Fear the Night

37

1994

“C’mon, Dante! The girls are waiting!”

Orvey was eager to leave. The ranch was holding what had become its annual mixer, an outdoor dance in the cool December Arizona evening. The girls from across the arroyo would be there, along with a five-piece band trucked in from Tucson. Strong had determined that all his charges on the ranch would learn to dance at least well enough to negotiate a crowded floor. This dance floor wouldn’t be crowded, but there’d be few standing and watching instead of struggling to keep time with the amateur band’s persistent tempo.

Dante didn’t bother answering Orvey. He finished brushing his teeth, then rinsed out his mouth with Listerene to ensure good breath. Wiping his lips with a towel, he smiled at himself in the mirror. A tanned, handsome youth smiled back at him. In fact, dressed as he was in a blazer and tie, his black wig perfectly adjusted to blend with his sideburns, Dante was incredibly handsome. Possibly knowing the pain caused in his young life by circumstances, then by hideous scarring, the surgeons had gone too far, made him somehow too attractive. His were the kind of features that graced movie posters and romantic fantasies of foolish girls.

Verna wasn’t foolish and didn’t think Dante was too attractive. She’d made it clear she’d be waiting for him tonight and expected the first-and the last-dance. This was the closest thing to a date the protective and puritanical Strong would allow.

The other boys were jealous but didn’t act on it. Dante, with his accomplishments and new handsomeness, had reached a place in their estimation where he was untouchable. And if anyone did cause pain or even inconvenience for Dante, they would have to deal with Adam Strong.

Strong made no secret of his favoritism when it came to Dante. He even from time to time slipped and referred to him as his son. He figured Dante, unlike Strong himself, had earned the hard way everything he had.

Dante’s long and often agonizing series of cosmetic surgeries to restore his burned features had been at the Strong Foundation’s expense. The result was the handsome reflection in the mirror. The effect could be ruined only if he removed his wig. Because of his burns, hair grew only over half his skull. Unless he kept his head cleanly shaved, the odd pattern of hair growth was obvious and, along with the unusual smooth texture of his flesh, gave the definite impression that he hadn’t been born with his good looks. Rather than shave his head almost daily, Dante often wore a wig.

Despite the nearly perfect image in the mirror, he sometimes looked more closely and could see beneath the surface of his new flesh and form. If he failed to look away, the old Dante emerged through the thin surface flesh and grinned hideously at him, and sometimes wept.

That was happening less often lately, but still it was happening.

Not tonight, though.

Not tonight.

“C’mon, Dante!”

Orvey again.

Dante switched off the bathroom light and hurried through the barracks and outside to join the other boys.

There were half a dozen of them, lounging around in sloppily knotted ties, and blazers that didn’t quite fit, all waiting for Dante. They seemed oblivious of the moths circling and darting around them in the pool of light cast by the barracks’ outside fixture. Hanley, a skinny six-footer from South Carolina, was smoking a cigarette, keeping it cupped in his hand so the ember wouldn’t be visible, fooling no one.

“You busy jerkin’ off or somethin’?” Orvey asked jokingly. The others laughed. “We’re already late.”

“What’s it matter?” Hanley asked. “Who else they gonna dance with?”

“You guys don’t wanna go, I’ll dance with all of ’em,” someone said.

Dante didn’t bother joining the banter.

With his friends, his admirers, he strolled through the cooling evening toward the distant music, voices, and softly hued light from colored paper lanterns, toward Verna and a dream almost real.

In the years that followed, nothing could stop Dante. Perhaps it was the successful surgery-that certainly had to help. But he grew in confidence and ability every year. He graduated from Nailsville High School with honors, then left the ranch to attend Arizona State University. Weekends he drove home from college in the old Ford pickup Strong had given him and stayed at the ranch.

Maintaining a 4. 0 grade point average was no problem, and Dante dated as often as he chose. But it was still Verna he thought of and saw most often. She planned on remaining at the ranch until she began college next year, when she thought she’d be psychologically strong enough to go out on her own, attending the same school as Dante. He’d already made up his mind that if she weren’t accepted, he’d go to school elsewhere, so they could be together.

It was a rainy weeknight, and Dante was stretched out on his bunk in his dorm room, reading Ecce Romani, when he took Adam Strong’s phone call.

As soon as he heard the tone of Strong’s voice, Dante sat up and the book hit the floor. He suspected something was wrong, but he would never have guessed what. He was afraid to guess.

“Verna has left the ranch, Dante.”

Dante lay back, stunned. “Left? Why?”

“She went to live with relatives.”

“She doesn’t have any living relatives.”

“Apparently she does.”

“Where?” Dante’s questions were automatic; he was still trying to digest this.

“She’d rather keep it a secret.”

Relatives. Verna had never talked about relatives. None she cared about, anyway, or who cared about her. “So where were these relatives when she needed them?”

“Not helping her as they should have. But that’s beside the point. They want to help her now.”

“When she doesn’t need their help.”

“She needs it, Dante. She’s going to have a baby.”

Dante’s mind whirled. Each time he’d made love with Verna he’d used a condom. She’d also taken birth control pills. They both knew how an early, unwanted pregnancy could alter their lives. Neither wanted to take the chance.

But nothing was perfect. God! A baby! Maybe one of the condoms-”

“Orvey’s left the ranch, too, Dante.”

It took Dante a few seconds to grasp what Strong had told him. “You mean with Verna?”

“No. Maybe that’s what he should have done. He said he didn’t have it in him, that he was afraid and couldn’t make it. And Verna didn’t want him. I think probably they were both right.”

“Damn it!” Dante said. He kept repeating it, slamming his fist into his pillow.

Strong must have heard the softened blows over the phone. “You want to come back to the ranch for a few days, Dante? Your grades can take it.”

“You sure Orvey isn’t with Verna?”

“He went the opposite direction.” There was disdain in Strong’s voice.

“Then Verna’s all alone with this.”

“It’s how she wants it. And she’s got family, Dante.”

“I oughta. . God, I don’t know!”

“She doesn’t want to see you again. She’s thought it out. You’ve gotta respect her wishes, Dante. She. . left a letter for you. I mailed it yesterday, figuring once I did that, I’d get up the courage to call you rather than have you read it cold. It should be in today’s mail.”

“Damn it, Adam!” Dante couldn’t hold back the sobs any longer.

“C’mon home, son. Come home to the ranch.”

Dante didn’t answer until he got his gasping sobs under control. He felt cold, but he noticed with surprise that his hands were sweating, slippery on the phone. “This weekend,” he said. “I can’t get there till this weekend. I’ve got a big calculus test.”

“Whatever you want,” Strong said. He sounded as if he might start sobbing himself.

“Goddamn that Orvey! Why the fuck-”

“You’ve gotta get used to it, Dante. It’s something that happened. A part of life you’ve got no choice but to learn to live with.”

“Don’t I know it?”

“You gonna be okay there by yourself?”

“I’ve always been okay by myself.”

“Dante, that’s not right. You don’t have to think like that anymore.”

“I know, Adam.” Dante wiped his nose with the back of his wrist. “Thanks for calling and letting me know.”

“I wish it hadn’t been necessary. I sure as hell do.”

Though his eyes brimmed with tears, Dante had to smile. Adam Strong using profanity. It didn’t happen very often. That touched Dante more than anything.

Verna, Orvey, they didn’t just mess themselves up; even if they didn’t mean to, they hurt a lot of people, caused so much pain. It might go on for years.

A part of life. .

“Thanks again,” Dante said softly, and hung up.

He felt so much older lying there. Like an old man who’d somehow found himself in a young man’s room. He realized he’d been old the first day he arrived at the ranch. Too much of him had died after his father killed his mother.

He’d begun to die when the gun his father aimed at him clicked on a bullet that hadn’t fired.

Verna’s letter wasn’t in that afternoon’s mail, but it arrived the next day. Dante didn’t open it. He knew why Verna didn’t want him, the only reason it could be: she’d seen beneath the thin new skin to the old Dante, the real Dante. He’d stared into the mirror last night and seen the real Dante himself, like sharp bones pushing through the flesh of a corpse.

He used both hands to crumple the unopened envelope with Verna’s handwriting on it into as small a damaged object as possible, then dropped it in one of the trash receptacles that were placed around the campus.

Verna was simply something that had happened.

Something in the past.