Sammy takes a restless, agitated step toward Anthony, tightening and untightening his fists. For a few beats, I imagine he’s going to take a swing at him. I think Anthony feels the same, because he hangs back a bit, unconsciously keeping distance between himself and this man while he assesses the situation. His eyes lock onto mine for a moment, then dart back to the threat in front of him once he satisfies himself I haven’t been hurt. It crosses my mind that he must have seen Sammy here on my bed on the monitors in his office—that’s what has brought him out here in such a panic—and I wonder how much he had to see before he finally decided to brave the storm to help me.
The cabin feels too small to contain the three of us. I want to push past Anthony and flee, or at the very least to join him and take refuge in his arms, but the thought of provoking Sammy any more holds me back. Next to me, Sammy’s breathing like a bellows. The mere sight of Anthony inflames him. I can feel his fury boiling up inside him. In the end, though, he seems to master it, and instead of lashing out, only loosens a fist, then extends his hand to the taller man, holding it open as if to indicate he wants to shake. Anthony examines the hand but doesn’t take it. Maybe he reads it like I do: a handshake offered before a match.
“Come on,” Sammy says, keeping his hand in place. “Didn’t your daddy teach you your manners?”
Anthony peers over the man’s head, finding my eyes again. “Are you okay?” he asks me.
The question is so inadequate, I almost laugh. But I don’t want Anthony’s attention focused on me. Not when Sammy is there in front of him. Wounded. Barely able to contain his rage. He moved so fast. When he’d attacked Mads, Mads hadn’t even seen him coming. And Mads is Mads. There’s no imagining what he would do to Anthony, especially driven by such hatred. So I lie. “I’m fine,” I say.
“What did you think I was gonna do to her?” Sammy asks Anthony, stepping closer to him, still with his hand raised. He moves differently, I notice. His steps are still loose, but they’re measured, and once again I’m reminded of his takedown of Mads.
“The cameras,” Anthony says, and Sammy freezes in place. “You moved them.” To me, he says, almost desperately, “I didn’t see him walk up here. He cleared a path.”
A smile creeps up Sammy’s cheeks. “Take my hand,” he insists. “It’s a question of manners.”
Anthony hesitates. He doesn’t want to look cowed, even though that’s precisely how he looks when he grasps the other man’s hand. “Bygones,” he says, giving Sammy’s hand a gentlemanly squeeze. When he’s ready to take his hand back, though, Sammy won’t let him. He holds on to it easily, like a prize.
“Bygones,” Sammy echoes, but not sincerely. Facetiously. “All is well,” he says. “Is that what you think?”
Anthony gives his hand a tentative tug, but Sammy doesn’t release him. There’s nothing I can do if this becomes physical, but I take a half step toward the two men, reflexively. Again, I’m reminded how small this room is. I’m so close to them now, I can smell them. Sammy’s salty, oily, masculine stink. Anthony’s familiar, almost flowery fresh scent. The wind whips through the open door, and raindrops spatter across the floor. The light flickers. Sammy doesn’t let go of Anthony’s hand.
He registers my proximity, but only for an instant. His eyes remain locked on Anthony’s face. Not on his eyes. But on a point somewhat lower. As with Mads, perhaps on his mouth or his chin. “You got three rounds in each match,” he tells Anthony, as if they’re in the midst of a conversation and Anthony knows what he’s talking about. “Round one, we call that the neutral round. We start out on our feet. Round two, we go to the ground. I’m on top. You’re on your knees. Round three, it’s the reverse. Understand?”
Anthony gives his hand another futile tug. His cheeks are reddening. His eyes avoid mine. “I don’t want to fight you, Sammy,” he says, managing to keep his voice firm.
Nevertheless, his protestation brings a smile to Sammy’s face. “Too late for that now,” he says. “Don’t you think? We started this particular match years ago, son. Didn’t we?” He pulls the taller man a little closer into his body, until his hulking shoulder grazes Anthony’s ribs. It’s becoming apparent that he has no intention of letting his hand go. “The way I see it, you’ve scored some points and so have I.” He flashes me a quick, vicious grin. “We’ve gone two rounds. The only question now is, who’s gonna take round three?”
Anthony’s eyes narrow. For an instant, they dart past me, to the far corner of the room—to the location of one of the hidden cameras, it occurs to me with a small shiver. But this isn’t about his film, I don’t think. Or at least not about Fear, or about its appeal as a movie. There’s something in his expression that arrests me. A certain calculation, perhaps. As if he’s peering into a mirror and reassuring himself—that kind of look. And it strikes me that he isn’t afraid anymore. Whatever he sees in that camera, whatever comfort he takes in existing in its lens, it’s enough to make him square his shoulders. And I think Sammy recognizes this change in him, too, because when Anthony locks eyes with him again, Sammy’s face falls. He has a sudden premonition, perhaps, that he might be the one who isn’t prepared for whatever might happen next, not Anthony. At the same time, however, his rage only increases that much more. Anytime he wants to, he can take this taller man down. That’s what he’s thinking. No matter how subtle this contest is, that’s what it comes down to. A physical fight that he can win. All this transpires in the course of a few seconds, in the permutations of a few expressions. In the whipped silence of the storm.
Anthony gives his hand a more deliberate tug, then leans into Sammy, close. “Let me go,” he says. “You think it proves anything, holding on to my hand?”
Sammy snorts. “Bygones,” he says. “Right?” Then, pressing his lips together, he begins to squeeze. I don’t see his exertion in his arm. I see it in Anthony’s face.
“Let me go, Sammy,” Anthony repeats.
And just like that, the tables have turned again. It’s Anthony who’s desperate once more, Sammy whose face is as smooth as polished wood.
“Goddamn it,” Anthony says. But Sammy’s grip only gets tighter. “Let me go.” Anthony starts to struggle.
At last, without conscious thought, I take another step forward and grab Sammy by the wrist. “Let him go,” I say. Then, when he turns to face me: “You’re hurting him.”
For a moment, Sammy can only stare at me. It’s as if he’d forgotten I was here. Then, his expression softening, he releases Anthony.
Anthony looks down at his hand, then—in a display of wanton pride that unnerves me—gives Sammy an unnecessary, reckless shove backward.
Sammy’s mouth constricts. Still, though, he holds himself in check, arms raised. “Is that really what you want to do?” he asks.
Anthony throws another glance toward the camera hidden in the corner of the room, then seems to reach some sort of decision. As if retreating into himself, he focuses on his hand—which Sammy has clearly bruised. He stretches it a few times, then kneads it with his other hand, before finally looking up at Sammy again. “I never did hear exactly,” he says, “what Darla told you.”
Sammy stops breathing. His face turns into a mask devoid of any expression. Then he lets out a lungful of air and shakes his head.
“You always thought,” Anthony continues, “that I caught her coming out of the shower. Isn’t that right? That’s how I caught her naked, that’s how I took those pictures. Spying on her, right?”
I can see Sammy begin to connect the dots. He blinks a couple of times. But he’s otherwise still. Frozen.
“You were eighteen,” Anthony says, drawing this out. “Captain of the varsity wrestling team. Darla was sixteen. A sophomore cheerleader. You stole a ring from your mother’s jewelry box and gave it to her. That’s what she told me. Is that right, Sammy? You gave her one of your mama’s rings? You wanted to marry her—”
Sammy pulls himself up. But he doesn’t even seem to breathe. He’s entranced, waiting to hear what comes next.
“She was afraid of you,” Anthony says.
Sammy takes a halting step toward him. Just one. Like he’s not aware of what he’s doing.
Out of reflex, Anthony retreats. Another half step, and his back will be against the wall. But he doesn’t look worried. Sammy’s fighting one battle. He’s fighting another. Psychologically, he’s the predator again, zeroed in on his prey. “She wasn’t coming out of the shower, Sammy,” he says. “I wasn’t spying on her. She was the one who wanted to take her clothes off. She posed for those pictures, Sammy. She posed for them.”
After Anthony stops speaking, nothing moves. Nothing. It’s like we’re caught between heartbeats suddenly. Even the wind stops blowing. The howl of the forest doesn’t just recede—it’s gone. The room is entirely still. And then, before I can figure out what’s happening, in a burst of movement, Anthony’s body careens backward into the wall. It happens so fast, I don’t have time to reach for him. And when I do try to help him, we lose our balance and tumble onto the wooden floor in a heap. Anthony’s shoulder slams into my chest, knocking the air out of me, and I roll away from him, gasping. My head is spinning, buzzing. Anthony, though, has already pushed himself up, onto his feet. Someone is shouting, I think, but I could be imagining it. I roll onto my hands and knees, and then, abruptly, I’m outside. The world is a blur. Wind whistles through my ears. Rain and sleet pepper my face. I move out of instinct, down the path, following the sound of their voices. Then, ten or twenty feet away from me, fading in and out of the mist, drenched in rain, I see two figures circling each other on the rocky shore.
I take a shaky step toward them, then another, a little faster, and another, until I’m sprinting toward them. “Anthony!” I cry. I’m scared for him. Terrified. “Sammy!” I shout. “Please, Sammy. Don’t!”
When I reach them, though, they don’t react. Neither one of them. They’re locked so intently on each other that they don’t even see me. “You get the hell out of here, Sammy,” Anthony tells him. “Now.”
“What are you gonna do, son?” Sammy taunts him. “You gonna call my mama? You gonna call the police?”
Anthony closes the gap between them and gives him a shove.
“Don’t!” I shout. I lurch toward him and grab both his arms. My presence here is the only thing that’s stopped Sammy from lashing out at him—and Anthony must know this, too. Sammy is angry enough to kill. I can see it in his eyes, how empty they’ve become. He’s not seeing Anthony anymore. He’s somewhere else now, back in time, operating on a different level.
“Those little cameras of yours can’t protect you,” he tells Anthony, too calmly. “Not from me.” He takes a step forward, brushing his chest up against Anthony’s, dislodging my hold on him. When he speaks, his voice is so low, I can barely hear it over the rush of the wind. “You can’t go running to my father anymore. You knew he was going to beat the shit out of me. You knew. You knew he wasn’t just going to take my allowance away.” He raises his hands to Anthony’s chest. Not to push him away, but to clutch his shirt in his fists and pull him toward him. He tilts his head to the side and brings his mouth up toward Anthony’s. “It’s just you and me now.”
When Anthony’s head jolts backward, it happens so suddenly, I can only figure out what’s happened in retrospect, as blood begins to tear with the rainwater beneath one of his eyes: Sammy has headbutted him, hard, in the forehead. I tell myself to close the distance and help him. Close the distance and stop this. Move, Betty. Sammy will kill Anthony, right here, in front of you, if you don’t do something. But my feet have rooted themselves into the ground. I’m frozen where I am, in terror. All I can do is watch as Anthony’s body goes momentarily limp in Sammy’s hands. “Please, Sammy,” I manage, whining, pleading with him, just like Darla had. “Please. Let him go.”
My voice comes out in a whimper. Nevertheless, he seems to hear it. Because he turns toward me, as if to measure my reaction to this punishment he’s meting out. And in this same instant, Anthony seems to shake himself back to life. His body uncoils, and he gathers a hand into a fist and lands a punch on Sammy’s chin, holding nothing back, so hard that Sammy releases him and Anthony falls backward to the ground.
Sammy stumbles to the side, reeling, one hand clamped over his jaw. Recovering his balance, he stops in place, gingerly testing the bone of his jaw with his fingers while Anthony picks himself back up onto his feet. For a second, I imagine—I pray—this will end it. But then Sammy lunges toward Anthony and grabs him again, this time by the throat, squeezing until he can’t breathe, then, with both hands in Anthony’s face, shoves him backward.
Anthony’s feet slip in the mud, and he tumbles again, hard, onto the rocky beach, where he lands in a heap. I rush to him, but he pushes me off, and, clambering to his feet, moves toward Sammy, not charging him, but slowly, deliberately. I see his hand tighten into another white-knuckle fist, but Sammy doesn’t. Sammy has time to glance at me and taunt his opponent with a sneer. Then Anthony slams his fist into his stomach, and Sammy folds in two. Anthony doesn’t wait for him to recover. He swings again, aiming for his head. Sammy, though, is too quick. Before he has even straightened up, his arm is already hooked around Anthony’s shoulders, and with a twist of his torso, he brings the two of them crashing down onto the rocks.
I stagger backward, turning in the direction of the main house, and hear myself scream. “Mads!” I shout. “Ben! Mads!” Through the heavy mist, I think I can see movement in the windows. The door opens. Ben, barely more than a silhouette, rushes out, hatched into a blur by the rain, leaving Mads struggling to walk on the porch. I don’t stop screaming, though. I can’t. For someone, anyone, to help Anthony.
At my feet, the two men are fighting and writhing, lashed by the waves that are riding into the shore on the back of the storm. I can barely make sense of it all. All I can see is that Sammy has Anthony in a headlock and that, as much as he’s struggling, Anthony can’t get himself free. He’s choking, barely able to breathe. His skin is blue. His eyes are bulging. Water crashes over him, momentarily swallowing him, and when he reappears, he’s coughing, choking. Suffocating. A hand grabs my arm. It’s Ben. But I don’t stop howling.
“Mads!” I’m screaming. “Mads!” And then to Ben: “Do something. Do something, Ben. He’s killing him. Don’t you see? Help him.”
But Ben doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t move. Like me, he’s frozen to the spot. Too terrified to take another step. Anthony’s eyes bulge and bulge, and then start to close into lazy slits. It looks almost as if he’s going to sleep. It looks peaceful. Like he’s not being choked and the rocks underneath him aren’t gouging into his back and his spine isn’t being twisted and the sea isn’t drowning him and the man on top of him isn’t killing him, right in front of our eyes. It’s over. That’s what I’m thinking. Mads, our savior, limps across the lawn, still too far away to see, let alone to help. Ben is too weak even to try. I’m still shouting. The cameras are still rolling. And Anthony’s dying. Anthony Marino is lying on the beach at my feet, already dead.
And then, all of a sudden, with a sickening thud, everything changes. For what feels like an eternity, I can’t figure out how. I don’t know what’s happened. Then I watch Anthony’s red, spidery hand pull away from the side of Sammy’s head. It confuses me for a moment, that his fingers would be so widely spread in a fist, but as the outstretched hand trembles in the air, I make sense of what I’m seeing. There’s a rock, about the size of a tennis ball, clasped in Anthony’s hand. Someone cries, Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, so loud I can’t hear anything else. I wish they would stop—then I realize it’s me.
The rock falls from Anthony’s hand onto the ground, and Sammy follows it, in slow motion. Another wave crashes over them, and for a moment the two men disappear completely. But as it recedes, Anthony picks himself up and stumbles away from Sammy.
I’m the one who tries to help the unconscious man. “Sammy?” I drop to my knees onto the sharp rocks next to him and give his limp body a shake. “Sammy!” I look up at Anthony, and then at Ben. And Mads shuffling toward us. “Help me.” I hear my voice as a shout, but I don’t think it has emerged as anything more than a whisper, inaudible above the rain. “Help,” I mouth. “Help me, please.”
I lean over Sammy’s unmoving body. Rain and tears cascade down my face as I run my fingers over that monstrously strong torso, rolling him onto his side. Blood drips from his ear. He’s covered in it, to the point where I can’t tell where it’s coming from. I wonder if he’s dead, when his eyes suddenly clench shut, giving me a jolt. A spasm of choked breathing dislodges my hands from his chest.
“Sammy,” I mutter, and his eyes open, finding mine as though he’d felt me looking at him. I register a series of emotions in his face—gratitude, love, confusion, rage—before he abruptly muscles me to the side and staggers to his feet. “Wait,” I tell him, standing up, trying to stop him, but reeling. It feels like I’m going to vomit. Throwing a look over his shoulder at Anthony and Ben and Mads, Sammy takes a few uncertain strides toward the trees, and I follow, speaking through my nausea. My hands are quivering. My legs can barely carry me.
Without looking at me, he says, “I have to get back to Ma. She’ll know what to do about this.” He touches a couple of fingers to his ear, then draws them away, scarlet with blood. He stares at the gore, momentarily transfixed, then shoves his fingers into his mouth, to suck them clean.
I haven’t heard anyone approach. A pair of hands, though, wrap themselves possessively around my shoulders, stopping me from following him any farther. I struggle to free myself, but without conviction. Then I stop and collapse into Anthony’s arms.
“He’s too hurt,” I manage, in a gasp. “He can’t—”
Already, though, Sammy has lurched away from us, disappearing into the trees, determined to find his way back to his mother.
Anthony’s arms tighten around me. “Ben,” he calls out. “Get over here. Take her inside.” He doesn’t let me go until Ben joins us and grabs my elbow. Then, with a grim set to his mouth, he starts after Sammy himself. “I’ll make sure he’s okay,” he tells us through the rain.
I want to go with him. But Ben obediently drags me back to the house, and I’m too disoriented now to resist. Mads catches up to us, hobbling on his makeshift crutch. “Just get yourself inside, Betty,” he says. “Anthony can take care of himself.” I throw one last look over my shoulder, but Anthony, too, has disappeared into the woods. The wind gusts, and the storm rages. There are footsteps on wet leaves, then nothing at all but the torrent of rain.