The Devil's Alphabet

Chapter 12

THEY’D COME TO him Sunday morning as he lay sprawled out on the grass. The voices crooned to him, making pitying, motherly sounds. Hands brushed the hair from his eyes, caressed the welts on his face.

Pax pushed himself onto his back, groaned. A voice like chocolate said, “There there. We got you.”

Small hands slipped under thighs and waist—“One, two …”—and then he was off the ground and swaying. Bruised skin awoke. Nerves totaled up damages.

“Wait,” he said. His voice cracked.

He forced open one eye. Two beta children cradled him between them, moving sideways toward the house. The girls were identical, with placid faces the color of wine.

“I can walk,” he said.

“Are you sure?” the girl to his left said, and the other one said, “We got tired of waiting.”

The sky vanished as they carried him inside the house. His father’s house; even with his eyes closed he would have known it from the smell.

They lifted him easily onto the couch. They carefully peeled off his shirt, damp from dew, and tsked at his bruises. They found washrags and dabbed at the crusts of blood on his face, then plastered him with Band-Aids. He asked for aspirin and they brought him two ancient powdery tablets and a water glass. The water pinked with his blood.

They tucked a blanket around Pax, then one of them sat next to him while the other attended to him. The girls traded places every ten or fifteen minutes. Sometime in the early afternoon they brought him Campbell’s tomato soup and packets of Lance crackers they dug out of their backpacks.

The girls seemed most comfortable when Pax was asleep; several times he dozed, and he’d wake to hear them babbling to him and over him—about his injuries, or what was on TV, or some minor adventure they’d had in the woods—but when he spoke or asked them a question they would go silent, change the channel, or slip from the room to bring him Ziploc bags freshly packed with ice cubes.

He woke once to the phone ringing. He shouted for them not to answer it, and the girls obeyed: They looked at the phone as it rang seven, eight times before going silent. A few minutes later it rang again and he told them to unplug it.

Sometime before dusk they said that they had to leave, but they wouldn’t stop fussing over him.

“Girls,” he said. He still couldn’t tell them apart. Was it Rainy in the jeans with the torn knee, and Sandra in the dress? “Thank you. I’m fine now.” His lips were swollen and his jaw ached, so the words came out glued.

“We’ll be back in the morning,” one of them said, and the other said, “Don’t you worry.” They slung their packs onto their shoulders and slipped out the door.

———

The nightmares woke him, or else it was the pounding headache, or the stale scent of his father lingering in the air. He tried to sit up and his ribs scraped painfully. It took him many small movements to ease onto his side, then lever himself onto his feet. He shuffled to the bathroom, edged past the gigantic toilet, and flicked on the light above the sink. He opened the mirrored door to the medicine cabinet before he could look too closely at his reflection.

He turned on the faucet, splashed water onto his face and let it run down his neck. He pushed a handful of aspirin into his mouth and bent, wincing, to drink from the tap.

He’d been dreaming of fists, and elbows, and knees.

It had taken him only seconds to surrender everything, to submit. One punch, really. He was on the ground, his cheek scraping the pavement, before he registered the blur of the fist that struck him. He raised his hand as if signaling, Yes, that was a good one, you got me. Then Clete began the beating in earnest.

Pax didn’t even try to fight back. When he was on the ground he tried to curl into a ball. When they held him against the car it was all he could do to raise his forearms to deflect some of the blows, but even that token of defiance seemed to anger Clete more. At first Pax had tried pleading with them—God knows what he tried to say—but soon he gave up trying to speak. He didn’t disassociate. He didn’t retreat to some safe place in his mind. He didn’t endure. The pain seemed to turn him inside out like a reversible coat. All the nerves on the outside. Every thought was the same thought, over and over: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

He walked back past his old bedroom to the guest room. Without turning on the light he found the bed and gingerly lay down. Sleep seemed impossible now. Each strained muscle insisted on reporting in, each cut and bruise jostled to inscribe its name and serial number on his brain. His head throbbed. Incredibly, none of these sensations drowned out the ache he felt for his father. The craving was still there, skulking like a coyote outside the circle of a fire.

We don’t live in our bodies, he thought. We are our bodies. A simple thing, but he kept forgetting it.

In the morning he heard someone rummaging through the kitchen, clinking dishes and closing cabinets. He managed to walk down the hallway and found them setting out bowls and pouring candy-colored cereal from a box he didn’t recognize. A plastic gallon jug of milk sat on the counter.

“Don’t you guys ever knock?”

One of the girls yelped in surprise; then both of them erupted into quacking laughter. It was the first time he’d seen either one of them laugh.

“You scared us!” one said, and the other said, “We’re not ready! Go back!”

He raised his hands and stepped back around the corner. “I hope you’re not using milk from the fridge,” he said. “I can’t vouch for anything in there.” Come to think of it, there hadn’t been anything in the refrigerator but condiment bottles. The girls must have brought their own milk and food.

After a few minutes they ushered him into the kitchen and sat him down at the table. One of them—the one in the yellow floppy dress—tucked a napkin into the neck of his T-shirt. The napkin dropped off a second later and he put it in his lap.

The cereal was generic, some kind of Froot Loops knockoff. “I hope you didn’t steal this,” he said.

“It’s ours as much as anyone else’s,” the other girl said. She wore a red T-shirt and jeans torn at one knee.

“Tell me, which one are you?” he said to the girl in red. “Sandra?”

“I’m Rainy,” she said.

“Okay, red shirt Rainy, yellow dress Sandra. Whatever you do, don’t change clothes.”

He chewed the cereal, the pain in his jaw and the alarming looseness of two of his teeth making him go slow.

“You know,” Pax said to Rainy, “you’re named after my mother.”

“Lorraine,” Rainy said. “She died in the Changes.”

“That’s right,” Pax said. “You know, my mom loved your mom a lot. Like a daughter.”

“We know,” Sandra said breezily.

After perhaps a minute Rainy said, “You said you could tell us stories about her,” she said. “At the funeral.”

“Oh, right. Your mom.” He started to beg off, but then he got an image of Jo Lynn at these girls’ age, eleven or twelve years old.

“Once we were at the Bugler’s,” Pax said. “The checkout woman accused me of trying to shoplift a Chunky candy bar. Do you know about Chunky’s? They stopped making them for a while.” The girls looked at him. Quizzically? Patiently? He couldn’t tell. “Anyway, I’m standing there petrified, but your mom got mad—so mad. She lit into the woman, whipping out words I couldn’t even pronounce.” He shook his head. “It was like watching Jesus in the Tabernacle. The clerk didn’t know what to say back, she was just sputtering.”

“What happened then?” Sandra asked.

“Jo slapped down a dollar and didn’t even wait for the change. And then—” He shrugged, smiling. “Then we just strolled out of there.”

Rainy said, “But you were trying to steal it.”

“No! Well, okay, yes. But that was stupid; I shouldn’t have tried to do that. The point is, no one was going to accuse one of her friends of a crime. Your mom would have defended me either way, because she’d already decided—”

He looked down at his cereal bowl, a sudden emotion closing his throat.

“Decided what?” Rainy asked.

He thought: She’d already decided he was a good person.

“Nothing,” he said. He picked up his spoon, put it down again. “She just thought that that’s what friends do.”

Sandra said, “Your face looks worse today.”

He laughed. “Thanks.”

“Really, it’s a lot more colors,” she said.

Pax said, “Isn’t anybody wondering where you are? Did you tell Tommy you were coming here?”

The girls exchanged a look. Pax had started to identify common facial expressions—the way their lips tightened and relaxed; the fractional droop of an eyelid, the slight downward jerk of a chin—but for most of those expressions he could no more interpret them than translate wind into words. But that look was easier—almost always it was Sandra checking in with Rainy, following her sister’s lead.

Rainy said, “Where we go ain’t anybody’s business—”

“—especially Tommy,” Sandra finished.

Something in their tone alarmed him. “Girls, is Tommy … Is he hurting you?”

Sandra looked at Rainy. Rainy said nothing.

Pax said, “Look, if something’s happening—or if something happened that night your mother died? You can tell me.”

Rainy said, “We were asleep.”

“Maybe somebody came to the door. Did you hear anyone come in? Maybe in the morning—”

“We were asleep,” Rainy said. She got up from her chair and began stacking the bowls.

“Did you ever hear her argue with Tommy?” Pax asked.

“Only all the time,” Sandra said quietly to her cereal.

“Mom argued with lots of people,” Rainy said. “They weren’t as smart as her, and that got on her nerves sometimes.” She carried the bowls to the counter and started running water in the sink.

Pax said, “What did she argue with them about?”

“Everything,” Rainy said.

Sandra nodded. “Pretty much.”

“It’s hard to be smart,” Rainy said. “Lots of people want things to be the same as they always were, but they can’t. You can’t do things the old way, not after the Changes. Life is different than it used to be.” She sounded like she was quoting. “You have to take a stand. You have to follow your own moral compass.”

“That’s true,” Pax said. “You have to do the right thing. Even if it’s hard.” He looked at Sandra and said, “If you’re scared of someone, if you’re afraid to speak, you can tell me, I can protect you.”

Rainy turned around, looked at his face, his arms. “You?”

———

The girls packed up their things about 1:00 p.m. and vanished into the woods, promising to return with more food. Pax set himself the goal of walking down the driveway to the mailbox. He hadn’t gone twenty yards before he’d broken into a sweat. He felt ancient, and something was wrong with one of his ribs; whenever he stepped a certain way pain shot up the right side of his chest, paralyzing him for a few seconds.

He heard a car pull into the drive and he stepped off the driveway, readying himself to—what? Fight? Run? He could barely walk. Then he saw it was Deke’s Jeep, and he put a hand against a tree and waited, trying to catch his breath.

Deke stopped the car and climbed out. He looked distraught. “Sweet Jesus on a stick,” he said.

Pax smiled tightly.

“I tried to call,” Deke said. “You don’t answer your phone.”

“My cell phone’s dead. I forgot to pack a charger.”

“I mean both phones.” Pax didn’t say anything, and Deke said, “Anything broken?”

“My ribs hurt like hell.”

“I’m so sorry, man.” He sounded genuinely remorseful. “You should go see Dr. Fraelich.”

Pax snapped a wedge of bark from the tree, tossed it into the underbrush. “What are you doing here, Deke? If you’re trying to help me out you’re a little late. Wait, maybe you’re here to take my report? Track down the bad guys?”

“I’m not a real cop, Paxton.”

“Then what good are you?”

“They said you tried to break into the Home. They were going to shoot you.”

“Wait a minute—I’m supposed to be thankful?”

Deke looked at the ground. “They had no right to do what they did,” he said slowly. “No right. But P.K., you can’t just …” He took a breath. “Listen, this thing you’re struggling with, this stuff from your father. I don’t know why it’s hitting you like this, but it must be pretty damn strong. But it’s just a drug, man. You just need to clear your system. If you need some money to—”

“I don’t need your money.”

“You have a chance, here, man. Right now.”

“A chance for what?”

“To get out of here. I’ll drive you back to Chicago myself. Right now.”

“I’m not going anywhere without my father.”

Deke sighed. “Listen, I know you think that sounds all noble—”

“Saving my father sounds noble? Noble? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“This isn’t you, Paxton.”

“Fuck you.”

Deke looked at him.

“Yes,” Pax said. “Fuck. You.”

Deke shook his head. Then he turned back to the Jeep. “Just call me, okay?”

The girls returned to him for every meal, and some days they spent hours with him. They refused to talk about their mother’s death, or what enemies she might have made among the Co-op community; whenever he raised the topic, however obliquely, Rainy changed the subject, or Sandra discovered that he must need something, or else they simply announced that they had to leave.

Pax and the twins lived off the food that had arrived Monday noon. A trio of charlie ladies, all women of the church that he’d known growing up, had appeared at his doorstep like a clutch of enormous hens. They carried enough food to host a small party: a tray of deli meats and cheeses, a bag of Kaiser rolls, macaroni salad, two three-liter bottles of Diet Coke, a family-sized bag of Doritos, glazed doughnuts, and a glistening slab of pineapple upside-down cake as heavy as a radiator. They bustled into the kitchen and started unpacking boxes and bags, somehow managing not to bump into each other, and without once suggesting that he needed this stuff or even wanted it. He tried to thank them, but they wouldn’t have it. Oh it’s nothing, they said, nothing at all, and even apologized for disturbing him, as if the pounds of food were the result of some shipping accident and they were just grateful he could take them off their hands. They didn’t mention his bruises or cuts, or even seem to see them. They didn’t ask about his father. The women enforced a no-fly zone of southern politeness: Every unpleasant thing was known, or if not known then assumed, and therefore beneath comment.

They asked to say a short prayer before they left. Mrs. Jarpe, who’d been his piano teacher for three years before Paxton’s mother finally admitted that her son had no talent for the instrument, took his hand in hers and asked for the Lord’s strength, and for blessings on Paxton and the Reverend Martin. A-men, the ladies said, and then they were gone in a wash of perfume and hairspray.

TDS had changed everything and nothing, he thought. The three women were bloated by the disease, but they were still southern ladies, still Christians with a tradition of offering food like a sacrament, the same women who’d loved him and watched out for him when he was a boy. Who were watching out for him even now. That request for strength had stung and warmed him at the same time.

When he began to feel better he began to make the twins meals, though they didn’t like it. “We can be the moms,” Sandra said. But on Wednesday afternoon he set out three settings and served them all little sandwich triangles held together with toothpicks. The girls, judging from their voices if not their faces, seemed delighted.

After supper Sandra said, “Tell us another story about Mom.”

“About when she got pregnant with us,” Rainy said.

Pax looked up, measuring Rainy’s gaze. “Girls,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve been coming here. You’ve helped me a lot. But I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea. Your mom and I …”

They blinked at him. Did he want to do this? They weren’t his daughters—he knew that now—but he couldn’t help but think of them as his girls. Nieces, perhaps. But that was just fantasy. Playing house.

Finally he said, “You know I’m not your father, right?”

Sandra tilted her head, then looked at Rainy. Rainy said, “Betas don’t have fathers, Paxton.” Her voice patient.

“I know that. I was just afraid that maybe you girls were thinking … I don’t know.” He breathed out, smiled. “I’m glad we understand each other.”

“Now tell us about Mom,” Sandra said. “Was she happy when she found out she was pregnant?”

“Of course she was,” Pax said. “She was … overjoyed.”

“You can tell us the truth,” Rainy said.

“She was scared, sure. No beta had had a child yet, so nobody knew what to expect. But she was excited.”

“Really?” Sandra said.

“She didn’t think we had ruined her life?” Rainy asked.

“What? Of course not,” Pax said. “Listen, the first time I met you two, your mom put my hand on her belly, and one of you kicked back—thump. She was so happy to feel you moving.”

“I bet that was Rainy,” Sandra said. “She kicks in her sleep.”

His walks in the afternoon grew longer. He went into the woods above the house, following the tracks he’d carved out with his ATV when he was a kid. Sometimes he’d burst into tears. Not from pain—though sometimes pain triggered it—but from a flash of memory, an image of fists or the sound of bone on flesh. Sudden fear would blindside him, leave him stumbling around bleary eyed and sobbing.

He tried to summon alternate images, counter-spells. A crowbar slamming into Clete’s temple. Paxton’s Ford mashing at ninety miles per hour into the driver-side door of the pimped-out Camry Travis pleading for mercy; Aunt Rhonda on all fours, blood pouring from her mouth; the Home, burning …

The fantasies were thin soup. He’d had his chance to fight back, and he’d lain there. Dreaming of revenge was pointless.

He came out of the woods just as Aunt Rhonda’s Cadillac pulled into the drive. Everett and Clete escorted the mayor to the door. Pax put his hands in his pockets to stop them from trembling.

“Oh, hon,” Aunt Rhonda said. She surveyed his face, frowning in concern.

“It’s not any worse than it looks,” he said.

“Clete has something to say to you,” Rhonda said. She turned to the boy.

Pax looked at the chub’s face. His nose was the color and shape of an eggplant. Dark rings and swollen cheeks reduced his already small eyes to piggy slits.

Pax looked at Rhonda and she said, “The Chief took issue with Clete’s behavior. As did I. Clete?”

“I’m sorry for hitting you,” Clete said. He glanced at Aunt Rhonda. “Very sorry.”

“What do you want?” Pax asked Rhonda.

“I came to ask you a favor,” she said. His reaction must have showed in his face because she said reassuringly, “It’s nothing big. In fact, it’s kind of a favor to you.”