Behold the Child Read online

  Someone speaks. An old black man in a bleached pine rocking chair is trying to tell him something important. Young Sam Kenzie does his best to listen…

  That’s when he woke up.

  The world was a white blur. As his eyes came into focus, Kenzie realized he was in a hospital bed. The pain was incredible, but somehow he had survived. He wiggled his fingers and toes and discovered that he wasn’t paralyzed, searched and found the expected IV needle in his arm.

  His balls.

  He tried to move his hands low enough to explore his genitalia, but one was fastened to a board with the IV and the other buckled to the metal frame of the bed. Kenzie gasped in horror. They didn’t want him to touch himself down there. The bullet had struck him low, and torn up his guts. He remembered that much. Jesus, he had lost his cock and balls.

  “Hello?”

  No one answered.

  He had to know.

  Kenzie struggled to free the hand they had fastened to the bed. He tried clenching the muscles in his pelvis, but everything seemed fuzzy and moved in slow motion. He felt a sharp pain in the groin area, but logic told him that this might just be a catheter inserted into his penis. It didn’t prove anything.

  “Nurse? Hello?”

  He found the nurses call button with his trembling fingers and pushed, then pushed again.

  Darkness began to overtake him.

  Suddenly Kenzie felt terrified of going under. He was panicked that he might die while he was sleeping; never get to explain what had happened in Oso’s house, why he’d had to take that shot, to clarify what had gone so horribly wrong. The world seemed to slide into thin, colored slats that moved further away. He was sinking fast; heart thudding, breathing rapid and shallow. Footsteps entered the room, someone spoke, but it was too late. He was unconscious.

  Someone said something, and Kenzie woke up. It seemed he’d slept only a matter of a few minutes, but the itch on his face told him he badly needed a shave. At least a few days had gone by.

  “How long?”

  It sounded like the voice of a man with the harsh, raspy voice of a chronic smoker. For a long moment Kenzie didn’t realize that it was his own voice, that he’d spoken his thoughts.

  “Honey?”

  A woman’s voice. Laura was in the room with him. Kenzie tried to speak again, but the effort exhausted him. The room began to spin, and he was abruptly terrified that he would vomit; that then his belly wound would pop open and his stinking guts spill out. The pain increased. He remembered the blood spurting from the girl’s neck and the bullet striking his stomach. Kenzie, half delirious, wailed his darkest thoughts. He said: “Damn it, you and the baby made me hesitate.”

  “What?”

  “I hesitated, Laura. I lost my fucking edge.”

  “Oh, Sam, forgive me…”

  And then he wanted to tell Laura that he was sorry, that he didn’t really mean what he’d just said, but by then it was already too late. The ‘pain train’ was back. Agony tore through his insides and stole all reason. I can’t stand the pain any more ese, I can’t stand the pain…Moments, hours, days flew by. Kenzie moaned and grunted and writhed on the bed, generally drugged out of his mind. The world had no sharp edges, everything was blurred and distorted. He had a surgery, and then got cut another time or two; maybe too many operations to count.

  In fact, Kenzie, at first humiliated, almost got used to watching his own shit flow into a plastic bag.

  Almost.

  One morning something felt different. Perhaps his medications had been changed, or it was merely that enough time had gone by for the healing to begin in earnest, but the world seemed almost back to normal. Kenzie found he was able to crack a joke and to smile. More time passed; sunny and then cloudy days. Several cops he knew came to visit, and quietly congratulate him on having “blown the assholes away.” No one mentioned the dead girl, and Kenzie was grateful for that.

  And finally the plastic bag of excrement was missing. Kenzie could see the furniture, the flowers, and the trees outside the hospital window even more clearly than before; the thin veil of cellophane, probably created by the pain medication, was finally gone.

  “Honey?”

  Sam Kenzie turned his head and saw Laura. She had dark circles under her eyes, and she had lost a great deal of weight, but Kenzie figured he didn’t look so good himself. He thought his wife was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  “Hi.”

  Laura began to cry. “You’re going to be okay,” she gasped. “The surgeon says you’re going to be fine.”

  “I know. He told me.”

  “How do you feel now, Sam?”

  He searched himself. “Weak,” he said. “Really weak.” And then he looked more closely at Laura, at how thin she was, and something deep inside began to shrivel and die. He struggled to speak again. “What’s bothering you, honey?”

  “I don’t know how to say it, Sam.”

  A chill ran down his spine. What, was she having an affair too? IAD was going to put him up on charges, what the hell was she so upset about?

  “For Chrissakes,” he sighed, “just say it.”

  “I’m not…carrying, any more.”

  “The baby?”

  Her eyes told him before she shook her head. “I realized that you were right, Sam,” she whispered. “This just wasn’t a good time for us to have a child. I…took care of it, honey.”

  “You what?”

  “The baby. It’s gone.”

  Kenzie searched himself, for he was uncertain how he should respond. What he discovered in his mending guts was an odd mixture of shock and relief. He looked up at Laura and was surprised to find tears running down her cheeks. He made his features more severe and covered up as rapidly as possible.

  “Oh, Laura, I didn’t mean you had to do that…I was blaming myself, not you.”

  “Hush,” she said. “You rest, now.”

  She touched a finger to his lips. Kenzie smelled her hand cream, and a bit of lush perfume. His groin stirred. He smiled. All of his senses seemed to be returning to normal, at long last.

  He fell asleep again.

  3.

  “Internal Affairs was all over you about this damned mess, Sam. Like ugly on a herd of apes.”

  Kenzie nodded. He knew that this was the part where he was supposed to express his gratitude. So he did. “Captain Kramer, I want you to know that I appreciate everything you’ve done on my behalf.”

  “The Hispanic community was up in arms about Oso and the girl getting wasted. It wasn’t easy to convince them that this was a righteous shoot.”

  “It was, Cap. He was going to kill her.”

  Kramer slapped a file down on his desk. Storm clouds gathered on his reddened, alcoholic features. He leaned down like Zeus. “But you went in there alone, without a warrant, and for Christ’s sake you were on somebody else’s turf, Sam! Parker Center is pissed off. They want me to give them your head.”

  “Then maybe you should consider doing that.”

  “You’re damn right!”

  Kramer was the theatrical sort. After a long, drawn-out pause he relented a bit and straightened up. He reached into his back pocket, produced a rolled up newspaper. He opened it with a flourish, pointed. “I particularly love this part. ‘Kenzie, a cowboy cop from the tiny town of Twin Forks, Nevada, brings a wild-west attitude to his job with the LAPD.’ That’s just great. Wild west, my sagging ass.”

  Kenzie cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

  “You should be,” Kramer seethed. “The only thing that saved you is all the positive publicity you got for getting yourself shot while in the process of fucking up. What the hell am I supposed to do with you, Sam?”

  Kenzie remained silent, face expressionless and eyes mild. He looked down at his still-healing belly. In truth, he had no answer to that question. Part of him, he realized, hoped he’d have the decision taken away; get early retirement and a pension. The other part of him was petrified by the idea
of leaving the job. Even though he’d just been shot.

  “Sam?”

  Kenzie winced. His stomach clenched involuntarily every time he thought of his wound, the surgeries, that omnipresent bag of feces beside the bed. It hit him that it had been a very long time since Kramer had spoken. He looked up.

  “I’m sorry, Cap,” he said. “I guess I’m still a little weak. What did you say?”

  Kramer shook his head sadly. “I asked what the hell I should do with you.”

  Kenzie shrugged. “I’m a team player, Cap. Whatever you think is best.”

  Kramer chewed his lower lip absently. Kenzie studied the broken veins in his nose and the bloodshot eyes. At one time Captain Judd Kramer had been one of the finest men the LAPD had to offer. A few errors in judgment and a couple of political mistakes had reduced him to an overweight bureaucrat; just waiting for a diagnosis of cirrhosis and a ticket to a liver transplant.

  Kramer sighed heavily. “Maybe you ought to take it easy for a while, Sam. I didn’t want to do this, but I think you’d better a ride a desk for the next few months. Get a little therapy, okay?” He opened his desk drawer and removed something small. He handed Kenzie a business card. “Call this shrink, a Dr. Sidney Greenburg.”

  Kenzie felt queasy. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Kramer shook his head. “I am most certainly not kidding, Sam. And all this comes down from God, okay? Right from Assistant Chief Daniels. He says you take it easy and shuffle auto-theft reports, maybe get yourself some psychotherapy, and then we can review your situation again in a few months.”

  “When the publicity dies down?”

  Kramer shrugged. “You think whatever you want.”

  “Thanks, Cap,” Kenzie said. He stood up and put out his right hand. “I know you really went to bat for me on this one.”

  Captain Kramer took his hand. “You nearly blew yourself right out of a career, Sam. Listen, I know you’re a hot dog, always chomping at the bit to be out there on the street. I realize that this desk thing is going to be hell on you. But everybody needs a break now and then, and believe me, this will be for the best. Just grin and bear it, okay?”

  Sam Kenzie nodded and turned to go. He worked hard to hide that he was not at all upset. In fact, he felt relieved. But fuck that shrink business. No way.

  4.

  “Do you really love your wife, Detective Kenzie?”

  Kenzie squirmed on the uncomfortably soft couch and manufactured an exasperated sigh. “Of course I fucking love her. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Dr. Greenburg was an almost absurdly mild-looking man who reminded Kenzie of a younger Woody Allen. His thinning hair was in disarray, and his thick glasses caused his eyes to mushroom. A small rectangle of sunlight reflected directly off Greenburg’s balding pate; it looked like a doorway to another world.

  “You fucking love her?” Greenburg rolled the word around on his tongue, almost tasted it. “I wonder why you would choose to phrase it that way.”

  Kenzie felt his palms moisten. This nerd Greenburg scared him a little. That fact, in turn, made him angry. “Look, I came in here to waste time and money because my boss asked me to. He thought it might help my…flashbacks. So far, all you’ve done is act like some caricature of a therapist.”

  Dr. Greenburg pursed his lips like a woman applying lipstick. He nodded “Point taken,” he said. “You are being direct with me, and I can appreciate that. So let us cut to the chase, as they say.”

  Kenzie leaned back on the couch cushions. It felt like falling into cotton candy. “Yeah. Please get to the point, okay? I’m not here to play games.”

  “I asked about your love for your wife for one particular reason, Detective Kenzie. You have admitted to occasional affairs, as well as a fondness for strip bars and lap dancers. I was simply trying to explore your reasoning and justifications for such…extracurricular behavior.”

  “What, because I love my wife I can’t touch any other pussy, is that it?”

  “That,” Greenburg said with a touch of sarcasm, “is what is generally meant by the term ‘till death do you part.’” Kenzie noticed that the psychiatrist’s cheeks had gone a bit pink.

  Kenzie sat up. “I was under the impression therapists were not supposed to render moral judgments. Did I miss something somewhere?”

  Greenburg blushed more deeply. “Frankly, it is difficult for me to not have some sympathy for your wife, under the circumstances. You have indicated that she wishes to have children and that she had an abortion for your sake. One would think…”

  Kenzie sighed. “Okay, Greenburg, look. Whatever you may think of me, I do love Laura deeply and I would never want to hurt her in any way. Cops have stressful lives, as you well know. Sometimes I blow off a little steam, that’s all. But Laura has never known about it, and she never will.”

  Greenburg started to respond and Kenzie could read the thought: How can you be sure? But Greenburg held himself in check. He merely shrugged. “Was your father unfaithful, Sam?”

  For some reason the use of his first name made Kenzie relax. He nodded absently. “I guess that probably figures, huh?”

  “At the risk of sounding like ‘a caricature of a therapist,’ what was your childhood like, Sam? Where did you grow up?”

  “In Twin Forks, Nevada,” Kenzie said. “And it was okay, I guess. My aunts and uncles all lived together on a small ranch. They had a tough time making it.”

  Greenburg wrote something down on his notepad and Kenzie cringed a bit. “What about your mother and father?”

  “I’d rather not talk about that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s not go there, okay”

  Greenburg made another note. He leaned back in his chair. “I was just wondering if your avoidance of starting a family might have something to do with your own experiences as a child.”

  Kenzie found himself half way to his feet before he could halt or disguise the intensity of his reaction. He blushed and sat down. “Touché,” he muttered. “A hit, a palpable hit.”

  “Shakespeare?” Greenburg said, one eyebrow arched. “I thought you were something of a cowboy.”

  “Good teachers. In high school, and a year or two of college. We moved to California when I was a teenager.” Kenzie leaned back into the annoying cushions. After a long moment, said: “We were rednecks. My father used to beat the shit out of me and my mother was a drunk. Are you satisfied, now?”

  Greenburg seemed only mildly interested, although he did make another note. “Do you have any siblings, Sam?”

  Kenzie said nothing. Greenburg scribbled a bit more then looked up with an arched eyebrow. “Sam?”

  Kenzie was surprised to find his voice small and weak. “A sister, Jenny.”

  “And where does your sister live?”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Jenny is dead.”

  Suddenly the clock on the wall seemed to tick forward more slowly and with greater volume. Greenburg could have, perhaps should have spoken but he did not. He waited, masterfully increasing the pressure until Kenzie felt his emotions rising like sewage in a tank; choking off his breathing and moistening his eyes. He felt himself drift through a wrinkle in time.

  “Jenny was always skinny,” Kenzie said softly. “My aunt used to say she could turn sideways and stick out her tongue and she’d look like a zipper. We we’re pretty close for brother and sister, maybe because we had to be to survive. Went swimming together down at the creek, swung out over it in an old used tire Grandpa hooked up to a piece of rope, stuff like that, you know?”

  Greenburg remained silent.

  “I reckon I was maybe ten, so Jenny would have been eleven then. It was just before we moved from Twin Forks to California. A half-breed name of Red came by, offering to break horses. We had two we couldn’t handle, so my uncle hired the man. Red, he was a big, pony-tailed bastard who walked bow-legged. Had a happy smile, like a kid at Disneyland, but he was pur
e evil.”

  Kenzie looked up at Greenburg with a worried frown. “I’ve never talked about this before,” he said. “I don’t like how it feels.”

  “No,” Greenburg said. His eyes were kind. “Go on. I think it will help you to talk this out, Sam.”

  “She told me she was afraid of Red,” Kenzie said. “But I didn’t believe her.” A clumsy, stiff moment passed. What Kenzie thought he saw in Greenburg’s placid eyes forced him to look down and away. The flesh around his lips turned white. “That’s bullshit, I guess,” he said. His voice was thick with emotion, now. “I believed her. But I was afraid of Red, too. Afraid to back her up with the grownups for fear he’d whip me. I had nightmares about him.”

  Greenburg interrupted only to prompt him. “What happened in those dreams?”

  “I’d be somewhere, stark naked and trying to cover myself. I’d see Red laughing at me like he knew what a coward I was, but also like he…wanted me. And in that dream I’d know something had happened to Jenny, something bad…”

  “Sam?”

  Greenburg’s voice startled Kenzie into realizing he’d been silent again. He tried to meet the therapist’s eyes, to defiantly stare him down and stop the flood of repressed emotion. He failed.

  “Sam, what happened to Jenny?”

  Kenzie looked down. “My sister hung herself in the barn,” he said. His voice broke on the last word. “She left a note. Turns out old Red had held her down and had his way with her more than a few times, and she didn’t think she could tell anybody.”

  “But you think she tried to tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  Greenberg leaned forward with sympathy in his eyes. “Sam, you were just a ten year old boy. What were you supposed to do? She should have told an adult.”

  “No,” Kenzie sighed, “she was probably right not to bother. Dad would have blamed her, and Mom would have figured out a way to make it something to get drunk over.”