The Big Dark Sky (74)

Earlier in the day, when he’d gotten the call from Wyatt Rider, when he heard Joanna wanted to see him, pain had for a minute rocked him, as though his heart must be turning backward in his breast and twisting the vessels that brought it blood: the pain of fear, of remorse.

“But she asked me nothing about it. And if she had, what could I have said that would change anything or answer any doubts?”

Hector’s habit was to carry on long conversations with his son, as though Jimmy understood but was unable to respond. However, never had he spoken of this or of anything else so sensitive.

“I saw nothing that proved anything, nothing worth destroying his reputation and his business. It was not just my job at stake, you understand, but also those of everyone who worked for him. Your mother and I and you—we lived on the ranch in those days. It was our livelihood and our home.”

Jimmy raised his left hand and, as he’d done with his right, flattened it against the glass, as if pleading with someone for something.

“He sometimes swam in the lake after dawn. There was nothing different that morning except it was still dark when I saw him in a swimsuit, coming back from the lake. There was no reason for me to be suspicious. She hadn’t gone missing yet in the skiff. He ran when usually he would walk. But it was cool, you see. So maybe he was chilled. He didn’t go directly to the house, instead followed the willows, through which I had only glimpses of him. No ranch hands were up and about. Only me. No one else to see. What proof is that of anything? What reason to destroy a man’s life?”

From a great distance, thunder rolled. If rain was falling in the mountains, it would take a while yet to reach here.

“Later that day, when they found the empty skiff drifting on the water, and later still when they found her, what could I have done? Anyway, I knew that he was not capable of harming her. He was not a violent man. She was beautiful and kind and gentle. No husband would want to lose such a precious woman. He wept. I saw him weep and heard his grief. If earlier I had seen him wet and chilled and following the long arc of the willows to the house, who am I to say that proved anything, meant anything? It meant nothing.”

Jimmy neither groaned nor grunted nor issued one of those beseeching whimpers that used to so affect his mother.

There were times when Hector was glad that his son could not talk. Silence could seem like absolution.

“I’ll make our dinner now. I’ll come for you in a while, when it’s on the table.”

Jimmy leaned forward and, between his flattened palms, pressed his deformed forehead to the windowpane.

In the kitchen, Hector popped the cap off an ice-cold Corona. He poured a double shot of tequila, tossed it back, and chased it with a long swallow of beer. He poured another double shot. He put the glass and the bottle beside the cutting board, next to the sink, where he would be working.

He was sixty-five and weary. For years, he’d given up drinking. But when Annalisa died, he had needed compensation for the loss.

Drinking had been their ruin. Maybe Jimmy would have been born as he was even if Annalisa had never touched a drop of alcohol, but in her grief and guilt, she would not allow either her or Hector to take refuge in that possibility. What they had done required atonement through sacrifice.

As Hector accused himself again, as if at confession, he peeled potatoes before slicing them to be fried. When the knife pierced his lower back, it carried with it a fierce heat that seemed to set his innards afire. The potato and peeler dropped from his hands into the sink as the knife ripped out of him. The blade stabbed deep again, and Hector collapsed against the counter. From behind him came a terrible voice that could be that of no one but his voiceless son. “Parasite. Pestilence.”





PART 4

THE TRUE JIMMY





We were created to be creators, and we create ceaselessly, both consciously and unconsciously.

—Ganesh Patel





63


Jimmy knew happy and he knew sad and he knew the place between when he wasn’t happy or sad, when he just was. He didn’t always know what made him happy or sad, those feelings just happened to him, and there wasn’t anything he could do to make happy come when he wasn’t or make sad go away when he was.

He knew fear, but not often because he didn’t know what he should be afraid of until it happened. And after whatever happened was done with, the fear usually went away; there was no reason for it to last.

The only fear that lasted long was the fear when the Thing moved inside him and did what it wanted with him. A long time ago when the little girl lived here, the Thing moved into Jimmy every day, moved in and stayed and stayed, so he was afraid most always even though the little girl was nice.

The Thing was not nice.

Time passed, and he all but forgot about the little girl and the Thing. They were far away like in a fog. Mostly he thought of them in his sleep, not much when awake. Then a while ago the Thing came into him again and did what it wanted, and the little girl came back, too, but she wasn’t little anymore, just a girl.

The Thing was always not nice, even long ago, but it was even colder now than it was before, colder and darker and even more not nice. A long time ago the Thing wasn’t mean to the girl, but it was mean to her now. Jimmy knew mean. People were sometimes mean to him.

The Thing wanted to hurt the girl. Jimmy never wanted to hurt anyone, but when the Thing was in him, he knew what it was like for the Thing to want to hurt someone because he felt a little of what the Thing felt. It scared him to feel that.