Chapter Three #2
She lay on the ground, shards of glass now poking and sticking out of her skin like a pin cushion. She’s sobbing and I wish I could run to her, hold her.
Today, her life was in my hands.
“Then why are you with me, Jack? Leave me. Do us all a favor,” she groans, breathless.
She has given up.
But her words only spur him on more. He spins around, yanks her to her knees and slaps her across the face, just for her to fall down again.
“I will never fucking leave you.” He bends at his waist, screaming directly in her face, “What don’t you fucking understand about that!?”
My father wrenches her up by her hair and beats her again before tugging on the belt, tightening the noose.
He’s in no rush, stuck in a cycle of depravity…
enjoyment. He could do this for hours—he has before.
When his back is to me, I creep out, sliding across the thin wall between Jade’s and their bedroom.
I slip around the edge, feeling my heart beating in the nerves of my teeth as I move toward the old black-stained timber dresser in the back corner.
A spilled bottle of rum and a can of Coke drizzle off the edge, calling to a trail of ants, and frantically, I rip open the top drawer, shoving the contents around.
I pause when I hear gurgling sounds.
“Look. At. What. You’re. Making. Me. Do!” My father growls each word slowly, and I know now that I’m definitely running out of time when my mother’s cries wither to whimpers.
But that’s when I feel it.
Something cool.
I grasp the metal, ripping the gun out of the drawer, snatching the magazine sitting beside it. With trembling fingers, it takes me a few tries to load the pistol, but once the ammunition is in, I move swiftly toward the door.
The barrel brushes against my thigh as I step out of the room and stop at the end of the small hallway.
My father’s back is to me, my mother is lying on her stomach, not moving, though I see the slow fall of her back as she inhales and exhales.
She’s still here, only just.
Her lips are a stark purple against the crimson red blood. She’s a mess of skin and bone. And he did this—my father, her husband—this is what he made of her.
My mother’s dark, broken and frantic eyes latch on to mine, she shakes her head.
And still, I raise my trembling hand.
I line the barrel up directly with my father’s back, then I release the safety.
My father spins around casually, his empty eyes rake up the length of me and he snorts, pushing the bottle of beer clasped in his palm to his mouth. He’s smiling as he pulls on it, pouring half of the contents down his scrawny throat. And when he takes it away, he’s still smirking.
It’s sick and disturbing, terrifying, as his dark eyes stare unflinching down the barrel of his demise.
He throws the bottle against the wall to our left, never taking his eyes off mine. A loud smash reverberates around the room, shattered glass sprinkling over the sofa.
He is still smiling when he taunts, “How stupid are you, boy?”
I shrug. “Let’s find out.”
Bang.
It was the first time I had shot a gun.
And I close my eyes, waiting for the thud that would never come.
Until it did, only not from him, from me.
The back of my head cracks against the floor when my father tackles me, knocking the wind out of me. I begin to sputter and cough, curling into myself, but he is already on me.
My father is straddling my legs, and before I can find a way to collect myself, he slaps me, and then his closed, bloody fist comes barreling toward my face.
“No, Jack. Stop!” I flick my eyes to my mother, finding her dragging herself on her elbows, across shattered glass toward us.
And I shake my head the way she had, and yet, she continues, the way I had.
I feel the first right hook between my eyes, and the pain that extends from the hit is agonizing.
The second meets my nose, and the crunch is sickening.
My eyes roll into the back of my head.
“Jack, you’re gonna to kill him!” My mother’s voice is frantic, ricocheting between the walls of my now beaten skull.
But my father doesn’t stop.
And I knew he wouldn’t.
The third, well, that one…that just felt…warm.
Darkness took me.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t speak, though, I could hear and what I heard had vomit pushing up my throat. I started to choke on it before I found my way to my side.
“You did this…” My father was saying, and when my eyes blinked, I could see my mother sobbing. “This is all your fucking fault,” my father finishes, punching her again before turning to me and kicking me in the pit of my stomach.
The crunch of my ribs was the only confirmation I needed to know that my father had really fucked me up.
My mother and I were both curled over, our heads buried into the beer-scented wood.
And when we heard the front door slam shut, his engine start, wheels screeching, the rumble disappearing in the distance, my mother reached her broken fingers toward me and pushed the dead weight of her hand over mine.
We cried together.
In silence.
On the floor.
In a pool of our shared blood.
And I hadn’t noticed that she was here until I looked up and found Jade on her knees between us. Her twelve-year-old hands were through our hair, comforting us as she repeated over and over again, “It’s okay, I’m here.”
And I reach for her fingers at the top of my head and tighten mine around hers. Her stormy blue eyes catch mine, tears streaming down her innocent face.
She is trembling when I whisper, “You were supposed to go next door.”
Then she tears at her bottom lip with her teeth. “Why do you think I asked for your hoodie, Chase?”
I furrow my brow, confused, clasping onto my broken ribs and rising slowly, sitting over shards of glass. I drag myself across the ground until my back hits the wall behind me, then I raise my knees, hang my wrists, letting my shoulders drop forward.
Everything aches.
“Why, J?” I cough into my hand, blood dots my palm.
Jade swallows, trembles harder. “Because if you didn’t make it back to me by the time I was done counting, at least I had a reason to come to you,” she says so quietly with a shrug of her shoulders. “You know, to give it back.”
And I bite the inside of my cheek.
Sometimes I forget just how smart she is, the way she can expertly layer intention into something so simple, masking over it until she intends to use it.
A tear trails my broken nose when she smiles. The glimmer in her eyes, an ember of hope. It’s so small, but I see it.
“It’s me and you, Chase. Against the world.”
And I slump my head back against the wall when another tear falls, but my eyes stay locked on hers. “Against the world, sis.”
Our mother coughs and we both hear it, turning toward her.
She somehow has found her way to the opposite wall and is cradling her torn up knees to her chest. She is a mess, and yet, among all the blood and bruises, I can see her white teeth peeking from behind the depravity of our father.
She smiles when she whispers, “Don’t ever lose that, my babies. Your love for each other, that…” She’s nodding continuously. “Will withstand any and every storm.”
The luminescent red glow of the old plastic sign blinks, the D on Devil’s Peak Trailer Park sputters before it bursts, leaving it to read, Evil’s Peak.
“Well, that’s telling,” Jade says, unbuckling her seat belt and twisting into the back seat. She’s grabbing for her bag when my truck's front wheel catches a pothole at the corner of the entry. “Fuck,” she grumbles, falling against me, then back into the passenger seat.
I barely touch the gas. I allow each ditch and rut to rock us to the back of the park, passing a single-wide that shakes to “Hot Dog” by Limp Bizkit.
It has five cars parked at its rear—two are police cruisers.
There’s a bed sheet tied to the front, and a birthday message spray painted in alternating blue and green.
The bubbly words drip like tears, the cotton fluttering in the scant breeze.
I pull up in front of Laiken’s mother’s rundown double-wide. It’s nestled among spindly trees that reach high toward the sky and saggy powerlines. Overgrown brush circles the small perimeter, crawling up the crumbling lilac paint, feathering the broken and rusted shutters.
I kill the engine and push back into my seat, adjusting my jaw, hanging my wrist over the steering wheel.
I stare past the purple trailer and out to the murky river that runs along the park's edge, tapping the horn three times.
I let the sound settle before clearing my throat to tell Jade, “That day…” I sniff, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip and tearing at the rough skin beneath.
“Should have been the day I put that motherfucker in his grave.”
I am talking about when I was fifteen, when I took a shot at my father and missed.
And Jade knew that too, because silence swallows us.
Until she speaks.
“Hey, Chase, can you look at me?” Emotion chokes Jade’s words.
I drag in a long breath, stare unblinking ahead. I wasn’t done yet. “He was never supposed to get his hands on you, J. I let you down, I let Mom down.” I work my jaw again, feeling the ligaments pop. “Should go back and put him there right now.”
But the warmth of a small, trembling hand curls over my forearm.
“Please, look at me,” Jade whispers, and I blink, shifting my gaze to hers.
Jade keeps her hand on my arm when she speaks, “You are destined for so much more than a life behind bars.” She smiles mournfully, like she knows she will never receive the justice she deserves, as if she needs to put up with the same abuse Mom does, as if she’s accepted that this is her life, and she has no say in it.
It’s a knife to my chest.
My sister lets go, reaching for the packet of chewing gum shoved in my drink holder. I know she is putting on a brave face for me, but I see the way her pupils wobble beneath her tears.
“Don’t let him take that from you. You hear me?” she mumbles around the gum, “I’m f-fine.”
My temper flares, chiseling into my marrow. My fist tightening on the wheel.
“You deserve a better life, J, the things you’ve seen, and now felt…” I swallow my words, throwing my palms down on the wheel and shaking my head. “Fuck!”
Jade curls both of her hands around my biceps, and with my heart battering behind my ribs, she burrows into my side, whispering, “We both do.”
A door slams, the tinny sound pulling our attention over the peeling red hood of my truck.
Jade’s best friend trips over the dead pot plant at the entrance of her trailer, mumbling profanities beneath her breath. Her white-blonde hair is stuck in her glossed lips, her cheeks rosy as she drives her foot back and crunches her bare toes to the plastic pot, this time on purpose.
I snort and Jade lifts herself from my arm, giggling at her friend's expense. Reaching toward the window, I wind it down, raising my chin, calling out, “Hey, Laik!”
Laiken’s head slices toward me and her bright-pink painted nails work to yank the strands of hair from her mouth, guiding them behind both ears.
“Please, do that again,” I taunt, laughing beneath my breath.
A grin quirks the corner of her mouth, and it’s small but I catch it, and she knows it too.
Laiken retrieves a cigarette from the waistband of her running shorts, along with a lighter that was in the same pot plant she had just stubbed her toe against, adjusting the strap of her cut-off white tank that tumbles off her fair shoulder.
She probably just got back from a run. She loved running, and often said there was nothing quite comparable to the feeling she felt when she threw her body against the wind.
I’d said she was a fucking freak.
She bites the trunk, the small gap between her front teeth prominent as she ignites the flame. Jerking her chin at me, she closes her lips around it and takes her first pull.
“Hey, Chase!” she shouts back, dropping the arm holding the cigarette to her side and reclining her head, letting go of her breath. A cloud of smoky-gray whispers above her and she licks her lips, smoothing them together. She levels her sea-moss eyes to mine, offering me another hint of a smile.
“How about you go fuck yourself.”
Laiken Campbell bites into her bottom lip, chuckling on the return of the cigarette to her mouth.