Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Escape (2007)

  Prayers were over. But Merril and a few wives and children were in the living room. One of the other children said, “Patrick, what did she do to you?” Merril jumped in and told Patrick to go to bed. Patrick came into my room. The lights were off and I was asleep. I had taught him how to put my La-Z-Boy chair into a reclining position. He climbed into the chair and sobbed himself to sleep. Patrick was too afraid to awaken me or tell me about the attack the next morning. It would take nine years before he was able to speak about what happened—nine years. The next morning I was getting Patrick ready for his bath. I saw bruises all over his back, bottom, and legs. “Patrick, what happened to you? Who did this to you?” Patrick’s face went white with fear. “Nothing, Mama, nothing happened to me.” “Patrick, someone hurt you and I want to know who it is.” “Mama, I promise that nobody hurt me. I was playing with Parley and Johnson and we were roughing around. No one was supposed to get hurt.” I knew he was lying. I could see how traumatized he was, but I didn’t want to push him into telling me the truth. I thought someone might have hurt him while I had been at work. There were few options, all bad. If I went to Merril and complained, he would scold me and say nothing had happened. I did not want to get trapped into playing someone’s sick game—my child was hurt, and if I told Merril and he didn’t believe me, my child could be hurt again, perhaps even more, in retaliation for my protest. Whoever had hurt Patrick might hurt him even more. I couldn’t go to the police. The community police were all members of the FLDS. They would never investigate. The police would tell me to go home and be obedient to my husband. Merril was too powerful in the FLDS. No local police officer would ever make waves against him. I could report the abuse to state child protection agencies in Utah or Arizona, but they had poor track records of protecting women and children in Colorado City. Victims routinely got sent back to perpetrators. I decided my preschoolers were never staying at home again without me. Though my children could see how upset I was that morning, I told them it was a special day. We were going to breakfast and then to see their grandmother. I would buy them some new books and papers because from now on, they’d be coming to work with me.

• From Escape (2007)

  I ran outside to the van and banged on the window. Merril could see that something was really wrong and he opened the door. I just shouted, “You have to get downstairs now.” The fear in my voice sent him running. By the time he got in the house, Ruth had retreated to her bedroom and was crying. Barbara was in her bedroom. Frightened children were huddled in the corner of the bathroom next to the kitchen, crying. Merril stormed into Ruth’s room and started screaming at her. His words were muffled by her loud crying. I felt so dizzy I suddenly found it hard to stand. Several of Merril’s teenage daughters came running. When they saw the small children crying they looked at me in shock. “What happened? What’s going on?” I looked at them blankly. What was I supposed to say—I just watched your mother try to kill your aunt? I merely shook my head and walked away. Someone else could fill them in. I was too depleted. Barbara and Merril slept together again that night. Cathleen and Tammy were still shut out. Tensions kept rising. Honeymoon Two weeks after Merril’s two weddings, he decided it was time for a honeymoon and that all of his six wives and thirty-four children would go. For years, Merril had been promising the family a trip to the San Diego Zoo. His construction company was working on a major project in Yuma, Arizona. In a maniacal moment of multitasking, he opted to combine a honeymoon, site visit, and trip to the zoo into a five-day ordeal. Merril rented a Greyhound bus from a friend who lived in the community. It was old and had been out of service for several years. Merril assigned his twenty-year-old son Nathan to drive the bus. Five wives would ride with Merril in his van. Faunita was assigned to travel in the bus with the children. Tammy had finally spent a night with Merril. She was so excited afterward that she couldn’t talk about anything else. She told Cathleen that she felt like she would count every breath she breathed until he slept with her again. But Cathleen still had not slept with Merril. Faunita remained sequestered in her bedroom. She was angry about not being invited to the double wedding and now rarely left her room. Ruth was still in the throes of madness. Aunt Lydia had prevailed upon Merril to let Ruth take some potent sleeping medication, so at least she now slept for a few hours every night. But it had been weeks since she’d been able to care for any of her fourteen children.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Then we accuse Sapphira and her husband; 23 we praise the kicks which Heliodorus 24 had; and all the mount doth circle in infamy Polymnestor who slew Polydorus. 25 Last of all here we cry: ‘Crassus, tell us, for thou knowest, of what savour is gold?’ 26 Sometimes we discourse, the one loud the other low, according to the impulse which spurs us to speak, now with greater, now with lesser force; therefore at the good we tell of here by day, I was not alone before, but here, near by, no other person was raising his voice.” We were already parted from him, and striving to surmount the way so far as was permitted to our power, when I felt the mountain quake, like a thing which is falling; 27 whereupon a chill gripped me, as is wont to grip him who is going to death. Of a surety, Delos was not shaken so violently, ere Latona made her nest therein to give birth to heaven’s two eyes. 28 Then began on all sides a shout, such that the Master drew toward me, saying: “Fear not while I do guide thee.” “Gloria in excelsis Deo” 29 all were saying, by what I understood from those near by, whose cry could be heard. Motionless we stood, and in suspense, like the shepherds who first heard that hymn, until the quaking ceased and it was ended. Then we took up again our holy way, looking at the shades, that lay on the ground already returned to their wonted plaint. No ignorance, if my memory err not in this, did ever with so great assault give me yearning for knowledge as I then seemed to have, while pondering; nor by reason of our haste was I bold to ask; nor of myself could I see aught there: thus I went on timid and pensive. 1. The evil and the she-wolf of old are, of course, Avarice (see Inf. i); while the deliverer anxiously alluded to corresponds to the Greyhound of Inf. i, though the indication here is less definite than in the earlier passage—perhaps because Dante was beginning to lose hope at the time of the composition of the present canto? See also Canto xvi. 2. “And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke ii. 7).—Cf. Par. xv and note 14. 3. Caius Fabricius, the Roman Consuls (282 B.C.) and Censor (275 B.C.), refused the gifts of the Samnites on settling terms of peace with them, and, subsequently, the bribes of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, when negotiating with him concerning an exchange of friends. Virgil’s words in this connection-parvoque potentem Fabricium (Æn. vi) are quoted in the De Mon. ii. 5; and in the Conv. iv. 5, there is a further allusion to Fabricius’ refusal of the bribes (here he is mentioned together with Curius Dentatus; as by Lucan, Phars.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Who and what the master could be that girt him thus, I cannot tell; but he had his right arm pinioned down behind, and the other before, with a chain which held him clasped from the neck downwards, and on the uncovered part went round to the fifth turn. “This proud spirit willed to try his power against high Jove,” said my Guide: “whence he has such reward. Ephialtes 7 is his name; and he made the great endeavours, when the giants made the Gods afraid; the arms he agitated then, he never moves.” And I to him: “If it were possible, I should wish my eyes might have experience of the immense Briareus.” 8 Whereat he answered: “Thou shalt see Antæus 9 near at hand, who speaks, and is unfettered. who will put us into the bottom of all guilt. He whom thou desirest to see is far beyond; and is tied and shaped like this one, save that he seems in aspect more ferocious.” No mighty earthquake ever shook a tower so violently, as Ephialtes forthwith shook himself. Then more than ever I dreaded death; and nothing else was wanted for it but the fear, had I not seen his bands.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  acutulae anus milvinos oculos. effugere potui: nam ubi me conspexit absolutum, capta super sexum et aetatem audacia lorum prehendit ac me deducere ac revocare contendit. Nec tamen ego, memor exitia- bilis propositi latronum, pietate ulla commoveor, sed incussis in eam posteriorum pedum calcibus protinus applodoterrae. At illa, quamvis humi prostrata, loro tamen tenaciter inhaerebat, ut me procurrentem ali- quantisper tractu sui sequeretur, et occipit statim clamosis ululatibus auxilium validioris manus im- plorare. Sed frustra fletibus cassum tumultum commovebat, quippe cum nullus adforet qui sup- petias ei ferre posset, nisi sola illa virgo captiva. Quae vocis excitu procurrens videt Hercule memo- randi spectaculi scaenam, non tauro sed asino dependentem Dircen aniculam, sumptaque constantia virili facinus audet pulcherrimum. Extorto etenim loro manibus eius me placidis gannitibus ab impetu revocatum naviter inscendit et sic ad cursum rursum incitat. Ego simul voluntariae fugae voto et liber- andae virginis studio, sed et plagarum suasu, quae me saepicule commonebant, equestri celeritate quadripedi cursu solum replaudens virgini delicatas voculas ad- hinnire temptabam. Sed et scabendi dorsi mei simu- latione nonnunquam obliquata cervice pedes decoros puellae basiabam, 288 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VI with all my four feet!: howbeit I could not escape the kite's eyes of the old woman, for when she saw me loose she ran after me, and with more audacity than becometh her kind and age, caught me by the halter and thought to pull me home; but I, not forgetting the cruel purposes of the thieves, was moved with small pity, for I kicked her with my hinder heels to the ground. I had well nigh slain her, who (although she were thrown and hurled down) yet held still the halter and would not let me go, but was for some time dragged along the ground by me in my flight. Then she cried with a loud voice and called for succour of some stronger hand, but she little prevailed because there was no person to bring her help, save only the captive gentlewoman, who, hearing the voice of the old woman, came out to see what the matter was and perceived a scene worth telling, a new Dirce? hanging, not to a bull, but to an ass. Then she took a good courage and performed a deed worthy of a man: she wrested the halter out of her hands, and (entreating me with gentle words) stopped me in my flight and got upon my back and drove me to my running again. Then I began to run, both that I might escape and to save the maiden, and she gently kicked me forward, in so much that beneath her frequent urging I seemed to scour away like a horse, galloping with my four feet upon the ground. And when the gentlewoman did speak I would answer her with my braying, and oftentimes (under colour to rub my back) I would turn back my neck and sweetly kiss her tender feet. 1 Quadripedi cursu seems to be a phrase for galloping, as

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Then said I, behold here thy breakefast, and therewithall I opened my script that hanged upon my shoulder, and gave him bread and cheese, and we sate downe under a greate Plane tree, and I eat part with him; and while I beheld him eating greedily, I perceived that he waxed meigre and pale, and that his lively colour faded away, insomuch that beeing in great fear, and remembring those terrible furies of whom I lately dreamed, the first morsell of bread that I put in my mouth (that was but very small) did so stick in my jawes, that I could neither swallow it downe, nor yet yeeld it up, and moreover the small time of our being together increased my feare, and what is hee that seeing his companion die in the high-way before his face, would not greatly lament and bee sorry? But when that Socrates had eaten sufficiently hee waxed very thirsty, for indeed he had well nigh devoured a whole Cheese: and behold evill fortune! There was behind the Plane tree a pleasant running water as cleere as Crystal, and I sayd unto him, Come hither Socrates to this water and drinke thy fill. And then he rose and came to the River, and kneeled downe on the side of the banke to drinke, but he had scarce touched the water with lips, when as behold the wound in his throat opened wide, and the Sponge suddenly fell out into the water, and after issued out a little remnant of bloud, and his body being then without life, had fallen into the river, had not I caught him by the leg and so pulled him up. And after that I had lamented a good space the death of my wretched companion, I buried him in the Sands there by the river.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “He said I might have a mass.” “Might? What mass? You a Catholic now?” Alek wanted to laugh and to cry, both, simultaneously, but he just coughed into the phone. He tried to block the sound of it, but he could feel Grigori’s judgment. Snow was falling now. It clung to his eyelashes. The streetlight was staggering into life. “Yes, I guess, something like that.” “Like what?” “I don’t know, Grigori. I don’t know. I don’t know.” “So what do you want?” “I don’t know.” “Stop saying that!” Grigori shouted, but there was something more than anger or irritation in his voice this time. No, it was something worse—something like fear, which he had never seen Grigori experience. It spoke to something in him, too, spurred his own fear into life. Stop saying that! was a declaration, a desperate plea to speak it out of existence, and now Alek wanted to say it back to him, until they’d both said it back to each other and would never have to say another word again. “I’m sorry,” Alek said. “Sasha—did you tell Mom?” “No, just you.” “Just me,” Grigori said. It was the first secret they’d ever had together, just the two of them. They were standing now in a world of their own. “What do I tell her about this?” “Nothing,” Grigori said, sharply. “Absolutely nothing. You don’t know anything. We don’t know anything. It’s nothing.” “It’s nothing,” Alek said. “Do you have an appointment? What’s happening next?” “I have a scan,” Alek said. “Just to see. A biopsy. To confirm. That it’s nothing.” “Okay, sounds good. Do you want me to come?” “Excuse me?” “Hello, Space Cadet Sasha, do you want me to come?” Alek held the phone out from himself and regarded it. It had never occurred to him that his brother might want to come and be with him, to be in any way involved. He had never considered that possibility, and now, faced with it, he didn’t know what to do with it. “You don’t have to.” “I know—but do you want me to? I can. It must be scary.” There was a gentleness in his voice then, a gathering calm, and he didn’t seem like Alek’s brother at all. “It’s not like I’m dying,” Alek said, and Grigori seemed to relax. “Yeah. You’re not. It’s fine. You’re fine. But if you need . . . well, you know. It’s fine.” “It’s fine,” Alek said. There was a silence over the line, but Alek found it comforting. There was a time when he might not have, when silence would have meant being frozen out, lined up for trouble. But tonight, on the street, in the snow, it was enough. It was enough. It was enough. “Okay, Sasha. Okay. Good night,” Grigori said. “Good night,” Alek said.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  He ran the tub full of water, just short of skin-stripping hot. He tried to wash off the smell of the doctor’s office, that bitter, burned hazelnut coffee smell. That smell like antiseptic. It was true, what he had told the doctor: He was not sick. He didn’t feel ill. It was just a persistent cough, something rattling but not painful. He coughed and coughed, through morning ballet, through his classes, through rehearsal, through dinner, through sleep. There was nothing that his cough didn’t infiltrate. He could feel the cough coming on even now in the bath, gathering at the base of his lungs like something caught there that he couldn’t expel, a kind of fibrous feeling spreading out along the edges of his ribs. His mother was going to lose her shit. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to think of it, but there was the image of her face. Her bright blue eyes. The stern teacher’s eyebrows. He saw the play of every muscle in her face, the relaxation in her jaw that suggested grief, the fleeting alleviation of pressure in the left temple. The subtle slackening of her throat. The faucet dripped. He tried to see the space as it was cleaved by each drop, the surface rippling and then going still again. He tried to breathe. Since Alek had started dance, he had lived in perpetual fear of disappointing his mother and father. His brothers were good at science, like their parents. His mother taught earth science in high school. His father was a plumber at first, then an engineer. His brothers had attended the advanced science and math magnet school. Alek had attended the elementary school, and had very few prospects of following them into the science and math school, but he was put into an after-school arts program by chance, and the teacher, always on the lookout for boy dancers, scouted him. At first, his parents had only stared in disbelief. Clumsy Sasha? Hyperactive Sasha? Unfocused, lazy Sasha? No, impossible. Yes, the teacher said. He had excellent balance, a good ear for music, for timing, rhythm. He could be a good dancer one day. Good would never have been enough for his father. If you tried your best and all you were was good, then it was time to try something else. His father believed in the optimal, and if you weren’t able to get to the highest level, then you were doing something for which you were not optimally suited. Good was an insult. Good was mediocre.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  How could this be possible, unless Charles had told her, or unless it had been as obvious to her as it had been to him last night. Charles materializing out of the snow, breathing hard at his doorstep. He could see it, Sophie watching the whole thing with a detached ease, a calm paid for by who knew how many other similar events. There, he thought, was a truly horrifying possibility: that he was nothing more than another bit of local weather for the two of them, and that what felt to Lionel like the edge of some great change, a sign of his reacclimation to people, to the world, to the easiness of friendship, was nothing but another thing to them, one more thing that happened and was now over. She knew, Lionel thought with sinking fear. She knew. It’s cool. Lionel envied her but also felt humiliated—what to say? Best to say nothing. it’ll be fun. i’ll buy Coffee? ! ! ! even better! come to the café! One of the students coughed, and Lionel looked up sharply. The boy with the security concerns was staring at him. No. The boy was staring beyond him at the board, at the question that was not a question. French Absolutism. Lionel felt sorry for him, because he looked like he was drowning and he knew it. Poor kid. Lionel wanted to lean over and ruffle his hair, to say it would be okay, that no matter what he wrote in the blue book, it would be okay, that this was temporary and at the end of the two hours it would pass, would collapse down into the general topography of his life, and he’d forget this panicked, drowning feeling. The guy licked his lips and put his head down—back to work. Lionel glanced at the clock over the door. There was time. • • • AFTER THE EXAM, Lionel took the fifteen blue books up the stairs to the history department’s office. He gave them to the departmental secretary, a broad, bland-faced woman with a skin tag like a perpetual crumb at the leftmost corner of her mouth. The secretary took the papers, shuffled them, and stared at Lionel reproachfully. He shrugged uneasily at her, signed the form saying that he’d done what he’d been asked, and left. The look, he suspected, was because he’d had to cancel the last several proctoring appointments with the history department when he had been in the hospital.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  And Nolan’s straddling Abe to try to keep him still, saying, “Abe, please Abe, stop, chill, fuck, chill.” But it’s Milton with the sweater trying to find and plug the source of the blood. It’s Milton who eventually feels the loose plate of bone shifting under his scalp, and when he looks up, Nolan’s staring right at him, his pupils wide, as if he’s been suddenly thrust into the light from some vast, deep water. Abe’s hand lands on Milton’s arm again, his fingers stiff, his nails piercing Milton’s skin. Abe’s eyes widen, and his groans turn to something like the lowing of cattle. His eyes then roll to the back of his head, and he seizes one hard time, goes so still and rigid that for a moment, none of them dares to breathe, dares to do anything. They wait, holding on to Abe, as if that alone could bring him back to himself. He jerks again. Fills with motion, and they all exhale. Nolan turns to Tate and says, “Call a fucking ambulance.” Milton holds his sweater to Abe’s head, holds it as still as he can and tries, with his eyes squeezed shut, to imagine himself far away from all of this. From Abe and Tate, from Nolan, from his parents, from himself. Anywhere else. Anywhere else. • • • Milton doesn’t put the sweater with the dried blood back on. There’s too much of Abe on him already by the time they load him into the back of the ambulance, groaning and gummy. Milton leans against the side of a tree at the edge of the park. He feels like he’s made of something insubstantial. Nolan is coming toward him through the twilight of the cop car headlights. He’s just given his statement on the matter, probably. Milton had walked away after giving his, unable to stomach the way he knew Nolan could effortlessly tell a lie. They were all standing around, and Abe must have tumbled off the side of the hill. No, sir, they weren’t drinking. Freak accident. Tate had gone home, chewing his fingers raw, eaten up with nerves. Nolan, their fearless leader. Nolan reaches Milton, looking tired, run down. He smells like blood. Like a wild thing. Like when they used to play in the woods and come home smelling like wildcats, their mothers said, wrinkling their noses. Half raised, half animal. Nolan drops down to the ground and sits among the roots of the tree, and Milton wants to join him down there, to put an arm around his shoulder, to hold him close. Milton hands him the yellow hat from before. They’re both a little shocked it’s not covered in blood. Nolan lets out a snort. “Oh, thanks.” “Sure thing.” “Jesus,” Nolan says, shaking his head. Milton kicks one of the roots. “Think he’ll be okay?” “Some birthday.” Milton’s fingers are still sticky.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  She smelled like limes. “What got up your asses?” she asked. “Nothing,” Lionel said. “That’s your favorite word, isn’t it? Nothing. ” “I should go,” he said. It was not especially late. A few minutes after eight. But he had a longish trip home, and the thought of the cold air on his face and all around him was comforting. “Why?” she asked, though she was yawning. Charles said nothing. He scrolled on his phone. “Charlie? Do you have something to say about this?” “No,” Charles said. “If he wants to go, he can go.” “It’s freezing outside,” Sophie said. “It’s okay.” “He can’t walk. Tell him to stay. Use your common sense, Lionel.” Sophie turned to him. She smiled. Her eyes were warm, caring. It was a kindhearted gesture. But then, beneath it, he sensed something else. Not meanness. But something prickly and alive. “I can, it’s okay.” “I’ll drive him,” Charles said. “I’ll drive him if he wants to go.” “No, that’s not necessary. He’s staying,” she said. Lionel twisted his scarf in his hands. Charles had looked up and was making direct eye contact with Sophie. They were exchanging some form of information. But Lionel wanted to go. He felt it necessary to leave. Sophie’s head turned very slowly to Lionel. “What are you afraid of, Lionel?” “Nothing. I just want to go home,” he said. “We have been nice to you. I let you fuck Charlie, didn’t I? What’s there to be so afraid of?” Lionel felt a chill race up his spine. Sophie sat up fully then. She put her feet on the floor, but then crossed her legs elegantly. She tilted her head to the side, rested her chin on her hand. “Do you think I’ll eat you?” She snapped her teeth playfully at him. “Sophie, leave him alone,” Charles said. “You can see he’s about to piss his pants.” “Don’t make fun of me,” Lionel said. “Yeah, Charlie, don’t make fun of him.” She was still smiling when she said it. “You know the problem with you and also you ,” she said, gesturing to each of them in turn, “is that you’re both selfish.” Charles stood up. He reached behind Lionel for his coat. As he was putting it on, Sophie lay back down and closed her eyes. “I made you a nice dinner, didn’t I?” “It was great,” Lionel said. “When are you going to thank me for the rest of it?” she asked, and Lionel frowned. Charles was kneeling to put on his boots. He shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.” “For letting you have Charlie. When are you going to thank me for that?” she asked, and Lionel flushed. His mouth went dry. And he looked to Charles and then back to Sophie. He felt ill. Charles stood up, awkwardly. He winced.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  He floated on a warm cloud. Lionel lived on Hancock, so he cut a path through Orton Park. The playground looked a little sad and eerie. The swings moved in the wind. The gazebo had white-blue lights going, but snow had piled up to the benches. The neighborhoods and their mismatched houses. Queen Anne and modernist and Dutch colonial, all mixed together, side by side. During his first year in graduate school he had taken a walk with a friend through one of the East Side neighborhoods, and the friend, from Denmark, kept saying, You have turrets on one end and Frank Lloyd Wright on the other. It makes no sense. No flow. At night, the houses made a kind of sense. As if they were embedded in a shared context. Lionel almost missed the chatter of the party, missed talking to Sophie and Charles. Charlie . It hadn’t felt comfortable, exactly. But he’d felt good talking to them. Sparring a little. It was easier to forget what lay in wait for him at his apartment: The dishes in the sink. The laundry he’d left. The dust covering all his possessions. Not for long—just a week and a half—but still. When he’d come home from the hospital, his apartment was stale and unfamiliar. Like it belonged to someone else. It had been the water sitting in the sink, he knew. The crusty dishes and soggy pasta. He’d done the dishes before the potluck, at least. His phone vibrated, and he checked the screen. He did not recognize the number. where r u? Lionel looked up the long gray street. The little houses finally giving way to stone-and-brick apartment buildings. Near the capitol but not on the square. The snow had dampened the cuffs of his jeans and soaked through his socks. The drifts were high and thick. He checked the cross streets and saw that he was almost home. He had been walking for fifteen minutes without realizing how much time had passed. He texted his location to the number he did not recognize, feeling a kind of drugged, silly courage. His phone pulsed again: on my way This was different. This was not a question but an answer. Something was on its way toward him, and he did not know what or who it was. He had texted his location as a joke, almost, but here was its echo, bounding back at him, and he felt a prick of something, a little bee-sting sensation at the base of his skull. Then another text: c u soon Lionel went on walking, texting briefly: who are you? Another pulse, another text from the ether: ;) Lionel looked behind himself along the street from which he’d come. He felt a pale version of fear. As if his whole body were numb, but trying to wake up, registering sensation only through a dense haze.

• From Escape (2007)

  Merril had heard about the storm in Page and knew I was driving home. He’d called my apartment in Cedar and talked to his daughters there, who said I’d left a few hours before. Then he called my parents to see if they had heard from me. No one had. Merril told my dad there had been a lot of accidents on the road. Dad decided to look for me. He had to make his way through the storm, which was still wreaking havoc in the area. He started following the route he thought I’d have taken and spotted Merril’s van in Hurricane, where it had been towed. He was stricken by the sight of the damaged van. He flagged the driver down and asked if he knew what had happened to me. But the driver of the tow truck had no idea of my whereabouts. Ambulances were coming in from everywhere. My father got back in the car and told my mother that they’d just have to go home and wait for a phone call with news. When my parents got home at midnight, they learned I was safe and had called about an hour before. The first thing I did when I got home was hold Arthur in my arms. He was now just over a year and nothing on earth was more precious to me than him. The warmth of his small body against mine began to melt some of my awful fear. It took me more than twenty-four hours to feel warm again. But I still didn’t know about my pregnancy. I hadn’t started bleeding, which I thought was a good sign. Maybe, just maybe, the baby had been spared. When I was stranded, I’d prayed and prayed to God to save my baby. I went back to school and started studying again. College gave me a focus. The days were fine, but I started having terrible nightmares. I would see the steering wheel spinning out of control and feel the van skidding out from under me. The terror was unshakably alive in me. I stopped driving, but I just didn’t tell anyone about it. I made up excuses about why I didn’t want to drive. In large families, there is always someone who is willing and eager to drive. I was too traumatized, but no one ever suspected the real reason I never drove. There would be times when I had to drive between school and Merril’s house, but they were few and far between. Once I graduated, I never wanted to drive again.

• From Escape (2007)

  My mother and I came up with a plan. I would spend the days hiding out at my father’s house and the nights at Merril’s. I could not risk getting my father into trouble with the FLDS, which had very strong beliefs against a father interfering in his daughter’s marital life, even if he felt she was being physically or emotionally abused. It is a sin for a woman to talk about abuse; if she’s being abused, it is because she is not in harmony with her husband. My parents would be considered sinners in the FLDS for listening to me talk about the abuse. Their job was to talk me into being more obedient to my husband’s will. One day when I was at my father’s house, he came back from church and said that Warren had closed the public school system permanently. Everyone in the community had been ordered to educate their children in private religious schools. This affected roughly two thousand children. As a teacher, I had seen what happened academically when families in our culture home-schooled their children. It amounted to no school. Families were now to band together in small groups and create their own religious schools. There was no uniform curriculum. Warren would tell each school what to teach. Warren didn’t want credentialed teachers teaching. He believed we had been contaminated by worldly knowledge. Anyone with an education was seen as a threat because we were too involved with the ways of the world. It was no secret that Warren Jeffs closed the public schools; it was covered in local newspapers as well as the Salt Lake City Tribune. But, inexplicably, there was no public outcry or state action. Education, which I prized, had almost no value in Warren Jeffs’ FLDS. The changes were dramatic but had occurred incrementally. First no one was allowed to get a college education. Then the public schools were closed and those of us who took pride in working there were seen as a threat. I continued to stay at my father’s every day until very late at night. Then we’d return home after everyone was asleep in Merril’s house. I would lock my children into my room with me. Harrison would sleep for about two hours and then by early morning we’d head back to my parents’. Merril cornered me in the family sewing room one afternoon when I was getting some material and patterns to take to my parents’ house to make back-to-school dresses for Betty and LuAnne, who were then eleven and nine years old. He insisted on talking to me. All I said was, “I don’t want to.” I think this was the first time in my entire married life that I had ever intimidated Merril.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Keep the change, you filthy animal,” Nolan says, and more gunfire rains down on them. It’s that scene from Home Alone where there’s a movie playing, an old movie, and the man on the screen pulls out a gun and shoots someone who had come to betray him or something like that. Nolan aims his fingergun squarely at Milton’s chest and fires as if he, too, were nothing more than an animal. The gesture’s cruelty jolts him momentarily, and in an instant, an awful transfiguration: Nolan, the hunter, fierce and terrible, come to shoot them all down. Milton digs his fingers into the ground to steady himself. There’s a hand on his shoulder, and Milton jumps. A girl he doesn’t know. “Hey,” she says, “isn’t it your birthday?” “How did you know?” “I saw it online. We’re friends there.” “We are?” Milton strains to remember where he has seen her face before. At school, maybe, or out with everyone like tonight. But she is plainly pretty, pale and blond with delicate features. He’s familiar with the look, everything straightened and cleared, frosted and dyed and perfect. “We are,” she says. Her voice is musical and high. “I’m Edie.” “Milton.” “Oh, I know. Happy birthday, by the way.” “Thanks,” he says. Even though he doesn’t ask her to or make a gesture that’s welcoming or open, she sits next to him. “Shouldn’t you be out celebrating?” “What do you think I’m doing?” he asks, and she rolls her eyes at him. “Some celebration.” “I know, it’s great.” “Then why are you here?” she asks. “Nolan wanted to come, and I couldn’t tell him no.” “That boy,” she says, and it makes Milton lean toward her. “What do you mean?” “Oh, I don’t know. People have a hard time telling him no. Or he has a hard time hearing it, I should say.” There’s something resigned about the way that sounds to him, and Milton wants to press her on it, but before he can, Abe and Nolan have made their way over. “You can’t sit around here talking all night. We gotta get you high,” Nolan says. Then, noticing Edie, he smiles. “Hello, Edie.” “Nolan,” she drawls. “How you been?” “Oh, you know.” She shrugs. “How’s your sister?” Nolan asks, and something mean catches the underside of his words. But Edie sighs, rises from the ground. Abe snickers to himself nearby. Edie turns her head subtly, her eyes ranging over all their faces. They are not alone. They are at the edge of the crowd. The holler and hoop of the others. The music pressing down on them all, percussive, driving in the way Nolan remembers church music to be. So solid in its presence that he had once asked his mother if it was the Holy Spirit, and she had laughed and said, No, boy, that’s just the drums. Edie’s shoulders open and she tilts her chin up stiffly. “Better every day,” she says firmly.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  He wanted to withdraw from her but didn’t. It was another of those moments when he had a clear choice but chose not to act. She came closer to him then, until she was kneeling on his folded legs. Her weight felt good against him. She stroked the back of his neck, and his hands tingled, as with the feather sticking out of Charles’s coat. It was like a premonition of an act. A presentiment of what he might do. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “Isn’t it what you want?” “No,” he said, but his mouth was dry. Her lips were on his, her tongue parting, sinking. She kissed him again on the corner of his mouth, and then on his cheek. She bit his lip, and the sharpness was a jolt. “Are you a good boy, Lionel?” “No.” He tried to lean away from her. She swayed. She didn’t need him to stay upright. She withdrew as if she’d made up her mind about him. And she climbed back onto the sofa. “I think you’re right about that,” she said. She shrugged, sighed. “I don’t think you’re good at all.” The words crackled in the dim apartment like blue static. He saw them flare to life and then vanish. Charles returned, his wrists still soapy from the dishes. He leaned over the back of the couch, looking down at them. “I was trying to get Lionel to tell me what he’s thinking,” Sophie said. “But he won’t.” “What are you thinking?” Charles asked. Lionel stood up and cleared his throat. He wanted to be anywhere but there. They were both watching him very closely, so much so that their eyes felt like a single organ through which every one of his actions, no matter how small, was being categorized and stored away. “I should go,” he said. “Why?” Sophie asked. “It’s cold out.” “It’s fine.” “You’ll freeze,” Charles said. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.” “You don’t mind freezing?” Charles asked with a bewildered smile. “Are you crazy? Sit down, Lionel.” “I should be going,” he said. “Sit down, Lionel,” Charles said again, firmer this time. Something in Lionel responded to that firmness, used it as a guide as he let himself settle back on the floor. Charles smiled at him and came around the couch. He sat next to Lionel and put his arm across Lionel’s shoulders. He drew him closer, inspecting the bruise. Lionel was awash in Charles’s body heat, in the proximity of his touch. He felt he’d come undone under the insistent stroking of Charles’s finger back and forth across the bruise on his cheek, back and forth across that place that had been marked with a promise of violence. Lionel tried to get away from Charles’s hand, but he couldn’t. Charles gripped the back of his neck tightly.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “You’re not much of an Anne Boleyn,” Sigrid said, and the name darted through Marta’s mind like a swift silver fish. There was something there, a glimmer of recognition—or, no, maybe just a desire to have the conversation over with. She had not thought much about history in some time, in years, really. She had studied chemical engineering as an undergraduate and now she worked at a waste-processing plant in Baraboo. She might have told Sigrid this, except that the look on Sigrid’s face, with its precise concentration, wedged inside her like a splinter. “Definitely not Catherine Howard.” “I don’t know who they are, but I’ll take your word for it,” Marta said. The wine was too sweet for her. She didn’t much like wine. She preferred Coors or Old Milwaukee, beer of the pale, weak variety. It may have been the result of spending all her time in college around engineers, who drank shitty beer and leaned over their notebooks and parsed their calculations long into the night. She had often woken up on their couches smelling sour and raw, with rulers stuck to her thighs. That’s how she had met Peter and fallen in with him: they saw each other so much that it seemed natural that they should date, and when he asked her to the movies, she’d said, Okay, all right, sounds good. On that first date with Sigrid, she was still sad about Peter, and uneasy, and if this was how dating women was going to be, a series of increasingly esoteric questions, she wasn’t sure she liked it that much, either. “This won’t work,” Sigrid said, and Marta felt a little pulse of fear. “What won’t work?” “This,” she said, gesturing wildly. “You retreating, falling into silence. It won’t work.” “I’m sorry,” Marta said. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or do. I don’t know anything about Henry the Eighth, or whoever.” “That’s fine,” Sigrid said. “You say that, except I told you before, when you asked me, that I didn’t know much about it. And you kept going, so I don’t know.” “It’s fine,” Sigrid said, and she leaned over the table and crossed her arms.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  A pause. Then another vibration. charlie? i know, it’s cool Jesus Christ. He stared down at his phone and tried to figure out what that could mean: I know . What did she know? How did she know? What did she mean by It’s cool ? How could this be possible, unless Charles had told her, or unless it had been as obvious to her as it had been to him last night. Charles materializing out of the snow, breathing hard at his doorstep. He could see it, Sophie watching the whole thing with a detached ease, a calm paid for by who knew how many other similar events. There, he thought, was a truly horrifying possibility: that he was nothing more than another bit of local weather for the two of them, and that what felt to Lionel like the edge of some great change, a sign of his reacclimation to people, to the world, to the easiness of friendship, was nothing but another thing to them, one more thing that happened and was now over. She knew , Lionel thought with sinking fear. She knew. It’s cool . Lionel envied her but also felt humiliated—what to say? Best to say nothing. it’ll be fun. i’ll buy Coffee? ! ! ! even better! come to the café! One of the students coughed, and Lionel looked up sharply. The boy with the security concerns was staring at him. No. The boy was staring beyond him at the board, at the question that was not a question. French Absolutism . Lionel felt sorry for him, because he looked like he was drowning and he knew it. Poor kid. Lionel wanted to lean over and ruffle his hair, to say it would be okay, that no matter what he wrote in the blue book, it would be okay, that this was temporary and at the end of the two hours it would pass, would collapse down into the general topography of his life, and he’d forget this panicked, drowning feeling. The guy licked his lips and put his head down—back to work. Lionel glanced at the clock over the door. There was time. • • • After the exam, Lionel took the fifteen blue books up the stairs to the history department’s office. He gave them to the departmental secretary, a broad, bland-faced woman with a skin tag like a perpetual crumb at the leftmost corner of her mouth. The secretary took the papers, shuffled them, and stared at Lionel reproachfully.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  But it’s Milton with the sweater trying to find and plug the source of the blood. It’s Milton who eventually feels the loose plate of bone shifting under his scalp, and when he looks up, Nolan’s staring right at him, his pupils wide, as if he’s been suddenly thrust into the light from some vast, deep water. Abe’s hand lands on Milton’s arm again, his fingers stiff, his nails piercing Milton’s skin. Abe’s eyes widen, and his groans turn to something like the lowing of cattle. His eyes then roll to the back of his head, and he seizes one hard time, goes so still and rigid that for a moment, none of them dares to breathe, dares to do anything. They wait, holding on to Abe, as if that alone could bring him back to himself. He jerks again. Fills with motion, and they all exhale. Nolan turns to Tate and says, “Call a fucking ambulance.” Milton holds his sweater to Abe’s head, holds it as still as he can and tries, with his eyes squeezed shut, to imagine himself far away from all of this. From Abe and Tate, from Nolan, from his parents, from himself. Anywhere else. Anywhere else. • • • MILTON DOESN’T PUT the sweater with the dried blood back on. There’s too much of Abe on him already by the time they load him into the back of the ambulance, groaning and gummy. Milton leans against the side of a tree at the edge of the park. He feels like he’s made of something insubstantial. Nolan is coming toward him through the twilight of the cop car headlights. He’s just given his statement on the matter, probably. Milton had walked away after giving his, unable to stomach the way he knew Nolan could effortlessly tell a lie. They were all standing around, and Abe must have tumbled off the side of the hill. No, sir, they weren’t drinking. Freak accident. Tate had gone home, chewing his fingers raw, eaten up with nerves. Nolan, their fearless leader. Nolan reaches Milton, looking tired, run down. He smells like blood. Like a wild thing. Like when they used to play in the woods and come home smelling like wildcats, their mothers said, wrinkling their noses. Half raised, half animal. Nolan drops down to the ground and sits among the roots of the tree, and Milton wants to join him down there, to put an arm around his shoulder, to hold him close. Milton hands him the yellow hat from before. They’re both a little shocked it’s not covered in blood.

• From Escape (2007)

  Merril and Barbara were on their way to his motel in Caliente when the news reached them. Merril didn’t want to drive all the way back to St. George, so he called his son Leroy and told him to go to the hospital, check on Luke, and call him back. Leroy, who was in his twenties, found his brother, who told him he was okay and had nothing more than a bad bump on his head. When this was reported back to Merril, he wondered why he’d been told Luke was in critical condition. A bump on the head was no big deal. That night Leroy stopped by our house on his way home from work. Ruth had prepared the meal that night and was serving up soup and hot bread when he arrived. “I just stopped by the hospital to check on Luke like Father asked,” Leroy said. “He seems to be doing just fine.” Ruth looked shocked. “What? Why is Luke in the hospital?” “Didn’t Father tell you Luke was in an accident with his dirt bike today?” She shook her head. “No, I haven’t talked to Father today. When did Luke get a dirt bike?” “I think Father let him get it quite a while ago. But he’s doing fine. I’m sure Father would have told you if there was anything to worry about,” Leroy said Ruth cared deeply for her children when she was stable. She picked up the phone in the kitchen and immediately called Merril. “Father, Leroy is telling me that Luke is in the hospital and that he had an accident on his dirt bike.” There was silence while Ruth absorbed whatever Merril had to say. She continued. “But Father, I think I better go to the hospital tonight and check on Luke. I want to make sure he’s really all right.” Ruth listened some more and then hung up. I could see that her hands were shaking. She finished the dishes and told us how worried she was about Luke. “But Father doesn’t think that if I go there will be anything to do there anyway. He thinks it’s important for me to stay home and take care of the family.” Ruth seemed to be trying hard to convince herself that this was something she wanted to do—even though there were four other wives at home. She was clearly upset and complained the next morning that she had not been able to sleep. Merril and Barbara decided to go to Las Vegas the following day on business. Merril thought he might make it to the hospital later that day. Meanwhile, at the hospital, the surgeon monitoring Luke couldn’t understand why no parent had yet arrived on the scene. She couldn’t operate until the forms were signed. If there was an emergency, Luke’s life could be in jeopardy because of his parents’ negligence.