The Edge of Sleep

Chapter 1

A
LONG THE BORDER
between Virginia and West Virginia the mountains of the Alleghenies erupt like the edges of a worn molar through a jawbone: notched, eroding cusps rising irregularly beyond the tree line and running roughly parallel through the dentition of the American southeastern massif.

Thirty miles outside of Wytheville, where the eruption is at its sharpest, stands a jagged outcropping of rock called Hatchetface. With movements as whimsical and random as bugs in water, a small team of picked its way slowly up a face of stone, a facet of the mountainside that had sheered off as if from a hammer blow, shedding its burden of ages in a cataclysmic rending and leaving itself splinter straight and smooth. It was the most difficult ascent on the mountain and the climbers had chosen it for that reason. They were not after elevation—there is no oxygen-thin height in the East—but hardship.

The leader of the group reached a two-foot-wide ledge that jutted from the face like the serrated tooth of a saw. Carefully hauling himself up, the leader wedged a nut into a seam in the rock and secured a spring-loaded carabiner gate to it. The climbing rope went through the carabiner and anchored the safety line for those who followed him.

His arms were trembling with the stress of the climb and he let them hang at his sides as he looked down at those coming up the mountain to join him. The nearest was a young woman. Lithe and lean, she scrambled up like a spider, seeming to follow the leader’s hard-earned path as if she were weightless, as if she could have come straight up without benefit of handholds or rope, carried aloft by an updraft. Below her, however, the next climber was struggling. In the informal nomenclature of the sport the leader was known as Ace, because he was the first onto the mountain. The young woman was Spidey, and the middle-aged man below her was Rich. It was not his name; the others accused him of being wealthy.

Rich had made the wrong move. Out of boldness or overconfidence he had ignored the leader’s carefully chosen route and struck out on his own. The two paths ran parallel to each other, did not deviate by more than a few feet, but the difference was crucial. The handholds that had lured him had turned out to be inadequate, and Rich was caught now in mid-step without the ability to advance or retreat. Like a jumper who has learned in mid-air that the ground before him has opened into a pit. Rich had nowhere to go but down.

The leader shouted instructions, trying to direct Rich’s blind feet to a position that would support his weight, but the man was already too far gone. The young woman had reached the ledge and the leader pulled her alongside him.

“He’s going to go,” the leader said. “We’ll have to pull him up.”

Twenty feet below them. Rich had begun to buck violently, his whole body quivering.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Cramps,” the leader said. He pulled the safety rope taut while Spidey chocked a secondary, anchor into the seam of the rock. “He’s been putting too much strain on his hands and feet for too long. He must have been frozen in that position for several minutes.”

“I never realized,” she said.

“Wasn’t your job, it was mine,” the leader said.

“It was
his.
Why didn’t he call out, tell me he was in trouble?”

“Too proud,” the leader said. “And pride goeth before a fall. Get ready.”

A fourth climber was hurrying up toward Rich, but he was too late to help. Rich’s spasms bucked him off the mountain face, and the leader and the young woman strained against the rope. Rich swung on the end of the lifeline like a human pendulum, his whole body shaking as if he were having a seizure. With the fourth climber assisting from below, the leader and the woman pulled Rich up to the ledge as he quivered and yelled in pain, powerless to help himself.

They stretched him flat on his stomach on the shelf of rock, his muscles fighting against them, trying to bend his body into the fetal position. The woman sat on his legs, the leader on Rich’s back, pinning him so that his gyrations didn’t jolt them all off the ledge. The fourth climber had secured himself just off the ledge, his feet standing on pitons as if on a ladder so he could help with his hands.

“What do I do, Ace?” the fourth climber asked. He had to yell to be heard over Rich’s agonized cries.

“Take his arm, bend against the cramp,” the leader said. “Then massage as deeply as you can.”

The woman was bending Rich’s toes toward his head, digging her knuckles into his calves where the muscle had bunched so violently it felt like a rock under skin. The muscles in the small of his back spasmed suddenly and he arched, bowing like a breaching dolphin, nearly hurling the leader’s weight off the face.

Rich’s cries and their own shouted communications were so loud that they didn’t hear the helicopter until it was almost upon them. The
whump
of the rotors slammed off the mountain wall, drowning any human noise. The rescuers looked up to see the copter hovering a few hundred feet from the mountain. A signal light flashed insistently from the open door of the helicopter and the climbers could see two helmeted heads in the front of the machine. The letters
FBI
were written large in white on the side.

The occupants of the helicopter had not spotted the climbers. They continued to scour the area, still flashing their coded light message for the whole mountain to see.

After the leader managed to get the cramp in Rich’s right arm to release, he turned to help the young woman work on the man’s tortured legs.

The helicopter came back for another pass, farther away this time. Someone inside had swung the light around so that it was still aimed at the mountain. The flashes came in measured bursts.

“What the hell is that about?” the woman asked.

The leader studied the lights, his lips moving silently.

“It’s Morse code,” he said.

“What does it say?”

The leader spoke the letters as he saw them come in their longs and shorts.

“B ... E ... C ... K ... E ... R.”

“Becker?” the woman said, puzzled. “What’s a becker?”

The leader sighed heavily, then returned his attention to Rich’s leg.

“I’m afraid I am,” he said.

Chapter 2

D
EE WAS LOOKING FOR
something to beat him with. Cursing, she thrashed angrily around the room, testing potential instruments against the furniture, then tossing them aside—sometimes hurling them at him in disgust at their inadequacy. Ash lay on the bed, waiting. He watched as she tugged furiously at the clothes hangers in the motel closet, but they were clunky wood and metal things, permanently secured to the rod. Their resistance only enraged her further. He thought of telling her that she had already tried the hangers but decided against it. A wire clothes hanger had always been her favorite whip in the past, but the current frugality of the motel chains had forced her to use whatever came to hand.

He lay on the bed, waiting. She would find something she liked eventually. Although it looked at the moment as if she were going to use all of her fury on the search itself, as if she might collapse, exhausted and spent, before she even got around to Ash, he knew that once she started the beating her vigor would be restored. She drew strength from the violence, just as her anger fed on itself to grow into rage.

She turned for the third time to her suitcase as if she expected a wire hanger to materialize suddenly. Ash did not remind her she had already looked in the suitcase. He had left the hanger behind in their previous motel when she told him to pack. He did not like the wire hanger; it was too thin and left ugly welts. She had been suffering one of her blinding headaches, which was why she had entrusted him with the packing, and she had not noticed when he slipped the hanger under the bed. Ash was surprised that she hadn’t caught him in the act of betrayal. She always seemed to notice everything. She had told him many times that she could read his mind and he believed her. Maybe the headache had affected her mind-reading ability.

She stopped abruptly, her back turned to Ash, and let the suitcase fall to the floor. Slowly she turned to face him and her voice was very calm.

She had read his mind after all.

“Where did you put the hanger?”

Ash did not even think of lying to her. It never worked; she saw through him like glass.

“I left it in Branford,” he said. He thought Branford was the last town they had lived in. He wasn’t sure; geography confused him.

“You did it on purpose.” she said.

What was the point in denying it? She knew everything. Her face was very, very still as she looked at him. Her lips were taut and the skin around her mouth had turned a greenish-white. White patches showed on the wings of her nostrils where they flared out from the central ridge.

She was very dangerous when she got like this. It was at such times that she really hurt him.

“Take off your clothes,” she said. Her voice was so low he could barely hear her.

“I’ll get you another hanger,” he said as he rose from the bed. “I’ll get it right away.” He yanked his shirt over his head without undoing the buttons. “I know where to get one.”

“No, you don’t,” she said.

She was right. He did not know where to get another wire clothes hanger, although he thought he might be able to steal one somewhere. He felt self-conscious as she continued to stare at him. It was so much better when there was anger in her eyes. Now there seemed to be nothing there at all, as if she had gone away and left her body frozen in place behind her.

Ash looked down at his chest where her gaze was fixed. He was a big man, massive through the upper torso without need of weights or exercise. Dark hair sprouted and curled from his belt up to the soft skin on his throat. He knew she hated the hair and at first she had made him shave it, but she had abandoned that process since starting with the boys. The boys had changed many things.

“The pants,” she said.

Ash stepped out of his pants and stood naked before her. He had stopped wearing underwear several months ago when she forgot to buy him a new pair.

“Give me the belt.”

Ash pulled the belt from his trousers and handed it to her. He watched carefully to see how she wrapped it around her hand. If the buckle was in her palm, he would be all right. He did not mind so much when she used the belt, because it was a broad strap of leather and the blows did not cause welts.

She put the tip of the belt in her palm and wrapped it once around her hand, leaving three feet of leather dangling down. The buckle was on the hitting end.

“We will see how much you prefer this to the hanger.”

She made him ball his socks and put them in his mouth, then bent him over to clutch the back of the chair. In this position she could hit all of him, everywhere.

She beat him in silence, punctuated only by the grunt of her exertion, the whoosh of the belt, the slap of leather on flesh, the duller sound of metal colliding against skin. Normally she would scold him, tell him what he had done wrong, revile him with his own failings. This time she was saving her energy for the job at hand.

Ash held on. There was comfort in knowing he deserved it. He always deserved it. There was not punishment enough in a lifetime to be more than he deserved.

When he came to, Ash could hear her steady breathing from the bed. He lay on the floor where he had collapsed, his face pressed against the musty, threadbare carpet. His balled socks were only inches from his face. He lay very still for a long time, knowing that when he moved the pain would overcome him again. He wished he could see her from where he lay on the floor; he loved to watch her sleep, knowing she was safely in the same room with him, at peace, so that he could watch over and protect her while she was swathed in what little calm and serenity she ever knew. He would watch her half the night, one eye on the television screen, the other noting her every shift and turn. The sweet tranquility of her face in slumber restored Ash from the turmoil of her waking hours and he knew that he loved her then.

He pushed himself to his knees and the pain came at him from all sides. He gripped the chair to steady himself but could not keep from pitching forward again. For a long time he stayed on all fours, his head hanging down like a sick animal. He was careful not to moan too loudly and wake her. He did not want her to see him like this; she was used to thinking of him as powerful. Sometimes she called him her bear. Those were the good times, the very good and tender times. Ash worried that she would not continue to think of him as her bear if she saw him so bruised and swollen and sore that he could hardly move. He must get dressed and hide his condition. His face was unmarked; she was always careful about his face, and with the boys as well. It was important to her that everyone should be able to go out in public the next day as if nothing had happened. That was especially important with the boys, of course. She didn’t mind if Ash spent days at a time in the room, but she liked to have the boys with her in public. That was the whole point of taking them.

He must dress himself, but first he must be sure that she was not in danger. Ash’s beating had been very severe—that was unusual for her. It was a bad sign. He crawled to the bed and raised himself to look in the purse that was on the nightstand. Ash rummaged through the purse until he found her medicine. Everything was all right. She still had it, the bottle was half full of pills. She wasn’t in danger, she was still with him. The beating must have been especially severe only because her thoughts of what he had done had overwhelmed her. That was all right, because he deserved it.