Good Day to Die (16 page)

Brock began the study proper with an analysis of the relationship between child abuse and fantasy. Abused children—whether the nature of that abuse was physical, sexual, or psychological—all feel helpless; they must achieve some kind of psychological equilibrium in order to survive. Fantasy becomes their only avenue to empowerment.

Typically, these men recounted fantasies in which they, as children, became the abuser, the most powerful figure their inexperienced minds could imagine. The object of this fantasy-abuse varied considerably. Sometimes it took the form of the abusing adult and can be understood as a fantasy of revenge. Just as often, however, the object of abuse was another child or an animal.

She went on for some time, recounting individual fantasies, then noted that, with few exceptions, her subjects had asserted the absence of
any
nurturing adult in their early experience. They were completely unprotected and thus completely vulnerable. Their fantasies, over time, became fixed and obsessive. And, over time, they began to act out their fantasies. The most common form of this acting out was cruelty to animals.

I laid the article on the floor and dropped my head onto the pillow. Wondering if it’s cruel to kill animals if you eat them after you kill them? If you’re hungry? If someone puts a weapon in your hands and
tells
you to kill them? If coming out of the forest with the body of a squirrel or a rabbit in your six-year-old hand means a pat on the head and a muttered, “The kid’s good. He’s real good.”

Try as I might, I could not remember the details of my first successful hunt, but the effort put me in touch with another hunt, one that took place when I was eleven years old. My first deer.

My carefully chosen killing ground is a long-abandoned homestead several miles from Mom’s shack and buried in the forest. There’s almost nothing left of it—a gaping rectangle of piled foundation stones, a busted brick chimney, a few rotten planks buried in weeds and earth. The walls and floors are long gone. As is the road leading up it, if there ever was a road.

The waters of a shallow beaver pond stretch to within fifteen feet of the house. I’ve seen the beavers a few times, their dark triangular heads at the narrow end of a long wake. They swim in straight lines, with fierce determination, diving and emerging on an exact course.

The beavers would be easy to kill, but there’d be no sense to it because they’d only sink to the bottom. Food for the snapping turtles, but not for me. No, if I want to kill them, I have to catch them on land, and they only operate after dark when I am blind and they can see and smell and hear.

In the moonlight, their wakes are twin silver bars dissolving into flashing lace.

But it’s not the wreck of the house or the muddy beaver pond (which was probably a stream or a small clean creek when the house was built) that brings me here on a weekday morning in early October. I’m here because the apples are ripe and dropping to the ground.

Because deer love apples.

As orchards (even long-abandoned orchards) go, it’s not much. Maybe a dozen gnarled trees ringed by skeletal birch and crowded by densely packed young hemlocks. Eventually the hemlocks will overspread the apple trees and the birch, closing out the sun and killing them. But that means nothing to me. At eleven years old, the idea of plant wars has never crossed my mind. All I know is the orchard continues to produce shrunken wormy apples and the deer will come for the fruit.

I’m in place an hour before sunrise. Sitting behind the brush atop a granite outcropping forty feet above and seventy yards away from the orchard. I need the height for two reasons. First, because the hemlocks will hide the browsing deer from any line of fire at their own level, and second, because deer (like humans, incidentally) rarely look up.

I’ve been watching ever since I discovered the orchard, watching long enough to know that the deer bed down in a marshy area at the headwaters of the pond, that they’ll come out before sunrise to feed, circling the pond and the homestead to get to the half-rotted fruit.

The air is cold and wet. A mist hangs over the pond, moving in thin clouds, driven by a breeze so light it barely exists. The pink light of dawn tints the mist a pale, pale rose. A blush thrown over aging features.

But, again, I know nothing of this. These are details to be observed in reflection. I’m an eleven-year-old boy with enough sense to remain still, but with too little experience to be patient. I have a new rifle (or, at least a different rifle, a borrowed, lever-action 30-30) and I can’t wait to put it to the test.

Suddenly the air is filled with noise. At first, I’m at a loss, and I almost stand up to see what it is. Then I recognize the honking of geese. I know the geese are migrating, that most of the birds are fleeing the onrush of winter, and I wonder where they’re coming from. If their summer home is a lake in some remote Canadian province, a lake completely unknown to humans. A lake where I could be entirely alone.

As the geese approach, I strain to see them, turning my head to pinpoint the sound. They’re coming in just above the tree-tops, but the mist hides them for a moment. Then they appear, white breasts flashing up, webbed feet extended, slicing through the mist as they skid onto the surface of the pond. For a time they continue to call to each other, the dominant males, necks extended, menacing the weaker members of the flock. But they are too tired and hungry to pursue old quarrels for long and soon begin to feed.

I turn away from the geese to find a deer in the orchard, a small doe. Seconds later, another doe follows, trailed by a half-grown fawn. Then a third doe, this one older and wiser. She halts every few feet, sensing me, but unable to pin me down.

Finally, the buck trots into view. His head is up, his nostrils flared. He stops beneath an apple tree and begins to duel with the lower branches, pawing the ground as he slashes an imaginary opponent. The buck has an impressive rack, the kind city men lie about as they stoke the fires in their cabins. As they sip at their whiskey, their six-packs of beer.

The buck’s antlers mean nothing to me. I want a tender young doe, and for a moment I consider taking the half-grown fawn. She’s not more than forty pounds, and I can pack her out in one trip. But, no, she’s so small she disappears beneath the hemlocks. If I fire and miss, I’ll never see these deer again.

I bring up the rifle slowly. Very slowly. I’m not excited, but my concentration is narrowly focused. I see only the sights of my 30-30 and the smallest doe’s shoulder. My finger squeezes the trigger gently, caressing it until it explodes. The doe drops immediately, slammed to the ground by the force of the bullet. The buck, without a backward glance for his consort, leaps twenty feet and disappears into the forest.

L
ORRAINE CHO KNEW THAT
night had fallen. She was lying on the small bed, enclosed from her feet to the top of her head in the woolen cocoon of her blanket, trying to fight the cold.

She listened to the scrabble of tiny claws on the bare wooden floor and imagined an army of rats massing for an attack, a continuous undulating gray wave about to charge across the cabin. She imagined this army baring yellowed teeth as it contemplated the taste of her flesh.

Or rats’ feet over broken glass.

The single line of poetry repeated in her mind, but try as she might she could not recall more of the poem. Couldn’t even remember the name of the author.

Or rats’ feet over broken glass.

She told herself not to be so dramatic. That she had plenty to fear without worrying about a few mice come to pick at the crumbs. If they bothered her all that much, she need only tell Becky and Becky would take care of it.

But that wouldn’t do, either. Becky would set traps to kill the mice, and Lorraine knew she couldn’t bear another death.

Suddenly, without warning, a long-forgotten memory surfaced. She was down in the basement of her parents’ apartment building, heading for the tenants’ storage area to retrieve her bicycle. Her best friend, Linda Fried, was already outside and Lorraine was in a hurry. Still, when she saw her buddy, Joe, the super, kneeling by the furnace, her curiosity got the best of her, and she skipped over to see what he was up to.

“Hi, Joe,” she said, trying to peek over his shoulder, “wha’cha doin’?”

He turned, grinning his customary broken-toothed grin at the sound of her voice. “Looky what we got here, Miss Lorraine. Look at how we got this critter.”

Lorraine saw the narrow pointed face and the long naked tail and knew it must be a rat. Her parents were always complaining about rats in the basement. One bar of the trap was lying directly across the animal’s back, as if the rat, sensing danger, had turned away at the last second.

To Lorraine, all of nine or ten years old, the rat seemed to be two animals. The lower half, the legs and tail, lay motionless, while the upper half writhed furiously. The rat bit at the trap, at itself; its front legs tore at the dirty concrete next to the furnace. Blood trickled from its nose and ears.

“That’s one rat won’t be botherin’ nobody,” Joe observed.

Lorraine watched as the animal’s frantic efforts slowly diminished, as the volume of blood increased, as the rat emitted a final piercing squeal. She watched Joe lift the bars of the trap, hoist the animal by its tail and carry it to the compactor.

Or rats’ feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar.

The next line of the poem came to her. Along with a decision not to let
anyone
kill her mouse.
Her
mouse.

She wondered if the mouse (it was a mouse, now, she noted, not a rat or even mice) would take food from her hand. Or if she had the courage to put her hand out there. To await her mouse’s attentions without being able to anticipate them.

She fell asleep without deciding to, and when she awakened, her mouse was gone. Or at least quiet; she had no way to know. But she was sure that it was finally morning because she was sweating beneath the blanket. And also because she was hungry.

“Your throne awaits,” she said out loud.

Her “throne” was a bucket in the corner, and she used it as quickly as possible. Now she would have to live with the smell until Becky arrived.

What, she asked herself, will I do if one day Becky
doesn’t
arrive. If nobody comes.

Whatever she
would
do, in that event, was what she
must
do now. Because it was only a matter of time until Daddy killed her. Or until he took her riding again. In which case she would go mad.

She was half-mad already, and she knew it; she held the madness off by dreaming of a mouse taking food from her hand. There was a limit to how long that would work. How long before the screaming returned.

The question she asked herself again and again was if there was anything she could have done to stop him. She wanted to be able to say, “I didn’t know what was going to happen and if I didn’t know, how could I have been obligated to prevent it?”

But she couldn’t say the words. Because she had known. Because she
will
know if Daddy takes her riding again. Because remembering the screams crush her words like a trap crushing a hungry rat.

She crossed the room and ran her fingers along the edge of the sheet metal covering the window. Counting the four nails that held the metal in place. Daddy had built a prison fit only for the blind. He must have thought she was too crippled to escape. As if she were a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair. But, then, why did he bother to cover the window at all? Why bother to lock the door?

The whine of a car’s transmission pushing up a steep incline sounded in the cabin. Becky on the way. It seemed a little early, but Lorraine was too hungry to worry about tiny inconsistencies. She wanted to eat, to get out in the sun, even to bathe in the cold stream.

The car skidded to a stop, and a moment later hands fumbled at the lock on the door. Lorraine listened for Becky’s “Well how are
we
today?” What she got in return was a silence that brought her near to panic. Wondering exactly what she was going to do if it was Daddy instead of Becky.

“Becky? Is that you?” Lorraine labeled herself a coward for asking the question.

“Yes, Lorraine, it’s me.” The voice was oddly muffled, as though the speaker had a swollen tongue or a toothache. “Here is your dinner. I am afraid it’s cold, because I did not cook this morning.”

Lorraine accepted the basket, then, without thinking, reached out to run her fingertips over Becky’s face. She felt the spongy swelling around the eye and beneath the cheekbones, the deep split running across both lips.

“What happened, Becky? What happened to you?” Lorraine’s mind began to move even as she asked the question. Because she knew what had happened to Becky. Daddy had happened to Becky, and there had to be a way for her to use that.

“Oh, Lorraine, I just can’t understand Daddy. I know I am not perfect, but I do try so hard to please him.”

“How badly were you beaten?” No response, and Lorraine’s fingers continued to explore until Becky pulled away.

“My ribs are sure a’hurtin’.” Becky managed a short laugh. “Whew, I guess you will have to carry your own bucket today, Lorraine. I don’t believe I could manage it. The drive nearly shook me to pieces. But I did bring something for you, and if you will give me a minute, I’ll go fetch it right now.”

Lorraine listened to Becky’s retreating footsteps. She didn’t really care
what
Becky had brought her. The important thing is that Becky had brought
something.
That she had managed one small act of defiance.

Lorraine was not surprised when Becky wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. “Thank you, Becky. I know how much courage it took for you to bring it.”

“Well, Daddy is just so darn wrong about this. I mean if you got sick, what would we do? I said I would not let anything happen to you, Lorraine, and I did mean it. I swear I did.”

Lorraine put her arms around Becky and, very gently, drew her close. She tried to feel some sympathy for Becky’s predicament, for her life, but the effort threatened to summon up rage instead. Better, she decided, to do it cold.