Never Let You Go (a modern fairytale) (7 page)

“They’re supposed to have good barbecue,” said Tina. “You like barbecue, honey?”

“Sure.”

“And then we’re going to that fight,” said Jonah, challenging Griselda to argue with him.

“Fine,” she answered, leveling her eyes to his.

Something critical had shifted between them since she head-butted him, and she wasn’t sure of what it meant now and what it would mean later. Jonah knew that she’d clocked him on purpose, and he’d never gotten an answer to the question he asked her about Holden’s identity. She sensed he was spoiling for a fight with her, but that he was also confused by the sudden change in her behavior. In the year they’d been together, she’d never raised a hand to him, rarely argued with him, and put up with almost everything he dished out without complaint. She could feel him looking at her with new eyes, like he was trying to figure her out, like he wasn’t sure exactly who she was anymore.

He took a deep breath, and his lips tilted up in a lazy smile of victory before he looked away from her.

“Boys hitting boys. Ain’t they got nothing better to do?” asked Tina. “I’ll stand back with you, okay, Zelda? We don’t have to watch.”

Griselda gave her a weak smile and nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

Several hours later, after Jonah and Shawn had spent the afternoon fishing and Griselda had spent it suntanning and flipping through magazines with Tina on the porch, they headed off to Rosie’s.

As they walked in, Griselda was surprised to discover that everything she’d always assumed about Rosie’s turned out not to be true. She’d pictured Caleb Foster’s Rosie’s as something dark and evil, a place ripped from the pages of Old Testament iniquities. It wasn’t.

It looked like a barn from the outside, and the walls inside were wooden and old, but festive white lights roped around the room, old-fashioned lighted beer signs blinked cheerfully, and she heard the sound of cue balls knocking together from somewhere in the back. They were greeted by an older woman dressed in Western-style boots and wearing her hair in gray braids. She led them to a roomy wooden booth, where she handed out greasy menus and told them what beers were on tap.

Griselda shifted slightly in her seat, her eyes zeroing in on a lonely stool at the end of the bar. She tried to imagine Caleb Foster here, slamming back shots of whiskey before returning to the farm late at night, his boots loud and heavy on the basement stairs, breaking through the darkness and mercy of sleep, as buckets of hot water and pungent bleach slopped onto the dirt floor.

Get up! Filthy heathen. Get up! Get up and scrub this floor now! Scrub! Scrub the sin away! “And if a man shall take his sister, his father’s daughter . . .”

She forced herself to shut off his voice in her head and swallowed the bile in her throat, looking up as Shawn slid into the booth beside Tina and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before picking up his menu.

“So the bartender didn’t know anything about the fight, but that guy over there?” Shawn gestured to a man sitting alone at the bar with his back to them. “He overheard me asking and said we could follow him. Said it would take about half an hour to get there.”

“Good work,” said Jonah, raising his hand to high-five his friend.

“Said we could place bets with his son too,” said Shawn.

“What do you say, Zelda?” asked Jonah. “Ready to win some green?”

Or lose some,
she almost muttered but bit her tongue. Jonah hadn’t hit her or picked a fight when he returned to the cabin after fishing. In fact, as they’d gotten ready to go out, he kissed her on the back of the neck and said something about how her getting so pissed off had been a turn-on for him.

“I like you sweet,” he said, biting her ear and shoving her facedown on the bed. “But fuck if I don’t like you spicy too, baby. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

All things equal, the weekend would go faster and smoother if she kept the peace. Despite her flash of temper this afternoon, she had no further reserves of spirit to waste. As long as Jonah didn’t mention Holden’s name again, she was ready to let things return to the status quo. She leaned into him, and he put his arm around her shoulder, pulling her up against him as they ordered dinner.

It didn’t take long for them to finish off baskets of barbecue and fries and to polish off three pitchers of beer. To Griselda’s surprise, she had loosened up and was even enjoying herself a little. Tina was in high spirits and did a good job of keeping the conversation moving, deflecting obnoxious comments by smoothing them over and asking questions that managed to be provocative and funny. They were all red-faced and smiley when the man from the bar stopped by their table, flicking his chin to Shawn.

“Y’all ready to go?”

He was about fifty years old, with salt-and-pepper hair and a straggly beard that came to a point right above his T-shirt–covered chest. Griselda looked up at him, giving him a bland smile. She was about to look away when his eyes locked on hers, widening in recognition. He leaned forward a little bit, narrowing his eyes and examining her face.

“How do I know you?”

Griselda stared back at him but didn’t recognize him at all. Not a bit. For a moment, she wondered if she could have somehow met him during her three-year stay at Caleb Foster’s farm, but the Man had been careful. She and Holden had lived in secret; she didn’t recall ever meeting anyone during that time.

“I—I don’t—”

“Hey!” said Jonah. “What the fuck?”

The man checked out Jonah’s arm draped possessively across Griselda’s shoulder and shook his head. “Sorry. She—uh, your girlfriend reminds me of someone.”

“Someone hot who doesn’t belong to you?”

“Didn’t mean to offend, son.”

“Hey, Jo,” said Shawn. “Quint here said he’d take us to the fight. Let’s all be friends.”

“I don’t like guys lookin’ at Zelda.”

“She’s a beautiful girl, Jonah,” said Tina, winking at him as she stood up, dusting her hands on her jeans. “Can’t blame a man for admiring her, honey.”

Jonah nudged Griselda, who stood up so he could get out of the booth. He stood a good three inches taller than the older man and crossed his arms over his broad chest when he asked, “Who’s fighting tonight?”

“Two local guys. One by the name of Eli,” answered Quint, indifferent to Jonah’s peacocking, and picking up a fry from an abandoned basket on the table. He glanced at Griselda again, chewing slowly as his eyes searched her face. “Other one’s called Seth.”

Griselda’s mouth dropped open, and her breath hitched and held, burning her lungs. She reached for the table to steady herself, digging her fingernails into the soft oilcloth table cover and gasping for a breath.

Quint took another fry but didn’t drop Griselda’s eyes, clearly interested in her reaction. He spoke distractedly to the others, “Grudge match. Seth won last time.”

“Seth,” she murmured, staring back into his bluish-gray eyes.

“Yeah,” said Quint, nodding slowly.

She swayed lightly, and Jonah put his arm around her, pulling her close.

“You have too much to drink, baby?”

Griselda took another deep breath and shook her head before looking back up at Quint.

He cocked his head to the side, furrowing his brows as he stared at her. His voice was thoughtful when he asked, “How the hell do I know you?”

“You don’t,” she answered, dropping his eyes. Her heart thundered painfully, and she turned back to Jonah, leaning her forehead on his chest.

“You’re being weird and freaking her out, man,” said Jonah in warning. “You don’t know her. She don’t know you. Quit fucking staring at her or—”

“Okay, okay, okay,” said Shawn, positioning himself between Jonah and Quint.

Tina quickly laced her arms through Quint’s and Shawn’s elbows and moved them toward the door together, asking Quint cheerful questions about the match.

Seth.

A name that equaled heartbreak.

Seth.

It echoed and circled in Griselda’s head in an endless circuit as fuzzy images of Holden’s face filled her mind and her knees buckled, making her stumble on the way to the door.

Jonah tightened his arm around her. “Damn, baby, didn’t look like you drank that much. You drunk? Or is that old bastard upsetting you?”

“Just a head rush,” she managed. “I’ll be fine.”

The fresh air of the cool June evening was a welcome relief to her burning cheeks and helped relieve some of the buzzing in her head. As the parking lot gravel crunched under her sandals, she reminded herself that there were plenty of people named Seth in the world. It wasn’t exactly an uncommon name.

But it wasn’t exactly common either.

It isn’t him. It can’t be.

He’d never go by that name.

Never, ever.

She took another deep breath as they reached Shawn’s car, and straightened up a little.

Besides, if Holden was alive and well in West Virginia, wouldn’t he have come looking for her by now?

It’s not him. His name isn’t Seth.

It wasn’t him. It was just that being here—so close to where she’d known him, so close to where she’d lost him—and hearing
that name, was messing with her head.

She climbed into the backseat, and Jonah pulled her close to his side.

It isn’t him,
she told herself again.
His name isn’t Seth.

Seth

Seth sat in the cab of his truck, winding the white surgical tape carefully through his fingers, then around his knuckles, while Garth Brooks sang “To Make You Feel My Love” on the CD player. Technically, it was a Bob Dylan song, but the Garth Brooks version had been playing on the radio the night Seth had his first fight, a few years ago. He hadn’t expected to win. He’d been told he’d still make a hundred dollars just for showing up, but his rage was so wild and overwhelming after listening to the song, he’d beaten his opponent to a pulp. That night he’d been offered the chance to fight in a local fight club once or twice a month, and he made it a rule to listen to the song before every fight. It made him ache. It tormented him so bad, the moment the song was over all he wanted to do was hurt someone just as much as he was hurting inside. It was a relief to hit and be hit.

He clenched his jaw as the song played on repeat for the second time, watching the white tape go round and round his fingers as ragged snapshots flashed through his mind: a filthy yellow and white dress, honey-blonde braids falling over her shoulders, the tassels resting just above the softness of her budding breasts. Bony, scratched-up legs. Small, torn-up feet that fought for balance on a slippery rock a few feet away as the raging water rushed between them.

The last words she’d uttered on this earth had been for him, pleading with Caleb to let him go. He hadn’t. Crazy fucker had knocked him out cold, and then he’d put a bullet through Gris, through the sweetest, strongest, bravest girl who’d ever lived.

***

Holden came to sobbing her name while his head pounded with pain from the two hits he’d taken to the temple at the river. “G-G-Gris? G-G-Gris?”

“You mean Ruth,” the Man spat, offering him a tin cup of water. Holden sat up slowly on the porch floor, looking up at Caleb’s bloody shirt and scrambling backward until he was flush against the clapboard wall of the farmhouse. Panting and trembling with fear, he stared up at the monster before him.

Caleb set the cup on the edge of the porch and jerked his head to a fresh mound of dirt in the front yard. Holden followed the movement with horrified eyes.

“Ruth’s dead, little brother, an’ you can thank me for puttin’ an end to her evil ways. She ain’t never comin’ back to torment you with her wickedness. We’re headin’ west. West. Fact, that’s who we are now: Caleb an’ Seth West. Now shut up ’bout Ruth, or I’ll smack yer mouth off yer head. She’s gone. Good riddance. We ain’t never talkin’ ’bout her agin an’ glory be for redemption!”

As Caleb walked to the red truck parked in front of the house and hefted a box into the flatbed, Holden turned his head to the side and vomited the meager contents of his stomach onto the porch floor beside him.

The mound of earth was a grave.

She was dead. Griselda was dead.

Holden had loved her, and she’d been killed trying to save him.

His blood rushed like a waterfall through his ears, his breathing fast and erratic as his small hands curled into fists.

“N-n-nooooooo!” he screamed. “G-G-Gris!”

He jumped up, leaping off the porch and running toward her grave, but Caleb caught him around the waist before he reached the pile of overturned earth about the size of a curled-up thirteen-year-old girl.

“P-P-Please . . . p-p-please . . . Oh G-G-God, p-p-please! G-G-Griiiiiis!”

“I warned ya, boy.”

He felt the impact of Caleb’s fist against his cheek, but the darkness that followed was merciful.

When he woke up, it was dark outside, and Holden was strapped into the passenger seat of the old truck, Caleb driving beside him.

“Good. Yer up. We’ll stop for supper soon.”

Holden’s head pounded like a hammer on an anvil. He clenched his eyes shut, then blinked twice, the red taillights before him streaking like blood against the black of the highway. It took him several minutes to process what had happened earlier in the day—he and Gris had tried to escape after Caleb left for church, but Caleb must have gotten home early and tracked them to the cornfields. He’d captured Holden in the Shenandoah, and Holden had told Gris to run . . .

Caleb had knocked out Holden, shot Gris, and buried her in the front yard before leaving West Virginia for good.

“Oh n-n-no,” he sobbed, turning to look out the window. “No. N-n-n-o-o. N-n-n-no.”

“Quit that cryin’, dummy. Can’t hardly understand yer words as it is.”

Holden took a deep breath and spoke as carefully as he could. “W-w-why did you k-k-kill her?”

“That gal was pure evil.”

“She w-w-wasn’t.”

“I knew her better’n you, I guess. It was happenin’ all over agin. Right afore m’very eyes.”

“W-w-what was?”

“Lust!” he bellowed. “Lust, damnation, an’ hellfire!”

Holden gasped and cringed as Caleb banged the steering wheel with fury once, twice, three, four, five times. Over and over again, until Holden lost count, until Caleb finally yelled, “Ya got redemption, boy! Drop to yer ever-lovin’ knees!”

Holden cowered in the corner of the passenger seat, as far to the side as he could, pressed up against the door.

“Ya don’t have to die for yer sins no more! Ya can live on in the blessed light of redemption! Through her blood I’ve made ya whole!”

(Are you whole or broken, Holden?)

“Now . . . No. Talkin’. ’Bout. Ruth. No. More!”

(I’m broken, Gris. I’m finally broken.)

There is some pain in your life that, when you experience it, you’re shocked to the core that it doesn’t kill you. It feels like it should kill you, like your heart should stop beating and your lungs should stop breathing and your eyes should stop seeing. Everything should just . . . stop. With pain that profound and regret that unfathomable, it should be impossible for your body to stay alive.

Holden turned slowly toward the window, staring at the reflection of his face, a study in misery, in desolation, in surrender.

The real horror of that truck ride was that Holden’s body had survived, that he had to keep living with the knowledge that Gris had died trying to save him, trying to free them both, and that now he was completely alone. As they sped west into the dark night, his heart kept beating, his lungs kept breathing, his burning eyes kept seeing. He tucked the memories of his beloved girl deep, deep, deep into the most secret recesses of his heart, closed the door, and buried the key as surely as his beautiful girl lay buried in a fresh grave in West Virginia.

His body stayed alive, but Holden Croft died with Griselda Schroeder on that river.

Inside he was dead.

Inside he didn’t care what happened to him anymore.

Inside he surrendered to darkness and to Caleb Foster.

And the body that remained—that, for a long time, did very little but beat, breathe, and see—became Seth West.

***

He didn’t know how long the song had played on repeat, but the knock on his window made him jump. His eyes flashed open, and his fingers fisted, ready for battle. As he turned to see his friend and co-worker, Clinton, knocking on the glass, pantomiming that Seth should roll down the window, he relaxed, pausing the song.

With one hand he gave Clinton the finger as he rolled down the window with the other.

“Sorry, man,” said Clinton. “You’re in the zone, huh?”

“What do you want?”

“The bets are good tonight. Your take’s going to be strong. Folks love a grudge match.”

“You seen Eli?”

“Yeah,” said Clinton, spitting on the ground.

“Drunk?”

“Didn’t look it.”

Seth flinched, and his nostrils flared. Fighting a drunk was always easier than fighting someone sober.

“He’s a mean fucker, Seth.”

“Yeah.”

“Gemma coming?”

Seth looked out the window at the trucks rolling onto the field about a quarter mile down the hill from where he’d parked his truck. He shook his head. “Asked her not to.”

Clinton pursed his lips. “Since when does she listen to you?”

“Fuck,” sighed Seth. “True ’nough. You seen her here?”

“Naw. Just busting your balls.”

“Bust ’em later,” said Seth in a low voice, not in the mood for teasing.

“Got it.”

“So, what else? You here to give a pep talk?”

Clinton stared at Seth for an extra beat before dropping his eyes and shaking his head.

“Spit it out, Clinton.”

“I heard a rumor he’s got a knife.”

“W-weapons aren’t allowed.”

“He’s pissed at you, Seth. Says you cheated last time.”

Seth clenched his jaw. “I didn’t cheat.”

“Fair enough. Forget I said anything.” Clinton turned to go.

“Clinton!” called Seth. Clinton turned around, and Seth nodded at him. “Thanks.”

“Good luck,” said Clinton before continuing back toward the field.

Seth stared until his friend blended into the darkness, watching as more and more trucks pulled in and parked in the field below, the energy amping up with every new arrival. Someone had a truck radio on pretty loud, and there was some whooping and hollering making its way back up to the hill. Half the spectators would be drunk by the time the fight started. That was fine, as long as they stayed away from the ring. Once Seth started fighting, he didn’t stop until he was knocked out, and he hit anything—
anything
—that got in his way.

He leaned forward and pressed Play again.

***

“Seth West, please report to the principal’s office. Seth West, to the principal.”

Seth stared up at the speaker over the blackboard, flicking questioning eyes to his English teacher.

“Seth, go to the office, please.”

Without saying a word, Seth slid out of his desk and loped up the aisle, ignoring the batted eyes from the girls on either side of him. When he got to the office, the principal, an older lady who’d always resembled a sparrow to Seth, small and birdlike, closed her office door behind him.

“Won’t you sit?” she asked, her voice soft and serious.

Seth sat down across from her.

“I’m so sorry, Seth. I’m so very sorry to have to tell you this.”

He stared at her, his face purposely blank.

“It seems your—your older brother passed away this afternoon. He was . . . well, he was hit by a car crossing the street. The doctors did everything possible, but . . .”

Her blue eyes were gentle as she stared back at him helplessly. Blue eyes bothered Seth a lot more than brown. Blue eyes reminded him of Gris, and he preferred not to think about her. He felt her in his gut, all the time, like you’d feel a heavy stone resting in the bottom of your stomach. She was always, always with him, but there was a difference between feeling her constant presence and thinking
about
her. He lived with the former; he hated the latter.

“That all?” he asked, looking around her office for the last time.

This school had been a shitty experience, mostly, with obnoxious kids who’d had far more schooling than him. The one bright spot was that a speech therapist had worked with him for the past couple of years twice a week after school. She’d taught Seth to limit his phrasing, make soft contact with beginning consonants and use one breath for each short sentence. Always having hated his stammer, he’d taken her advice to heart and practiced religiously. As a result, he barely stammered at all anymore unless he was upset. Of course, he had nothing to say, which made it easier.

“Seth,” she gasped. “Your brother is dead.”

“Wasn’t my brother.”

“But . . . But, he—”

“Wasn’t my brother.”

“Oh. Oh my goodness. You may be in shock. I can ask the nurse to—”

Seth stood up, pushing the chair back under the lip of her desk, and walked out of her office without another word. He walked the two miles to the twenty-five-foot trailer he shared with Caleb, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. Walking purposefully to the back bedroom, he opened the overhead compartment above the bed and removed a metal cash box. Feeling around for the tiny key taped to the back of the shelf, he opened it and took out the money that was inside. He counted it carefully: $662. Shoving the bills in his pocket, he pivoted, opening another overhead compartment and taking out a beat-up brown cardboard boot box.

Turning back into the kitchen, he took the truck keys off the nail by the door and headed outside.

He pointed the truck east.

He never once looked back.

***

The song finished playing again, and as the opening bars restarted, Seth reached forward and flipped down the visor. The small mirror lit up, and he stared at himself.

Dead gray eyes stared back at him, cold and stony. His dark brown lashes were long and slightly curled at the ends like star points, offsetting his eyes with a soft, innocent quality that confused people momentarily as they reconciled his eyes with their setting. His cheekbones were high and cut, but crisscrossed with white scars from the many open gashes that had healed over the years. Same with his forehead and lips, which had been split, by both Caleb and other fighters, more times than he could count. His nose, which hadn’t been straight since he was a kid, was crooked and slightly thicker than average, due to it having been broken several times. He had it set once at the hospital, two years ago, because he was having trouble sleeping, but fight club had ensured it had been broken again since then. His jaw was covered with a light brown scruff that, combined with the hardness of his face, gave him the appearance of a man six or seven years older than his twenty-three.