Christopher Conlon - Savaging the Dark

“Connor, honey, lie back, lie back on the bed.”

Using pillows I elevate his legs. I check his pulse, which seems normal—shock victims have rapid pulses, I think I remember. Having more or less exhausted what I recall about treating shock, I take a washcloth from the bathroom and soak it with warm water, apply it gently to his forehead.

“Connor, sweetheart, you’re going to be all right. Close your eyes. Try to sleep, honey.”

I hum to him, no particular tune, just hum, in part to comfort him, in part to keep silence from descending in this room. I reach to his eyelids gently, push them closed as one would a corpse’s. After a while I take a cup of water and try to dribble a little into his mouth, wet his lips. He just stays like that, seemingly asleep for all I can tell. But he’s not asleep. He’s something else, somewhere else. I don’t know where he is.

But after a long time his breathing slows and he does seem to have drifted off. I stay very quiet, watching him. His color is bad but his breathing is all right and he’s not shaking. It grows dark outside. I go to the window, glance out the curtain. The car is in total darkness, there’s no light on this part of the parking lot at all. No one will come for us tonight, I think. Most likely no one is looking within even hundreds of miles of where we are. And yet I know that someone will come, eventually. Someone will knock on some door somewhere or a highway patrolman or policeman or trooper will flash his lights behind us. But is that true? Aren’t there stories of people who vanish entirely from their own lives, take on new identities, live somewhere else for years, decades, make new families, new existences? Yes. People do it. I know they do.

After a long time Connor coughs suddenly and I go to him.

“Hey, baby,” I whisper in the semi-darkness of the room. “How you feeling?”

“I’m thirsty,” he says, not opening his eyes.

I tilt up his head, offer him some water from the cup. He drinks, coughs a little, swallows. Then again, and again. Finally the coughing stops and he’s able to drink without trouble. He opens his eyes and looks at me.

“Where are we, Mona?”

“I think we’re still in Ohio. But I’m not sure what this town is called. The middle of nowhere.”

“When are we going home?”

I think about how to answer this sleepy, sick boy. “Soon, sweetheart.”

“Where’s Kylie?”

I look at him. “She’s not with us on this trip, Connor.”

“Oh.” He swallows a little more water. “I thought she was.” His voice doesn’t rise above a whisper.

“No, sweetheart.”

He rests his head on the pillow again, bunches the blankets up to his neck. “I’m cold.”

He shouldn’t be cold; it’s actually quite warm in the room. I stroke his forehead again. “I’ll run you a hot bath, Connor,” I say. He doesn’t object, so I get up and do it. When it’s ready I return to him. “C’mon, sweetheart. A bath will warm you up.” I pull at him gently, get him out of bed, guide him to the bathroom, take off his things for him, help him in. He trembles as I trickle the hot water over his head with a washcloth.

“Good?”

He doesn’t say anything. I wash his unresisting limbs and face, watch him soak for a while. His body calms.

“Okay, honey, c’mon,” I say at last. “Time to get out.” I hold out the biggest towel I can find, ready for him to step into it. He does. I rub him dry, lead him back to the bed, help him get in between the covers.

“Okay?” I ask.

He nods.

I take a quick shower, dry myself, climb into the bed. He’s facing away from me. I spoon him, wrap myself around him as tightly and as warmly as I can, try to will some of my strength into his frail body. After a while he begins to shake again.

“Are you cold?” I whisper.

“No.”

But he keeps shaking. The shaking becomes violent, frightening, wild thrashings. I hold onto him, feeling that if I let go he might completely fly apart. “Shh, Connor, shh.” I hold him, hold him. He begins to cry, first quietly, then wildly, without any reserve, terrible agonized wailings. I hold his forehead, kiss his hair, tell him it’s all right, everything will be all right. When he gets too loud I place a pillow gently over his mouth. He screams into it, weeps, hiccoughs. I know I have to stay here, hold him, not let him go, not ever. It suddenly occurs to me that he could die without me, that if I were to get up and leave him now he might literally shake himself apart, cry himself to death.

“Connor,” I whisper into his ear, “come back. Come back. Bring yourself back to me. Come on. Come back, Connor.”

It goes on for a long time, the weeping, the screaming. But I ask him over and over, hundreds of times, to come back, come back to me. Finally it all slows. Quiets. The shaking fades to occasional tremors. The crying stops. He sucks his thumb.

He whispers something. I don’t catch it. I lean to his lips. “What, sweetheart?”

“I want,” he whispers hoarsely, “my mom.”

“I’m here, sweetheart,” I whisper in return. “I’m right here.”

He sleeps. In the middle of the night he wakes again and says he’s thirsty, thirsty and a little hungry. I give him more water, give him half of a giant cookie I bought from the vending machine. I eat the remainder and we get cookie crumbs in the bed. I almost think he smiles, just slightly, a mere shadow of a smile, when I say what a couple of pigs we are and make an oinking sound at him. He rests again, falls asleep again. I do too. Toward morning, my arms still wrapped tightly around his narrow shoulders, my breasts on his back, my legs pushed against his, I see he’s gotten an erection. I reach over, stroke it gently. He’s asleep, I can tell from his deep breathing. After a few minutes he moans softly and ejaculates into the sheets. He never wakes, not really, just sighs a little. After a while he turns over, his body relaxing into mine, and we sleep that way until the sun’s up. Face-to-face. Soul-to-soul.

The problem is that I’m running out of money. My own account is nearly depleted and I’m worried every time I make a withdrawal, make sure that we’re moving on immediately afterward so that we’ll be hundreds of miles away by the time anyone could trace the account activity. I have credit cards but these seem even more dangerous to use. Yet we have to have something. It’s amazing how quickly motel rooms, food, gas add up. We drive, drive, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, the interstates all bleeding into each other, one endless gray-black ribbon of road stretching endlessly before us, endlessly behind us. I have no idea if anyone is following us, if anyone has the slightest idea where we are. I keep us moving, driving all night sometimes, into the following day. We follow no route, just drive, take exits impulsively, get back on the freeway for no reason, change direction, zigzag across counties and states. Connor rarely speaks. He eats when we go to a drive-thru, occasionally he fiddles with the radio, but mostly he just stares out the window. When we get to a motel, invariably out of the way, well off the freeway, he steps into the room and turns on the TV. I always initiate the lovemaking. He never says no, never says yes, just does it with a dispassion I find disturbing but that there’s nothing I can do about, at least not now. I understand that he’s adjusting to this new life, new reality. I don’t want to push him, don’t want to frighten him any more than he’s already been frightened. I know he’ll come around fully, be the apple-cheeked boy I once knew, the sweet bright boy who couldn’t wait to be with me under the Christmas tree all those years ago—no, not years, months, it only feels like years. I just have to be patient, let him adjust in his own way. I try to josh him along, point out interesting landmarks, stop once in a while if something looks worth stopping for. Yet I’m nervous about letting him be around people. I’m very aware that he could walk up to any one of them, say My name is Connor Blue, please call the police, I believe they’re looking for me and it would all be over. Yet I can’t believe he would really do that, not Connor, not my Connor. But he has odd moments, sometimes in the car, sometimes in a room, when his eyes grow strange and he says something disconnected like “Do we have any homework tonight?” or “Where’s Kylie?” There’s nothing I can do but go along, say, “No, no homework tonight, Connor,” or “She’s not with us now, Connor.” My answers always satisfy him, for that moment. But then the next moment comes. And the next.