Damien
The winter wind lashes in through the smashed window, whipping snow into my face, into my mouth. The snow melts and water drips down my skin like the tears Callie was crying not too long ago, melts into my beard. I speed down the highway, dodging between cars, not giving a damn about anything but finding Ogre and my baby as quickly as possible. Anger grips me like the devil, making me squeeze the steering wheel so hard my knuckles are like four white marbles beneath my skin, bulging out. I clench my teeth so hard that I think they might just shatter; they’re damn cold enough to.
A child . . . I have a child. It hits me afresh over and over as I drive. I have a baby. I think back to the store, to when I saw Callie and the baby in that baby-holder thingy. I wasn’t paying much attention to the baby at the time, but I saw enough to notice her age, and I even thought about it being mine. But she lied to me, didn’t she? She told me it was the old woman’s. Maybe I ought to be angry at that. But I’m not—I just want to find the kid. The questions can come later. I just need to find the kid, for Callie’s sake.
I am about halfway when the engine begins to cough. I glance at the dashboard. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
The gas is empty, the dial past zero, the engine coughing and huffing. I turn onto the side of the highway just in time for the engine to die completely, and for a second I just stop, hands on the steering wheel, as white cold rage moves through me, the sort of rage you feel just before you kill a man, the sort of rage I felt all those years ago with that perverted old man, the sort of rage which takes you just before you smash in somebody’s head, before you become a killer. I want to tear the steering wheel free and throw it through the window and grip shards of jagged glass and stab. I don’t care what. Just fuckin’ stab.
No fucking gas. If there is a God, he’s laughing at me right now, I know that much.
I force myself to calm down. At least, calm down as much as I can. It’s already past three, though, and each second that passes is a second in which Ogre could be doing some horrible shit to my daughter. At least Callie would have told the police, which means they’ll be on the lookout for him; maybe they’ll even put him on some watch list. I don’t know. But that doesn’t matter when I’m standing at the side of the highway, face moist with melted snow, a chill creeping into my bones.
I glance up and down the highway, looking for a gas station. Behind me, there’s nothing but road, cars gliding along the snow. In front of me, there is a station, but I reckon it’s at least a half-mile away. Which means I’m going to lose at least half an hour.
“Fuck!” I roar, the anger growing like a tumor in my chest. I think back to the anger I felt when that piece of shit old man had his syringe in me, wonder if it was as fierce as this anger. The answer is no, and that shocks me. I’ve always assumed that would be the angriest I felt, but this is different. After spending a night with Callie, and then learning I had a daughter, and then learning that my daughter was gone—my rage is like hellfire.
I bow my head to the wind and begin sprinting toward the gas station, not caring when it begins to hail and hard stones lacerate my face. I feel them cutting into my skin, melting in my hair, slicing into my hands. I feel them pounding into me. I feel them whipping into my open mouth and hitting the back of my throat. I choke, but I don’t stop running. I run for my daughter, and I run for Callie, and I run for the man I once was and the man I am now becoming. I run because there is a little girl out there, fuckin’ terrified, wanting her mother, and she’s mine, too. I think about Ogre, with that little girl in his arms. The image makes me want to vomit. It’s wrong, like a camera out of focus, simply incorrect. Ogre should be six feet under the fuckin’ ground, not holding a kid in his arms.
I wonder what he’s feeding her, which is how I know there’s been some change in me since I reunited with Callie. I would never have thought some shit like that before. I wonder how he’s taking care of her. And when I think the worst—that which I can’t even say to myself—I clench my fists so hard my nails dig into my palms.
Finally, hail-soaked, face covered in innumerable tiny cuts, I push open the gas station door, wind following me, howling. The attendant, a spotty ginger kid with his phone in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other, looks up in shock.
“Need something to hold gas,” I snap.
“Uh, I think we have—yeah, just behind you.”
The kid watches me warily. When I pace across the room, he jumps up from his seat, spilling his orange juice all over the counter.
“Woah, man! Woah!”
“Relax.” I reach into my pocket, take out my wallet, and toss a bunch of notes on the counter. “That’s for the gas. I ain’t coming back in to pay—and for the container, too.”
“Dude,” the kid says, inching forward and looking down at the money. “This is like—three hundred bucks.”
“Then it’s your fuckin’ lucky day,” I snap, picking up the green gas container and pushing back out into the cold, to the pumps.
With the container full, I cork it, and then sprint back down the highway toward the car. The hail stops, and snow begins to fall once again. Somewhere to the west, thunder rumbles. Somewhere further west, lightning strikes. By the time I get back to the car, even my leather is soaked through. But I don’t give a fuck. I don’t feel the cold. I don’t feel anything right now except an animal urgency to find Ogre. As I fill the gas tank, I wonder if this is what Callie felt for all those years after leaving the Movement: driven by just one urge, an urge that superseded all others. I toss the empty container to the ground and climb back into the car.
I hotwire it again, and the engine roars to life.
I return to traffic, having lost a full forty-five minutes, my belly churning now.
Alice is an extension of me and Callie, a part of both of us, something which ties us together and cannot be ignored. Alice is something I have never been: precious, untouched by the cruelty of the world. Alice deserves better than me or Callie had. Alice deserves a proper father, a proper mother. Alice deserves a proper life. And Ogre, that sack of fuckin’ shit, is going to try and take that away from her. If he hasn’t already—no, I won’t think that. I won’t let myself.
I reckon life is a damn joke some of the time. If I’d made this drive some other day, some day when urgency didn’t matter, it would’ve been smooth, easy, no problem. But today life is against me. Maybe that crevice-faced man really was the devil and he’s down there somewhere, playing tricks on me.
I’ve been driving for about twenty minutes when one the back wheels of the sedan goes pop, causing me to skid a little. Lucky the roads ain’t too full.
Once again, I pull to the side of the road, temples pulsing, mind overfull with images of Ogre and my daughter.
I climb from the car, growling deep in my chest without even meaning to, and then reach back into the car and pop the trunk. Then I go to the back, praying that I can have one piece of goddamn luck today. I open the trunk all the way, part of me not wanting to look down just in case. But when I look down, I breathe a sigh of relief—or as much relief as I can with time pressing colder and more urgently around me each second. I take out the wrench, the jack, and the spare tire.
After changing the tire and leaving the dud on the side of the road—at this rate, there’s going to be a Hansel and Gretel trail followin’ me all the way to the clubhouse—I start the car and drive once again down the highway. Twenty minutes lost to that bullshit, and now the sky is beginning to get winter-dark, clouds closing over what little weak sunlight there was, and a clouds closing inside me, too. I want to believe Alice is okay. I want to believe I can get to Ogre in time. I want to believe that the police will do their job, even if I’ve never been much of a fan of the police. But the more I drive and the darker the sky gets, the more a weight settles on my chest.
Maybe I’ve learnt that I have a daughter only to learn later the same goddamn day that she’s been taken away from me—taken permanently, and cruelly. I’ve already missed so much: the pregnancy, the birth, the first months of her life. And now I’m going to miss everything else, too. I’m going to miss her whole life, ’cause Ogre’s going to take it from me, from us, from me and Callie. Callie, the woman I love. Yeah, I can’t deny that now. Callie the woman I love and Alice, my child.
I left Missouri a single man on a whim; I return a family man on a mission.