Frank De Felitta: For Love of Audrey Rose

“Nobody will bother us ever again,” he exclaimed.

In the front seat, Jennie shivered, chills shaking her slender shoulders. Bill tucked the blankets around her.

“Poor darling,” he said. “Daddy is taking you home.”

Bill glanced into the rearview mirror at a world of gray pools of dirty water, smoke above rows of factory walls, and grimy snow. He was exhausted. He had been without sleep so long that his fingers trembled.

Instinct had brought him here. But now instinct was confused. Instead, there was a horrifying buzzing in his head.

“Four-five-nine-no—”

Bill turned. The sweat poured down his face. His hand calmed Jennie.

“It’s all right, darling. Daddy’s here.”

“No-no-no-no—”

“Yes, yes, it’s Daddy.”

The Dodge careened along the slick surface at ever-increasing speeds.

“No-no-no—”

Frustrated, Bill alternated between looking at the road and at Jennie. Veils of spray roared at the Dodge from traffic. Horns honked as he fought to maintain control.

“Don’t be frightened, Ivy. I love you.”

But Jennie squirmed. The chills were disappearing as fast as a fever began to rise. Her cheek quivered. Then the small limbs began to convulse.

“Ivy, what’s wrong?”

A smothered gurgle stopped in Jennie’s throat. Panicked, Bill felt her face. It burned with an unnatural heat. He desperately looked around, but heavy freight trucks hemmed him in. Rain blasted at the windshield.

“D-D-D—” Jennie gasped.

“Yes, yes, Daddy’s here!”

A blast of horns, and Bill grabbed the steering wheel. He was driving much too fast, the wheels losing their grip on the curves. But his cold hands, like his feet, felt disconnected from his body.

He thought he saw the old Ford approaching behind him.

“D-D-D—”

“Yes, Daddy’s here, darling! You’ll be all right!”

But a sudden crimp of muscles arched Jennie’s back. She shook from side to side. Her glazed eyes stared out at the rain. Her throat worked convulsively. Inarticulate syllables lodged there, and when she breathed it sounded like strange words. Bill’s head was dizzy, light, and her voice mingled with the whispers from the fissures of his own fears.

“Da — Da — Da—”

“Going home, Ivy. Try to sleep.”

“No-no-no—”

Jennie began to twist and turn. The embankment dropped beside the lane. Jennie’s screams merged with the squeal of brakes behind him. Bill fought to keep her down, to keep the blankets around her, but the slender arms pummeled his face and chest.

“Ivy! You’re burning up! Oh God, Ivy!”

A cacophony of truck horns, squealing brakes, and automobile horns blasted through the rain. The Dodge hit the center divider.

Through the windshield he saw the old Ford hard behind as the Dodge tumbled slowly, ever so slowly, it seemed, down the embankment, spitting mud in great arcs over itself, throwing off huge segments of metal and glass. As in a dream, through the mist, he saw the Ford skid to a stop above him, as his own car lifted into the air, rolling over and over, a twirling mass of white iron and steel. The blast blew glass through the upholstery of the front seat. Blackness, a hideous stench of near death, swallowed Bill, and the explosion deafened him.

Hoover crawled to the lip of the embankment and peered in horror at the smoldering wreckage below.

A figure, blackened and ragged, crawled frantically over the mud below, clawing at the wreckage.

“Bill!” Janice screamed, holding Hoover.

“He’s alive!”

Furiously the silhouette beat his fists against the twisted body of the white Dodge.

“It’s on fire!” Hoover cried, catapulting himself down the steep embankment. Rain plastered his hair. He peered into the flaming cauldron below, and the brilliance of the reflections hurt his eyes. Slipping, sliding, his ankle collapsed and he fell. He hobbled, crawled, and rolled down over the slippery mud.

A strong hand grabbed him.

“Keep back!” said a deep voice. “She’s gonna blow!”

A police officer held his arm. Now Hoover saw a trio of policemen with fire extinguishers, racing away from the Dodge. He shook off the hand, slipped under the officer’s reaching arm, ducked under low, rolling clouds of black smoke and flung himself toward the burning car. At the rear door of the Dodge, where the metal was jammed immovable into the earth, Bill was weeping furiously, beating his hands against the window.

A muffled scream emerged from the Dodge, under the crackling of burning fabric.

Hoover stumbled closer. The black smoke seared his lungs. He kept low to the wet earth. There was a rush of hot air, and flames licked upward from the engine block. In the rear window, black hair torn into streamers, Jennie beat against the glass.

“daddydaddyhothothot!”

The scream barely came through the roar of the flames.

“Ivy!” shouted Bill.

“daddydaddyhothothot!”

Hoover knelt forward. The heat sucked at his eyes. Flames shot up over the roof. Smoke twined lazily from the upholstery inside. Jennie began to choke.

“IVY!!!” Bill bellowed.

“daddydaddyhothothot!”

“Dear God! No!” Hoover wailed in anguish. “Not this time!”

But Bill’s hands flailed uselessly at the thick glass. Jennie was on the rear seat choking, and the black smoke rolled quickly through the car.

Bill reached to the ground, picked a heavy piece of cast steel from the engine block, and raised it over his head. With a roar of anger, fear, and sheer exertion, Bill heaved the cast steel into the plate glass and it blew apart, fragments shining, scattering over Jennie’s crumpled form.

“GET WAY FROM IT, MISTER!” called a bullhorn.

“IVY!!” Bill shouted.

The door would not budge. Smoke roared out through the shattered window, fumes of hot, acid smells. Bill leaned in through the window, and gathered Jennie’s body to his chest. He coughed furiously, and slowly the white Dodge, gathering momentum, began to slip back on top of him.

“Bill!” cried Hoover.

Bill turned. His face was haggard, blackened, deep gouges of blood gashed through his forehead and chin. Hoover tried to come forward, but the heat pressed his clothes against his own body.

“Bill!”

Bill’s blackened eyes locked onto Hoover’s. The Dodge teetered farther.

“Bill!”

Looking into Hoover’s eyes, Bill threw the child into his arms. Their hands brushed, inches apart.

Then Hoover recoiled. A rush of intense heat swirled around him, dazed him, sizzled the water on his hair. He fell backward, clutching Jennie. He saw dirt spray oddly up into the shining air, black clods of death, and then the smoke billowed out, followed by a deafening roar, a thunder of all creation, and then came the twin horror — fire, leaping upward from the hideous pile of melted and destroyed metal, and the Dodge settling lower, rolling farther over Bill’s flaming body.

Arms pulled Jennie from him. The last thing Hoover saw before he lost consciousness was the inexhaustible forces of destruction and creation, the white Dodge now utterly consumed in dense clouds of smoke, topped with leaping fingers of triumphant fire against the leaden sky, a paean to the divinity that worked its immutable will.

The water was deep. Brown reflections rippled from rowboats, spread in long rings to the rocks. One by one, Jennie lifted green leaves, covered the pebbles at the shore, and touched them with a short sprig of elm. Her face was absorbed in the methodical ritual. The lake sent small sparkles of light across her eyes.