My Sister's Keeper (41 page)

As his shadow followed him into the barn, I grasped a chunk of firewood, flattened myself against the rear of the building, and treaded on quaking legs to the edge of the doorway. Drunk on hate, I didn’t care about the law. I didn’t care about the other lives he’d torn apart. He had destroyed my sister and I wanted to punish him for it. I wanted to be the one that did it, to be the one to tell her, to see the sparkle return to her eyes when I gave her the news.

I could smell his sweat and the burnt gunpowder that lingered in his wake. I listened to his footsteps as he moved about on the dirt floor inside, dragging something, bumping something, and another heavy thump. My heart pulsed in my neck as his steps came near the door. I waited with the wood cocked, ready to swing. It would be quick and there’d be no compassion as he’d given none to Martha. Wind blowing in off the river chilled the perspiration on my skin as I waited, until his footsteps faded off in another direction and a door elsewhere squeaked and bumped.

I dared to peer into the room, into the stabbing silver light from the lantern consuming its fuel in a perpetual inhale. Scott was gone and so were Ashleigh and her gun. I leaned farther into the room and heard a frightened scream.

Sydney?

Running past the door as fast as I could on my swollen ankle, I rounded the other end of the barn and tripped over a body in the grass landing face down in the dirt, my camera under me.

Clutching my hip, I rolled to the side and bent low over a warm body. It was Sam. There was a dark stain in the dirt beside his head. I laid an ear to his chest, detected a slight heartbeat, and shook him. “Sam.” He didn’t respond. I searched him for a gun, but found only an empty holster and a flashlight. I left the camera, took his flashlight, and ran beyond the house to where I’d left Sydney.

I whispered in the dark, “Sydney?” There was no answer. “Sydney!” I switched the light on and I could see that there’d been a struggle. One of Sidney’s shoes lay in the grass and there was a distinctive odor in the air that I recognized from having my tonsils removed as a child.
Ether!

I felt a clamp squeeze down on my chest. I clutched the shoe. The heat of her foot was still in it. I tracked footprints around the back of the house, through waist-deep weeds and soggy earth, ending in standing water that seeped into my shoes. I hobbled back toward the barn spotting a young woman frozen on the pier, her eyes wide with fear as she gazed toward the light coming from the barn. Turning the corner, I glimpsed Scott lugging an unconscious Sydney into the back door of the barn.

I bent forward gasping for air, trembling.
I had to do something, and I had to do it now!
I took a deep breath, tightened my grip on the flashlight, and charged through the doorway throwing every ounce of weight and strength I could muster into Scott as he held Sydney over one of the polyethylene tanks. Knocking him forward, I fell on him beating him relentlessly with the steel light. I swung with both hands chasing after him as he tried to crawl away on his back, drawing blood from his face with every blow. Insane with rage, I unleashed a vicious barrage onto him—a blow for every bully that had ever taunted me. I kept banging and smashing until he locked my arms with his legs and wrestled the light out of my hands. Dragging me to the ground, he rolled on top of me crushing the air out of my lungs, jamming an elbow into my throat cutting off my air.

Struggling against his incredible bear-like strength, I tried to roll out from under him, to snatch a quick breath, but his fist smashed into my face. I heard my nose crack and tasted blood in the back of my throat. I twisted and yanked at his arm feeling the energy leaving my oxygen-starved body. I thought of my mother trudging back and forth between hospital rooms comforting a dying husband on one floor and begging her only daughter to wake up on another. I saw the tortured wail form on her face when told that her only son was dead. I saw the light fade from her eyes, heard her agonizing sobs, and felt her slipping away from reality as I drifted toward unconsciousness.
God, have mercy on my mother!

My hands clawed at Scott’s head seeking a hold. My nails ripped at his ears and skin. My right thumb found his left eye and I dug the nail in with all my remaining strength. He rattled his head and bashed his elbow against my arm, but I refused to let go forcing my nail deeper into his eye. He whipped his head from side to side lessening the pressure on my neck and I gasped a lungful of air. He pummeled my face with his fists and whacked my head against the dirt floor, but I could breathe and with every breath my grip got stronger.

I saw the color rush back into my mother’s face as the tip of my thumb slipped behind his eyeball. He grabbed my wrist with both hands and wrenched my hand away; his bloody eye falling against his cheek dangling from muscles, sinews, and nerves.

Reeling back, he held his eye with one hand and pointed his gun at me with the other—the white of his good eye stark against his bloody face, agony contorting his features.

“
You fuck!” He pulled the trigger and I saw the bullet leave the barrel in a puff of white smoke. I felt the impact as I spun to my left and came face to face with Sydney. Gazing upon her slumbering eyes, I felt a burning in my right arm and a tingling in my fingers. Reaching up, I touched those tingling fingertips to her lips.

Life is a journey of chance and choices; a maze of paths each leading to a different venture and each holding a lesson to be learned through pain and consequence. There’s no way to know what lies at the other end of a particular path before you start down it.
And there’s no way back.

My pilgrimage had brought me to Sydney, and hers to me. Our lives had intertwined for a brief moment in time, but I knew I could never be the man she needed, or give Sydney the life she deserved. I knew, too, that I would not be able to live without her. I tasted the salt as tears dripped into my mouth.

“
Let her go, please,” I uttered.

“
You…ripped…my…fucking…eye…out!”
he screamed attempting to push it back into its socket.

“
Please. Let her go.”

He jammed the pistol against Sydney’s temple.

“
No, please!”

“
Kiss my ass!” His finger squeezed the trigger. I shut my eyes and heard the hammer click, but the gun did not fire. I opened my eyes and saw Sydney still sleeping quietly.

I grabbed his pant leg. “Please—”

He kicked me in the throat with his shoe. “Get up, damn it!” Grasping the back of my collar, he lifted me off the ground and swung me against a wooden bench loaded with steel tractor parts and chains that gouged my face and tore my right ear. “Get up!” The burning in my arm flared with hot pain. I clenched my teeth and rolled facedown onto the dirt floor pulling my knees up under me.

“
I said ‘Get up!’” He whipped the barrel of the gun against my head, the sight cutting a gash behind my ear. Heaving me off the floor, he bowled me into the plastic drums sending them toppling and crashing above and beneath me. Pain ravaged my right arm as blood saturated the sleeve. Pushing up on my left hand, I rolled to the right, propped my back against the wall, and was reaching for the top of an upright drum when I spied Ashleigh’s pistol lying under an overturned tank. It had a thick barrel and finger grooves in the grip. I could see that at least some of the bullets in the cylinder had not been fired.

“
Okay! I’m coming,” I groaned, clenching my teeth against the pains as I struggled to rise from the ground. As I got to my feet and turned to face him, a powerful punch landed on my right cheek.

I AWOKE A SHORT TIME LATER lying face down on the dirt floor. Scott was leaning over Sydney with his back to me folding her arms over her chest. I twisted my head and looked for Ashleigh’s gun, but did not see it. Grunting as he lifted her, he carried her to an open, upright tank, and lowered her into it. The eye dangled against his bloody cheek jerking grotesquely whenever his other eye moved. Releasing her, he whipped his gun from his belt and aimed at me as she settled with a thud against the bottom of the barrel.

“
Yes,” he said, his eye swinging. “I reloaded while you slept.” To prove his point, he fired the gun into a barrel behind me, the percussion ringing in my ears long after the bullet stopped spinning around the empty drum. “How do I look, Baimbridge?” he said leaning over me holding his eye in place. “Huh?” He fired another round that pinged off a piece of iron, ricocheted off a wall, and rolled across the dirt to his feet collecting dust. “Do you think that little girl on my boat is going to want to screw me tonight? Huh?”

“
She can thank me later.”

“
Fuck you!” He kicked me in the kidney. “Get up!”

As I struggled to my feet, he moved around me, stuffed his gun in a holster, then lowered his head and charged me, striking me hard in the chest, knocking me backward against the barrels, flipping my legs high in the air. Tumbling headfirst into a tank, I slide down against Sydney with my legs folded painfully under me. I couldn’t budge. These tanks surely held at least a hundred gallons, but there was hardly enough room for one person, much less
two
. Blood settled in my head. I couldn’t get my weight off Sydney. I felt I was crushing her. There was nothing to grab hold of, no way to pull up. I was as helpless as a turtle on its back. It was suffocating.

“
For God’s sake, Scott, don’t do this to Sydney. Let her out!”

I squirmed and rocked the tank pushing with my one good hand trying to back out, to take the pressure off Sydney, but my movement only wedged me in tighter. He hammered my knees with the lid, compacting me deeper into the cylinder, and laid his weight on top of it to set the latches, casting us into near total silence. The sound of the metal clasps snapping into place around the container reverberated through the drum like a nail-gun sealing the lid of a coffin.

55

T
HE TEMPERATURE INSIDE THE DRUM instantly began to rise and my claustrophobia drove me into a panic. Without air, we would suffocate in minutes. There was light coming through the opaque sides and I could see shadows moving around it as the drum tipped and fell on its side slamming us against the hard shell. My heart pounded so loudly I could hear it. A drum within a drum. Fear gripped me, its sharp spears ripping my senses. I pressed my knees against the lid and pushed. My muscles cramped, but nothing gave way.

Scott’s shadow fell over the barrel and I could hear his clothes rubbing against it as we began to roll—the heavy container crunching the ground like shoes on soft rocks. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it, Baimbridge?” he grunted. “You and Sydney together forever? Is that what you wanted, Baimbridge?”

The tank turned another revolution. My right arm was locked behind my back, and I could barely move my left. The temperature in the cylinder climbed rapidly and perspiration poured from me. “Please, Scott. Let her out! She’s never done anything to you!”

“
You don’t know the first goddamned thing about Sydney and me!” His body rubbed the barrel as he lay against it, pushing with his feet, grunting, forcing it to roll in the soft dirt. Sydney’s knees were crammed against her chest and my chin jabbed her shoulder. As we tumbled, Sydney rolled on top of me, moaned, and tried to move. We rolled again and I fell into her and I heard the air press from her lungs. Sweat burned my eyes.

“
Richard?” she whispered near my ear. “I can’t breathe.”

I could hear my weight forcing the air out of her as we rolled. “I’m trying to keep my weight off of you.”

“
It’s hot.” She panted, then screamed. “Let us out! We can’t breathe!”

Her cries pierced my ears and gave me strength. I tensed my body and swelled in size trying to burst the thick plastic container open like Superman, but I was not Superman.

Scott pounded his hand against the drum. “I love it!”

“
Shhh. Try to relax,” I whispered to Sydney as sweat rolled around my neck as the tank tumbled. “Take slow breaths.” The light in the tank grew dimmer as it rolled away from the lantern until there was none. I forced my muscles to go limp and exhaled as her lungs expanded against me. When she exhaled, I inhaled. “We’re going to have to take turns breathing.”

“
What’s he doing? Why are we rolling?”

“
He’s going to drop us in the canal.”

The barrel bumped something and tilted up at one end.

Sydney quivered. “What are we going to do?’

“
He’s just trying to scare us,” I lied. I knew what was going to happen.

I felt her body quaking with silent sobs. “I’m sorry, Richard.”

“
For what?” I gasped.

“
For getting you involved.”

I panted. “You just gave me the best two weeks of my life.” As the tank began to move again, it bumped every few inches and I knew we were on that short pier. As it hit each plank, it pounded us against each other, knocking the last of the air from our lungs. With every bump a new image flashed through my mind. Martha and I lying on a hill picking out rabbits and foxes and elephants in summer clouds. Dad on a tirade, his fingernails cutting into my jaw as he screamed and spit into my face. Martha fading away in that hospital bed while nurses worked to pull her back. Sydney laying naked against my back in the shower her arms moving over my chest and abdomen.