Christopher Conlon - Savaging the Dark

Once upon a time in a dream I was Mona Straw and I lived in a lovely middle-class home in Silver Spring Maryland with my husband Bill and daughter Gracie and I taught children at Cutts School and my life was all anyone could ever ask of a life. Billions of people look for food and water and shelter every day on this planet and they go to bed hungry and their children die with their stomachs bulging and flies on their cracked lips and that’s when they’re not rounded up by armies, by juntas that haul away the boys and force them to carry guns and murder and pillage and line the rest up against a wall and shoot them or hack off their heads except for the pretty daughters, of course, who get raped by a dozen soldiers or two dozen and spat on and beaten and finally wind up with a bullet in the brain or a bayonet in the chest and by that time they welcome it as a blessed relief. That’s how people live in this world but it was not how Mona Straw lived once upon a time. In a dream Mona Straw had everything anyone could want or need, far more than she deserved, than anyone really deserves. But it wasn’t real. Reality is only Connor, Connor Blue, my love, my life. The rest is fantasy. Bill never existed. Gracie never lived. There is no house in Silver Spring Maryland, no Cutts School. There couldn’t have been, because there had been no Mona Straw, not that Mona Straw, that half-girl, one leg, one arm, half a head. She never existed. Nothing else ever existed except what I see before me right now, the road, the car, the steering wheel in my hands, and Connor, Connor, Connor.

One night we lay in bed with Cokes and potato chips and watch Gun Crazy, an old ’50s film noir. We’re both enraptured, Connor leaning toward the screen and shouting “Wow!” every time something new happens. It’s just like it was once, only better, now Connor and I don’t have to hide behind a veneer of respectability, appropriateness, we can do what we wanted to do then, be naked together, crawl into bed, touch each other, fill the bed with crumbs if we want to, and just escape into movieland, watch, watch, then make love afterward, make love all night long. I’ve not seen Connor like this in a long time. I’ve never been more joyful, more ecstatic, life is everything I want it to be, I have everything I’ll ever need in this room, this bed. We laugh, we wrestle with each other during the commercials, we play silly games with fingers and toes, we kiss, then the movie pulls us back, again and again, always the movie, the movie on the screen, the movie of our life. It occurs to me that I don’t know what town we’re in or even what state. It makes no difference. My state is Connor Blue. My life is Connor Blue. This night, I think, he’s finally better, he’s committed to me again, to us, his life is my life. He laughs, the color comes back to his cheeks, he’s a boy again, a happy boy with his first love.

It doesn’t last. That night in the middle of the night I awaken to the sound of his crying and when I touch him he pulls away, yanks his shoulder from under my touch. I don’t ask him why he’s crying. I don’t say anything. I can’t think of anything to say. After a while he says, “I want to go back to school.” Later still he says, “I wish Kylie was here.” After that he says, “Mona? I want to go home, Mona.”

And so I watch him, watch him carefully. I don’t allow him in public places without me. He doesn’t resist, doesn’t fight. Many times he’s quite affectionate, holding my hand as we wait for our fast food to arrive or wandering around a park or on a street somewhere. He laughs, he swings our hands high together, he runs ahead and says, “Catch me!” At night we can still love, be in love, watch old movies on whatever local station the TV picks up. One night it’s You Only Live Once, another it’s They Live By Night, wonderful dark stories, lovers on the lam. He’s Connor then, the old Connor, the Connor I love, will love until death.

But somewhere outside Oklahoma City in a dry dusty town, not even a town, just a scattershot collection of rundown buildings of which the biggest is the Tumbleweed Motel, where we stay, it happens, the moment I’ve feared. In the dark after TV and a vending machine dinner and lovemaking for hours I nod off to sleep and when I wake he’s not there. Connor is not there. The bed is empty, the bathroom is empty. I slip on my shirt and jeans and look outside, walk over to the ice machines, look toward the office (dark now, closed). Nothing. Nothing, nothing! I try to breathe, try to think. He’s gone. He’s gone. But he can’t have gone far, on foot. And what’s around here? Nothing. The town is lightless, everyone asleep. There are hardly any streetlamps. Only one road in and out. He couldn’t have knocked on anybody’s door, I’d see the light from here, there would be cars and police lights bearing down on this motel. I can’t call out, can’t let the owners know I’ve lost my son, can’t wake the occupants of the other rooms—there are two or three, judging from the cars in the lot. I collect my keys, get in the car, gather up my bag which I always leave in the locked vehicle when we take a room. He can only have gone one of two ways. I take a left, headlights sweeping over all that endless Oklahoma dirt, drive for four miles. I’ve gone the wrong way. He couldn’t have gotten this far. Unless, of course, he didn’t stay on the road at all, instead wandered off into the desert. But that would be crazy. He must be on the road. I turn around, gun the engine and drive as fast as I dare to in order to make up the four miles I’ve wasted. At last I’m back at the motel. I pass it by, slow down and keep driving, driving. He’s about two miles from the motel. When he sees the lights he turns around and begins to wave but then realizes that it’s me. He runs then, runs into the dirt, past all the thorny brush. I pull up, take the gun from my bag. I don’t point it at him. I just stand there in the glare of the headlights.

“Connor, come back here.”

He squints in the light that’s aimed straight at him. He looks at me.

“I don’t want to, Mona.”

“Yes, you do. Come back, sweetheart. Come back to me.”

He stands indecisively, looks over his shoulder at the desert dark.

“There’s nothing out there, Connor,” I say. “Nothing but dirt and tumbleweed and rattlesnakes.” I smile. He can’t see it but I’m sure he hears it in my voice. “Back at the motel you can watch TV all night long if you want. And you can make love to me all night long if you want.”

“Mona…”

“Come back to me, sweetheart. Now.”

Finally he steps slowly toward me, gets obligingly in the car. I get in as well, return the gun to its bag, turn the car around and return to the motel. When we get to the room and close the door behind us I hug him gently and say, “I meant what I said, Connor. Do you want to watch TV all night? Or make love? Or both?”

“I just want to go to sleep,” he says, not looking at me. He removes his shirt and pants, climbs into the bed wearing only his shorts. I follow him, take off my things, get in with him, stroke his warm shoulders.

After a minute he says, quietly: “Please don’t touch me.”

I withdraw my hands. I watch him in the darkness.

Another county, another state. I’ve nearly maxed my credit cards. I know I should be thinking of how we can have a life together, really live as opposed to this fugitive quasi-existence. Back at the beginning with Connor I’d hated the furtive quality of our encounters, hated having to rent dirty motel rooms when what I really wanted to do was announce our love to everyone, to have Connor make love to me on the street, the lawn, in front of my classes, boldly, shamelessly. Back in that other life, that fantasy life, that dream. But the furtiveness never stopped and it hasn’t stopped now, we’re still running, still hiding. But I can’t trust him anymore. I keep the bag with the pistol with me all the time now. I see his wandering eyes when we’re in public places. I notice how he looks around, maybe checking where he could run if he decided to. I see. It will end, whether they are close upon us or not. It will end. Connor’s going to end it. I know it.