Chapter 43- The Final Cut

Chapter 43

The Final Cut

Cavill, Virginia

She’d always considered herself to be a good mother, to be a good person and to live her life right.  She’d always worked, even when Jeffrey was first born.  She’d paid her taxes, looked both ways before crossing the street and never done anything she shouldn’t have done.  And people in the little town she’d been raised in said that she was “a good sort.”

Mary Elizabeth Wagner had prided herself on that, on being a good mother to Jeffrey.  She’d spent money on making sure he had toys that would help him grow up with a brain in his head.  Neither Mary nor her husband, Mark, were especially bright.  Neither of them had gone to college and Mark had left high school before graduating.

Mary wanted more than that for Jeffrey.  He was going to be able to go to college if he wanted to.  It was a long way off but Mary wanted to give him every edge, every opportunity, every chance she’d never been given herself.  But America wasn’t about being given a hand out, it was all about the idea that once you were on your own two feet, you could run as fast as you wanted to.

Mary, often referred to as “Mare” by her friends, was a believer that Jeffrey was the future she had always dreamed about.  “If we get behind the boy, get our shoulder behind him, there’s no telling how far he might go,” she had said to Mark.  Mark had nodded, he wasn’t much for talking.  Mark was a good ole boy and heading for an early grave.  Beer and turkey sandwiches were his favorite things in the world, with Mary and Jeffrey probably following in after Sunday night football.

Mark had been willing to work extra shifts, stay on late and quietly help them save the money they needed to.  Mary had thanked him and been good to him.  She was a good wife too, knowing when to keep her mouth shut and when to speak.  She’d turned the other way when he wanted to drink and smoke with his friends and they often paid her the compliment that she, like her husband, was “ole country tough,”

There was another series of thuds in the distance and Mary looked up from her reverie.  She was wearing a familiar pair of cut-offs, not indecent but short enough to catch the occasional stare from her appreciative neighbours.  Her blouse was stained with a red sticky substance and now as scattered with a fine white powder too.  She finished what she was doing and walked back towards the bedroom.  Her eyes were wide, darting from one place to another.  Jeffrey’s CD would be ending soon.

Mary had always considered herself to be kind.  She had recsued “Mr Snuff”, the little kitten that had ended up in their house and had become Jeffrey’s treasured friend.  She had fought Mark to keep him and Mark had eventually backed down on that front.  She had taught Jeffrey that a kitten was a living thing, that it had feelings.

“If you look after him, he’ll be good to you and he’ll be your buddy,” she had said last summer .  She had always talked to Jeffrey like he was a little grown up and she hoped that by aiming high, she’d get him to follow.  It was working, already it was working.  He was the smartest kid in his pre-school and this made both Mary and Mark very proud.

“Proper little quiz-kid aint he?” Mark had said, a big smile on his face.

“I love you Mark,” She had replied.

“Yeah,” he had said back and gone back to his magazine.

She had knelt by Jeffrey in the garden, Mr Snuff not too far away and said to him.

“Now remember that he’s a living breathing animal.  So you gotta treat him right?  You remember how much it hurt when Tommy Cristakis pulled your hair at kintergarden?”

“Yeah mommy, that was nasty”

“Yeah.  Well that’s what it’d be like if someone yanks on Mr Snuff’s fur too.  He’s got feelings like you do”,

“I’ll not forget mommy”.

Mary found herself crying again and she stopped by the baby’s bedroom.  The baby, they still called him the baby even at four and a half years old.  He would always be their baby.

There was a crashing sound from the neighbors house and Mary wondered vaguely who it was in there now.  Whether it was the army or the others.  She wasn’t sure and she supposed it didn’t make any difference now.

She stood by the door and she looked bitterly at the cross that was on the mantle-piece.  “Jesus, you’ve let us down,” she said mildly.  She had gone to church every Sunday, she’d baked for the fund-raisers and she’d raised Jeffrey to be a proper little Baptist.  If this hadn’t happened, if they had been saved, if someone had saved them, then he’d have grown up Baptist too.

His first day at high school, dressing up for the prom, college, jobs, his first car.  His whole future ahead of him.  Mary bit back her bitter tears for her sons sake.  She entered the baby’s room where Jeffrey was lying on his bed, headphones on.  When he saw his mother enter the room, he looked up.

“What’s up mommy?” he asked.  He was a bright kid and he’d figured out that something was amiss.

Mary sat down and hugged him closed.  Jeffrey had learned that his mother needed to hug him almost as much as he needed to be hugged and he held on to her.  She cried over his shoulder and Jeffrey looked up.  The headphones slipped away and he heard the terrible crashing sounds coming from nearby.

“What’s all the noise?” he asked.

“Jeff, honey.  You need to take some medicine now,” She said.

“I’m not sick,” he replied

“Yeah I know honey I know.  But it’s like the vaccine you had. Do you remember that?”

“It hurt,” said Jeffrey ruefully.

“Well this is just some pills.  I crushed them up in some jam for you so you just swallow em right back,”

Jeffrey obeyed his mother’s strange instruction.  Sometimes adults would want you to do the strangest most inscrutable things and Jeffrey had already learned that if you just went along with it, it would normally be okay.  After all, his mother loved him very very much.

Jeffrey laid his head down, already feeling drowsy.

“I’m sleepy,” he murmured.

“I know baby I know,” she replied, tears pouring down her face.  The front door buckled under an unseen impact.  She looked away and lifted something small but heavy onto the bed.

“Good night mommy,” he whispered.

“Good night baby.  Mommy loves you”, she whispered back.  She looked up at the ceiling, a mobile spun in the breeze, cast in the dawn light.  She looked down at her son, seemingly fast asleep.  She decided not to take any chances.

There was a flash of light from a window and the sound of a gunshot.  Somebody wrenched the front-door to the Wagner house away from its hinges and threw it to one side.

There was another gunshot and another flash from the doorway.  A human-shaped figure entered the bedroom through a gauze of smoke.  It looked impassively at two small slumped forms.

There were more crashing sounds, guns and vehicles, death and screaming.

The human shaped figure walked calmly back out the front door to greet the new arrivals in the town.

The sun continued to rise