By Charles Thomas Peters Jr.

Margaret Stewart remembers the first time her husband’s lips touched her lips. She blushes as she thinks about their wedding night when they first saw one another naked. How timid she was. How excited she was. She laughs at having been a naïve small town girl that was totally amazed when she watched Benjamin’s cock grow rock hard from such a tiny thing to nearly 9 inches.

Margaret Stewart remembers the good times. She imagines the good things in life. She can almost smell an orange. The taste of a sweet slice of cake on her wet tongue is a nice memory. And the naked touch of her husband’s body against her body raises her senses to a tingle and a shiver. Such reminiscences bring tears to her eyes as she lays feeling helpless in the ward.

Margaret reaches down and touches herself as she thinks about how gentle her husband was that first time. She had been so afraid but her terror turned to pleasure when Benjamin first placed his cock in her during a loving embrace and with a ticklish nibble on her earlobe. Longing for her husband, the feel of her hand is not the same as the love she feels when Benjamin is with her.

Laying in the ward her memories become fantasies and she can’t help but wonder what was real and what is fantasy. Has a nurse really handed a baby to her or is it a doll? The bundle of joy she holds tightly in her arms is like a miraculous dream; a dream she prays is real.

Margaret whispers, “My baby. My George.” She’d always considered that a good name for a young man. Sprawled uncomfortably in a ward bed and trying to ignore the screams and other sounds of horror, she smiles as she stares off into space. “1957 wasn’t really such a bad year.”

Indeed, most would not consider 1957 a bad year to bring a child into the world. This same year General Foods introduces Tang, Velcro is patented, Bobby Fisher becomes Chess Champion, and the AA battery is introduced for radios. An old invention is named Frisbee to begin its destiny to become a sensational marketing success. Also, 1,000 little known or understood and yet feared contraptions called computers are sold. Indeed, Margaret thinks George was born in the year that change was beginning to happen on planet earth at a phenomenal pace. She wonders if the source of this change is science, little flying men in UFO’s, magic, the gross influx of souls being incarnated from advanced ancient civilizations left forgotten in ruin, or she thinks perhaps it is just the ability of her generation to dream, dreams once left unimagined.

It is nice to envision happy times. Margaret holds her bundle of joy to her bosom as she shifts in the bed and whispers, “You are such a doll.” And Margaret truly attempts not to go to that dark place, that depressing place, that place of seemingly no escape haunting both her sleep and waking moments. But she can’t help it. From the moment Margaret Stewart first imagines holding her baby son in her arms, she wonders what the fuck she has gotten herself into. The year was 1957 and her husband had just gotten arrested for running moonshine between Macon, GA and Nashville, Tennessee. She had been working as a bookkeeper for a small Conyers, GA company that now found itself under Federal Investigation for hiring underage workers and not paying their warehouse workers minimum wage. God she hated talking to the Feds. Given the situation of her husband she was treated like trash by those blue suited assholes. But she tried to imagine things weren’t so bad and perhaps the blue suits were not quite as ugly as she thought.

The day she watched her former bosses being led away in handcuffs and the warehouses and offices padlocked with chains she felt so guilty. Why in the hell hadn’t she burned those documents rather than handing them over to the Feds? Mal and Joe were such pansy choirboys who had just fallen into their business. One of the Supervisors out at the Mill had set them up in the chemical disposal business. When the blue suits with their shiny shoes swept down on them, the choirboys picking their teeth and scratching their asses were clueless to what was going on.

Yes, she felt guilty as she stood in the crowd of 20 boys and girls who now had no place to work. Most in the crowd were “slower” than the rest in the community. One young retarded man standing next to her whispered, “My old man said I might as well not come home if I don’t come home with a paycheck.” God, those words haunted the very recesses of her mind for indeed she had more than once said something similar to her husband. She looked at the young man and closed her eyes and did her best not to picture her husband. It was so awful for her. She had always been the one to hand out the paychecks but now all she could do was give the young man a hug.

Federal Agent Jack Biggablow walked up, “Now don’t be wasting those hugs.”

Margaret shook her head and gave the young boy a wink. “Hugging a friend is never a waste.”

He bashfully smiled and walked away.

The next day the young man’s bloodied and mangled body was found near some railroad tracks. Margaret was at the bank retrieving some letters from her soon to be closed safety deposit box when she heard the news. She had just stepped out of the bank when she found herself standing in the middle of a bunch of Conyers’ snobs bestowing the gory details on of how “the retardo” had killed himself.

The image of the bashful young man walking away from her kept flashing in her mind as she heard the vile women savoring in the days tragedy. Some of their voices sounded almost joyous in their description of how “the weird idiot” had killed himself. Margaret knew they looked down on her just as they looked down on that poor, pitiful boy. She said nothing even as a couple of the other women made more rude, crude remarks about the boy and his death while giving her scold filled, disapproving looks. What could she say?

Margaret held on to the letters in her hand and fumbled with the loose watch bracelet on her arm. She thought how odd that with all the talking, she could hear the sound of her watch ticking. She focused on that for seconds and then thought how she would not allow the Conyers’ snobs to see her cry.

The women were just about to turn their attention and crassness more toward Margaret when a woman from the mill village walks up and warmly embraces her in loving arms. Trying not to cry, but still with tears clouding her vision, Margaret does not know who is talking to her or who is holding onto her as though for dear life.

“Not your fault dear. Not your fault,” the woman whispers to Margaret as she walks to ease her away from the hateful women and into a back alleyway.

Margaret wipes her eyes and looks up at the woman. When she sees it is Mal’s mother she grabs and hugs on her. “I should have burned those damned records.”

“Not your place. Mal and Joe were trying to better themselves. But they screwed up. They let people down.” Mrs. Malipooski pulls away from Margaret and begins looking in her red pocketbook for something. She continues talking, “But Mal is my son and I must do what I can to protect him just as I expect you would do what you can to protect your husband.”

“My Benjamin.” Margaret holds the letters from her husband close to her bosom and to the warm feel of her own heart beating hard against the side of her cold fist. Again she hears the sound of her watch ticking.

It was difficult when Margaret first read the letters that she clasp in her hand from the safety deposit box. To her, it almost seemed in her mind that Benjamin was dead and the letters had been written by a lost soul locked and tortured in the bowels of hell. She imagined that she was holding letters that had been mailed from the grave of a soul lost from knowing or being known. Those letters were like cries for help from the grave but there was no exorcist, much less lawyer, who might be her husband’s savior. Margaret prayed night after night that somehow she and Benjamin would manage to live again. How she prayed, but doubts would not escape her logic as she had not been able to fight through the demons of dread that locked her like a deer in the bright headlights of an oncoming car.

And there is an oncoming car. But the lights aren’t so bright. It is daylight after all. And the cars speed doesn’t seem so alarming. It actually begins creeping to a stop. So Margaret looks away from the car and toward her friend.

Margaret looks at Mrs. Malipooski still searching frantically for something in her pocketbook. Margaret thinks about Mal and knows the fright, the worry, the helplessness Mrs. Malipooski must be feeling for her son. Those are feelings that Margaret feels for her husband. Margaret says, “I wish I could have done something.”

Mrs. Malipooski nods in sympathy while still searching her red pocketbook. She tells Margaret, “The trial has not happened yet. Documents can still be lost. You’ve not given a signed statement nor testified.”

“They can make things even rougher for Benjamin.”

“I know dear. And I know what that Federal Agent did to you that night. I walked in. I saw.”

“I’ve started so many letters to Benjamin. I don’t know whether he will ever understand how I share his desperation. You know, he was raped in prison. I couldn’t talk to him about it. I did talk to my friend Harry about it and he talked to Benjamin. My friend Harry says sex is just sex and he tried to tell Benjamin that but you know, to surrender to that kind of domination, that kind of force, it just makes a person feel less than human. Worthless. Knowing what Benjamin has gone through I can‘t tell Benjamin about everything. I start the letters. I start to go visit him. I pick up the phone to make calls. But everything I say alludes the truth. In the end nothing I say has meaning. It is all so trivial. I am so worthless.”

“Dear, I am sorry. Listening to you. You are breaking my heart.”

“Sometimes I think of Benjamin not as in prison but as dead. I don’t know why I do that. I feel so angry. Not just at him but at everything. But then I want to reach through that anger and hold Benjamin. I want to kiss his lips and soothe his hurt and let him know that he is not lost from my heart nor lost from my aspirations. I want us to have a future but then I am so afraid we can’t have a future. When I start trying to make plans it is like I am slipping into some fantasy. I so much want to have Benjamin‘s baby.” Margaret looks at her stomach and sighs. “Benjamin doesn’t know.”

“Well, dear, you know your mother and I were friends. I know about your condition where you can’t get pregnant. I understand why after the agent raped you, you began putting on the act. You didn’t want the agent coming after you again. I understand.”

“I don’t understand. What you say is true. I know it is impossible. But at times, I really believe I am pregnant. I so much wish I could give Benjamin a son.”

“I know dear. But think. Maybe it is good that you will never have a son to break your heart.”

“Mal’s a good man. He was a good friend to me.”

“If he had just not been so damned stupid.” And then Mrs. Malipooski pulls a revolver from her purse and points it toward Margaret. “I wish I didn’t have to do this. I can‘t let you testify against my son.”

Margaret steps back from Mrs. Malipooski. “You are going to kill me.”

“I know the agent raped you. I managed to get a picture. I will make him lose those documents.”

“Then I won’t have to testify.”

“When you told Harry that you were raped, you sealed your fate. You sealed Harry’s fate.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sure you do. The only leverage I have against the agent is what he did to you. I have got to protect my son. That means I must protect the agent‘s secret so that he will protect my son.”

Mrs. Malipooski hears an automobile and she turns. She drops her red pocketbook. Though only seconds pass it seems an eternity as the pocketbook falls through the air to hit hard against the pavement. As the sound of Margaret’s watch loudly ticks toward tragedy, Margaret glimpses with spying eyes at the contents of the red pocketbook scattered on the pavement. She stares for a moment at the broken, wire framed eyeglasses. She notices the open compact with its mirror broken, a cracked bottle of perfume, several dollars and coins, a pack of chewing gum, a book of matches from the Twilight Inn, a checkbook, a letter, an envelope addressed to who it may concern, and a sharp looking silver letter opener. Then Margaret stares at the small, palm sized handgun falling from Mrs. Malipooski’s hand. It falls seemingly in slow motion to land at her feet. Margaret notices that is what Mrs. Malipooski now also has her wild looking gaze glued upon.

Mrs. Malipooski, with her elderly hands shaking and the whites of her eyes a glaze kneels stiffly with a catch in her back to pick up the handgun. Moaning from her back pain, her attention again turns to the approaching car closing in on her. Only feet from her, Mrs. Malipooski looks up into the face of an unforgiving driver who does not want secrets to be told.

Instinctively Margaret backs against the back alley wall of the Theater as she watches the face of a rapist and soon to be killer driving toward Mrs. Malipooski. Margaret watches and doesn’t watch, for it increasingly has become easy to separate herself from reality. Suspended in disbelief, it is as though the horror isn’t really happening. Peeking into the eyes of her rapist for but a moment, Margaret feels as though she has stepped outside of herself just as she had done that night. Her eyes transform into a vacant stare and the reality of the moment becomes replaced by fantasy. Even as the poor old lady’s head hits the shiny fender on the brand new sports car and she collapses to the hot, scorching pavement and the back tires skid, squealing loudly, as the front left tire rolls over, crushing Mrs. Mallipooski‘s head, Margaret whispers, “My prayers are with you and Mal and Joe.”

To Margaret it is as though the car has never been there as it turns the corner and out of site. Margaret chooses to ignore the bloody body laying at her feet. She doesn’t see the handgun held in the hand of the dead woman and pointed firmly up at her as the last deed of a dying “friend.” Instead, Margaret sees Mal’s mother standing on the other side of the alley and she hears the lady say, “And our prayers are with you and Benjamin.”

Now as Margaret holds her baby George in her arms, she knows it isn’t just a doll she holds. It is a real baby. It is a real baby she has managed against all odds to conceive and to bring into this crazy world. Soon she will be released from the hospital, and with a bit a blackmail her husband Benjamin will be released from jail, and her life will not be a fantasy. It will not be a total nightmare. It will be a joy. It will be real. But it will still be in a crazy world.