like I’m going to shatter. The gun. The screaming baby. Peggy cowering, babbling, begging Dickie to release us.
“Please let us go,” I whisper. “Please.”
“I don’t think that’s going to work.” Dickie gives me a sad smile, raising his voice above the cries of the newborn.
“You can’t do this, Richard,” Peggy begs.
He yanks her hair, and she shrieks.
“Enough!” he snarls. “Into the shelter or I pull the trigger.”
I scuttle backward, into the small room. Peggy sobs, clinging to Dickie’s leg while the baby screams, mouth wide, face purple.
That’s the last thing I see. The baby on the floor, howling in a bundle of towels, Peggy, babbling and pleading, with Dickie’s fist embedded in the hair at the top of her scalp, his other hand clutching the gun. And Dickie’s face. Blank. Expressionless.
He releases Peggy’s hair, pulls the door shut, and bolts it from the outside.
Then I hear the blast of a gunshot on the other side of the door. Followed by a heartbeat of quiet. Then curses streaming from Dickie’s mouth.
I sink to the floor, shaking, suffocating in the awful silence.
And now a tapping sound as fragments of chipped concrete fall from the growing hole in the ceiling.