Thirst (11 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

OUTCASTS

There had always been something about Hanna’s family that made people uncomfortable; something that no one could ever properly put into words.

Even before the controversial homicide, people made a point of walking on the other side of the road from the Wilkinsons. On a number of occasions, Hanna overheard other students, teachers and even total strangers saying, “There’s something wrong with that girl.”

Hanna could never figure it out. A plague never ceased infecting her family.

Even people who did not know her father, or what he did for a living, found Hanna’s presence uncomfortable. It was an incredibly unfortunate part of Hanna’s life.

Hanna’s mother became fatally ill after she gave birth to Hanna. She was a very small, fragile woman—shorter than five feet tall, weighing much less than ninety pounds. She was a beautiful woman—no one ever denied that.

Olga was the daughter of two lower class Russian farmers—the Pytrovichs. She was born in Russia, but her and her family moved across the world, just outside of Snowbrooke before she was old enough to walk.

She was the quietest person you would ever meet. In fact, she never spoke a word to anyone. The only people who had ever heard the young beauty speak were her parents, and eventually her future husband.

She did not like going into town much. She was happy living out on the family farm, with her parents and their dairy cows. Like Hanna, Olga spent her time writing poetry. She would sit out in the field and just write for hours, every single day.

The neighborhood boys were all obsessed with her. She was the definition of a Russian Bombshell. Her hair was long and soft, she always had a smile on her face, and she always wore the most beautiful dresses, which flowed down to her ankles. She would braid her hair and wrap it into a bun whenever she went into town. Women envied her marvelous perfection.

But whenever anyone spoke to her, she would just sheepishly look away. It did not take long for storeowners to learn to be quiet around her, and not make any eye contact. The only words that came out of their mouths were those that were vital to the transaction. “Four dollars and ninety cents.” Anything more and Olga would become uncomfortable.

Her unfathomable shyness led people to believe that she just did not understand any English. Everyone just assumed that she only spoke Russian, which was not true at all. She actually spoke very beautifully and articulately. Every sentence that came out of her mouth could have been a poem in itself.

Despite her reputation for being chronically quiet and shy, men could not resist her beauty. Every time Olga went out into public, nearly every man would ask her out on a date. Supposedly, one man even asked her out in front of his own wife—explaining that he “couldn’t bare to be with his wife knowing there was a woman as beautiful as Olga.” Some men even skipped asking her on dates, and went straight for the marriage proposal. Olga never said no—nor did she say yes. She never said anything at all.

When Olga was seventeen, she encountered Francis Wilkinson for the first time.

Francis Wilkinson was a nobody—as in, nobody knew that he even existed. Like Olga, he never spoke to anyone except for his own parents. He spent most of his time in his old family home, listening to the radio and staring out the window at the mountains. He had always loved the mountains.

He was a talented painter, but no one knew it. He loved painting mountains and landscapes. Whenever he finished a painting, he would wrap it up in an old sheet and hide it in the attic, so that no one would ever see it—despite it being breathtakingly incredible.

It was not until Francis was a teenager that he really started to venture out from his home. He took a sketchbook with him and went from place to place, drawing different areas around town. If people asked him what he was drawing, he would swiftly shut his sketchbook and awkwardly leave. His awkward demeanor made people uncomfortable. They thought he was rude—and to an extent, he was rude. When people tried to see what he was drawing, he would snarl at them like some wild boar. He had the nasty habit of muttering things to himself—things he assumed no one could hear.

However, he was wrong. People heard him. People heard him muttering how much he hated the town, and how “the cancer needs to wipe everyone out already.” He was always referring to some mystical cancer.

Eventually, Francis stopped sitting out in public. He found a beautiful view of the mountains in the gear room of the town’s clock tower, and started to spend his days there, drawing the mountains and the small town below. He always left the people out of his drawings; because he hated people, more than he hated plague infested cockroaches. At least the hypothetical cockroaches had the potential to wipe the people out.

People referred to Francis as “The Hunchback of Snowbrooke.” You could see him sitting in the window, looking out—day and night. Kids started to make up stories and rumors, which spread quickly around the town.

One day, while Francis was drawing the town from his favorite spot, he heard a noise. Someone was coming up the steps of the clock tower. Francis quickly closed his sketchbook and prepared to leave.

Olga Pytrovich emerged from the spiraling staircase. Without saying a word, or making a second of eye contact, she walked over to the clock tower window and sat down. Then, she started to write into her little poetry book.

Instead of leaving, Francis reluctantly sat back down, and continued to draw. The two said nothing to one another.

They simply sat in a peaceful silence.

The next day, they sat together in the tower again—and the next day, and the next day. For months, the two sat together, never muttering as much as a single word to the other.

Slowly, inch-by-inch, they sat closer together. One day, they sat right up against one another—still without muttering a single word. They never even looked over to see what the other person was creating. They understood one another at level no one else could possibly fathom—a peculiar connection of a peculiar magnitude.

Even on the coldest night, Olga and Francis sat together in that old clock tower. Olga would bring a warm blanket, and the two would share it as they stared out into the town, listening to Francis’ radio, and together, they silently scribbled into their books.

A year later, Francis decided to show Olga what he had been drawing. It was the most breathtaking drawing of her—capturing her magnificent beauty. It was the only portrait Francis ever drew—the only portrait Francis would ever draw. In the picture, Olga was wearing an incredible wedding dress, and standing at a snowy altar. Underneath the image were the words: “Will you marry me?”

For the first time ever, Olga spoke to Francis. “I will,” she said with a smile.

“I love you,” Francis said, breaking his own chronic silence.

“I love you too,” Olga said.

The two got married to an audience of four—just their own parents. All of the men in the town were shocked and confused. The most beautiful of God’s creations had married the mumbling and grumbling Hunchback of Snowbrooke.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

AN UNEXPECTED TRAGEDY

Olga became unexpectedly pregnant with Hanna immediately after the wedding.

But the pregnancy was complicated.

Because of Olga’s small size and weight, her body was not able to handle the woes of pregnancy. At three months, she became very ill and bed-ridden. Her body began to fail her, and she became increasingly weak.

Doctors kept naively assuring that it was normal for small women like Olga to experience difficult symptoms during pregnancy.

After Hanna was born, the symptoms persisted. Within days—Olga’s body began to shut down. Francis was an emotional wreck—completely devastated. He spent every dime he had brining in different doctors to try to muster up a solution—but there was none.

It was inevitable.
Olga was dying.

Unable to fathom the painful death of their daughter, Olga’s parents had one final reluctant idea. They explained to Francis that Olga could be saved, but it involved returning to Russia, and never coming back. Francis could not understand why, but the Pytrovichs would say no more.

Francis wanted his wife to survive—so he reluctantly agreed to let the Pytrovichs take Olga back to Russia, despite knowing that it meant never seeing her again.

In case Francis’ life had not become difficult enough, his parents passed away just a few weeks later from sudden and unexpected natural causes.

Francis was left raising Hanna alone. He had no money and he had no knowledge of how to raise a child. Life had taken a swift turn.

Like her parents, Hanna was extremely quiet and shy. In her first few years of school, she said nothing at all—even when her teachers demanded she speak. Because of chronic silence, she never made any friends. As kids started to form little friend circles, Hanna found herself left out.

During lunch and recess, she would sit under the school stairs, where no one would see her. Kids started to make up stories about her, and called her “The school troll.”

Hanna’s teachers put the blame on Francis, who was struggling to make ends meet. Forced to work double and even triple shifts at his work to pay the bills, Francis was not able to make it to parent-teacher meetings, school plays or any of the school meet-and-greets. He did not help with homework and he never filled out any of the field trip forms.

Desperate for money, Francis took a job at the local high-security prison, as a security guard—a dangerous job for a new father. Unfortunately, it was the only job that was hiring. Because no one else wanted to do it. The only reason the job was available was that an inmate stabbed the last guard to death. Because the prison was so understaffed, Francis often worked well over his scheduled hours.

One day, Francis received a call from Hanna’s school. Hanna’s teachers demanded that Hanna see a psychiatrist about her social anxiety—blaming it on her poor performance.

The psychiatrist was expensive, but Francis wanted his daughter to be normal and accepted—and to not have to suffer through the familiar woes of his own lousy childhood. Hanna began seeing a local therapist about her fear of speaking and socializing.

No matter how many shifts Francis picked up, he could not make quite enough for the mortgage, groceries, the expensive heating bill, and the pricey therapist.

But there was a glimmer of a silver lining. Luckily for Francis, for the first time in forty years, the ban on capital punishment was lifted—the death sentence became reinstated as an attempt to control prison overpopulation. Despite the lucrative pay increase, none of the other prison employees would take the new prison’s newest position: Executioner.

But Francis was desperate, and the money was the solution to his financial troubles.

Francis Wilkinson became the town executioner.

The job was simple—pull the lever to activate the electrical current to the chair. It was a job that took a few minutes every day—for double the income of his usual sixteen-hour day.

However, the guilt was twenty-four hours.

It did not take long for the local students to learn that the school troll’s father was the local executioner. She was tormented to no end. Even the teachers looked at her with disgust. One day, she opened her locker to find all of her belongings soaked in pig’s blood.

Their house was frequently vandalized. Almost every night they were bombarded with eggs, toilet paper and flaming bags of dog shit—not to mention, more pig’s blood.

One day, Hanna’s “career preparation class” received an unfortunate assignment: Write an essay about your father or mother, and what they do for a living.

When Hanna’s father returned from his day’s work, Hanna began to ask questions for her paper. Francis did not want to divulge any details, but Hanna was persistent.

“Just don’t write about my job,” Hanna’s father insisted.

“But I don’t have a choice,” Hanna said.

“Write about something else. Write about your favorite poet.”

“But that isn’t the assignment, dad.”

“Or you can make up a story. It could be fun.”

“But dad—that’s not the assignment. I don’t want to fail. They will fail me again.”

“Your teachers will understand, Hanna.”

“Your job isn’t anything to be ashamed of. You told me yourself—someone has to do it.”

“I lied,” Francis said, starting to get frustrated.

“What do you mean, you lied?”

“No one has to do it—If everyone said ‘no’, they couldn’t force it on someone. No one has to do anything in life.”

“But they’re bad people who deserve it—Right? That’s why you do it...”

“Some are bad—Some could be innocent. None of them deserve it.”

“So why do you do it? Why not do something else?” Hanna asked.

“You’ll understand when you’re an adult.”

“But that doesn’t help me now—for the assignment,” Hanna persisted.

“Fuck the assignment! The assignment isn’t fucking important,” Francis snapped. “It’s just an assignment—it’s stupid and it doesn’t matter,” Francis yelled. “There are more important things in life than some fucking assignment.”

Hanna was silent as she stared down at her feet. It was not the first time she had heard her father scream in her face. “But I’ll fail…” Hanna began to cry.

“Then you’ll fail. So be it.”

“But that’s not fair,” Hanna said.

“Life isn’t fair,” Francis said as he walked up to his bedroom and slammed the door.

Francis was far from what you would call a patient, tempered person. He was a great father, and everything he did, he did for Hanna—including his less than ideal job. Between the emotional abuse from the townspeople, the guilt from his work and coping with Olga’s permanent absence—things were not easy, and it was surprising that his outbursts were as isolated as they were.

Hanna was young and still very ignorant. She loved her father, but she did not understand why he was angry with her. The reality was he was not angry with her. In his moment of weakness, he had just taken his anger out on her. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet again.

Crack! Splat!

As she sat down to try to muster up an assignment, eggs began to strike the side of the house.

Tired of the emotional abuse from the town, Hanna was also feeling angry. Just like her father, she needed an outlet for her frustrations.

She found one.

What she did not realize was—her moment of weakness would have dire consequences that would follow her around for her entire lifetime.