F Wilson - Deep as the Marrow

“What’s up, Paulie? What’s bothering you?”

He pulled away and went to the window. He stood there with his hands jammed into his pockets and stared out at the front yard “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t sleep much last night. I got to thinking—I don’t do much of that, but last night I couldn’t turn it off. I kept thinking about how you stood up to me yesterday. I mean, Mac says, ‘Cut off her finger,’ I haggle him down to a toe, and I’m ready to do it. But you say no—this was something you weren’t going to do, weren’t going to allow to happen. You were ready to put everything on the line to stop it. I was pissed, as you know, but later on it hit me like a ton of fucking bricks: You drew a line and said, ‘That’s it. That’s where I stop. I don’t cross that line and neither does anybody else when I’m around.’ And so I laid there last night thinking, Where’s my line? I mean, do I even have a line? Or do I just wait for someone like Mac to tell me what to do, then go ahead like some fucking robot and do it? What kind of man is that? I couldn’t turn it off.”

Poppy stepped over to the window and slipped her arms around him, pressing her face against his upper back. She felt as if she were about to totally burst. She didn’t dare speak because she knew she’d start bawling.

So amazing… the feelings Paulie was talking about, they were the same ones that had been growing in her since the last baby-sitting job. But hers had been creeping up on her—at least until she’d seen Katie having a fit; then it all like came together. Paulie had got hit all at once.

“I’m gonna be thirty in November,” he said. “And man, I laid there and looked back over my life and you know what I saw? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. I mean, if I died now, is there any trace of me anywhere? Is there anything to say Paulie Dicastro was even here? No. There ain’t. So last night I decided I was gonna start drawing lines. Gonna learn to say ‘Stop, I don’t go past this point.’ I mean, you gotta stand for something in your life, and I never really stood up for anything, but that’s gonna change. I’m not saying this good. Am I making any sense at all?”

Poppy hugged him tighter. “Truckloads. Maybe this is a turning point for us, Paulie. Maybe we can make something good out of his whole ugly scene. We take the money we get and like go off somewhere and use it to build something.”

“Yeah, but what? I don’t know anything legal. What am I good for except taking orders?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll find something. We’re not total jerks. But the important thing is we’ll draw another kind of line—between the old life and the new life. And we’ll like never look back, Paulie.”

“Yeah,” he said, turning around and looking at her. His eyes searched her face. “You and me. We can do that.”

Poppy pressed her face against Paulie’s shoulder. She’d never felt this close to him.

4

“You will be able to come up with so much money?” Nana said. John looked up at his mother from where he sat before the computer and worried. She didn’t know the half of it—a tenth of it—and already she looked like she was falling apart. Her hair was carelessly combed, her clothes wrinkled, her once rosy cheeks now pale and pinched. And she kept digging her fingertips into the sides of her throat as if she were having trouble breathing.

No way he could tell her the truth—about the “service” he was to perform, about… Katie’s toe. So he’d lied to her. He’d told her the kidnappers didn’t really want a service from him, they wanted money—a million dollars.

“Yeah,” John said softly. “It’s in the works. I have calls out to some people who owe me favors, and a bunch of loan officers at the bank are working on it. I should be able to get it all together in a couple of days.”

“A couple of days? But Katie will be a prisoner all that time. How can you—?”

He flared. Before he could stop it, his voice jumped to a shout.

“Don’t you think I want her back too? Today? This minute? It’s not like I can just sit down and write a check!”

He saw her flinch and that doused his anger. He reached out and grasped her hand. “Sorry, Mom. I’m just on edge. I’m doing the best that I can as fast as I can.”

She patted his hand. “I know you are, Johnny. I never should have said… it is just that I cannot bear the thought of Katie being held prisoner by these people a single minute longer than absolutely necessary.”

Prisoner, he thought, feeling sick again. If only that were the worst of it.

“I am going to lie down. Those pills you gave me make me so sleepy. I am too tired even for my yoga.” He’d started her on a tranquilizer last night. He wished he could pop a few himself, but he had to stay alert, had to stay on top of things.

“Do that. Mom. Lie down, close your eyes, try to sleep. It’ll make the time go faster.”

When she was gone, he got up and went downstairs to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door and looked inside. He knew he had to eat something, but his appetite was gone, maybe forever. He closed the door but didn’t move away. His eyes were drawn to the freezer compartment.

He could almost see it through the door, still in the plastic bag, sealed in a white envelope tucked away behind the ice cube trays: Katie’s little toe.

He had no delusions about reattaching it, and if he had, freezing would not be the way to preserve it. But what else could he do?

After dragging himself in from the mailbox and vomiting, he’d taken the Baggie and its contents down to the basement where he could cry without his mother hearing. He remembered shaking, sweating, and sobbing for only a few minutes, and then it was as if a circuit somewhere inside of him overloaded and tripped a breaker. He went numb. He’d sat there with the Baggie in his hand, not looking at it, staring off into space instead.

Finally he stood and began moving about, in circles at first, trying to focus. He couldn’t wallow. He had decisions to make. Katie’s life depended on those decisions.

But first, the toe… that horrid, precious, bloody little toe. He couldn’t let Nana see it, and he couldn’t bear the thought of letting it rot. He’d had to do something, and the freezer was all he could think of.

Thinking… God, that was such a problem. Trying to force his thoughts to get in line and make sense—it took such effort.

But after hiding the toe, he managed to sit down at the computer and tap out a reply to Snake. It wasn’t all that coherent, but John didn’t care.

All he wanted to do was let this monster know that he would do anything— anything—he was asked, just please don’t hurt Katie any more.

And he meant that. Snake had made his point: He held all the high cards. He was in charge. John had been tortured by the choice between his best friend and his daughter. But Katie’s toe had dissolved the conflict.

Katie.

He chose Katie.

Katie would live. And Tom would have to find some way to survive.

Snake’s blood-freezing reply had reinforced that resolve.

NOW we understand each other! You know what you have to do. Do it soon. VERY soon. Or we’ll start testing your jigsaw puzzle skills.

John dragged himself away from the refrigerator and went to the phone.

He blocked all questions, all speculation as he narrowed his focus to the task at hand. He pulled out the yellow pages and searched the physician listings. He found a Dr. Adelson, an internist way up in Friendship Heights, and copied down his address and phone number. As Dr. Adelson, he began dialing the downtown pharmacies until he found one that had a small stock of chloramphenicol.

In the most matter-of-fact tone he could muster, he called in a prescription for someone named Henry Johnson: “Give him Chlormycetin 250, twenty caps, one Q-I-D, No refill, and generic’s okay.” When the pharmacist asked for his address and office phone number, John supplied Adelson’s. Fine… Mr. Johnson could pick up his pills in about thirty minutes.