Reprisal

May 19, 1969

Oh, Jimmy—what's wrong with you?

Carol Stevens stared down at her sleeping son and wanted to cry. Lying prone in his crib, pudgy arms and legs spread wide, round-faced with soft pink cheeks, wisps of dark hair clinging to his scalp, he was the picture of innocence. She studied the delicate venules in his closed eyelids and thought how beautiful he was.

As long as those eyelids stayed closed.

When they were open he was different. The innocence disappeared—the child disappeared. The eyes were old. They didn't move like the eyes of other infants, roving, trying to take in everything at once because everything was so new. Jimmy's eyes stared, they studied, they… penetrated. It was unnerving to have him watch you.

And Jimmy never smiled or laughed, never cooed or gurgled or blew bubbles. He did vocalize, though. Not random baby noises, but patterned sounds, as if he were trying to get his untrained vocal cords to function. Since his birth, his grandfather Jonah would sit here in the nursery with the door closed and talk to him in a low voice. Carol had listened at the door a number of times but could never quite make out what he was saying. But she was sure from the length of the sentences and the cadence of his speech that it wasn't baby talk.

Carol turned away from the crib and wandered to the window where she looked out on the Ouachita Mountains. Jonah had brought them here to rural Arkansas to hide until the baby was born. She'd followed his lead, too frightened by the madness she'd left behind to do anything else.

If only Jim were alive. He'd know how to handle this. He'd be able to step back and decide what to do about his son. But Jim had been dead a little over a year now, and Carol could not be cold and logical and rational about little Jimmy. He was their son, their flesh and blood, all she had left of Jim. She loved him as much as she feared him.

When she turned she saw that Jimmy was awake, sitting in the crib, staring at her with those cold eyes that started out blue but had darkened to brown within the past few months. He spoke to her. It was a baby's voice, high and soft. The words were garbled but clear enough to be understood. She had no doubt about what he said: "I'm hungry, woman. Bring me something to eat."

Carol screamed and fled the nursery.