Jigsaw Man Excerpt

PROLOGUE:  PILOT LIGHT

 In her darkness, so subtle beneath the scrape of each breath she took, something crept. His boots trying to be discreet on bowed, subdued floorboard? Or was it this old house again?

Sweet Jesus, she’d hoped to be asleep when he returned, half-hoping to die in that sleep. It’d never be the case. There was always too much pain after these episodes to sleep, and she was too much of a coward to die.

How many more nights to live these moments?

It had been a quick ride to this point. Ila was a fourteen-year-old girl, not long ago, standing on a rust-red, chalk-dry country road waiting for a ride all the girls in her off-the-map town waited for. She and they were all too eager to hop into the car that would pick a dusty girl up off the dirt road and drop her on some other road—any other road—as a woman.

Silly little girls. They all had the dream, or some elaborate variation of it. But Ila’s journey wouldn’t need to be a complicated one, she’d told her girlfriends. It didn’t have to transport her to money and fame, or power and friends, or to a big city lit with enough lights to blind a dreamer. Ila needed nothing more from it all than to gain two simple titles.

Careful what you wishing for, girl, Momma told her. Momma knew.

Ila shifted in bed. Rusting springs were slow to adjust. Blood across the pillow was dark and wide. Hair at the back of her head felt matted. A concussion maybe. It wouldn’t be the first.

There it was again, something creeping. Or was it the damn house, egged on under the protection of the darkness, behaving mischievously.

Ila hushed herself—no easy effort, that. She took in air at the price of pain. The man had turned an involuntary function into a stinging chore.

At sixteen she met and married Merrick, accomplishing her goals, minus one. A year later she gave birth and all her hopes had become reality. A year after that, the dream went bad, like a banana in the sun.

That was the beginning.

Ila could not hear the hammering of the boots, a telltale sign of Merrick’s arrival. He was not home. Not yet. She couldn’t know what kind of mood he might be in whenever he finally showed up. Two beatings in the same night wouldn’t be a record for Merrick, his personal best achieved on an occasion when he’d pummeled her and then twice afterward returned to repeat the deed. But this time, this night, he was reaching for new heights in the annals of his abuse: his most severe beating.

Why was it easier to face the beatings than to leave him? God, for the children, Ila.

Her vision was obscured. Her hand went to the soft, pulsing golf ball that was her eyelid. She had been something to look at, once. Now, every piece of her was disgusting and disgusted. Twenty-seven years old. Mother of two. Wife of a monster. Courage of a flea.

Ila worked her way to her feet. There was a sticky wetness where her thighs met. The way Merrick beat her, it was possibly something very serious, very permanent; more likely, it was nature running its course. She couldn’t know for sure. She had no tampons and Merrick wouldn’t allow her out of the house to get more. Either way, the spill between her legs assured her she’d keep at least one of the hundreds of promises she was incapable of keeping: She would never give this ever-loving monster another child to abuse.

Pathetic. Weak. Could there be this much weakness in the world? That she chose to stay in this house, her life in danger—her children’s lives in danger—was utterly asinine. Letting him beat her was pathetic enough, but refusing to leave the house, to seek medical help, to wait in fear for him to come home and probably beat on her some more was so sad. Pathetic. Weak.

Where was anger?

Anger, if not for the increasing abuse she received, then for the emerging abuse he’d begun to inflict on the children. Anger at Merrick’s lack of compassion. The man was triple her size, yet he struck her full strength like she was an equally matched opponent.

Where was her anger? Anger that he thought so little of her after slapping her to his feet, he’d kick her for bleeding on his boot. Anger for his silly conscience-clearing justifications: “Ila, can you feel how much I love you?”

“You don’t have to have the courage to fight him, girl,” her sister Lily would tell her, “just the courage to leave him. Go to the police. The shelter. Come stay with me.”

Sure, there were always alternatives. Alternatives fueled by courage she didn’t have. Where was the anger that was supposed to make her fight back? Where? Ah, there it was, a tiny pilot light, forever inkling to ignite her courage, forever snuffed out by her weakness.

“For your children, Ila,” that tiny flame coaxed.

“He’d kill us all,” she’d reply, extinguishing another opportunity of hope.

She ran her trembling fingers along her breasts, down her belly. Her insides didn’t feel right. Merrick had possibly set something free within her.

No more.

Right this moment there was need. Get out of bed, head quickly, quietly, to the basement. It was never or right now.

Don’t think, just do. Find inside you that little girl who stood on a roadside daring to hitch a ride. Time for another trip. A new journey. Quickly.

Ila was in the cool, lightless hallway. Pathetic, weak, aching. Yet here she was, making her way down the house with a speck of the determination she thought she would never again feel. Each step along the hallway protested, reminded her of the danger. The ancient floor, its length in darkness, strained to keep its passenger.

Get to the basement, get the suitcase. Pack it quickly—some for the kids, some for you. Don’t think, girl, just do. Get the kids up and out of the house. Not to Lil’s; he’d follow you there. Get as far as you can get. Quickly, Ila. Don’t think, no time.

Sure, the pain was bad. But her life with Merrick was worse than pain, wasn’t it? She was surprised by her speed. She walked out of a slipper. No time to retrieve it, leave it. Merrick’s coming.

A chance, Sweet Jesus, a chance.

In the basement she found the suitcase lodged in the corner full of junk, covered with dust perhaps older than her children. She freed it from the pile of things never used and spun away with it. Her shadow, so crisp in the moonlight ushered in through the scarred, yellowing tiny window high up on the basement wall, cut across the man in the doorway. The suitcase jumped from her startled fingers.

“Merrick?” she whispered. “Honey?” Her heart wasn’t merely in her chest, in her ears, in her head, it was thumping on the walls of the room.

Merrick wasn’t a man as much as shadows. Seemingly taking on properties of shadows, he stretched across the doorway and meshed with the dark of the basement, all black but for the flash of silver in his hand.

Ila’s scream was sharp and quick. She took sight of the blade—through the dark, through the light, through the dark—on its journey down to her. It caught flesh, moved into her, an invader so cold, skipping over a bone, finding something softer that would accept it deeply. Her liquid washed over the weapon, offering warmth to its chill.

She must have fallen to the floor. He must have stabbed her repeatedly. Her vision flickered like a candle finishing its wick. There would be no more beatings. Here, tonight, in her darkness, her husband would have to finish her. He could have this body, crumbling at twenty-seven as though it was eighty-seven. He could no longer have this mind, this spirit.

Yes, Jesus loves me.

The courage.

The pilot light.

Cold, then numb, she looked to that tiny flame.

Who will take care of my children? she wondered.

Give it to God.

Beneath mounds of numbness, there was warmth. She knew she could abandon the numbness for the heat. A new journey indeed.

No more time for regrets, silly little girl.

Yes. Give it to God.

Bye, Lil.

The pilot light ignited her courage. Her entire body went up as if some flammable liquid greeted by a spark. Engulfed, finally, there was the courage, the anger, the strength, to just let go.

Ila burned down slowly, softly, without pain, all the while somewhere in the distance, there was music.

Copyright © 2012 by Marvin Brown