The Absolute Brutality of Love by Grayson Tate

A farmer found the body. He was traveling down a little used dirt road, checking the perimeter of his cornfields, preparing for the fall harvest. The body was face down in the dirt. Stab marks littered its back. Runnels of red, dried and frozen, crisscrossed the back like a grotesque spiderweb. The farmer stopped five feet away, unable to go closer. He had been hunting and gutting and skinning since he was younger than the dead corpse, but he had never seen the body of a child outside a hospital. He had never come across a site so permeated with evil. He looked up at the sky, surprisingly blue for that time of year. “Why, God?” He asked. His religion faltered briefly in that moment, the only time it ever had.  After a moment he walked back to his truck. He grabbed a blanket and walked back to the child. He got closer this time. All the way to the body. He forced himself to look back down at the Devil’s work. He knelt and covered the body with the blanket. The red crisscrosses were replaced by a checkered black and white wool, knit by his wife. The geometric pattern was mesmerizing, and calming. He took a deep breath and pulled out his phone. He dialed 911.

“911. What’s your emergency?” A female voice answered and asked.

“I found a body,” the man said. “The body of a child.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then: “What’s your address?”

The farmer told the operator his address. He told her how to get to the edge of the field, on the back of his property. He hung up.

*

Justin was a biology teacher at the local high school. He hadn’t intended on becoming a biology teacher. He had gone to college to study physics but had switched to biology after failing calculus II. The military had followed, courtesy of a ROTC scholarship. Two years sitting in a missile silo in Montana and then two years sitting behind a desk at STRATCOM in Nebraska. The world of the Air Force had been boring, utterly boring. He had started drinking. He had met a bartender named Jen. They had fallen in love.

He had knocked up the bartender. He had left the military. He had gotten a job with the local school district. They had even paid for him to get his MA in Teaching since they had had such a shortage of science teachers. Despite his best intentions he had ended up liking teaching. He liked explaining evolution. He liked helping his students with their labs. 

He had married the bartender. They had quit drinking. They had had a baby boy. They had named him Eli. Eight years of domesticity had followed. They had been surprised by their happiness. 

*

The weather outside was weather. The green leaves had turned red on their way to turning brown on their way to leaving the trees naked. A crisp breeze hit him as he turned onto the sidewalk. He shivered. 

The park was two blocks away. Two blocks of suburbia. Not the wealthiest part of town. Not the poorest. One-story brick houses. Sedans in the driveways. 

The park was surrounded by fields. The kind of empty fields that were overgrown with weeds, desolated by the neglect of city government. The park had a swing set, a jungle gym, a merry-go-round, a couple of wooden tables, and a rusty grill. There was no sign of life. No children running. No children laughing. Just the faint squeaking of the swings being pushed by the breeze. 

He was about to leave when he spotted a flash on the edge of the park, a reflection of the sunset on a piece of metal. He went over to investigate. 

The bike lay on its side. It was a silver bike with blue trim. Justin had picked it out for Eli last Christmas without thinking about how Eli would have to wait until spring to ride it. He had been nonplussed. He had even tried riding it in the snow. A bruised arm had followed, and Justin had taken the wheels off until the snow had melted. Eli had ridden it every day last summer and had insisted on riding it to and from school when August had come around. Jen was against it. Justin convinced her it was fine. He had been eight years old when he had begun riding his bike to and from school, after all.

Justin knelt and looked more closely at the bike. There was nothing wrong with it. It had been dropped on its side like millions of bikes had been dropped on their sides by children in too much of a hurry to kick the kickstand. He stood back up. He looked around. Nothing. He walked around the perimeter of the park, slowly, looking out into the surrounding fields for signs of children. Nothing.

“He must have walked to a friend’s house,” he thought.

He walked back to the house, pushing the bike alongside him. 

When he got back home, he walked around the back of the house and put the bike on the patio. Then he went inside and found Jen working in the kitchen. Making dinner. Fajitas.

She looked up from chopping green peppers. “Where’s Eli?” she asked, over the sizzling of the chicken in the pan.

“He wasn’t there,” he said. “Do you think he went to a friend’s house?”

“Maybe,” she said, slightly worried. “I’ll call around. Take over here.”

She picked up her phone and went to the living room. He dumped the peppers into the pan.

She came back a few minutes later. Full-blown worry on her face. “He’s not anywhere,” she said.

He took her phone and dialed 911.

“911. What’s your emergency?” a male voice answered and asked.

“My wife and I can’t find our son. He’s not at the park or any of his friend’s houses,” he said.

“Ok. I’ll send a patrol car over,” the operator said.

Justin hung up and waited.

*

He and Jen sat on the couch for about half an hour, saying very little, the news playing in the background. They both jumped up when they heard a knock on the door. Jen opened it to two cops, one in his forties and one in her twenties. The couple relayed the events of the last hour to the two. The younger one took notes in a little notebook. 

“Ok, here’s what we’ll do,” the older cop said, “You and I will go to the park,” pointing at Justin, and these two will stay here, gesturing to the women.

Justin got into the passenger’s seat of the cop car. The ride was silent. The cop was stoic. At the park Justin showed the cop where he had found the bike. The cop walked around awhile, looking here and there with his flashlight. They drove home. Justin went inside while the cop stayed in his car, calling his supervisor.

After about ten minutes he came in. “Ok,” he said. “I’ve talked to my supervisor. They’re sending the on-call detective over.”

The on-call detective came over. They officially opened a missing person investigation. An Amber Alert was put out. Justin and Jen were told to go to sleep. That they would receive a call as soon as anybody heard anything. That everything was probably fine.

They didn’t sleep. The night was interminable.

*

The smell of coffee drew Justin to the kitchen. Jen already had a mug in her hand, staring listlessly at the cupboards. He poured a cup. He took a sip. He heard a car pull into the driveway. He went to the window and saw three men in suits get out of a cop car. One was the detective from last night. He had never seen the other two before. He went to the door. He opened it. Jen followed.

“Any news?” he asked.

The two men in the front looked at their feet. After a moment the man at the back moved around them. The other two took a step back, looking at the trees, looking at the sky, looking at anything but the parents. 

The man who had stepped forward spoke. “I’m Chaplain Albertson, I work with the police department.”

Neither Jen nor Justin said anything.

“We think we might have found your son’s body,” he said.

*

Justin drove to the morgue, following the cop car. Jen sat in the passenger seat. Neither said anything. 

They parked in a mostly empty parking lot. They followed the trio into the building. The cops’ faces were grim. The chaplain’s face was placid. Their footsteps were robotic on the linoleum floor. They went down to the basement. The temperature dropped ten degrees. They walked through a swinging door into a room with tile floors. A drain in the center. Metallic surgical tools on the counters. A slab was in the center of the room. A body with a sheet over it. Jen grabbed his arm.

A man with thick-rimmed plastic glasses wearing scrubs looked up. He walked over and extended his hand. “I’m Doctor Peterson,” he said. “The pathologist.”

Justin forced himself to shake his hand. “Justin,” he said. “And this is Jen.”

The other three men stayed behind them, near the door. The two cops were still visibly uncomfortable. The chaplain’s eyes looked inward. Praying to something. 

The pathologist swept his arm toward the slab in the middle of the room. “If you’ll come over here. We need you to identify or disidentify the body,” he said calmly.

Justin began walking. Jen didn’t move. He stopped and looked down at her. Her face was frozen. He gave her a nudge and she began moving, gripping his arm as hard as she could.

The pathologist waited until they were next to the table. He pulled back the sheet. It was Eli. His eyes were closed. He looked asleep. Jen began to cry again. The pathologist looked at Justin, waiting for a sign of confirmation or declination. Justin nodded. The pathologist replaced the sheet.

“How did it happen,” Justin asked.

“He was stabbed to death,” the pathologist replied.

Jen passed out, her limp weight almost knocking Justin over. He picked her up. He carried her over to a chair against the wall. 

The pathologist followed. He bent down to look at her more closely. “She’ll be ok,” he said.

Justin looked up, shocked. No. Never. She would never be ok. He would never be ok. No parent would ever be ok again after seeing their child on a slab. 

“How many times was he stabbed?” He asked.

The pathologist didn’t answer.

The chaplain walked over. “Perhaps we should get you back home,” he said.

Justin ignored him. He continued to look at the pathologist. “How many times was he stabbed?” he asked again.

“Ten,” the pathologist finally answered.

Justin took a deep breath. He picked Jen up and carried her to the car. He drove home. She was awake by then. He guided her to the bedroom. She laid down. He went and took a shower and finally cried.

*

Jen’s parents’ pastor had officiated the funeral services. He had talked about God’s mysterious will and a human’s inability to understand it. He had talked about God’s everlasting love for humanity. He had talked about Eli being in a better place now. Being at peace. Neither Justin nor Jen had been comforted.

The FBI had taken over the case. It had been a kidnapping, so they had had jurisdiction. They had scoured the area. Interviewed hundreds of people. Followed up leads and tips. And come up with nothing. They had found fingerprints all over Eli’s body. They had put them into the national database. They hadn’t found any matches. They had come to a dead end. The case had been put on the shelf. Maybe one day the perpetrator would commit another crime and be arrested and his fingerprints would light up the database. They didn’t know. They weren’t optimistic.

Justin and Jen had begun drinking again. They had stopped at the liquor store on their way home from the funeral. Their life had become a blur. They had gone on benders and benders and benders and benders. Jen’s benders kept her away from home for days at a time. Justin’s benders were more domestic. He mostly watched the Discovery channel. He watched show after show about wildlife. About life and death and nature. Parenthood was a natural instinct for every animal on Earth. The drive to protect one’s young was ingrained in the genetic material of every animal. He had failed at that. He blamed himself. Jen blamed him too. When she came home she would yell at him. When she left he would yell at himself. One day Jen had not come home. She had gone on an interstate bender. The last he had heard she was in Dallas. Maybe they would see each other again one day. Maybe not. 

He had kept his job. He had managed not to drink until he got home from school. He contained his benders to weekends and holidays. He had remained bombed for the entirety of every summer break. Some nights he would order an Uber and go out to the murder site and retch and pass out. The farmer who had found his son would take him back to his house and let him sleep on the couch. In the morning the farmer’s wife would give him a cup of coffee and the farmer would drive him home in his truck, saying nothing.

At the graduation of his students nearly ten years after Eli’s death he had broken down. Sitting at the end of the row, wearing his college robes, he had cried and sobbed. His students had been sympathetic. They hugged him. The parents had not been sympathetic. One of them had escorted him out. Eli would have graduated that year. Instead, he had watched the graduation, and had looked down from a heaven that Justin didn’t believe in.

Justin had checked himself into rehab the next day. Twenty-eight days of nightmares and sweaty sheets and benzodiazepines to prevent the seizures caused by withdrawal had followed. He had gone to all the groups. He had talked to all the counselors. He had gotten sober.

*

Justin left the psychiatrist’s office. The psychiatrist had prescribed naltrexone. It would target the parts of the brain that craved alcohol. It would help keep him sober. That combined with Alcoholics Anonymous was the most effective way to stay sober, the psychiatrist had said. Justin had no reason not to believe him. 

He drove from the psychiatrist’s to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It was in the basement of a Catholic church. He listened to other people talk about their struggles. He was learning to be empathetic again. He was learning to feel again. He stood up and talked about his struggles, his doubts about his ability to stay sober, his plans to stay sober despite those doubts. He didn’t mention his son. He never mentioned him. After saying the Serenity Prayer and helping to clean up he walked upstairs. He wandered into the sanctuary. He walked around, looking at the pictures on the wall. He sat down in a pew and put his head in his hands. After a while, a priest walked in and sat down next to him. Justin looked up.

“Is there something bothering you?” the priest asked.

“Yes. Pain.” Justin said.

“Pain from what?” the priest asked.

“I lost a child,” Justin replied.

“Ah, there’s no pain as great as that caused by the loss of a child. It’s the absolute brutality of love,” the priest said.

“What?” Justin asked.

The priest looked up at the crucifix. “There’s no love as absolute as that of a parent for his or her child. And there’s no loss so brutal as that of the loss of a child for his or her parent,” the priest answered.

Justin followed the priest’s gaze to the crucifix. He got up and left the church.

He got in his car and drove. He drove past places vaguely familiar. Stores and restaurants he had gone to before his son’s death. And new places that had been built since then. He drove past them and out of town. Stores and restaurants turned into fields. He drove to the death site without thinking. He parked his truck and got out of the truck. It was summer. The sun was beginning to set. It was bright and luminous and filled the entire sky, no mountains or hills to block its light.

He got on his knees and looked down at the nonexistent outline of his son’s body. Dirt. Just dirt. No visible stains. But, after all these years, the miasma of death, still. Something he would always sense. 

He looked up. He screamed. He screamed so loud that birds miles away left their trees and flew into the sky. He screamed until his lungs hurt and his throat was raw. He screamed until he could scream no more.

There was no echo from the cornfields.