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To Be Loved

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Chapter One

April 21, 2007 10:40 AM

I'm gonna die ... I'm gonna ... die. Jericho gazed through the windshield, somewhere past the passing highway and beyond the empty fields, intensely aware of the violent pounding in his chest-thumping increasingly harder with each passing second-and the sweat between his hands and the steering wheel. The thought of death had never consumed him in such a way before, and now it seemed to stare ominously from some place very close, like a hidden predator waiting to attack. He had thought about it before, at funerals, envisioned it at church many times when his father had rasped and growled a sermon full of fire and brimstone. Many nights as a child he had lain in the bed staring into the darkness praying that the morning would come, with the words "If I should die before I wake" weighing heavily on his young mind-but never like this. And even in the midst of it all, it seemed to him that what he feared might be worse than death. And though the sun lay beautifully behind the clouds over the passing highway, and the lyrics of Sade's "Paradise" floated like wind through the open windows of the car, on this particularly beautiful day, the clouds were flung carelessly into the blue-and-orange sky in vain. Likewise, the melodies that would have usually pacified him did nothing more than plunge him deeper and deeper into darkness. The wind wasn't soothing; instead, it was rough and heavy. Like the lines on the highway, his mind raced. How in the hell did I let this happen, he thought. Lord ... Lord ... Lord. Unable to find any other words that matched what he felt, he fought back tears. "Dear Lord ... I know I'm no saint. Lord, I know I haven't always done right. I know ... I know ... I know ...," he whispered more to himself than to God. "Please save me, Lord ... please save me." He stopped, chest rising and falling deeply. "Lord, I promise I'll change." The wind smeared a single tear across his cheek.

Soon, his eyes blurred with tears. His mind became a movie projector on which the last several years played over and over-reexamining every decision he had made, every thought, every intention, every option. He felt he had been stalked, chased, pursued by some creature or thing that he had tried to outrun, but had always caught him, and brought him back to the same place. Tears flowed; his breath caught. He cranked the music high trying to escape to someplace deeper where he could hide ... disappear. In the sound, his stomach turned; he wanted to ball himself into a knot and explode. "I don't know why I'm tripping." He took a deep breath trying to calm himself, then he stopped. "Have faith ... have faith," he told himself. "Lord, please ...," he pleaded.

He had almost convinced himself that everything would be all right, and the squeezing in his chest had almost become butterflies when the blue-and-white lights of a police car snatched him back to reality. He pulled over and waited.

Staring through the rearview mirror, he remembered the bar-it had been his refuge, an escape, but now there was none. He remembered the stranger at the bar. He had been so intriguing-sweet eye-candy, lust personified-but now he was tortured by his memory. He remembered the wink that had lured him in and left him with more than he could handle; remembered all the songs that played on all the different occasions that had led here. He remembered the bliss-unrestrained, careless bliss that made him close his eyes and forget ... curtains that flailed in the night wind out onto the balcony, and the bed beside which they flew. He remembered, vividly, the blinding euphoria that made him see stars ... that arched his back and curled his toes. He saw breasts. He remembered how soft they were. Why, why, why, he asked himself, and then he saw the legs-bowed and hairy-ones he would never forget though he had tried so many times. He remembered "accidentally" rubbing his legs across them just so he could feel the tickle of his hair and warmth of his flesh after he came in through the window and lay under the fan; remembered his father; heard the rasp and growl from the pulpit again. The words burned deeply in his memory, and then he felt the fire well up in his throat. Hate. More tears came. He must've been right, he thought to himself, remembering all the things his father hadn't said but had made very clear by his actions. And now the police.

Jericho stared at the officer's shoes in the rearview mirror as he approached the car. He studied the shoe string on the left shoe that needed to be tied. Mindlessly, he gazed, not noticing when the officer reached his window, slightly startled when he began to talk. "Sir, do you have any idea how fast you were going?" Still in a daze, he half responded, his face tear soaked, eyes red. Sitting in his car on this beautiful day, now emotionless, speechless, in another world, and with no recollection of the last ten minutes of driving let alone how fast he had been going, he looked briefly at the officer, who, disturbed by Jericho's appearance, lost his breath. And by the time Jericho realized the officer had let him off, driven away, and he was about to drive off himself, he prayed God, too, would spare him.

Before he pulled back onto the highway, his phone rang. He already knew who it was.

"Where in the hell are you?" The message flashed across the screen. Jericho looked at his phone, but he didn't respond. It pissed him off, because he knew that they both knew, and why she needed to hear it from an old white man, he couldn't understand. Shame and anger set him ablaze, and, if he picked up the phone, she would pay, so he wasn't sure if he would answer.

His ringing phone broke into the silence again, and, before the passing highway, he saw the wall he had stared at a few days before when he lay back on the hospital bed, and he knew she stared at him from the other side of the bed. He could feel her gaze after the doctor left, already knowing what he knew she knew now. Again, the phone ripped him from his brief daydream, and he looked at the number again before finally answering.

"Hello," he answered-no emotion.

"Where in the hell are? You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago!" She had planned the anger. At first he didn't answer. "Hello ... hello ... Jericho!" she yelled. "You bring your ass here and now." The anger, very clear in her voice, and then he broke down again.

"Mama, I know, I already know." She could hear his tears, his gasping for air. Immediately, she became angry. She wanted to tell him to be a man, that he should have thought about the consequences beforehand-in her mind comparing him to his father, making an assumption that she just knew to be true though she had no proof. But, as he cried, she heard a baby, her only son, her only baby, and it silenced both her and her anger. "Ma, I know. I already know, Ma," he bawled-raw, uncontrolled sobs, desperate heaves for air, gargling sniffles to keep the tears under control. She still could find no words. She listened, waited-on what, she didn't know, but she waited. "Mama, I gonna die."

Finally, she spoke. "You don't know that," she said solemnly, trying to hide the shock of the statement, too,...