Sometimes Logan cried out in his sleep. He told her he was having nightmares of Sandro chasing him. And he was drifting inward, away from her. Was he shifting blame to her for what happened?
Sandro had done this to her son, to them, and she hated him for that. Yet there were also moments when her mind replayed the good times and she pined for what could have been. It was a maddening cycle that manifested as long late-night soaks after Logan crashed, plus Vicodin, washed down with whatever beer was on special at the liquor store.
She was soaking this way when her sister called just after midnight.
Soon as Blythe answered, Jackie blurted, “Your creep was here.”
“Sandro? When?”
“Like three minutes ago.” Blythe heard the crackle of a joint being hit, hard, before her sister continued. “Fucker wakes me up knocking on the window of the master. He thought I was you, kept calling your name.”
“What happened?”
“Not much. I showed him Dad’s shotgun and he got gone like real fast.”
“You had Dad’s shotgun that handy?”
“So, wait, all this shit’s gone down, and you think I wouldn’t sleep with it like a lover?”
Anger, its molten lava, gushed from Blythe’s chest, up her neck and into her cheeks. Now he was terrorizing her sister. “I’m sorry, Jackie, for all of this. I should’ve gotten a restraining order.”
“Hon, I just showed him two barrels’ worth of restraining order.” Her joint crackled again. “Just come home. You can have your room back.”
“Not yet.” Blythe wanted off the phone, to think, to plan, to do what? “Soon though. Love ya loads, sis.”
“Do not go back to that creep, Blythe, no matter how much he begs.”
Next morning, northwest of the valley, past the wind farms where a dirt lane dead-ended into open desert, Blythe stood behind Logan, a hundred yards from the car. His arms were extended, the .38 in his hands. Blythe reached around him and held his wrists to help him aim. He needed both thumbs to cock the hammer.
“Just relax,” she said, resting her hands on his shoulders. “Now exhale as you squeeze the trigger like I showed you.”
A bull’s-eye target, drawn on cardboard from a pizza box, was stuck to the spines of a saguaro cactus twenty feet away. Beyond, the desert raced toward the apron of the mountains. Blythe loved the desert at this hour, how the early sun on its upward arc gave this world a flaxen sheen.
She felt Logan’s shoulders tense. The gun barrel flinched upward with a crack like a giant whip snapping, followed by three echoes slapping off the distant rock face.
Logan lowered the gun. “Cool.”
“Right?” Blythe said, mussing his hair.
“How far does a bullet go?”
“Far, but we want to hit the target, not the mountainside.” She positioned herself behind him again.
When he brought the gun up to the target, Blythe spoke into his ear: “Pretend the cardboard is Sandro’s face.”
Logan’s hands tightened around the gun. “Yeah... I hate him.”
“I hate him too,” Blythe heard herself say, which immediately brought pangs of guilt, as if she were somehow betraying Sandro.
Three days later, on an unusually cool early April evening, they were at the sports arena. Blythe knew the promoter, so they’d slipped through a staff entrance to avoid the pat downs and security wands. She and Logan sat in a reserved row alongside the octagon. Biggest crowd she’d ever seen, maybe five thousand heads. She had taken extra time with her hair and wore her short black leather jacket over a mauve blouse. Tight jeans. She wanted Sandro to see what he could never touch again. Never is a long time came a voice deep in her mind.
“Fuck off,” she said aloud.
Embarrassed, she looked down at Logan but he hadn’t heard her over the crowd noise.
Logan sat frowning, hands clutching the armrests. He had not wanted to come, but she told him if he did, if he met Sandro in the eye, the nightmares would go away. For herself, she hoped it would reduce her flashbacks of the incident.
The first three fights blew by. Then, impossibly, the emcee was back in the cage announcing Sandro Garcia and his opponent, Hank “Inglorious” Stoddard, also undefeated, for the amateur super-welterweight matchup.
Attacked by nauseous fear, Blythe struggled to hold it together. Logan sat low, head sunk into the neck hole of his sweatshirt. She pulled it back down under his chin. “C’mon, Logan. Show him you’re a brave boy, not a turtle.”
He sat up and repeated the word turtle, and for the first time since the assault he actually laughed. The music of it filled her with relief and she laughed with him, thankful for this momentary lifting of a long dark stretch.
Both fighters were in the cage now, loosening up as Chicano rap pumped through the house.
Against her nervous fear, Blythe felt the excitement of fight night coming back.
Sandro shadowboxed and shuffled in her direction.
Blythe stood. Look at me, asshole, she willed, even as her knees trembled.
When he saw her, his hands dropped.
“Stand up, Logan, and look at him,” Blythe said, reaching her hand down for his. “C’mon, Logan.” But her boy had slumped into his chair again.
Through the mesh of the cage, Sandro smiled at her. Blythe did not smile back. She felt untethered, light-headed.
The fighters were called to the center of the cage for instructions from the referee. In a neon-orange sport bikini, some redhead walked the octagon perimeter hoisting a round one card. Decent legs but no flow in her stride, Blythe thought.
When the buzzer sounded round one, she sat, letting herself breathe again.
Inglorious, a muscled slab with a shaved skull, charged in and went for a hip toss. Sandro evaded it and they both ended up on the mat, bodies grappling like angry crabs. Sandro’s panther speed allowed him to slip behind Inglorious and throw his right arm around his throat. He wrenched Inglorious back and cradled him between his knees, trapping his neck in the vise of his forearms. In a lion-killer choke, Inglorious was at Sandro’s mercy now.
The crowd cheered, and up came the chant: “San-dro... San-dro...”
Blythe knew what it felt like to be Inglorious, and it reminded her how easily Sandro could have killed her, or her beautiful boy.
“Can we go?” Logan said.
“Not yet, honey.”
Any moment now, Inglorious would tap, or black out. But for some reason Sandro released him. Both men jumped up and faced off again. Boos erupted at Sandro for not finishing the job. Why would he do that? Blythe wondered. He never gave his opponents a break.
Sandro’s feet planted. He looked right at Blythe and winked, doing nothing when Inglorious threw a right hook that connected solidly against his jaw. The crowd moaned with the impact.
Inglorious went on throwing hooks, uppercuts, elbows to the face, knees to the body. Almost everything landed, the crowd roaring. Yet Sandro, staggered, one eye badly cut, threw nothing back.
Boos and jeers. Plastic beer bottles struck the cage.
The fighters stood slightly apart now, gathering their breath.
Sandro dropped his hands again and stood, as if waiting for a bus.
Reflexively, Blythe shot to her feet. “What the fuck, Sandro!?” she shouted through her hands. Others nearby stood and repeated, “What the fuck! What the fuck!” and soon, the whole arena joined, even Logan. Blythe’s body vibrated with the energy of the crowd.