The Ignored (49 page)

We moved in.

The days flowed from one to the next. We’d get up late, spend most of
the day on the beach, read and watch TV at night. It was pleasant, I suppose,
but I had to wonder: what was the point of it all? I had never really bought
into Philipe’s idea that we had a specific destiny, that fate had some plan in
mind for us, but I had thought that my life would eventually lead somewhere,
that it would have a purpose, that it would mean something.

And it didn’t.

There was no point. We lived, we died, we tried to make the best of
things in between. That was it. Period. No pattern had emerged from the series
of disjointed events that were my existence because there was no pattern. It had
made no difference to anyone that I had been born.

And then Jane announced that she was pregnant.

Overnight,
everything
changed.

This was the point, I thought. Maybe I would make a mark upon the world
and maybe I wouldn’t. But I would leave behind a child, and how that child
turned out would depend on me and Jane. And maybe that child would make a
significant mark upon the world. And maybe not. But maybe his or her child
would. And whatever happened, however far down the line it might be, it would be
because of me. I was a link in that chain.

I had a purpose.

I remembered Ralph telling me that the children of Ignored people were
always Ignored themselves, and I told Jane, but she didn’t care and neither did
I. She said that she didn’t like the lifestyle in Pacific Palisades, that she
wanted our son or daughter to grow up in a different environment, and once again
we moved up the coast, settling in a beachfront house in Carmel.

The first trimester passed, and Jane was showing, and both of us were
happier than we’d ever been in our lives. We tried contacting her parents, but
they could neither see us nor hear us, and though it was expected, that was a
disappointment. But it didn’t last long. There were too many other things to do,
too many other things to be grateful for. We pored through books of names. We
read manuals on parenting. We stole baby food and furniture and clothes.

We had been taking long daily walks along the beach, but when Jane began
to get bigger and to tire more quickly and easily, she switched her allegiance
to indoor exercise equipment. She told me to keep up the walks, however, and
though I protested at first, I soon agreed. She said she didn’t want me to
balloon up to her size. And, she admitted, she wanted to have some time alone,
without me always hovering around.

I understood.

I even grew to like my solitary walks along the beach.

And then it happened.

I had walked a mile or so down the sand and was on my way back when I
saw a strange disturbance in the air some ways ahead. I jogged forward,
squinting.

Flickering across the sand was the faint outline of a purple forest.

My heart leaped in my chest. I was cold all over, and I could not seem
to catch my breath. Terrified, I ran back toward the house. I reached it, bolted
up the steps.

Jane shrieked my name.

I had never heard her scream that way before, had never heard the sound
of pure abject terror in her voice, but I heard it now and it caused my insides
to squeeze painfully in a viselike cramp of fear. I doubled over, barely able to
move for the pain, but I forced myself to keep running.

“Bob!!”
she cried.

I dashed down the hall into the bedroom.

And there was the murderer.

He was on our bed. He had ripped off all of Jane’s clothes and was
straddling her, holding a knife to her neck. He had survived somehow. He was
alive and had come back and had tracked us down.

He saw me out of the corner of his eye, and he turned to face me.

His zipper was down, his penis out.

He had an erection.

“Oh, here you are.” He grinned. “I was wondering when you’d show up. I
wanted you to watch your wife blow me.” He reached next to him, picked up her
torn panties, held them delicately to his nose, sniffing loudly. “Mmmmmm,” he
said. “Nice and fresh.”

I took an angry step forward, and he pressed the knife against her skin,
drawing blood. She screamed in pain.

“Don’t try anything,” he said. “Or I’ll slit her fucking throat.”

I stood in the doorway, paralyzed, not knowing what to do. In some
hopeful, overly imaginative part of my brain, I thought that maybe Philipe had
faded into that other world by now and that he would pop out of nowhere and save
us and drag this guy back where he had come from.

But that didn’t happen.

The murderer leaned forward. His erect penis pressed against Jane’s
closed lips. “Open your fucking mouth,” he ordered. “Or I’m going to cut that
baby out of your stomach.”

She opened her mouth.

And he pushed his penis in.

Instinct took over. If I had thought about it, I would not have done
what I did. I would have been afraid for the life of both Jane and our unborn
child, and I would have done nothing. But I did not think. I saw his erection
slide into Jane’s mouth, and I reacted instantly, crazily. I lunged forward,
leaped, and landed against his back, my hands on his head. He probably would
have shoved the knife into Jane’s throat, but at that second she bit down, hard,
and he screamed in agony, temporarily losing control. I yanked back on his head,
pulling him off Jane, and grabbed for the knife. It sliced through my palm, and
I can’t say that I didn’t feel the pain, but I did not stop, and I twisted his
neck as far as I could to the right until I heard it crack. His screams were
silenced and he went limp, but he was still holding on to the knife, and Jane
pulled it out of his hand and shoved it through his crotch. A wash of blood
poured over her distended stomach, cascading onto the sheets.

She pulled it out and shoved it through his chest.

I rolled over, still twisting his neck, and both of us fell off the bed
onto the floor.

I jumped to my feet, waiting for him to get up again, but this time he
was dead.

Really dead.

I looked around, saw no orange grass, no purple trees, nothing from that
other place.

Jane was still holding the knife, and she was shaking like a leaf,
sobbing uncontrollably, looking down in horror at the blood that covered her
body. She kept spitting, and a line of saliva dribbled from her lower lip.

I could feel the knife cut on my palm now, and my own blood was pouring
around the side of my hand and dripping onto the floor, but I ignored the pain
and walked over to her, gently removing the knife from her hand and lifting her
to her feet, taking her into another bedroom.

“Are they sending people after us?” Jane cried. “Are they after us
because I wouldn’t let them take you?”

“No,” I said, stroking her hair and helping her down onto the bed.
“That’s it. It’s over. It was just that one guy. And he was after me. Not you.”

“Maybe they’ll send more of them.”

“No,” I said. “That’s it.”

I didn’t know how I knew that that was true, but I did. One of Philipe’s
“hunches,” maybe.

“It’s all over,” I said.

And for once I was right.

It was.

I buried the body that afternoon.

I chopped it into pieces first.

The next day, we packed up what we owned and moved up to Mendocino.

Four months later, Jane gave birth to a nine-pound boy.

We named him Philipe.

I think, sometimes, that I have been lucky. That I am fortunate to be
Ignored. I may be average in my makeup, but I have not been average in my
experiences. I have seen things normal men have never seen. I have done things
normal men have never done. I have lived a good life.

It is a wonderful world in which we live. I have come to realize that. A
world that is truly filled with miracles. And though my nature may preclude me
from fully appreciating those miracles, at least I know that they exist.

And I try to teach that to my son.

I cannot be forgiven for the evil I have done in my life. For I have
been evil. I believe that now. I know that now. Murder is an inherently evil
act, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how convincing the
rationalizations. Murder is evil no matter who does it or for what reason.

If there is a God, only He or She will be able to forgive me for what I
have done.

The one thing I can say for myself is that I have learned from my
mistakes. All that I have experienced and gone through has not been for nothing.
The person I am now is not the person I once was.

So maybe there was a point to all of my journeys and side trips, to the
meandering series of disconnected events that has been my life.

I still wonder what we are. Descendants of aliens? Genetic mutations?
Government experiments? I wonder, but I am not obsessed by the question the way
I once was. It is not the focus of my existence.

My son is.

Philipe is.

I don’t know if I believe in God or the devil or heaven or hell, but I
can’t help thinking that there is a reason why we are the way we are. I do
believe that we were put on this earth for a purpose. I don’t think that purpose
is merely to exist. I don’t think that purpose is to be noticed like everyone
else. I don’t think that purpose is test-marketing products for the mass
consumption of middle America.

But I don’t know what the purpose might be.

Maybe I will find out someday.

Maybe my son will find out.

And what about that world that I glimpsed, that I almost entered? I
think about it often. What was it? Heaven? Hell? Nirvana? Was it the place
mystics and gurus see when they meditate for so long that they supposedly lose
all sense of individual self? Or was it another dimension, existing concurrently
with our own? I have read and reread “The Great God Pan,” and somehow I can’t
buy that interpretation.

But I can’t offer an alternate theory.

Whatever it is, whether its origin is mystical or scientific, the
existence of that glimpsed world somehow set to rest any anxieties I might have
had about death and the afterlife. I don’t know that I was ever really bothered
or worried about what might happen after death, but I must have been concerned
at some level because I feel lighter now, more at ease. I don’t know if there is
something after death—no one can know for certain—but I’m pretty sure
there is, and it does not frighten me.

We still live here in Mendocino, by the ocean. In the mornings I write,
while Jane watches Philipe and works in her garden.

We spend the afternoons together.

It is a good life, and we are happy, but I sense even now that we may
eventually want more. I think sometimes of what James told me in Thompson, about
there being a country of the Ignored, a land across the sea, an island or a
peninsula where people like us live free and peacefully in a sovereign nation of
our own.

And I think that it would be nice to raise children there.

And I stare at the water and I think to myself that someday, perhaps, I
will learn to sail.

Scanning, formatting and basic
proofing by Undead.