Seth

 

Seth sat in the cab of his truck, winding the white surgical tape carefully through his fingers, then around his knuckles, while Garth Brooks sang “To Make You Feel My Love” on the CD player. Technically, it was a Bob Dylan song, but the Garth Brooks version had been playing on the radio the night Seth had his first fight, a few years ago. He hadn’t expected to win. He’d been told he’d still make a hundred dollars just for showing up, but his rage was so wild and overwhelming after listening to the song, he’d beaten his opponent to a pulp. That night he’d been offered the chance to fight in a local fight club once or twice a month, and he made it a rule to listen to the song before every fight. It made him ache. It tormented him so bad, the moment the song was over all he wanted to do was hurt someone just as much as he was hurting inside. It was a relief to hit and be hit.

He clenched his jaw as the song played on repeat for the second time, watching the white tape go round and round his fingers as ragged snapshots flashed through his mind: a filthy yellow and white dress, honey-blonde braids falling over her shoulders, the tassels resting just above the softness of her budding breasts. Bony, scratched-up legs. Small, torn-up feet that fought for balance on a slippery rock a few feet away as the raging water rushed between them.

The last words she’d uttered on this earth had been for him, pleading with Caleb to let him go. He hadn’t. Crazy fucker had knocked him out cold, and then he’d put a bullet through Gris, through the sweetest, strongest, bravest girl who’d ever lived.

***

Holden came to sobbing her name while his head pounded with pain from the two hits he’d taken to the temple at the river. “G-G-Gris? G-G-Gris?”

“You mean Ruth,” the Man spat, offering him a tin cup of water. Holden sat up slowly on the porch floor, looking up at Caleb’s bloody shirt and scrambling backward until he was flush against the clapboard wall of the farmhouse. Panting and trembling with fear, he stared up at the monster before him.

Caleb set the cup on the edge of the porch and jerked his head to a fresh mound of dirt in the front yard. Holden followed the movement with horrified eyes.

“Ruth’s dead, little brother, an’ you can thank me for puttin’ an end to her evil ways. She ain’t never comin’ back to torment you with her wickedness. We’re headin’ west. West. Fact, that’s who we are now: Caleb an’ Seth West. Now shut up ’bout Ruth, or I’ll smack yer mouth off yer head. She’s gone. Good riddance. We ain’t never talkin’ ’bout her agin an’ glory be for redemption!”

As Caleb walked to the red truck parked in front of the house and hefted a box into the flatbed, Holden turned his head to the side and vomited the meager contents of his stomach onto the porch floor beside him.

The mound of earth was a grave.

She was dead. Griselda was dead.

Holden had loved her, and she’d been killed trying to save him.

His blood rushed like a waterfall through his ears, his breathing fast and erratic as his small hands curled into fists.

“N-n-nooooooo!” he screamed. “G-G-Gris!”

He jumped up, leaping off the porch and running toward her grave, but Caleb caught him around the waist before he reached the pile of overturned earth about the size of a curled-up thirteen-year-old girl.

“P-P-Please . . . p-p-please . . . Oh G-G-God, p-p-please! G-G-Griiiiiis!”

“I warned ya, boy.”

He felt the impact of Caleb’s fist against his cheek, but the darkness that followed was merciful.

When he woke up, it was dark outside, and Holden was strapped into the passenger seat of the old truck, Caleb driving beside him.

“Good. Yer up. We’ll stop for supper soon.”

Holden’s head pounded like a hammer on an anvil. He clenched his eyes shut, then blinked twice, the red taillights before him streaking like blood against the black of the highway. It took him several minutes to process what had happened earlier in the day—he and Gris had tried to escape after Caleb left for church, but Caleb must have gotten home early and tracked them to the cornfields. He’d captured Holden in the Shenandoah, and Holden had told Gris to run . . .

Caleb had knocked out Holden, shot Gris, and buried her in the front yard before leaving West Virginia for good.

“Oh n-n-no,” he sobbed, turning to look out the window. “No. N-n-n-o-o. N-n-n-no.”

“Quit that cryin’, dummy. Can’t hardly understand yer words as it is.”

Holden took a deep breath and spoke as carefully as he could. “W-w-why did you k-k-kill her?”

“That gal was pure evil.”

“She w-w-wasn’t.”

“I knew her better’n you, I guess. It was happenin’ all over agin. Right afore m’very eyes.”

“W-w-what was?”

“Lust!” he bellowed. “Lust, damnation, an’ hellfire!”

Holden gasped and cringed as Caleb banged the steering wheel with fury once, twice, three, four, five times. Over and over again, until Holden lost count, until Caleb finally yelled, “Ya got redemption, boy! Drop to yer ever-lovin’ knees!”

Holden cowered in the corner of the passenger seat, as far to the side as he could, pressed up against the door.

“Ya don’t have to die for yer sins no more! Ya can live on in the blessed light of redemption! Through her blood I’ve made ya whole!”

(Are you whole or broken, Holden?)

“Now . . . No. Talkin’. ’Bout. Ruth. No. More!”

(I’m broken, Gris. I’m finally broken.)

There is some pain in your life that, when you experience it, you’re shocked to the core that it doesn’t kill you. It feels like it should kill you, like your heart should stop beating and your lungs should stop breathing and your eyes should stop seeing. Everything should just . . . stop. With pain that profound and regret that unfathomable, it should be impossible for your body to stay alive.

Holden turned slowly toward the window, staring at the reflection of his face, a study in misery, in desolation, in surrender.

The real horror of that truck ride was that Holden’s body had survived, that he had to keep living with the knowledge that Gris had died trying to save him, trying to free them both, and that now he was completely alone. As they sped west into the dark night, his heart kept beating, his lungs kept breathing, his burning eyes kept seeing. He tucked the memories of his beloved girl deep, deep, deep into the most secret recesses of his heart, closed the door, and buried the key as surely as his beautiful girl lay buried in a fresh grave in West Virginia.

His body stayed alive, but Holden Croft died with Griselda Schroeder on that river.

Inside he was dead.

Inside he didn’t care what happened to him anymore.

Inside he surrendered to darkness and to Caleb Foster.

And the body that remained—that, for a long time, did very little but beat, breathe, and see—became Seth West.

***

He didn’t know how long the song had played on repeat, but the knock on his window made him jump. His eyes flashed open, and his fingers fisted, ready for battle. As he turned to see his friend and co-worker, Clinton, knocking on the glass, pantomiming that Seth should roll down the window, he relaxed, pausing the song.

With one hand he gave Clinton the finger as he rolled down the window with the other.

“Sorry, man,” said Clinton. “You’re in the zone, huh?”

“What do you want?”

“The bets are good tonight. Your take’s going to be strong. Folks love a grudge match.”

“You seen Eli?”

“Yeah,” said Clinton, spitting on the ground.

“Drunk?”

“Didn’t look it.”

Seth flinched, and his nostrils flared. Fighting a drunk was always easier than fighting someone sober.

“He’s a mean fucker, Seth.”

“Yeah.”

“Gemma coming?”

Seth looked out the window at the trucks rolling onto the field about a quarter mile down the hill from where he’d parked his truck. He shook his head. “Asked her not to.”

Clinton pursed his lips. “Since when does she listen to you?”

“Fuck,” sighed Seth. “True ’nough. You seen her here?”

“Naw. Just busting your balls.”

“Bust ’em later,” said Seth in a low voice, not in the mood for teasing.

“Got it.”

“So, what else? You here to give a pep talk?”

Clinton stared at Seth for an extra beat before dropping his eyes and shaking his head.

“Spit it out, Clinton.”

“I heard a rumor he’s got a knife.”

“W-weapons aren’t allowed.”

“He’s pissed at you, Seth. Says you cheated last time.”

Seth clenched his jaw. “I didn’t cheat.”

“Fair enough. Forget I said anything.” Clinton turned to go.

“Clinton!” called Seth. Clinton turned around, and Seth nodded at him. “Thanks.”

“Good luck,” said Clinton before continuing back toward the field.

Seth stared until his friend blended into the darkness, watching as more and more trucks pulled in and parked in the field below, the energy amping up with every new arrival. Someone had a truck radio on pretty loud, and there was some whooping and hollering making its way back up to the hill. Half the spectators would be drunk by the time the fight started. That was fine, as long as they stayed away from the ring. Once Seth started fighting, he didn’t stop until he was knocked out, and he hit anything—anything—that got in his way.

He leaned forward and pressed Play again.

***

“Seth West, please report to the principal’s office. Seth West, to the principal.”

Seth stared up at the speaker over the blackboard, flicking questioning eyes to his English teacher.

“Seth, go to the office, please.”

Without saying a word, Seth slid out of his desk and loped up the aisle, ignoring the batted eyes from the girls on either side of him. When he got to the office, the principal, an older lady who’d always resembled a sparrow to Seth, small and birdlike, closed her office door behind him.

“Won’t you sit?” she asked, her voice soft and serious.

Seth sat down across from her.

“I’m so sorry, Seth. I’m so very sorry to have to tell you this.”

He stared at her, his face purposely blank.

“It seems your—your older brother passed away this afternoon. He was . . . well, he was hit by a car crossing the street. The doctors did everything possible, but . . .”

Her blue eyes were gentle as she stared back at him helplessly. Blue eyes bothered Seth a lot more than brown. Blue eyes reminded him of Gris, and he preferred not to think about her. He felt her in his gut, all the time, like you’d feel a heavy stone resting in the bottom of your stomach. She was always, always with him, but there was a difference between feeling her constant presence and thinking about her. He lived with the former; he hated the latter.

“That all?” he asked, looking around her office for the last time.

This school had been a shitty experience, mostly, with obnoxious kids who’d had far more schooling than him. The one bright spot was that a speech therapist had worked with him for the past couple of years twice a week after school. She’d taught Seth to limit his phrasing, make soft contact with beginning consonants and use one breath for each short sentence. Always having hated his stammer, he’d taken her advice to heart and practiced religiously. As a result, he barely stammered at all anymore unless he was upset. Of course, he had nothing to say, which made it easier.

“Seth,” she gasped. “Your brother is dead.”

“Wasn’t my brother.”

“But . . . But, he—”

“Wasn’t my brother.”

“Oh. Oh my goodness. You may be in shock. I can ask the nurse to—”

Seth stood up, pushing the chair back under the lip of her desk, and walked out of her office without another word. He walked the two miles to the twenty-five-foot trailer he shared with Caleb, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. Walking purposefully to the back bedroom, he opened the overhead compartment above the bed and removed a metal cash box. Feeling around for the tiny key taped to the back of the shelf, he opened it and took out the money that was inside. He counted it carefully: $662. Shoving the bills in his pocket, he pivoted, opening another overhead compartment and taking out a beat-up brown cardboard boot box.

Turning back into the kitchen, he took the truck keys off the nail by the door and headed outside.

He pointed the truck east.

He never once looked back.

***

The song finished playing again, and as the opening bars restarted, Seth reached forward and flipped down the visor. The small mirror lit up, and he stared at himself.

Dead gray eyes stared back at him, cold and stony. His dark brown lashes were long and slightly curled at the ends like star points, offsetting his eyes with a soft, innocent quality that confused people momentarily as they reconciled his eyes with their setting. His cheekbones were high and cut, but crisscrossed with white scars from the many open gashes that had healed over the years. Same with his forehead and lips, which had been split, by both Caleb and other fighters, more times than he could count. His nose, which hadn’t been straight since he was a kid, was crooked and slightly thicker than average, due to it having been broken several times. He had it set once at the hospital, two years ago, because he was having trouble sleeping, but fight club had ensured it had been broken again since then. His jaw was covered with a light brown scruff that, combined with the hardness of his face, gave him the appearance of a man six or seven years older than his twenty-three.

Despite these imperfections—or maybe because of them—he was still a good-looking man. He knew this because of the way women looked at him, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit he wasn’t above accepting their offers and invitations. His heart had died ten years ago, gasping and bleeding to death on a rock in the middle of the Shenandoah River, but his body could still feel and give pleasure. There was only one woman he’d ever loved, and when he was having sex, if he clenched his eyes tightly and blocked out the smell and voice of the woman beneath him, he could almost trick his mind into believing it was her. And for just a moment, for a split second, he could swear that she was returned to him.

Gemma had learned to shower first and shut up in his bed, not because he’d ever told her anything about his past, but because his commitment to her pleasure was unmatched when she came to him clean and quiet. The problem was, lately, that Gemma, whom Seth had been fucking for several months, kept talking about moving into his one-bedroom apartment. That he was considering her request was so fucked-up he could barely get his head around it.

His thoughts were sidetracked by the two portable stadium lights that suddenly flashed bright white, plugged into a generator on the bed of one of the trucks. They instantly lit up the empty square surrounded by hay bales. He sighed. He had about five minutes.

Listening to the words of the song, his heart raced with anticipation as he loosened the strong, high, rigid barriers around his memories. His breath caught, and his fingers trembled as he leaned his head against the back of the seat, closed his eyes, and let himself find her face, the only sliver of light in the dark, murky depths of his mind.

I could hold you for a million years to make you feel my love.

***

Gris made life bearable.

So bearable that, while Holden lived in constant fear of beatings, there were some days he thought he’d die if he was ever separated from her, even if it meant his freedom.

He knew that part of him should hate her for getting in the goddamned truck, and for a little while—for the first few weeks—he had. He’d refused to speak to her, despite her efforts to reach out to him. He’d purposely gotten her in trouble a couple of times, watching with terror and guilt as she was beaten in front of him. He’d shunned her attempts at friendship, listening as she cried in the darkness on the other side of the paneled wall.

But over time, faced with the reality of his life, he’d warmed up to her. She lived in the darker half of the basement, accessible only through a padlocked door or broken wall panel, and sometimes when the Man forgot to bring down two porridge bowls, Holden heard her crying softly from hunger.

Gradually he came to realize that it wasn’t her fault that he was here—he’d followed her into the cab of the truck of his own free will, after all—and his heart gravitated toward her bit by bit, until a solid friendship formed between them. And lately, a few weeks after his twelfth birthday, his feelings for her had blossomed into something deeper entirely. Trapped together in a life of hard work; erratic food, drink, and sleep; regular beatings; and no comforts, they’d forged a tight bond, and Holden knew—beyond any shadow of doubt—Gris kept him alive.

When they were out in the garden together under the hot sun, after the Man had finally dozed off in the shade, she’d whisper long, made-up stories, her lips sometimes tilting up just a little as she got to “the good part.” When her blue eyes lit on him, bright and soft, it made things happen to him that he couldn’t explain.

It made him feel strong and weak, happy and terrified, excited and guilty. It made strange and new things happen to his body that felt good, but wrong, somehow, even though he couldn’t help them. It made him try harder to remember his parents. It made him desperate to review what little he knew about men and women being together. It made him want to learn more about those things with her.

He’d lived with her for twenty months now, and she was as much a part of him as his family had been long ago. More, even. Gris was his whole world.

The lock clicked shut at the top of the stairs, and his heart raced with anticipation, knowing that his favorite part of the day was coming. He was a prisoner in a filthy, dark, dank cellar, and yet when the basement door clicked shut and he heard the panel slide to the side as she crawled out from her black hole, his heart hammered with nothing but love for her.

“Holden?”

“Yeah?”

“You still up?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I get in bed with you?”

Goose bumps rose across his skin, and his breathing hitched. For almost as long as they’d lived in the Man’s basement, Gris had crawled into bed with him at night, lying beside him until it was time for them to separate to sleep. Asking his permission was new. And it made him feel different. It made their relationship feel different somehow—in a good way, in an exciting way—like she acknowledged the subtle changes he was noticing too.

“’C-c-course,” he whispered, moving closer to the wall, as his body flushed with heat and he folded his sweaty palms over his pounding chest.

The mattress depressed just a little as she lay down beside him. And suddenly, he could feel the warmth of her, the softness of her bare arm pressed against his.

“Holden?”

“Yeah, Gris?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry we’re here. I’m so dang sorry I took that ride.”

This was a familiar refrain, and no matter how often he told her she could stop apologizing, she still did. He took a deep breath and sighed. “I kn-kn-know.”

“Do you still hate me? Ever? Even a little?”

“N-n-not anymore. You know that.”

“But you did? You hated me?” She rolled onto her side, facing him.

He clenched his jaw, staring up at the darkness. He loved her too much now to admit how much he’d hated her then. He wanted to forget he’d ever felt anything but love for her. Shifting to his side to mirror her, he placed a trembling hand on her hip and pressed his forehead gently against hers.

“Don’t ever hate me again,” she whispered, her warm breath fanning his lips. “Promise.”

He swallowed, his heart bursting with love for her, his soul swearing that he would never, ever love anyone as deeply as he loved her.

“I won’t ever hate you again. I p-p-promise, Gris.”

 

***

Go to the ends of the earth for you . . . to make you feel my love.

Seth reached forward and turned off the CD player.

He yanked up the sleeve of his unbuttoned flannel shirt and stared at the tattoo on his forearm for a long, hard minute before jerking the shirt back down.

It was time to hurt someone.