Jack Ketchum - Right to Life

He chuckled. Actually chuckled. The asshole.

“Thank you. That would be most welcome.”

“Kath? You?”

“No thanks.”

He walked into the kitchen and got two beers and opened them and when he returned to the living room both Kath and McCann were watching the silent screen. Both of them looking distinctly uncomfortable. McCann took his Bud and drank. Stephen sat down beside Kath and did the same.

“So. What can we do for you?”

“I may as well say this right out. I have to know, Stephen. It’s been bothering me. Where is she? Who is she?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The woman. In front of the clinic yesterday. I wasn’t supposed to be there, you see. The New York Christians’ Aid Coalition called some of us from my group at the very last minute. A number of their people had cancelled. Elsie Little and I were the only ones who were free yesterday. But I saw you. You pulled her into your station wagon.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He sighed. “I saw you, Stephen. If for no other reason than for the movement’s sake I need to know exactly what’s going on here. Remember, he that loveth lies loveth not the Lord’’

“You’ve got me mixed up with somebody else, Charles.”

He smiled. “You and Katherine both? That’s hardly likely. I saw both of you. I even recognized your car. Trust me, Stephen, please. This is just between the three of us. Elsie didn’t notice you and I haven’t said a thing to her. You can trust me.”

He’d sooner trust a water snake.

He wanted to strangle the little man. But McCann was scaring him too.

They’d planned it to be in a whole other State. The biggest city in the world for god’s sake. A place they’d picketed only once before. Nobody they knew was supposed to be anywhere near there.

He pulled heavily from the bottle.

“She’s going to have a baby,” Kath said.

“What?”

“Jesus, Kath!”

“She’s going to have a baby. She’s three months pregnant. I can’t have one and she can. And with Stephen’s record we can’t adopt. So she’s going to have our baby. Okay? You satisfied?”

“But…”

“She was going to abort it, Mr. McCann. Remember the first commandment? Thou shalt not kill? Remember what this is all about? We are saving the life of this baby!”

McCann stared at her and sipped his beer. Stephen was alternately furiously with her and relieved. The ball was in his court now.

It was unlike her to be so passionate.

Maybe she disliked the little toad as much as he did.

“Do me a favor, Kath. Get me another beer, will you?”

She got off the couch without a word. Just as glad to be out of it. McCann’s eyes followed her and then settled back on his.

“You really expect to do this?”

“Yes.”

“But you can’t just… kidnap somebody. What about consent?”

“We’ll get her consent.”

“How in the world will you do that?”

“That’ll have to be our business, I’m afraid.”

He shook his head. “Not the Lord’s business, I think.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Is abortion the Lord’s business?”

“We’re trying to end that.”

“I know. In our way so are we. Here’s one kid who’s not going to get sucked out of his mother’s womb like some dustball off a living room floor.”

“But the real mother…”

Kath handed him the second beer and sat down beside him again. “To hell with the real mother. She was going to kill it.”

“It?”

“The baby. Him. Her. Whatever.”

The man glared at him. Stood up.

“All right, let’s see her, then. Let’s see this… this brood mare of yours!”

“I gotta tell you. I don’t like your tone, McCann.”

“I don’t like your choice of words, either. A child is not an it. Motherhood is a blessed state and you cannot simply lift your choice of mothers off the street. Where is she? In the basement? That’s where I’d keep my prisoners.”

The man was actually trembling with anger. The self-righteous little bastard. He shook his finger at both of them and headed for the basement door.

"Isaiah 7:3. Amend your ways and doings, all ye whores and defilers…"

Something inside him gave a desperate lurch and he was up off the couch reaching for the second bottle and suddenly he was armed and fucking dangerous, one of the bottles dripping with cool sweat, he had them by the neck and he swung the empty down over the man’s ear, felt the impact and heard and watched it shatter and then he was looking down at his hand again, the suddenly truncated neck of the bottle sticking jagged and deep into the pad of flesh between thumb and forefinger. He looked up and saw the man turn trying to say something and swung the other bottle, the one that was almost full, directly into his face.

It was a kind of magic he thought what a simple glass bottle could do. One moment the face was full of fury and indignation and the next full of surprise and pain because the second bottle had shattered too but this time full across his mouth, a huge shard of brown glass pushed through the upper lip and out his cheek, foam and blood mingling in a bright pink slime riding down his chin.

Dimly he could hear Kath scream and the little man roaring deep and anguished but his brain was roaring even louder saying, finish it, you got to finish it! even as McCann reached for him. He pivoted and half-dived and half-fell over to the end table, the plate that had held last night’s stuffing clattering to the floor, the fork which was his target in his hand and he reached up off the floor as McCann lunged for him, McCann unaccountably still wanting to fight and shoved it deep into the man’s neck and twisted, twisted fast back and forth inside him, sinking it deeper until the hands closed over his own and tore them away with an unexpected force and tore the fork from his throat and sent it sailing across the room.

The man’s growl gurgled in his throat, the throat pulsing blood through his clasped hands like Steven’s own first pulsing orgasm when he was a boy, blood rolling off the pierced cheek and spraying from his throat over the throw-rug in front of the TV and over the TV screen where Jackie Chan fought on as he staggered to one knee and finish it finish it still wailed in his ears so he tore the shard of glass out of the palm of his hand and ripped the plug from the heavy brass standing lamp beside the couch and grabbed it by the neck and brought the base of it across McCann’s face as hard as he could hitting him with five solid pounds of brass, a sound like metal striking a bowling ball, knocked him sideways to the floor,’blood spraying the wall and the mirror over the fireplace in the wide arc of his fall. He stood over him and brought the base down on his head, he didn’t know how many times, over and over until the sickening thuds turned gradually softer, until the body stopped twitching and the flow of blood grew thick and languid as a mudslide. Until he could barely even lift the thing any more and collapsed to his knees beside him.

He realized he was crying. He looked at the mangled head.

He got up on quivering legs and rushed to the sink and delivered himself up of cold bread stuffing and meat loaf dinner.

He turned on the tap and the switch on the disposal unit and rinsed the stuff away and rinsed the gash between thumb and forefinger. With the other hand he splashed his face. The cold water seemed to revive him. The cut continued to seep blood in regular pulses so he wrapped it with a clean dish towel out of the drawer and used his teeth and his good hand to tie it tight.

Kath was still making tiny high-pitched keening sounds. Rocking back and forth on the couch. Staring at the ceiling. Her face shiny with tears.