Unspeakable

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He took one unsteady step closer, and then another. This was one time when Holly really wished she could hear, because she wanted to hear sirens. Elliot Joseph wasn't tall but he had a huge bony head, with angular cheekbones and widely spaced eyes and a flat widespread nose. His upper body was massive, like a buffalo's, even though his legs were so short. Mickey Slim had once described him as a 'walking definition of threatening behavior.'

'If anything happens to my boy? I'm warning you. I'll tear your fucking head off, you bitch, and I'll piss down your neck.'

'Mr. Joseph, something has already happened to him. Something very serious. I can't even tell if he's still alive.'

Elliot Joseph licked his lips. His eyes were wandering, as if he were trying to remember something important. Then he swayed forward even closer and whispered, 'Do you know who I am?'

There was a clocksprung quality in the way he said it that made Holly feel seriously unnerved. She had come across it so many times before: the quiet, illogical, unanswerable questions, followed by a gradual escalation into total rage. It was the way that violent men justified what they wanted to do.I'm trying to be reasonable here, you bitch, I'm trying to be calm, and all you can do is thwart me and provoke me. What else can I do but hit you?

Even more softly now. 'I said, do? you? know? who? the? fuck? I? am?'

Holly nodded but didn't reply. Whatever she said, it was going to be wrong.

'I am Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt. That's my real name. That's my tribal name. Do you know what that means, Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt?'

Holly shook her head.

'You should. It's one of the greatest fucking names in Nimipu history. It means Thunder Rolling Down From The Mountains, that's what it means. And I was given that name. I wasgiventhat name because I am a direct descendant of Chief Joseph, of the Wallowas, who was the greatest fucking-'

He stopped and frowned at her. 'You don't give a shit about any of this, do you? You don't give a rat's ass.'

'I'm worried about Daniel, Mr. Joseph, as I'm sure you are.'

'You come here trying to break up my family? you come here bad-mouthing me. You come here making my boy deaf. You deaf bitch.'

'Mr. Joseph, just take it easy. The paramedics won't be long now.'

'You deaf bitch, look what you did to my boy! Look what you did to my house! That's all you ever wanted- wasn't it?-to break up my family and break up my house. Wasn't it?Wasn't it?'

Without any warning, he swung his arm and slapped her across the side of the head. Holly saw scarlet and her head sang, and she stumbled back against one of the upturned armchairs. Elliot Joseph came for her again, seizing the lapels of her raincoat and wrenching her from side to side.

'You deaf bitch! You deaf bitch! If you've killed my boy-'

He hurled her backward. She fell against the half-collapsed curtain pole and hit her hip against the windowsill. Elliot Joseph pitched the armchair out of the way and came for her, and she could tell from the way that his mouth was stretched open that he was screaming a high-pitched scream like a woman, as if he wanted to scream for her.

He tried to pull her up to her feet, but she deliberately allowed her knees to buckle, and he was so drunk that he toppled over her into the window bay. He managed to clamber up again and strike her on top of the head with his fist, but then he abruptly spun around and jumped away from her with all the agility of a cat.

He hadn't jumped, of course. He was far too drunk to jump. He had been bodily heaved away by Mickey Slim and another officer in uniform. Two more officers were already coming in through the door, followed by three paramedics.

Holly climbed to her feet. She was trembling and gulping for air. 'Please-the boy. His name's Daniel. I don't even know if he's still breathing. His mother's in the kitchen? Mary. She's in a real bad way, too.'

'Hey, hey, steady,' said Mickey, putting his arm around her. His black raincoat was glittering with rain.

'All his bones are broken,' said Holly. 'Oh God. He's such a sweet little boy. He never did anything to anybody.'

'I told you!'raged Elliot Joseph.'Iexplainedit to you! He had that devil in him! He had that devil in him and I had to beat it out of him!'

'Will you kindly shut the fuck up?' snapped Mickey. Then he looked down at Daniel and asked the paramedic, 'How is he? Is he still alive?'

'Hanging on by his fingernails. God knows how.'

'Please,' said Holly. 'He's been through so much.'

'We're doing what we can, ma'am. What's his pulse rate?'

'I saved him from the devil and you made him deaf, you deaf bitch!'

Mickey shot Elliot a quick look. Two of the officers had him in the doorway, holding his arms, while a third was handcuffing him. 'Did he hurt you?' Mickey asked Holly intently.

'Just a-slap on the face. A knock on the head. Nothing serious.' But the vision in her left eye was blurred and she was trembling like a startled pony.

'Okay,' said Mickey, taking hold of her hand and giving it a squeeze. 'I won't be a moment.'

'It's all right. I'm not going anywhere until I know that Daniel's okay.'

Mickey went across to Elliot Joseph. He kept his back turned to her, so Holly couldn't see what he was saying, but he nodded his head from time to time as if he were talking to Elliot Joseph quite calmly. Only the complicated jumble of anxiety on Elliot Joseph's face gave Holly any idea that Mickey might be threatening him.

Elliot suddenly threw himself wildly from side to side. 'You can't touch me! You can't touch me and you fucking know it! You touch me-you lay one single finger on me, go on!'

Nod, nod, nod,from Mickey.

'I got rights. I got fucking human rights and tribal rights and you touch me, you just fucking touch me once, and you're finished. You and that deaf bitch who made my boy deaf. I'll get the both of you, I swear it.'

Nod?

'You're out of your mind. That's my boy over there, and if I beat that devil out of him, you ought to be giving me a fuckingaward.'

Nod, nod, nod?

'Well, she's my wife and she tried to stop me beating him and that was not in the boy's best interest, was it? If your boy had that devil in him, what wouldyoudo? Nothing, I'll bet, you faggot.'

Nod.

'She had it coming. She dropped the fucking supper and she had it coming. A woman drops your fucking supper, what are you supposed to do? Say, like, 'Thank you very much, no problem, I'll just eat it off the rug'?'

Mickey turned to one of the officers. The officer's face was round and bland like a self-confident cheese, no eyebrows and tiny, colorless eyes. He unholstered his baton and handed it over. Mickey smacked the baton in the palm of his hand,smack, smack, smack,although Holly couldn't hear it.

'So what are you going to do?' Elliot Joseph demanded, defiantly lifting his chin. 'Hit me? You better just try, you faggot. I got human rights and I got Wallowa rights.'

Mickey gave no perceptible nod this time, but he must have said something because the cheese-faced officer suddenly reached up and seized Elliot Joseph's bandanna, wrenching his head back. Then he clamped his other hand around Elliot Joseph's throat.

'Wob you doib, mab, I carn breeb!'

Mickey took a step to the right. Elliot Joseph tried to purse his lips but he was gasping for breath and so he couldn't. Mickey tilted the baton way back over his shoulder, paused, and then cracked him straight in the mouth. Blood flew up against the door, and the cheese-faced officer flinched as his cheek was sprayed with scarlet squiggles.

One of the paramedics looked up from the floor. She glanced toward the doorway but didn't make any comment about what she saw there. 'The kid's stable,' she told Holly. 'We should be able to move him now. Do you want to come along?'

Hard Words at theDoernbecher

It was well past five o'clock before Dr. Sokol came along the corridor to tell Holly that Daniel was going to survive.

She had been sitting for three and a half hours in the visitors' lounge at the Doernbecher Children's Hospital. She had started to type out her reports on her laptop, but her head was throbbing and she couldn't focus without squinting, so she closed it up. She knew that she should have gone home, but she couldn't-not if Daniel was going to die-and so she stood by the window while the rain gradually trickled down in front of her face, and lightning flickered in the distance.

Every time the lounge door swung open she looked up with a nervous jump. She knew that it couldn't be Elliot Joseph, but she couldn't stop herself. She had been jostled and punched plenty of times before, but Elliot had done more serious damage than a few bruises. He had made her question her competence. If she weren't deaf, maybe she would have heard him muttering threats behind her back. Maybe she would have picked up some subtle intonation in Mary's voice, some plea for help that she simply hadn't been able to detect by lipreading.

The lounge door opened and Dr. Sokol appeared. He wasn't much older than Holly and had a blue-shaven head and rimless glasses. He was still wearing his green theater robes and he looked exhausted.

'Well, it was touch and go a couple of times, but the kid's going to live.'

'How bad is it?'

Dr. Sokol wiped his neck with a towel. 'About as bad as you can get. Let me tell you,