C Box - Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

She took in a deep breath. “I’ve thought of those things. Believe me, Jack, I’ve never once stopped thinking of what we could do. Neither would have worked. I think you know that.”

I wasn’t so sure. “At least we could have tried.”

“We did try,” she said, her eyes tearing up. “We tried with the help of our best friends, and we did everything we could do. And I want you to stop speculating right now. All I’ve got in the world is the knowledge that we did all we could.”

I sat down heavily at the table. She came over and put her hands on my shoulders, leaving flour handprints.

“And we still don’t know why they really want her,” I said.

But I had an inkling, a thought so dark I still couldn’t share it, despite what Torkleson had said. And when I looked up at my wife, I could see by the emptiness in her eyes and expression that it had crossed her mind as well.

AND IT WAS OVER.

Even now the events of that morning are wispy and sharply painful and disconnected in my mind. I remember everything, but I have trouble putting the events in order. Even now, as I recall them, my heart palpitates and my breathing gets shallow and irregular and I find myself reaching out to steady myself.

It was early in the morning when the doorbell rang, I remember that clearly. The sun hadn’t yet percolated through the clouds and, with an inch or two of fresh snow on the ground, it seemed ice blue outside. I remember my eyes shooting open and being instantly awake and thinking: It’s them.

A BLAST OF WINTER as I opened the front door to find Sanders, Morales, the sheriff with his big gut and gunfighter’s mustache, plus a female deputy I hadn’t seen before. All of them crowded on my front porch wearing identical sheriff’s department dark coats, condensation like smoke from their mouths haloing around their heads as they stood there like a small black army from hell. They stamped snow from their boots as they came into the living room.

Outside, parked in my driveway with the motor running, were Judge Moreland and Garrett. Waiting.

Behind me, Melissa came down the stairs holding Angelina. When she saw the cops she said, “Oh my God.”

The female deputy was introducing herself, talking in I’m sure what she thought as competent and soothing tones. I didn’t hear a word she said.

I can’t recall if I lost it as she held out her arms for our daughter or when the sheriff said the Morelands “just want the child. They aren’t interested in the boxes.”

Something white-hot exploded behind my eyes and I was on them-punching, kicking, gouging, trying to get through them to the door so I could get outside and pull Moreland and Garrett from their car into the snow and kill them with my bare hands. Sanders went down with a surprised look on his face, and his fall took down the sheriff. The female deputy shouted while she unclipped her pepper spray and threatened me with it. Either Sanders or the sheriff clipped me hard in the jaw with a frozen fist and my teeth snapped together and my head snapped back and for a second I was staring at the ceiling. Then my arms were pinned to my sides and my feet left the ground as Morales picked me up in a bear hug and slammed me face-first into the couch. I saw spangles and little else for a moment. There was a knee in my spine and my arms were wrenched back. I heard the zip sound of flexcuffs being pulled tight around my wrists.

Through a fog, Melissa said, “I just can’t hand her over to you. I can’t perform that act. ”

The female deputy said, “That’s all right, I understand. Just put her in that swing, and I’ll take her out. You don’t have to hand her to me that way.”

“I can’t. I can’t.”

“Please, ma’am. We don’t want to have to restrain you to take the child. Think of the girl, think of the girl in your arms. We don’t want to risk hurting anyone.”

Melissa did it.

I heard an animal roar that turned out to be me.

Deputies cried, looked away.

The female deputy wrapped Angelina in blankets she’d brought along and backed toward the door, flanked by Morales and Sanders.

Directly in front of me, inches away, was the hem of the sheriff’s coat as he directed them. I could feel the cold emanating from it.

Angelina realized that she was being taken away and she screamed and her chubby hands shot out from beneath the blanket toward Melissa. The deputy quickly covered them back up.

Melissa shrieked and dropped to her knees.

The front door closed as the female deputy went outside with Angelina.

The sheriff said to Sanders, “Call the EMTs.”

To me, “Can I trust you to help your wife if I cut you loose?”

“Yes,” I said.

Melissa climbed back to her feet with the help of Morales, who was openly blubbering.

The sheriff watched the exchange outside through the front window, then said with grim finality, “It’s done.”

My cuffs were released, and I rolled off the couch to the floor, scrambling to all fours. Melissa was clutching herself, her eyes wild, her face bone white. I rushed to her.

She collapsed in my arms, but I held her body tight against mine so she wouldn’t slide to the floor. I duckwalked with her that way to the couch.

They say that when a person dies, the body suddenly becomes lighter as the soul leaves, that it’s been measured. Melissa didn’t die, but I remember thinking that her soul had left her because she felt featherlight in my arms.

As I picked up her legs and put them on the couch, I heard the tires of Moreland’s car crunch snow as it backed up and left.

A few moments later an EMT van, lights flashing, swung up into the driveway. The EMTs had no doubt been on call just down the street in case they’d be needed. Suddenly, there were more dark-clothed people in our house. They helped Melissa up the stairs into bed. I stood on the landing shell-shocked, my eyes burning. My jaw hurt.

There was a heated discussion as Morales and Sanders told the sheriff they refused to arrest me for assault, and if he insisted on it, he could do it himself, and they’d walk off the job. I heard him say, “Jesus, okay, okay. You guys are too damned close to this situation, that’s for sure.” While he talked, he sucked on a bloody front tooth that had been dislodged during the scuffle.

Sanders said, “You bet your ass we are.”

I went upstairs.

Melissa was sedated. Her eyelids fluttered and her grip on my hand relaxed to nothing and her hand dropped away. I looked up at the EMTs and insisted I didn’t need anything, didn’t want anything.

When I went back downstairs, the sheriff had left. Morales and Sanders stood there with their heads down, staring at their boots.

Sanders said, “I hate my job.”

Morales said to me, “Can we leave you? You won’t do anything, will you? You won’t hurt yourself or anyone else, will you?”

I shook my head no. Which meant yes.

And it was over.

THAT EVENING, as the sun set and suspended snow and ice crystals lit up with the cold fire of it and the temperature dropped to minus ten, I checked on Melissa in our dark bedroom. Still sleeping. The EMTs said she would likely be out all night. Nevertheless, I left her a note on the night table in a scrawl I didn’t recognize. I wrote:

I’M GOING TO GO GET ANGELINA.

IF I DON’T COME BACK I WANT YOU TO

KNOW I LOVE YOU WITH ALL OF MY

HEART.

LOVE, JACK

I slipped the Colt.45 into the front right pocket of my parka. It was heavy. To balance out the load, I emptied the box of cartridges in the left.