Jonathan unlocked the door and walked into a silent house, both Mary and Jacob asleep. He walked upstairs to change and pass out in bed. He saw Mary breathing lightly beneath the sheets. Beside her a smaller figure, curled into a ball and tucked back into her belly. Seeing them there together in a symbiotic-like unity made him feel achingly alone, as if he had no part in Jacob’s creation. No. He was meant only for destruction. Perhaps that is all men are good for, he thought, tearing down, blood, death. Perhaps that served a purpose, but it was not the purpose he glimpsed while watching Mary and Jacob curled together, breathing in unison.
He took some blankets from a wicker bin in the living room and fell asleep on the couch.
Chapter Five
He told Mary they were all taking a trip – a final send-off for Gene and a chance to rebuild their friendship. It was a lie, but it seemed to give her hope and relief, as if she might finally be unburdened of the tension that radiated within her husband and darkened the nice home she was struggling to build. Mary was, of course, supportive. She always said the right things to him, but that was all she said, and the words rang empty. For the past several years she spoke to him the way a stranger with a modicum of social awareness would converse with a new acquaintance. But he could see the relief in her eyes, the way her body somehow relaxed upon hearing the news that he would be gone for a few days, that he would be gathering with his old friends. He saw her hope that maybe a piece of the man she fell in love with would be revitalized. More than once, Jonathan had thought of divorcing Mary so she would no longer be infected by the sins of his past, and he was sure the thought had crossed her mind at some point, that she had wondered how her life had gone from such hope and joy to a morass of quiet desperation. But then he would look at Jacob and know he couldn’t actually do it. He was responsible for Jacob. His boy was the only chance he had at redemption. He may have buried one boy in the mountains, but he could endure anything to be sure Jacob survived, was loved and cared for.
Jacob’s birth was not an easy one. He became stuck in the birth canal, sending the doctor and the nurses scrambling to be sure he didn’t suffocate. They tried forceps at first, plunging this crude metal device into Mary’s soft, fleshy body in an attempt to pull the boy by his face into the world. It all seemed very medieval at the time, the wonders of medicine given way to harsh instruments. Then they attempted a suction tube. As there was only one doctor and two nurses, Jonathan was co-opted to hold one of Mary’s heavy, swollen legs on his shoulder while they attempted to extract Jacob from his mother. The vacuum inserted inside his wife could not keep hold of Jacob’s head. It pulled loose and sprayed them all with blood and afterbirth. It spotted his shirt and face. It was a messy affair, filled with images and smells he associated more with hunting and gutting a deer than with the miraculous beauty of birth. But even hunting was cleaner than the day his son was born. Cleaning a kill was not rushed. There was no scramble to save the animal. It all went smooth as clockwork. Jacob’s birth was entirely different. Life was messier and more traumatic than death.
But when the boy was actually birthed, in the open air, trembling with his mouth open, eyes shut as he screamed for comfort, Jonathan felt something so much bigger. He couldn’t get his head around it, couldn’t fathom it. It was like standing before God, and he cried for hours afterward, Mary having to soothe him. It just kept coming – pieces of unthinkable realization, little births in his soul that testified to the terrifying reality of life and death and whatever lay between.
Since Jacob’s birth, Jonathan worried over him like an old grandmother. Mary would tell him to let the boy be, let him grow up and learn the hard way on occasion. “You have to let him explore and get hurt,” she said. “You have to let him be a boy on his own.” Part of him wondered whether it was that exact line of reasoning that allowed a ten-year-old boy to end up in Coombs’ Gulch in the middle of the night. The thought of any tragedy befalling Jacob was enough to send Jonathan’s mind spiraling back to that moment of birth, that massive, overwhelming power he’d felt that day. He did his best to suppress it, but it stayed with him all the same. Mary, on the other hand, seemed to accept that tragedy was a part of life, at peace with the prospect of cancer and car crashes, kidnappers and boys accidentally shot by hunters in the dead of night. But, of course, it was
