Then the last lungful of gas hits him, and the euphoria is back, thank God, and the numbness and the all-is-forgiven now and perhaps Rufus is right you are not a bad person you are not really here but now nothing matters and thank you God thank you God and the sky is throbbing again, and the stars twirling then exploding into a thousand flinders of light.
# # #
On a late afternoon toward the end of July, the screams of a woman filled the stone house. You could even hear her from the front yard, standing in the wet, mosquito-ridden heat between the two live oaks. Andy and Beth certainly heard it, locked in their cramped dark cells underneath the house. They’d heard screams down here before, but this time was different. They recognized the young woman’s voice, and even through the antipsychotic fog, both reached the same conclusion: the Kites were killing Violet.
In the candlelight of Vi’s cell, amniotic fluid glistened in the dirt between her legs. Her hands had been balled into fists for more than an hour. Her larynx ached with strain.
Maxine Kite knelt beside her as Rufus leaned against the doorframe smoking a pipe.
"Take me to a hospital!" Vi begged. "It’s not coming."
"It is coming," Maxine said. "This is just—"
"No it’s not! It hurts so much!"
Another vicious contraction.
She screamed again.
Rufus chuckled.
"Pretend it’s the olden times," he told Vi between groans. "Just got to tough it out there, little lady."
Luther came down the creaking steps and peered over his father’s shoulder.
"Miracle of life, son," Rufus said.
"What are you going to do with it?"
"With what?"
"Ahhhhhgg!"
"The baby."
"I don’t know."
"What does that feel like?" Luther asked Vi.
"Fuck you!" Vi roared.
"Boy, she’s a tad busy right now," Maxine said.
Vi looked up at the Kites, their faces eerily grotesque in the firelight. This must be hell.
"Get out!" Vi screamed. "Get out all of you!"
No one left, and the contraction intensified. Lifting her head off the pillow, she grabbed her thighs and groaned for all she was worth.
A bloody head emerged.
When it was out up to its bellybutton, the little boy screamed "what the fuck?" at the world—a scared, fragile bawling that filled Vi with the purest joy she’d ever known.
She pushed the rest of the baby out.
It lay facedown in the dirt, crying.
"What is that?" Luther asked, pointing at the bloody mass beside the infant.
"It’s the placenta, boy. What feeds the baby."
"They eat that in some cultures," Rufus said. "It’s a delicacy. Mm, boy."
"Would somebody cut the cord?" Vi asked, crying now. "I need to hold him."
"Luther, go fetch a pair of scissors from the kitchen."
Vi sat up. She reached down, lifted the tiny, wailing creature out of the dirt, and brought him into her chest. She kissed his slimy head and whispered to him.
"What’s today?" Vi asked Maxine.
"I don’t know."
"Please. I want to know his birthday."
Luther returned with a pair of scissors. He pushed by his father and told his mother to get out of the way.
"Boy, you let me—"
"I want to do it."
Maxine relinquished her place beside the young mother, and Luther knelt down.
"Turn him over," he said.
Vi held her son up under his arms, facing Luther. The infant and the monster stared at each other, the baby’s eyes rolling around in its head, Luther’s black orbs taking in this bloody little miracle.
"Be careful, please," Vi said.
Luther took hold of the umbilical cord and clipped it a half-inch from the bellybutton. Vi pulled her baby back into her breast.
"What’s its name?" Luther asked.
"Max," Vi said.
"After my mother?"
"After my husband. I need to nurse him now. Can I have some privacy please? Please."
Luther got up and walked out of the room. Maxine followed him and Rufus closed and locked the door behind them all.
Alone in the candlelight, Vi wept. She removed her T-shirt, wiped off the baby, and pushed back her blond hair that clung to her sweaty face. Then she took Max into her swollen breast and began to nurse.
The sucking of the infant produced the only sound in the cell.
Vi closed her eyes.
The soreness between her legs was nothing now compared to those contractions. Loneliness, joy, and horror came in equal measure. She looked down at her infant son, eyes open and shining, sucking away. She stroked his cheek, the firelight dancing across his face. All she wanted now was her husband, looking down on them. She was certain of it—Max would’ve cried.
Vi started to pray, but stopped herself. The fuck had He done for her? She should be grateful that He allowed her to give birth before an audience of psychopaths? Did He need to hear her say she wanted her child to live? How could He not know that?
Count your blessings. Look on the bright side. Fuck the bright side. This should’ve happened in a hospital with my husband. We missed sharing this together.
For the first time in her life, it occurred to her that she was all alone and always had been. She’d bought into the God of suburbia. Comfy, predictable, and manmade to revolve around man. The God of her Baptist upbringing was clearly unconcerned with her current predicament. He’d denigrated the birth of her son by allowing it to occur in a basement that she’d probably never leave.
Her God was fine on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings when all was hunky-dory. And it was even possible to write off the tragedies that befell others as "part of God’s plan." But hold that sentiment up to the flaming knowledge that your newborn child will never see his father, that he might die horribly before he’s even a week old, and see if it doesn’t burn.
When life turns into a real horrorshow, the God she knew was about as useful as a water gun in a war. She felt blasphemous for thinking it, but He was no comfort to her now. She was drowning. He was watching. Either impotent to deliver her, or unwilling. And especially if it were the latter, she had no use for such a god.
# # #
Luther’s room stands at the south end of the third floor, unchanged for more than twenty years. His toy chest still occupies the corner, filled with the playthings he treasured as a lonely child. Even his stuffed animal collection remains—hanging from the ceiling in a rusty wire fruit basket. Dolphie the dolphin, Birdie the blackbird, Polar Bear, and Clementine the barn owl were the major players.
Luther enters his bedroom and closes the door. He approaches the window. Across the sound, a line of late day thunderstorms clobbers the mainland. Zigzags of lightning strike the water a few miles offshore, but their thunder never reaches Ocracoke.
Luther glances back at the desk beside his bed. He’s written only half a page in that leather-bound journal, and it’s utter shit.
"You’re no different from the rest of them," his father told him last night. "Best figure out what you believe and why. Time’s a wastin’."
Luther feels very peculiar. He hasn’t encountered the emotion of fear since childhood, though it isn’t fear of his father and what he may do to him if Luther doesn’t write an exceptional treatise. He could give a remote shit about Rufus. Fuck Rufus. Fuck the goddamn old codger of a bastard. What Luther fears is his own expanding emptiness. He thinks of Baby Max, the moment the infant’s head broke free into the world, and acknowledges it for what it was: the most powerful thing he’d ever witnessed.
Luther lies down on his bed and stares up at the cracks in the ceiling as the storms pass over the island.