Sharon Sala - Going Twice

The sun was warm, but the breeze blowing on the back of her neck kept it from being uncomfortable. As sad as it was to have to come here, it was also a strangely beautiful, peaceful place. She saw an older couple a short distance away, and a woman sitting on a bench farther up the hill—reminders that grieving for the dead was a part of living.

When she finally reached her destination, the weight in her chest was so heavy it hurt to breathe. Wade had insisted on this plot. He’d said it was because little boys needed trees to climb. She knelt in front of the grave marker to brush away freshly cut grass and a couple of leaves. The stone was cold and hard, the opposite of what you would associate with a baby, but she finally reached out and traced the letters carved into the granite: Samuel Joe Luckett.

The Samuel was for his daddy, Samuel Wade.

The Joe was for her, his mother, Jolene.

They had planned to call him Sammy.

Jo’s hands were shaking as she put the flowers against the marker.

“Happy birthday, little guy. I brought some pretty flowers and a new toy. The flowers are called forget-me-nots. I never forget you, because you’re always in my heart, and the toy is called a giraffe. He has a long funny neck, doesn’t he? They have some real ones here in the zoo, but this one is about your size.”

Everything began to blur as her voice broke and the tears welled. “If I could take back what happened, I would do it in a heartbeat. I didn’t know going to work that day would hurt you or I wouldn’t have gone. I know it’s my fault you’re not here, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Her cell phone rang again, and again she ignored it. She knew who it would be. Even though Wade surely hated her guts, he still called her every year on this day. She couldn’t talk to him now. She didn’t want him to hear her cry.

* * *

For the past three years Wade Luckett’s plan had been to fill up his days with so much work that he wouldn’t have to think about what he’d lost. But every year, when this day came around he stepped out of denial, and made himself face what had been the worst day of his life.

He hadn’t slept worth a damn last night and had dressed for work early. The thought of food made him sick, which was a sure sign something was horribly wrong. He drank a cup of coffee while watching the early morning news, and fielded a couple of texts from the office, answered a half-dozen emails, all the while watching the time.

They opened the gates to the cemetery at sunup, but he wouldn’t be the first one there for fear of running into his ex-wife. He still didn’t understand how losing their baby had turned her against him. He wasn’t the one who shot her, and he damn sure wasn’t the one who walked away after it was over. Still, what was past was past. If he could have, he would have gladly died in Sammy’s place, but nobody had given him the option.

For whatever reason, life had kicked them both in the teeth, and today was just the reminder. As soon as he thought enough time had passed, he began gathering up his things. His car keys were in a bowl on the table, and the little yellow Hot Wheels truck he’d picked out at the store last night was right beside them. His hands were shaking when he picked up the truck and dropped it in his pocket. Moments later he was out the door.

He drove to the cemetery with a painful knot in his chest, and the closer he got, the greater the pain became. He took a deep breath as he drove through the entrance, then kept driving. When he saw a car in the distance and the tall, dark-haired woman kneeling at the grave, his eyes filled with tears.

Ah, damn it, Jolene. You still break my heart.

Unwilling to intrude on her moment, he parked, took the little yellow truck out of his pocket and held it like a talisman against welling pain, but the longer he sat there, the worse the pain became.

Without thinking, he reached for his phone and called her, just as he did on this day every year. He saw her react as the phone began to ring and knew before she turned around that she wasn’t going to answer. He watched as she left the grave and began walking back to her car.

Her shoulders were too damn straight.

Her steps were uneven.

He knew she was crying.

After she was gone, he drove up and parked beneath the tree near the grave and walked over. When he saw the yellow giraffe, the pain in his chest bloomed. He looked down at the yellow truck he was carrying and shook his head. They’d always been on the same page with everything.

Then he focused on the name and smiled.

“Hey, Sammy, it’s me, Daddy. I see Mama’s already been here. That’s a great giraffe you have there. I brought you a birthday present, too. You’re three years old today, and I brought you your first Hot Wheels. This one is a little yellow truck like the ones I used to play with when I was three.”

He dropped to his knees, set the truck on the marker next to the giraffe, and then laid the palm of his hand on the engraved name.

“This is the closest I can get to you here, baby boy, but I carry you in my heart.”

Then he got up and walked away, his shoulders a little too straight, his steps staggering. He couldn’t see for the tears in his eyes.

Houston, Texas

Hershel Inman hardly remembered the man he’d been before his wife, Louise, died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and could barely cope with what he’d become, since Louise wouldn’t let him forget it.

She alternated days of crying and begging him to stop killing with preaching at him for his sins. If he didn’t love her so much, and if she wasn’t already dead, he would gladly have strangled her just to make her shut up.

His mission had begun as payback to the authorities who’d come too late to save her, and to God for picking and choosing who lived and who died. Then the FBI showed up, and his power grew as he continued to kill and escape detection. He had been invincible—until he’d made that first mistake and missed a survivor who’d witnessed what he’d done. After that, everything began to unwind. He’d tried to silence her, but the FBI kept interfering, and then, to make matters worse, she married the agent who’d saved her.

Their lives got better and his got worse, ending with the explosion in his getaway boat that nearly killed him. He’d dropped off the radar to let his burns heal and thought about disappearing altogether. But when he closed his eyes at night, all he saw was Louise’s face and the fear in her eyes as the water rose higher and higher around them, so he stayed in the wind, waiting for a chance to strike back.

Spring arrived, bringing with it the chance of tornadoes on a weekly basis through the heartland of America. He knew people would die, but even more would survive, and he thought about starting over with the killings, and wondered if he would be able to contact the FBI team like before. He wondered if they had deactivated the stolen phone he had used to communicate. He told himself if the phone still worked when he recharged it, it meant he was to continue. If it didn’t, then he would disappear.

When it activated, he took it as a sign. He packed his pickup with new camping equipment and headed north out of Houston. Storms were predicted within the next two days. If he got out there ahead of time and set up near where the outbreaks were expected to occur, and if the storms were bad enough, he would be close at hand when the survivors started crawling out of the debris.

Hershel drove north all the way to Wichita Falls, which was near the Texas-Oklahoma border, found an out-of-the-way place to camp and set up his tent.

When the storms started building, his anxiety built along with them. As they finally formed into wall clouds and began moving through the countryside, Hershel moved into action.