SECRETS by Ian DeShils
Chapter 3
REUNION
Lonnie walked in, dropped an old beat up suitcase on the floor and in a nervous voice said,
"Hi Dad."
I must have paced the house a thousand times that day, checking out the window every few minutes and yet I never heard him coming up the walk. He startled me. I hadn't seen him in six years, not since he was thirteen, yet I would have recognized him anywhere. He looked exactly like me, or at least how I remembered myself at his age. It left me speechless. He stood before me a young man, shy and nervous, blue eyed, strongly built and handsome and all the time I'd been expecting to see my little boy.
None of it was Lonnie's fault of course, but still there came an urge to shake him - slap him for all the pain I'd suffered, for not telling me, and most of all, for growing up without me and yet, all I could do was cry and hug him.
For almost all of those six years I thought him dead, the victim of some crazed killer. I didn't learn the truth until Carla became bed ridden. I took a leave of absence to care for her and while puttering about the house one day I found a postcard with a picture of a clear, sparkling mountain stream that belied the threat scribbled on the back.
"You crazy bitch, what the hell are you up to? Lonnie doesn't this kind of shit. You leave him alone! If you ever try to contact him again, I'll come see you up close and personal and that's a promise!"
It was signed with a scrawled `C, but the postmark was dated only two years before.
I read it over and over until the meaning finally sunk in. Lonnie was alive! Not only that, Carla had known all along, she even knew where he was! His kidnapping had been a hoax, a bald faced lie! I think at that moment I might have killed her had she not already been so close to dying.
I knew Carla long before meeting Sara, so it never occurred to me that she might have somehow gone insane. I lay her quirkiness, her interest in the occult, to simple rebellion against her bible pounding father. With Carla I had learned the ecstasy of sex. I thought I loved her, that I couldn't live without her, until her father broke us up.
Two years later I met Sara. We were both eighteen when she got pregnant, high school sweethearts of the hot pants variety. We thought we were in love, but if love was lacking, lust made up the difference. They say a love that's slow to bloom is finer than the instant kind, and I know that's true. We married before Lonnie was born and our fascination with the baby kept us together while we learned to care for one another. Somewhere along the way, like and lust turned into a love and caring so profoundly deep it made me want to cry for joy. Lonnie was a part of it of course, a part of us, a part of everything that mattered, yet that knowledge somehow escaped me when Sara died.
He was only four when Sara lost her life in one of those senseless freeway shootings in LA. Suddenly I was alone. Shock and grief followed me for months and I couldn't seem to cope with even simple things. Lonnie needed more than I could give him and Carla came back into my life ready to provide it.
Why didn't I see the evil in her? Why didn't I feel the hate? She ripped away his childhood and all because she hated me. For eight long years I left Lonnie in her care, never questioning her decisions, never inquiring very deeply into why my son seemed so withdrawn. It was just a phase, she said, and I accepted it! I was inured to Carla's strangeness, busy with a job that took me away for months at a time, yet neither reason can mitigate my guilt. Lonnie thought I didn't care what Carla did to him!
One bright November day he vanished. Carla claimed she'd seen him talking to a man just minutes before he disappeared. The police assumed a kidnapping, but no ransom note arrived, no clues, no body, no description of the man except the vague one Carla gave, and no resolution of any kind. As the days dragged into months and years I simply gave up hope.
The bitch had known where he was all along and when I confronted her with the postcard she laughed in my face.
"I hope you like your little bastard, I'm sure he'll be a credit to your whole family."
What an actress she was. All those years I never realized she actually detested me. Oh God, how could I have been that blind!
The only way I could get a straight answer from her was by withholding morphine and even then I was never sure she told the truth. Once she claimed it was she herself who killed Sara, then in the next breath denied it.
Carla hated me all those years because I'd chosen Sara over her, but at the time I first knew Carla we were only kids, sixteen at the most. How she could plot and spend all those years ruining Lonnie's life over something he had no part in, was beyond my understanding. It was she who chose the abortion, I never knew about the pregnancy until years after, but in her twisted way of thinking it was I who carried the blame for her later barrenness, not that back hills abortionist her father sent her to.
All those years I thought him dead, Lonnie had been living on a ranch in Colorado. In Carla's desk I finally found the address for C. . . Charles St. Pierre, Craig Colorado. I wrote at least a dozen letters to the post office box in Craig before Lonnie finally called, but when I told him I was coming to bring him home he refused. He said the old man who had taken him in was ill and that he couldn't leave right now.
We talked for hours. Lonnie told me a little of what Carla had done and said he had received a letter from her stating that I knew where he was and that I never wanted to see him again, that I was glad he was gone. I couldn't believe that he'd think I would say those things. I always thought he knew I loved him.
The next day I put Carla in a hospital and made arrangements for her funeral when she died. It was the last time I ever saw her. Whether or not she killed Sara, I never knew, but without a doubt, Carla earned and deserved the pain the cancer gave her. She inflicted cruelties unimaginable on my son and I hope with all my heart her final suffering matched his.
Notes
Dan's last icy words, they were hard to reconcile with the warm, jovial man I met, but then, how would I react if someone had lied to me like that? Probably the same. That time in Hawaii when we nearly lost our children left me perfectly capable of killing the bastard responsible. It's all reaction and I think Dan was totally honest in describing how he felt. Thoughts of murder has entered my mind at least twice in my life. It seems longer now, but it was just three years ago when I turned the whole of GSI into a juggernaut intent on destroying those who wounded Jake and that before knowing the extent of the damaged done. Like Dan Harris, I cannot be forgiving to those who injure people I care about. Be it from insanity or sane intent, it is an eye for an eye and nothing less is near enough.
I now add Lonnie's side of those events and find it poetic that the woman's final act of hatred is the one that ultimately saves him.
NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
I was really scared because this time she didn't care if it showed. My eye was swollen nearly shut and I had bruises everywhere. She phoned the school telling them I had a bike accident, but I hadn't been off the chain for three days now, not since she caught me trying to run away.
I was hungry but didn't dare ask for anything. She told me to be quiet and was still acted like she gets just before a Punishment. I wish Dad would come home, just once walk in without calling first, maybe then she'd stop. I started to cry again, but quit when the steps creaked. She might hear. I learned a long time ago not to cry, it makes her mad and then it gets awful. . . Awful.
The next thing I knew it was morning and she was sitting on my bed shaking me.
"Come on, baby boy, let mama see it!"
"I'm not a baby, and you're not my mama!" I cried, trying to pull the covers tighter.
"Oh, yes I am, Lonnie, the only mama you'll ever know. Now be good, or Mama Carla might cut it off."
It was the same threat she used since I was five and it still scared me. Someday I knew she would. She told me when the signs were right, she'd cut it off and burn it on the alter, along with my 'cute little balls.'
Carla was a witch. Not like the hags the kid dressed up to be on Halloween, but a real one. The kind that could make you hurt and wish you were dead. She lay the knife on the shelf where I couldn't reach it, then the other four came in, their faces all covered up with black hoods. I knew what was going to happen, they'd done this before. They'd hold me down and Carla would get the knife. Once, I tried to get away and she cut so deep I think it scared her because afterwards she left me alone for almost a month.
When I was little, Carla would do it by herself and just for the blood, now these last few weeks they wanted something else. What Carla used to do didn't work anymore, it hadn't for a long time, I hated her so much that just the thought of her made me limp. They crowded around doing things with their hands and even though I didn't want to, it came up hard. They played with me until I came, then they all nodded their heads as Carla spoke some words in Latin, or some strange language.
"I'm getting tired of this shit, Carla," one man growled. "When do I get the boy. You promised me a week, and now it's only four days before high mass!"
"Shut up, Charlie, can't you see I'm busy?"
The knife's duel points made two tiny stab wounds like a snake bite and she caught the blood in silver cup.
The face Carla always presented to neighbors was as serene as the statue of the Madonna at Saint Paul's, now it was twisted and ugly as she chanted her incantations. Finishing the words, her face changed back again and like a cloud uncovering the sun, she smiled sweetly at the man.
"My, how time flies. This is Friday, isn't it? Dan will be coming home tonight!".
She looked at me, humming and smiling to herself as though she had some great secret to tell dad.
"Why, Charlie dear, I think it's time! I see no reason you can't take him now. I can hardly wait to tell Dan all about it."
Patting my face she said,
"Lonnie baby, I guess this is goodby, but then you never loved Mama Carla anyway. No matter how hard I tried to teach you, you've always been a rotten little bastard! Now don't give Charlie any trouble and maybe he'll keep you around for a few days. And when it hurts, Baby, just remember your uncle Phil and think how much quicker this will be for you than it was for him."
Jumping to her feet she left the room laughing, white teeth like a shark's glittering in the morning light.
The man was huge with muscles that stood out even through the heavy shirt he wore. He was the only one in Carla's coven I'd never seen without a hood and when he slipped it off it startled me. He didn't look at all like a killer, but then Carla didn't look like a witch either.
"Get dressed, Lonnie," he said, as he unlocked the chain around my ankle. "You and I have things to do."
Then he smiled at me with large white teeth and suddenly I was as cold as ice. I tried to hide back in the covers only it didn't do any good. He pulled them away and dressed me, and his eyes gleamed just like Carla's when he looked at the bruises.
Cold. My body turned to solid ice, my teeth chattered and my mind seemed frozen. All I could think of was, this isn't real, this isn't happening and I couldn't move a muscle. That didn't matter either. He just carried me to a pickup and we drove out of Bakersfield heading east.
The man kept saying he wasn't going to hurt me, but I heard words like that from Carla all my life and they only led to pain. He was one of Carla's witches, so why bother to lie? I knew the truth, I knew it the moment Carla stopped worrying about the bruises showing. The 'Right Time' she always talked about was now, so why keep saying that? Over and over he told me,
"No one will ever hurt you again, Lonny." But I knew he was lying.
He bought some pop and stuff at a gas station, but I couldn't eat. I felt like throwing up all the time. I kept waiting for it to start, but he just drove farther and farther away from Bakersfield and after awhile I felt so sick I just didn't care anymore. I couldn't stop what he was going to do to me any more than I could stop Carla, so like always, I just closed my eyes and went to sleep.
Instead of ending up dead, I ended up in Colorado on an old ranch so far from nowhere that it might as well have been the moon. Charlie wasn't anything like Carla. Instead of slaps, he showed me kindness, instead of terror he gave me peace. He said hate would never come to me again and as the days stretched imto weeks I slowly began believing it.
Charlie was quiet man who never raised his voice or lost his temper and I soon found my favorite place was curled up beside him on the sofa. We might read, or talk or listen to the radio and it was as though I belonged there, as if I had finally found my way home. Charlie taught me to play chess and lots of different card games and when the snow came deep, we built snow forts and row upon row of snowmen. Sometimes we'd go sledding until dark, and then light a fire and watch the stars come out and if the mountain lions howled or the coyotes yapped, he'd slip an arm around me and I was safe.
I don't know when it was that Charlie became my universe. I only know that after awhile I was following him everywhere, afraid he'd disappear. I crept into his bed one night, just wanting to be near him, and he held me close and all the hurt and fear I had always known fell away. After that, we never slept apart.
Later on that winter, I learned how loving he could be, how his hands could arouse me to pleasure without the fear of pain and by spring I wanted to stay with him forever. Throughout that long, cold winter and all the years that followed, Charlie never raised his voice at me in anger nor showed displeasure with any sort of violence, yet he could be loud at times. If I worked extra hard or he was pleased with how I did some ranch chore he might chase me down and knuckle my hair, laughing and shouting all the while. It was the kind of praise only Charlie would give and I worked all the harder to earn it. Yes, Charlie was a kind and gentle man, thoughtful and giving, but he had his dark side too.
Charlie was hooked on steroids. He started taking them, I think to please his friend Steven, only he didn't stop when Steve left. He told me he took them now because they kept his pecker hard, yet that was an excuse even I could see through. Charlie was too scared of AIDS to sleep around and I know his continued use came not from choice, but from some sort of addiction to the damn things. Steroids were not Charlie's only blind spot. I think he half believed the shit Carla was into because he read tarot cards and looked for mystical signs in everything he saw. He said the cards had led him to Bakersfield to find me and I guess that was one point I couldn't argue because he had.
Charlie told me there had been only two other lovers in his life. Carl, his first, was killed by a rock slide on the mountain not far from here, then a few years later he met Steve. He never talked about the problems he had with Steve, only that they had argued and Steve moved on. Three years later he went to Bakersfield because that's where the cards told him he would meet his final lover, the one that would remain with him all his life.
Charlie's mother had been a healer, he called her a white witch, a person who used their powers for good. She had friends throughout the mountain states and California and as a boy he traveled with her everywhere. They lived in Bakersfield when he was young and people there still wrote to him years after she died. Charlie had been lonely and I always thought that it was those letters that brought him back to California, not the cards, but I never said it.
He despised the black arts, yet said he had a nose for them and could sniff them out wherever he went. He'd gotten involved with Carla's coven when he heard they had a young virgin boy giving sacrament. (that's what Carla called her blood letting). To Charlie it was a chance of finding someone 'clean', someone to share his life with and he planned it all very carefully. He worked his way into Carla's favor by presenting her with the entrails of mothers milk fed infants for the unholy days, (actually they were the guts from slaughtered lambs, but Carla never knew the difference). Charlie made everyone in the coven believe he was a bad ass, a sadist who tortured and murdered children, because he'd found out what Carla had in store for me. She was waiting until I reached puberty, then on the holiest of unholy days she planned to mutilate my body for the offering.
That was her crazy plan, Charlie had his own. He convinced her that the Great One wanted him to test the boy, to make sure that I was fit for such an honor, of course the things needed for the service would remain intact while he went about the testing. Carla liked the idea of having me slowly tortured by a someone who knew the ways of pain so she promised Charlie a week alone with me if he would present her with the offering.
I'll always be grateful to Charlie for saving my life. If not for him, my balls would have been chestnuts roasting by the fire and he reminded me of that from time to time as we played around, but he was only teasing. Actually he didn't have a mean bone in his body, only sometimes the steroids got the upper hand. When they did, he'd get temperamental and rough and as big as he was, only a fool would argue with him. Oh, he never hurt me, I didn't even mind what we did, it's just that for a time he'd be so aroused that sex was all he thought of and that really wasn't Charlie. I'd just do whatever he wanted, no matter what it was and in a few days he'd snap out of it. Suddenly he'd realize how crazy he was acting, then start crying like a baby and pleading for my forgiveness. He'd beg me not to leave and promise never to do it again. I'd act plenty mad at him, of course, and he'd lay off the drugs for awhile, but it never lasted. After a week or so he'd think his pecker wasn't stiff enough, or his hair was falling out, or one of a hundred other excuses, and he'd be back on the shit. I tried to reason with him, I had heard about steroids and knew how dangerous they were, but he wouldn't listen.
I think Charlie knew I'd never leave him no matter what he did. I owed him my life of course, but more importantly, I had become completly smitten with him and after that nothing really mattered to me except Charlie. Sure, he got a little crazy at times, but mostly he was kind and tender, gentle, fun and caring and a hundred other things I can't even name. Even at his worst I always felt safe with him. Wrapped up in those big arms, snuggled tight against him was a place without fear, a nest of pure warm contentment, far from Carla and her pain.
I know he wouldn't have stopped me had I really wanted to leave, but I never considered it. There was just no place for me to go except back to Bakersfield and the only reason I'd go there would be to murder Carla. I dreamed about that sometimes, taking an ax and giving her a whack for each time she'd hurt me, for every time she stabbed me in the dick. Besides, I knew by then that I was just like uncle Phil, and even if dad did care a little bit about me, I didn't know if he could handle that news. For that matter, I didn't know if I could handle it anywhere but with Charlie. Uncle Phil had died of AIDS, and I was just as scared of that disease as Charlie.
Carla hated me. Dad never seemed to care what she did, though I'm not certain he knew what really went on. He'd come home for a few days, ask me how things were going, then tell me to mind Carla and be good. So many times I wanted to tell him, but she said she'd kill me if I upset daddy. He worked so hard and wanted things nice and peaceful at home. There was nothing ever peaceful there, but I'm pretty sure she would have killed me had I told him. I was always scared of her, right from the very first minute I saw her. When daddy was away she looked at me like I was something the cat did on the floor, but when he was home, she was pretty Mama Carla, all concerned, always on the move, never leaving me alone with daddy for a minute. No, I don't think he ever knew, but then I guess he really didn't care that much about me. He left me with her while he went away to build roads and bridges and only came home when he felt like it. If he really cared wouldn't he have stayed home and made her stop?
Charlie loved me, at least I've always thought so, I know for sure he loved sex. When I was sixteen, he wanted me to try the steroids. He said I'd be able to keep up with him, but he never forced the issue. I do think he slipped something in the food from time to time, because I put on muscle faster than I should have just tending sheep. That's what we did, chased sheep across the ranch under contract every summer. The herders would bring them up by truck or drive them in and we'd help by hauling supplies and such. Up the mountain in the summer, down in the valleys in the spring and fall, it's a nice life if you like the out of doors. Charlie had an income of a few hundred a month from somewhere back east and he told me the ranch made a profit, but we lived pretty simply. Lots of books and magazines, a radio, plenty to eat and sex whenever the mood hit us. It was what Charlie wanted and I never found any fault with it.
In the summer we went into town each week for supplies. The first three years, everyone knew me as Charlie's nephew from California, just here for the summer to help with the sheep. After that we said my mother had died and that I had moved here permanently. I don't think anyone ever suspected the truth, but if they did no one ever spoke of it.
In the fall we'd go hunting for awhile, then drive over Denver so Charlie could take care of the ranch business. I never liked Denver much, it was just too damn big and busy, moreover, it was there that Charlie always dragged me to the dentist for my yearly checkup. I went, but I didn't like it. All that poking around and scraping reminded me of Carla.
Winter was the lazy time. We always made it back before the first big storm because we both loved the feeling of being snowbound. We could lie in bed 'till noon and read, or get around and cook each other special meals. Charlie would fire up his homemade sauna and we'd broil ourselves awhile then flop down in the snow, savoring the sudden chill. Winter was for all those special things we denied ourselves when others were around, like holding hands, or sneaking up and nuzzling each other's ear. Snow was freedom, we became two souls marooned in an ocean of white with no one to look askance at what we did. The ranch house was little more than a shack built half buried in a hillside cave, yet it was warm and cozy and it was home.
In the early spring before the work began, we'd take a few weeks vacation and just ramble around. Once we even went to Mexico. We saw movies, shopped for clothes and books and gawked at everything that was new and wonderful. I think we enjoyed those trips more because we lived apart from all the hubbub that went on in towns and cities. TV or a movie was always a thing to look forward to, not just something to use up time. Charlie told me that material things should be savored, taken in small bites so as not to dull the palate. It was the immaterial things like love, he said, that should be reveled in, because it grew stronger when you used it. And he was right.
We lived on the ranch for six years. I loved the life and I loved Charlie. Then one fall as we were trucking out the last of the sheep, he had a stroke and landed in a hospital in Utah. He was only thirty five when the steroids finally got him.
I stayed in Provo to be near him yet there wasn't a damn thing I could do, but hold his hand and watch him die a little every day. Dad's letters caught up with me there. I figured someday I'd tell him everything, but right then I didn't want him disturbing Charlie. I told dad I ran away. I said I was caring for the old man who taken me in and I couldn't leave right now. We talked for hours on the phone, but when he said he was coming to get me, I told him not to, I needed time before I could see him again. It was all lies of course, but I had to protect Charlie. I didn't know what dad might do if he learned the truth.
Charlie wasn't getting any better. He was only conscious part of the time, yet when he was, he'd call for me. Usually I was right there anyway, massaging his arm and leg, he just couldn't feel it. Whenever he was awake we'd talk and I'd comb his hair like always. His words were sometimes hard to understand but not their meaning. He kept telling me he loved me and his right arm seemed strong as ever as he'd reach up to brush my tears away.
Three weeks later Charlie died in his sleep, his whole circulatory system damaged beyond any hope of recovery.
DAMN YOU CHARLIE! Why wouldn't you listen to me? How did you expect me to go on without you? We had our whole lives ahead of us and you threw it all away!
I buried my sweet Charlie in Craig and then went back to the ranch to get his business things in order and write to those who had to know. Mostly I just cried. Finally I got it together enough to go see dad. When I called, he told me Carla had died the week before. On my way to visit him I stopped by the cemetery. I don't know why I went there. I guess I wanted to make sure she was dead or maybe I thought seeing it for myself would make things better. Whatever the reason, before I left, I pissed on her grave.
For all the good it did.
Notes to myself (Remember, don't let Jake see these notes - they would only confuse him)
I printed it out Lonny's harrowing story and as Jake read it he cried. He has always had a deep well of sympathy for helpless people, especially children. Before the shooting he spent a great deal of time and money making young lives better and even now he retains that same compassion. It is the one part of Jake that has stayed consistent throughout.
It wasn't until I was well into Dan's journal that I begin to put two and two together. If I am right, the connections between Jake and the Harris' are multiple, and I guess that includes me as well. It's almost unnerving. Strange that we never knew about each other all these years. Was it just an accident that we finally met or is it fate? Our old friend, Alex once joked about fate being the driving force in the world. Maybe he was right. Carla returns to haunt us. I haven't found absolute proof yet that Carla Harris is the same Carla I knew, but I'm leaning in that direction. There is so much in Dan's description of her that jibes with my memories. I wish I had known her maiden name, if Jake ever mentioned it, I don't remember, nor did she ever tell me. What I do recall of Carla was her overwhelming beauty, her charm and especially her eyes, those gorgeous eyes. You could get lost in those eyes. I nearly did. If this is the same Carla, then fate is cruel indeed. Such a waste. . .
There are three more excerpts, all from Dan's journal that I'm going to set down for Jake. I don't know that each one is particularly relevant to him, but all mention Carla and that alone seems important. This next entry is about Dan's brother, Philip. It's so personal I don't know if Dan would want us discussing it. On the other hand, he could have taken the journal with him if he was concerned about it. . .