Christopher’s mother knew her way around dangerous men. There was only one way to handle a guy like this.
“Hey, little dick. You touch anything near my kid, and I’ll break your fucking hands.”
The man looked her dead in the eye.
“Cunt.”
“Proud of it,” she said with her best poker face.
The man finally turned back around, seething. Christopher’s mother looked at the security guard. She made sure to give him a nice flirty smile to keep him around the checkout line. After the men bought their supplies and left, she went to the front of the line. As the teenage girl checked her items, Christopher’s mother watched the “jugs” man walk out to his 4x4. The girl behind the counter coughed. She looked like she had the flu herself. Christopher’s mother saw the girl’s name tag. It read DEBBIE DUNHAM.
“Hell,” the girl said without a trace of humor. “Next!”
Christopher’s mother waited in the store until all of the men from the line got in their pickup trucks and left. She knew the “jugs” man could have swung back and waited for her. Away from the security cameras. Away from the light. She had been in situations before. She had learned the hard way.
But she had learned.
The drive back from Giant Eagle should have taken ten minutes, but traffic had somehow gotten worse in the time she was in the store. It was backed up for a good three miles. A lot of people started blaring their horns. She heard windows rolling down and voices screaming into the night.
“Come on! Let’s go!”
“I don’t have all fucking night!”
When she finally reached the front of the traffic jam, she realized that it was all because of one accident.
“Rubberneckers,” she thought out loud.
A deer had slammed into a pickup truck. The deer was wedged inside the driver’s-side window. It looked as if the deer had rammed it on purpose, trying to kill the driver. The driver sat slumped down as EMT workers tended to the wound on his hand. The deer’s antler had driven itself through his hand like a stake. After a moment, the driver looked up. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized the driver was the “jugs” man. She knew the man couldn’t see her in the dark, but it still felt like he was looking right through her and thinking the word.
Cunt.
Christopher’s mother quickly passed the accident and decided against getting back onto Route 19. She couldn’t risk another traffic jam. So, she took the back streets to their neighborhood.
They passed the old Olson house on the corner. Christopher rested his head against the cold window. The heat from his forehead melted the fog off the glass. They pulled up between the log cabin and their house. The old lady sat in the attic, asleep in her chair.
Christopher’s mother pulled into the driveway and parked the car in the garage. She quickly got out of her seat and moved to Christopher’s side. She opened the car door.
“Come on, honey. We’re home.”
Christopher didn’t move. He just stared out through the windshield. The only sign of life was him licking his dry, cracked lips. Christopher’s mother bent down and picked him up in her arms. It had been years since the last time she carried him in from the car. He was so small then. He was so sick now.
Don’t you fucking cry.
She carried Christopher into the house and brought him up to his bedroom. She took off his old school clothes that he wore to the Christmas Pageant. God, how long ago was that now? Two days? Two and a half? It felt like a year. The clothes were covered in so much sweat from his fever that she had to peel them off like snakeskin. She took Christopher to the bathtub and cleaned him the way she had when he was small enough to fit in the kitchen sink. She wanted to get the hospital off his body. Get the germs off. Get the crazy off. She scrubbed him from head to toe, then put him in his new favorite pajamas. The ones with Iron Man on them. He had stopped wearing Bad Cat a month ago for some reason.
Christopher’s mother put him under the sheets. She went back to the bathroom and got the pain relievers out of the medicine chest. She expected to find enough for weeks. But when she looked, she had