Miracle Creek(15)

The next part he remembered in jags, like one of those old-fashioned films that go tat-tat-tat when they turn, the scenes spliced crudely, jumping from one image to the next. TJ pounding his fists on the porthole. TJ taking off and throwing his oxygen helmet aside, then hammering his head on the wall. Kitt trying to get TJ away from the wall.

“Did you ask Pak to stop the dive?”

Matt shook his head. Now, in the light of day, that seemed the obvious thing to do. But back then, everything had been fuzzy. “Teresa said maybe we should stop, but Kitt said no, we just needed to restart the DVD.”

“What did Pak say?”

Matt glanced Pak’s way. “It was chaos in the chamber, very noisy, so I couldn’t really hear, but he said something about getting batteries, it taking a few minutes.”

“So Pak’s working to fix the DVD. Then what?”

“Kitt calmed down TJ and got the helmet back on him. She sang songs to keep him calm.” It had been one song, actually: the Barney song that cut off when the DVD died. Over and over, soft and slow, like a lullaby. Sometimes, drifting off to sleep, Matt would hear it: I love you, you love me, we’re a hap-py fam-i-ly. He’d jolt awake, heart thumping his chest, and he’d picture himself ripping Barney’s fat purple head off and stomping on it, its purple hands stopping mid-clap and decapitated purple body toppling.

“What happened next?” Abe said.

Everyone had been still and quiet, Kitt half murmuring, half singing, and TJ leaning against her chest, eyes closed. Suddenly, Henry said, “I need the pee jar,” and reached to grab the urine-collection container in the back for bathroom emergencies. Henry’s chest smashed against TJ’s legs, and TJ startled, jolting his arms and legs like he’d been defibrillated, and started kicking, out of control. Matt pulled Henry back, but TJ yanked off his helmet, threw it in Kitt’s lap, and started banging his head again.

It was hard to believe that a child’s head could repeatedly strike a steel wall, producing such heavy thuds, and not crumple into pieces. Listening to the pounding, being sure that TJ’s head would crack with the next blow, made Matt want to pull off his own helmet, slap his palms over his ears, and shut his eyes tight. Henry seemed to feel the same, turning to Matt with eyes so wide they bulged into circles with pinpoint pupils. Bull’s-eye.

Matt took Henry’s small hands into his own. He brought his face closer to Henry’s, smiled eye to eye, their helmets between them, and said everything was okay. “Just breathe,” he said, and puffed in a deep breath, keeping a steady gaze on Henry’s eyes.

Henry breathed with Matt. In, out. In, out. The panic in Henry’s face began to dissipate. His eyelids relaxed, his pupils dilated, and the edges of his lips curled into the beginnings of a smile. In the gap in Henry’s top front teeth, Matt noticed the tip of a budding tooth. Hey, you’re getting a new tooth, Matt was opening his mouth to say, when the boom sounded. Matt thought of TJ’s head cracking open, but it was louder than that, the sound of a hundred heads banging steel, a thousand. Like a bomb going off, outside.

Matt blinked—how long did that take? A tenth of a second? A hundredth?—then, where Henry’s face had been, there was fire. Face, then blink, then fire. No, faster than that. Face, blink, fire. Face-blink-fire. Facefire.



* * *



ABE DIDN’T SPEAK for a long time. Matt didn’t, either. Just sat there, listening to the sobs and sniffles from the gallery, jury box, everywhere except the defense table.

“Counsel, would you like a recess?” the judge asked Abe.

Abe looked at Matt with raised eyebrows, the lines around his eyes and mouth saying that he was tired, too, that it was okay to stop.

Matt turned to Elizabeth. She’d been remarkably composed, to the point of appearing disinterested, all day. But he’d expected the fa?ade to break by now, for her to wail that she loved her son, that she could never hurt him. Something, anything, to show the devastation that any decent human being would feel, being accused of murdering her own child and hearing the gruesome details of his death. To hell with decorum, to hell with rules. But she’d said nothing, done nothing. Just listened to it all gazing at Matt with a casual curiosity, as if she were watching a show on Antarctica’s climate pattern.

Matt wanted to run up and grab her shoulders and shake her. He wanted to shove his face into hers and scream that he still had nightmares about Henry in that moment, looking like some alien in a kid’s drawing—a bubblehead of flames, the rest of his body perfectly intact, his clothes untouched, but his legs thrashing in a silent scream. He wanted to zap that image into her head, transfer it or mind-meld it or whatever it took to pop that fucking composure off her and heave it way the hell away where she could never find it again.

“No,” Matt said to Abe, no longer tired, no longer in need of the break he’d prayed for. The sooner he got this sociopath hauled off to death row, the better. “I’d like to continue.”

Abe nodded. “Tell us what happened to Kitt after the explosion outside.”

“The fire was isolated to the back oxygen spigot. TJ’s helmet was also connected to that, but TJ had taken it off and Kitt was holding it. The flames shot out of the opening, onto Kitt’s lap, and she caught on fire.”

“What then?”

“I tried to get Henry’s helmet off, but…” Matt looked down at his hands. The scar tissue over the amputated stumps looked glossy and new, like melted plastic.