Take Your Turn, Teddy Read online

  Teddy threw the bat down and crawled to his mother in the hall. Her freckled face was swollen and blaring red. It was like her face alone had suffocated the fire and was holding it in so it couldn’t spread to Teddy. He couldn’t help but think of the women in his comic books, how brave they were.

  “Mom? Mom, are you alright? We have to go now. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand.”

  His mother slowly moved her hand to Teddy’s. She held it and ran her thumb across the top of his hand. Even then, as her face pulsated from the hits, she tried to comfort Teddy.

  Teddy barely heard her when she spoke with her swollen mouth. “You’re right. We have to go.” Her eyes ran over his father in the hall.

  Blood spattered over his lips where they parted to release the slightest hint of breath.

  “Go and never come back.”

  The finality of her words scared Teddy, but what frightened him most was what might happen if his father woke up and looked at his son, who had struck him down.

  Teddy helped his mother rise to her feet. She leaned on Teddy, and he tried to balance the weight of the tub of clothes in one hand against his hip while stabilizing his mother on the other side.

  “We have to go now. We can’t take anything else.”

  Teddy set the tub on the porch and helped his mother to the car. He dug under the passenger seat and pulled out four canvas bags with “Greg’s Grocery” written in cursive.

  She put her seatbelt and looked up at Teddy. “We have to go.”

  “I just need one more thing.”

  Before she could argue, Teddy turned and ran for the screen door. In the corner of the living room was the Crosley record player. He folded it in its suitcase shape and emptied as much of the shelves as he could, stuffing the records into his mother’s reusable grocery bags.

  He heard a shuffle in the hall, followed by a small groan. Teddy peeked into the hall to see his father’s hand raising to the back of his head.

  Teddy grabbed one final handful of records. On the top was Frank Sinatra. Teddy thought of all the nights his father came home singing “The Way You Look Tonight” outside his parents locked bedroom door. He grabbed the Sinatra record, flipped the jacket upside down, and watched the disk fall to the floor. Teddy raised his foot in the air and stomped on the vinyl, and did it again and again, splitting it into little bits.

  Teddy nodded with approval, grabbed the canvas bags, and ran for the car.

  His mother was more coherent now. She reached over the center console and threw the passenger door open. She hardly waited for Teddy to get inside before she pressed the gas.

  With the records crammed against his chest, Teddy put his hand to the window as his street sped by. To Pete, to his father, to all he had left behind in Oakhaven, Teddy mumbled a heavy “goodbye.”

  4

  On that long car ride from New Hampshire to Indiana, Teddy dreamt of a bull with a septum piercing and strong shoulders, kicking in the dirt. He stood at the center of an empty arena with no audience members but Teddy, floating somewhere above him.

  But he heard a soothing voice, soft and sweet, asking the bull to calm down, asking it to work through the issue calmly. The voice was comforting to Teddy. It wasn’t until it said, “Please, come back to me. Don’t let your anger carry you away,” that Teddy realized the voice belonged to his mother.

  The bull flared his nostrils, and before him appeared a woman. Her long, red hair curled only at the ends and stopped just above the waistline of her athletic shorts. The back of her black t-shirt listed venues in Paris, Seattle, New York City, and at least thirty other cities. Teddy had seen t-shirts like that all his life. They were concert shirts, like the ones his mother collected.

  Teddy turned to the crowd to find there wasn’t one. No one to see the terror of the beast. No one to know its fury. No one but Teddy and the woman before him. The woman he was sure was his mother.

  Like a criminal to a police officer, the woman held her hands above her head, showing she meant no harm. She moved closer to the bull, her steps soft and careful, almost fearful. The bull showed no sign of backing down. Despite the increasing urgency of the danger before her, Teddy’s mother didn’t raise her voice. She worked with ease and grace to avoid the fatal pierce of the horns.

  With each step she took, the bull seemed to grow in size. His horns not only grew larger but the ends became sharper.

  Teddy felt his heart pulsating in his chest, into his cheeks and his ears as if his blood carried its own panicked rhythm as it beat through him.

  Teddy wanted her to get back, to stop trying to ease the raging anger of the bull. It was a lost cause. He knew that, but she only inched closer. How could she not see the threat of the beast?

  “Shhh. You’re alright, darling—deep breaths.”

  The bull shook his head, shucking the comfort of her words. He lowered his head, exposing the mountainous strength of his expanding shoulders, and kicked his hooves in the dirt. A dirty cloud of dust sank into Teddy’s nose and down his throat. He coughed through it but felt as though the dirt had trapped him in a chokehold.

  The arena shook, as though an earthquake were only miles out. Bits of concrete fell at the edges of the arena, decreasing the air quality even further.

  Teddy watched his mother through the haze. Though he couldn’t see his feet, they wouldn’t respond. Teddy felt stuck in something like he was sinking into the jaws of the arena itself.

  “Mom! Stop! Get out of here!”

  Then, Teddy couldn’t even speak. He sank lower into the dirt, and the air claimed his last bit of lung space. He couldn’t move. He was helpless—held victim by the bull and the after-effects of his anger.

  But his mother took another step forward. She hummed a love song by The Beatles. The sound of the melody pulled a memory from Teddy’s brain that he had forgotten. At one time his parents would dance around the record player. But in recent months, his father used songs like “And I Love Her” as an apologetic ploy—one he knew would tug at his mother and make her open the locked bedroom door.

  Teddy coughed and was able to clear out some of the fog trapped within him. He hummed to the familiar song’s chorus, hoping the effort from him and his mother would be enough. All he could do was follow her lead and hope.

  The bull snapped its neck away from his mother and looked right at Teddy. Its eyes were a deep, dark brown that looked as though the iris and pupil were merging.

  Teddy panicked and reached his hands out before him, trying to hoist himself from the earth. Then, he saw the gentle movements of his mother, and Teddy tried to slow his own. He didn’t want to be the thing that set off the beast. Proceed with caution, he thought.

  But he was too late. The bull turned back to his mother and, without a moment’s hesitation, rammed into her. His horns dug two deep gashes into her chest and pinned her to the arena’s wall. Blood pooled from her mouth, and her arms spread widely with the bull’s force. Teddy was horrified to see his mother suspended like a sacrificial Jesus Christ.

  Then the bull ripped her from the wall and thrashed around the arena, shaking and splitting the earth. A jagged crack stopped just before Teddy, and he could taste his own salty sweat that dripped from his upper lip.

  The beast kicked his back legs and threw his horns toward the sky, sending his mother’s helpless body flying. When she came down, searching for the ground, the bull caught her atop his nose. He threw her against the arena wall. His horns, coated with crimson gore, pierced her back as she stumbled to her feet.

  The bull shook his mother free from the grip of his horns, threw her limp body just before Teddy, and trotted to the other side of the arena. His cavalier response to brutalizing his mother was sickening.

  Teddy struggled to lift himself from the sinking pit of dirt. He could feel its hands tighten around his ankles as he tried to free himself.

  Blood poured from h
is mother’s mouth as well as the two deep gashes in her chest and two on her back. The seams of the wounds stretched as she tried to inhale.

  “Hang on, Mom! I’m coming. Please, just hang on.”

  Teddy kicked with all his might and lifted himself from the dirt. Minding the fragile crack in the ground before him, Teddy hurried to his mother’s side.

  “Mom, I’ll get you out of here. We can get you some help. I’m so sorry, Mom. It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have told you. This is all my fault.”

  Teddy whimpered, and his mother raised a hand to his face. Her thumb was turned backward, nearly touching her wrist. Teddy quivered as she rubbed it across his face. Even in death, even with blood spewing from her chest, mouth, and back, she tried to comfort Teddy.

  His mother tried to speak but was cut off by the blood in her throat. She coughed and sprayed his face with blood. Teddy’s stomach turned.

  Through his peripherals, Teddy saw the bull kicking again. He hadn’t had enough.

  Teddy turned to him. “Stop! It’s not her fault. I told. I told!”

  The bull centered its focus on Teddy. And while holding its gaze, he ran through him, like he wasn’t physically there at all. Like he was invisible—a ghost in that world. Or an unworthy target.

  Teddy turned back to his mother. The bleeding was too heavy. There was nothing he could do. She let out a final whimper of pain, and then, her quivering and her breath ceased.

  * * *

  Teddy jolted forward in his seat. His mom had an arm stretched out in front of him, ready to catch him.

  “Sorry, hun. The light turned on me.”

  Teddy turned to both sides, eyeing his whereabouts. He was still in the car. He felt the cold sweat sticking his shirt to his chest and the dryness in his throat from breathing so heavily.

  His mother eyed him up and down. “Teddy, sweetie. Are you alright?”

  Teddy turned from his mother, glad to see her alive but still not ready to accept the night they just had. The bruises and swelling of her face were bulging reminders that he couldn’t take right now.

  Still, Teddy wondered, if he could protect his mother at the house, why couldn’t he in the arena?

  5

  The beige Chrysler wagon rolled down a gravel road, and as the bits of rock chewed into the cracks of the wheels, Teddy felt the car slow down. He stared out the window for hours, dozing in and out of the arena with the bull, and avoided his mother’s developing bruises and bloodied scabs across her face. More than anything, Teddy tried not to meet her hurt yet hopeful eyes at all costs.

  With his eyes locked on the rows of rusty train cars and split, decaying trees, Teddy asked, “Are we there yet?”

  “Oh, well, hi there, Teddy Bear. We’re here.”

  Teddy could hear her sniffling. The same way she did when his grandma’s perfume tickled her nose and put her into a sneezing fit. But that smell was nowhere to be found out in the woods of that Indiana township.

  Teddy sat up against the warm leather seat and rubbed his stiff neck.

  The train tracks went on and on, stretching farther than Teddy could see.

  Nothing was out there except the train cars, which were so neglected that not even the town’s teens had bothered to vandalize them. There were abandoned train cars in New Hampshire too, but the color of the spray paint on those was much livelier than this acidic rust.

  In front of the ongoing row of train cars was a big steel building with “Abraham’s Abattoir” stamped across the front. A potent smell of pennies permeated the air. It smelled like the jar his mom had kept in the kitchen when he was really little. If she had change from the grocery store or at the bottom of her purse when she’d switch to another one, she’d dump it into the jar and say, “Someday we’ll take a nice vacation.”

  On nights when things were particularly quiet at dinner, he would hear the jar slam on the counter as his father dug through to find enough bills and coins to quench his thirst. Or after his parents had a knock-down-drag-out fight, before the garage door zipped open late at night, Teddy would hear his father’s anxious hands digging through mounds of change. The mounds quickly became ant hills, which led to more fights. They never got to go on that vacation, and part of Teddy always knew they never would. Now, he knew it for sure. The thought filled his eyes with tears.

  Careful not to let his mother see, Teddy turned toward the window and searched for a chance to clear his head. He pointed to Abraham’s Abattoir and asked, “Mom, what’s that?”

  She glanced at the sign and her tired eyes widened. She locked her eyes on the road ahead, “Oh, that’s just…” There was a pause. “Just a, uh, it’s where food is processed. Yeah, you know, where it is processed before it goes to the grocery store.”

  “What kind of food?”

  The sound of a blaring steam trumpet made Teddy jump.

  “It’s just the train, sweetie. It runs through a few times a day and then once or twice at night, if I remember right.”

  “You mean we’ll hear that every day, more than once?”

  Teddy’s mother smiled. “Things will be different, but I think different is what we need.”

  Teddy’s mother continued down the gravel path and turned at an opening in a wooded area. No houses, no schools, just trees, miles and miles of trees. And, unlike the ones in New Hampshire that were always full and bright with color, there were patches of entirely bare trees with their skeletal limbs exposed. So many branches interweaved, and they reminded Teddy of a spider web that trapped dwarves and hobbits in a Tolkien book he had read. He shivered at the thought of snapping spider fangs in Bilbo’s face.

  Through a small break in the miles of trees, Teddy could see the front of a house. It was a pretty brick color, and a yellow swing was attached to a far livelier tree in the front yard. He had a feeling it was planted more recently and was well-tended, unlike sectors of the forgotten forest before it.

  Okay. Just had to get through some of the rough patches.

  A girl ran from the front porch and hopped on the swing. Her blonde braid flew over her shoulder as she pumped her legs, and the seat carried her higher. She waved at Teddy and his mother as they drove past.

  “I wonder if she’ll go to your school. She looked about your age.”

  Teddy shrugged. “So, where is our house then?”

  Just past another patch of woods where that same cluster of trees with dead limbs and strange twists separated them from the appealing house with the girl and the swing sat a large two-story farmhouse.

  Only blotches of grass were left where the front yard should’ve been, and even that had little life in its yellow straw-like strands.

  The front of the house may have been white siding at one point but was now a grey color with sporadic lines of peeling paint, as if some towering monster had clawed at it with hopes of scratching out its prey.

  The ripped curtain in the front window only offered partial coverage to the stacked cluster of a table and chairs.

  Teddy’s mother shifted the car to park and unhooked her seat belt. But Teddy sat in his seat, eyeing the house. He felt like a rock had settled in his stomach.

  His mother climbed out of the car and crouched down to Teddy’s eye level. “Come on, Teddy Bear. Let’s start unloading the car.”

  She popped the trunk and began unloading boxes. His mother grunted when she came across the boxes that didn’t quite allow the flaps to close in, the ones that were ready to compromise their contents at any moment.

  Teddy sat frozen in the overheating leather seat, just a few feet from his dreadful new home. The curtain slowly pulled away from the window, exposing greyish-colored boney fingers. Someone was there, holding the curtain back to look out to the front-drive. The sun gave the figure a spotlight. Teddy could see the shadow of a head and shoulders. Someone was in the house.

  “Mom?” His fear made him impatient when she didn�
�t answer immediately. “Mom!”

  “What, Teddy?” she called from the trunk.

  “Someone is inside the house! I saw them. Look, look! In the window.”

  Teddy’s mother, as she had when she was angry with his father, stomped her feet to the front of the car.

  But the curtain returned to its position of partial coverage. She looked at Teddy with stern eyes as if to say, See? Nothing.

  “Okay, Teddy dear. Come get your things. We need to get you some sleep.”

  She opened the door to the backseat behind the driver’s side. Her face looked harsher than it usually did. She was worn, frustrated, maybe even a little annoyed.

  “But, Mom. I’m telling you...”

  Her shoulders raised with tension. “Teddy.”

  Teddy knew better than to say anything else. But as he unclicked his seat belt and got out of the car, he kept a careful eye on the window with the torn curtain.

  The breeze through the trees carried the smell of pennies from down the road to their front yard. Once they had settled in a bit, Teddy wanted to ask his mother about the smell that came from that building they had passed.

  He put one box on the ground and then checked on the window again. The curtain was still. But his nerves were wired.

  “When did grandpa say the last people moved out? I mean, are we sure they’re gone?”

  “Yes, dear.” Her voice was dry and short.

  With another deep breath, she was able to lighten her voice.

  “They’re gone. Come on, sweetie. We’re both just tired from the drive. We’ll get these boxes inside, and I’ll help you get your bed set up.”

  Teddy was hesitant to go into the house alone. He held his box and stepped behind his mother, hoping she’d go in first.

  “Go on. I have some things to go through out here. Go pick your room. You’ll be upstairs. There are at least two rooms up there, and then I think a home office, but pick whichever.”