Blood Men

chapter thirteen

I wake up and everything is as it should be. My wife is alive. We’ve bought the new house. Sam is Sam and Mogo is being Mogo. Then those thoughts become blurred, my bedroom comes into focus, and Jodie isn’t in bed next to me. I reach over and her side is cold, untouched, and then it all comes racing back, as it did yesterday morning, and every morning since the. . for some reason I think accident but that’s the wrong word. Since the what?

The execution the voice says, and I agree, though Dean Wellington would say “incident.”

It’s after eight already. Normally Sam would be up watching cartoons and making a mess, but this morning she’s still asleep, the last few days. .

Since the execution. .

The last few days since the execution she’s been sleeping later.

I sit on the porch and eat cereal directly out of the packet. The Tuesday-morning sun is slowly climbing into the sky. There’s a truck and a cherry picker out in the street about half a block away, motors and chainsaws making plenty of noise as they trim tops of trees away from the power lines. My head is slightly fuzzy and my mouth feels like I spent time last night licking the carpet. The cereal is dry and sticks to the roof of it. I think about work and the file I should be working on, and whether not going in today and no longer giving a damn about it means I no longer have a job. I wonder what kind of letter Dean Wellington would send if he knew I was dropping from one income down to none.

The phone rings and I head inside for it, wanting to stop it from waking Sam.

“Jack?”

The voice is familiar in the way you can flick on the radio and hear a song you haven’t heard in twenty years and know how it goes. When you hear that song, your mind starts scrambling, taking you back to a time when you heard it last. Good memory or bad, you’re in that moment again, the smells, the sounds, the sights, they’re all there.

“Who is this?” I ask, and I remember the handcuffs, the police, the smile on his face when he watched me from the back of the police car. I remember the dog, I remember the weight of the piece of steak in the plastic bag. I can feel the cold sunlight, my school uniform, my mother holding my hand and holding Belinda’s hand. I can remember the neighbors pouring out of their houses, the women with their hands over their mouths in shock, the men shaking their heads, the long line of police cars, dozens of cops, all showing up in force as if to arrest a small army. I remember the media vans, the photographers.

“Jack, it’s me. It’s your father.”

I don’t say anything. The kitchen disappears, the world disappears, all fading away as the front door of my childhood home appears, the policemen, the disgust on their faces. Of course that childhood home is gone now. About three months after Mum died, when I was living with Belinda at my grandparents’, somebody went along and set fire to that house. Nobody was ever caught. I always thought maybe Belinda did it, but it could have been anybody. Dad hurt a lot of people.

“I’m calling to-”

“I don’t care why you’re calling,” I say, and I tighten my hand on the phone and for some reason, for some freaky-shit-get-the-hell-out-of-here kinda reason, I don’t hang up.

“I’m calling to tell you how sorry I am.”

I let his sentence hang and he waits patiently. I guess my father is used to being patient.

“You’ve had twenty years to apologize,” I say. “Anyway, you’re saying it to the wrong person, and you picked the worst damn time to do it.”

“Not. . not about the past, Jack. I’m ringing to tell you how sorry I am about Jodie. I wish things had been different. For her. For you. For everybody.”

“How the hell do you know about Jodie?” I ask. “How do you know a damn thing about me or Jodie?”

“This isn’t the moon they’re keeping us locked away on, Jack.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“What?”

“Jack. Don’t call me Jack.”

“Oh? What am I supposed to call you?”

“Don’t call me anything. What the hell do you want? You ringing to tell me you know what it’s like to lose somebody? Like the way you lost Mum and Belinda?”

“I know you’re angry at me.”

“No. How could I possibly be angry at you? You’ve really been there for me, a real role model.”

“Jack. .”

“What do you want, Dad?” I ask, immediately nauseous at how comfortable the word “Dad” feels in my mouth. I’m nine years old all over again. The photo that told the world I was the son of a serial killer flashes into my mind. The memory turns as black and white as the picture. I’m holding on to my father, the police are taking him away, and my mum is trying to separate us, black-and-white tears spilling down my black-and-white face. The policemen weren’t friendly toward any of us. None of them wanted to touch me or push me away, as if they feared the killer gene they were so sure I would inherit could contaminate them, that it would jump from me and land on their hands and burrow under their skin. It would tell them bad things and make them suck on the end of a pistol at the end of a long tiring day. They looked at my mother and my sister and me with open hatred, so sure all of us had been in on the action, that Dad had brought the hookers home for the holidays, that we’d taken turns at draining the life out of them, raping them, a good-ol’-splasharoo in blood, the son and daughter committing the sins of the mother and father.

“I want to see you,” my dad says, snapping me out of the memory, and my skin crawls, not at his request, but in the undeniable knowledge that yes indeed I’m going to go and see him.

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“I’m busy.”

“It’s important.”

“Being a father is important. Not killing eleven women is important. You staying locked up is important.”

“I’m still your father. You can deny it as much as you want, but-”

“I do deny it.”

“I’m sorry the way it worked out.”

“You make it sound like you had a different plan. How many more would have died, Dad? Another dozen?”

“We’ll talk about it when you get here.”

“Go to hell,” I say.

“I’m already there,” he says. “Please, son, it’s important I see you,” he says, and he hangs up, and I’m angry at his arrogance as he leaves me holding the phone. I’m scared at the prospect of seeing him, yet curious too, and perhaps, yes, just a spark of this-perhaps a little excited.

“Who was on the phone, Daddy?” Sam asks.

I didn’t even know she was in the kitchen. I turn toward her. She’s still wearing her pajamas, the teddy bear clutched under her arm, and for the first time I realize that she’s hardly put that teddy bear down since her mother died. The bear’s name is Mr. Fluff ’n’ Stuff, and I bought him for Sam’s first birthday. The bear has fared rather well over the five and a half years since then, but he’s tattered around the edges and grubby in places, and if you asked the bear he’d probably tell you he was ready for retirement.

“It was nobody,” I say.

“You called him Dad.”

“You must have misheard,” I say, and it’s a small lie but it hurts like a big one.

“You did. I heard you.”

“I’m sorry, baby, you’re right. I did say Dad.”

“Am I going to live with them?”

“What?”

“Daddy-Nat and Gramma,” she says, and she thinks that’s who I was talking to.

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. Mummy’s gone and I thought you might want a new family now.”

“Is that what somebody told you?” I say, immediately. .

Make them suffer!

. . angry at my in-laws for poisoning her mind like that. I keep my voice low and calm and friendly, a singsong voice, like when the cat sits at the door and I’m trying to convince him to come in.

“No, nobody told me. But on TV sometimes that’s what happens. Is that why Mummy left? Because she didn’t want to be with me anymore?”

“Of course not, baby,” I say, and I crouch down in front of her. “Mummy loves you very much, I know that-”

“You smell like the art teacher,” Sam says, interrupting me.

“Huh?”

“After lunch sometimes when we have art. He has the same aftershave.”

I smile. No more beer for Daddy. “Give Daddy a big hug, then eat some breakfast. I’m going to drop you off at Daddy-Nat’s and Grandma’s house for a bit. I have somebody I have to see, but I promise I won’t be long. I love you, sweetie.”

“I don’t want cereal,” she says.

“You can have what you want,” I tell her, which is a mistake, because thirty minutes later we’re sitting in a McDonald’s, the day heating up, and all I can think about is my father and what it is he wants to tell me.