Amazon Bestseller in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction
4.3 stars – 25 reviews
25 PERFECT DAYS of the title are perfectly disturbing, a walk through a possible future as bleak as George Orwell’s 1984. Scary,
realistic, and satisfying.”
IndieReader ReviewDiscover this chilling gets-under-your-skin collection of interwoven short stories set in a psychologically horrifying future.Just 99 cents for a limited time only!
Will you follow The Way or be crushed by the Controllers?
A totalitarian state doesn’t just happen overnight. It’s a slow, dangerous slide. 25 Perfect Days chronicles the path into a hellish future of food shortages, contaminated water, sweeping incarceration, an ultra-radical religion, and the extreme measures taken to reduce the population.
Through twenty-five interlinked stories, each written from a different character’s point of view, 25 Perfect Days captures the sacrifice, courage, and love needed to survive and eventually overcome this dystopian nightmare.
Praise for 25 Perfect Days:
“Move over The Hunger Games and Divergent. Mark Tullius has …produced a dystopian novel that teens and adults will both enjoy…”
“Absolutely loved this book…keen-edged knife that, at times, cuts right to the heart of a character and gives the reader a visceral shock.”
an excerpt from
25 Perfect Days
by Mark Tullius
Five Minutes Alone
August 19, 2036
How much damage could Michael really do in five minutes? It’s not like he was launching a nuclear attack or sitting behind the wheel of a semi, plowing into pedestrians. He just had to stand in a room. An 8×10 concrete cell. It’d be over in a blink. Conference calls at his office allotted more time for being on hold. There was nothing to worry about. If this meant closure, it was worth every second. That’s all Sarah wanted, after all, for the twins, for the family. They needed to move on.
Sarah’s voice came barreling up the stairs saying breakfast was ready. Michael couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard that, couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t awakened to her staring at the wall, lying there until the day was nearly done.
Michael threw off the covers. He smelled bacon and coffee. Bypassing his work suits, Michael slipped on a pair of jeans and a Polo and headed downstairs.
Sarah was behind the stove in an apron, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. The way Michael remembered her. Looking like a mom.
“It smells great,” he said.
Sarah scooped sizzling strips onto a plate, blotted them with a paper towel to soak up the grease. “You talked to your boss, right?” Sarah set the plate onto the kitchen table.
“Yeah.”
“I just really don’t want anyone calling today.”
Michael took his seat and poured a glass of orange juice. “They won’t. And I talked to the boys’ principal too. It won’t even count as a sick day.”
“Good.” Sarah wiped her hands on her apron. “Boys! Come on, we’re going to be late!”
Like they were waiting outside the door, the fifteen-year-old twins walked in and took their places, Justin to his father’s left, Jeremy to the right. Black pants, black shirts, no words.
Michael started to think the family might not be ready for this, but as if she was reading his mind, Sarah pointed at his shirt. “You’re not really wearing that, are you?”
Michael realized he was the only one in white, not exactly an appropriate color for the occasion. “I’ll, uh, change after we eat.”
Sarah pulled off her apron, took a seat. She was wearing the black dress she wore for Jenny’s eighth grade graduation. The dress Michael teased her about because she was just like the other parents acting like it was some big deal. Sarah asked the boys if they liked their eggs. They gave little nods. Sarah didn’t respond, didn’t touch her food, she just sat there, staring at her empty juice glass. Michael told himself it’d get easier.
After breakfast, the two-hour ride to San Angeles was quiet. Only Sarah spoke, and only once. She said, “This is good, this is going to be good.”
When they got to New Parker Center, Michael kept the doors locked.
“There’s something I have to say.”
Sarah pulled on the handle. “We’ve already discussed this. Open it.”
“Yeah, Dad.” Jeremy sat up and glared in the rear view, his eyes the size of golf balls. “You promised.”
Michael didn’t know if that was true. He couldn’t remember promising, but he couldn’t remember not promising either. It had been like that lately, Michael’s recent memory had become a thick fog and as always, he was too exhausted to try to cut through it. Instead, he just wondered what kind of father would promise his children something like this and unlocked everyone’s door.
The cop at the desk signed them in, told them to be sure to keep track of the time. Five minutes each, not a second more.
Sarah grabbed the pen, signed her name. They had agreed she could go first. A uniformed officer led Sarah away.
The desk cop pointed Michael and the boys across the hall. “Someone will come for you.”
The waiting room was cold and small, the floor and walls a dull white. The boys were on the little couch. Jeremy sat with his fists pushed together, his steel-toe boot tap, tap, tapping. Michael wondered if Sarah had bought them just for today. Justin sat hunched over too, but different, like there should be a bucket between his feet.
Michael felt he should ask if they were okay, give the boys a chance to back out. But Sarah said they had the right. What if it’d been his sister? Michael didn’t have a sister, but he understood what she meant. This would give them a little control, help them move past this.
Michael locked eyes on the clock. Four minutes past nine.
A cop called Michael’s name from the doorway. He got up without saying a word to the boys. The elevator took him down to an unmarked floor and a long hallway, the fluorescent lights and ceramic tiles part of the original building.
They turned right at the next hallway. Sarah was down at the end. An officer led her by the elbow, her face speckled red, the same color dripping from her clenched fists. Sarah didn’t even glance at Michael as they passed, ragged breaths seeping through her plastered smile beneath a vacant gaze.
Michael’s officer nudged him toward the door. “Mr. Adams, you’ve been advised of your rights. Do you have any questions?”
He did have questions. What would he see on the other side? Did he really want to know what his wife was capable of? And what about the boys?
The officer unlocked the door. Red globs covered the floor, fragments of Sarah’s footprints. Michael started to ask if it could be cleaned then realized how ridiculous that would be.
“Mr. Adams, clock’s ticking.”
Michael stepped inside. The dimly lit room smelled of blood and sweat. That’s what he remembered about Jenny’s birth. The complications. All that blood.
It was three days before the doctor took Jenny out of the NICU bed and said they could hold her. Michael was scared because Jenny was so small, but once she was in his arms, he swore he’d never let go. He’d protect her from everything.
But Michael failed.
The monster who raped and murdered his baby girl sat naked, his hands cuffed to the top of the table. Sarah had kept her word, but just barely. Olsen’s eyes were swollen, but he could still open them.
For a second, Michael thought this was the wrong guy. Olsen looked nothing like the family man with five adoring kids. Each of them had written Michael and Sarah at least once a week begging them not to come today. They asked for mercy. They said none of this would bring Jenny back. Sarah burned every letter.
The cell looked like the interrogation room from an old cop show. Three bare metal walls, a fourth with the one-way mirror Sarah said she’d be behind. The only light flickered from the 60-watt bulb hanging over the table, where the naked monster looked like something out of a horror movie. Olsen’s face oozed blood. His nose flattened and mushed to the left. The whites of his eyes were clouded red. His left ear hung on by a few ropes of skin.
Michael sat across from Olsen and stared at his hands. The top of the right one was a dark purple mass, the cuff smashed into the skin, looking like someone had slammed an anvil on it. Even if Olsen lived, it’d have to be amputated.
But Olsen wasn’t going to live. If he made it past today, they’d still fry him tomorrow. That’s what Michael kept telling himself.
An electric timer was mounted on the wall next to the mirror, thirty seconds already gone.
Olsen’s attack on Jenny lasted a minute and fifty-three seconds. Some coward on the third floor caught the whole thing on video.
Below the timer was an iron stand that held a sledgehammer, a fireplace poker, and an aluminum baseball bat, smudged red on the end.
Olsen made a noise. It came out all mumbled through his broken jaw. Two teeth poked through his bottom lip. He was trying to speak, but Michael had heard enough of this prick’s voice. During the trial, Olsen made a full confession and cried the entire time. He said Jenny had smiled at him. He said he couldn’t help himself. He was sick.
Olsen finally got out his words, clearer this time. “Finish it,” he said. “Please.”
Michael closed his eyes and took a deep breath, tried to remember the last time he’d held Jenny. She was only thirteen.
“Kill me,” Olsen begged.
Michael banged the table and drove it into Olsen’s chest, pinned him to the wall. Michael jumped to his feet. “You don’t get to decide.”
The timer said Michael had three minutes.
He walked over, told himself not to pick up the poker, but there he was, pulling it out of the stand, careful not to cut himself on the razor-sharp hook and pointed tip.
Olsen moaned and Michael watched the seconds tick away. If Michael hit him once, that would be it. There’d be no stopping.
At two-forty-two, Olsen said, “She cried for you.” Olsen cocked his head, raised the pitch in his voice, mimicking some ditzy teenage girl. “My daddy, my daddy…”
Michael spun around. Olsen leaned into it. But Michael let go of the handle and the poker flew past Olsen’s face, clanked off the wall.
The timer hit Jenny’s minute fifty-three. The head of the sledgehammer was as wide as Michael’s fist. One hit is all it would take. Finished. The boys wouldn’t have to step foot in this room, lower themselves to this piece of shit. They wouldn’t have to hear Olsen’s goddamn voice.
Michael reached out, picked up the sledgehammer and faced the mirror. The man staring back looked nothing like the man Michael had awakened as.
The mirror thumped. It thumped again, Sarah pounding it over and over until Michael let the sledgehammer fall to the ground.
The timer was down to one-fifteen, the moment Jenny had stopped fighting, and Olsen slammed her head into the concrete.
Each passing second was one less for Olsen, a little closer to the death he deserved.
Michael concentrated on the mirror. He saw the timer in the reflection. The buzzer rang. His boys would get their five minutes alone.
Fourteen Angry Marchers
October 11, 2037
Kenneth Murphy refused to fidget. He sat alone in the front pew, his sparkling white suit jacket too big, his fingers peeking out pale and stubby. The shoulder pads did little to add confidence, did nothing to stop him from picturing all the families at home watching and wondering how a scrawny, pimply-faced eighteen-year-old could take over for his glorious father, who was commanding the altar like God’s personal general. Sunlight poured through the stained glass windows and streamed over the Reverend’s crimson locks, creating a fiery halo worthy of the archangel Michael. All that was missing were wings and a sword.
It was often said when the Reverend spoke, the world stopped, and when the Reverend asked his flock to join him in prayer, Heaven rumbled from the thunderous sound.
Kenneth and his father were the only ones wearing white, the sacred color of the Chosen, but Kenneth just felt like a fraud. This was the day he was to take his first steps toward becoming the leader of the Church of the American Way, the largest ministry in the world. The Reverend had baptized the current president, countless senators, and two Supreme Court justices. Kenneth’s reign would forever reside in the shadow of his father.
The Reverend raised a golden book to the rafters. His amplified voice boomed, “The Only Way!” The congregation echoed his words, each member showing off his copy to the angels above.
“For too long we have allowed selfishness to poison this glorious land. But no longer will we turn our backs on our brothers and sisters. We will no longer stand by as this country falls into the hands of the few, while the rest suffocate in death.”
Kenneth joined in the applause. His father smiled for the cameras. “This book, inspired by the Almighty, shows us the Way, but a book cannot make our decisions. It is only a tool, a guide. It is up to each of us to accept our role, to take up the burdens of those in need, to elevate the least so we can all be given seats at the banquet of God. For how we treat the suffering souls of this earth defines our kingdom. And come election day we will usher in an era of prosperity for all, not just those willing to lie and cheat their way to the top, but for those courageous enough to play by the rules. For we are all in this together. One people. One Way!”
The crowd leapt to their feet, praising God and the Reverend, who made his way down to his flock.
“I look around this room and I still see the faces of fear. At least a hundred of you have over a million dollars in assets. Some of you even more. And you’ve worked hard for that money and you’re concerned. How can you trust it will protect the ones you love? How can you be sure it will care for those in need long after you pass on?”
The Reverend leaned against the second pew, just a simple man of the people. “I’m afraid I cannot take away those fears. But I know someone who might…” He looked to the rafters. “I suppose you might call it faith.”
The plump woman in a floral dress sitting three feet from the Reverend, held her heart with both hands, had the biggest smile. The Reverend smiled back at her then continued.
“When November 3rd comes around and you step inside that ballot booth, I want you to see beyond Proposition 867. I want you to see the faces of the children you’ll feed. I want you to see the roofs over families’ heads. See the shoes, the highways, the dignity and self-respect each of us deserves.” He turned his back to the crowd, returned to the altar. “Vote no and your family keeps ninety percent of your money when you die.” He spun back. “Sounds like a great deal, right?”
A few couldn’t help but nod.
“Sure. Who cares if children starve? Who cares if the whole country burns?”
No one moved.
“How much is enough?! Tell me!” He took out a handkerchief, dabbed his brow. “Proposition 867 isn’t about taking everything, and don’t let anyone tell you different. If you’re making more than a million, it’s half, not a penny more. And if you’re making over a million and you cannot get by on half, then you need an accountant.”
A sliver of laughter sliced through the tension.
Wayne, the lead usher and bodyguard, stood watch at the side door, his long hair slicked back in a ponytail. Kenneth could tell there was something going on outside. Shadowy figures seemed to be gathering on the other side of the stained glass.
The Reverend continued. “Think of the changes we can bring. The good we can accomplish if we’ll simply join together. Heaven on earth, where everyone gets a seat at the table.”
The applause came crashing and everyone was stomping and hollering hallelujah. Everyone except Wayne and a few other bodyguards.
The Reverend said, “Difficult decisions are part of life, but they will always be rewarded when the correct path is chosen. And today, God has blessed us with a special choice of his own. Before us is a young man who has been called to serve the Lord and His people.”
Kenneth’s cheeks grew warm. He needed to calm down. Having to approach the altar with his white suit and red hair was bad enough. He didn’t need a red face to match.
The Reverend began listing Kenneth’s accomplishments, but he was soon drowned out by the violent shouts outside the doors.
Most of the congregation swiveled their heads toward the back of the church. The Reverend spoke louder.
“As the Church of the American Way’s first youth minister, this wholesome young man will guide us through the Word and the Way…”
The voices outside grew louder and echoed through the building. Their angry message was clear: the Reverend was leading his flock toward damnation.
But the Reverend would not be interrupted in his own house. “It is with great pride that I call forth my son, Kenneth Murphy the Second!”
Nervously, Kenneth rose. He was greeted with a smattering of applause inside the church and angry chanting outside. He stepped toward his father, but not too quickly. He’d learned his slick white shoes turned the carpet into an ice-skating rink. Slowly, he knelt before the altar.
The Reverend placed his hands on Kenneth’s head and told the congregation to help usher this child into the light of the one, true Way.
Kenneth slid his thumb over his heart, stood, and took his place at the right hand of his father. He tried to look confident and strong, like his father wanted, but he couldn’t help but notice the congregation glancing everywhere but at him. No one admired his fine suit. No one noticed his hair parted to the right just like the Reverend’s. No one cared a single bit. They were focused on the rising chants from outside the doors.
Wayne and the other bodyguards shifted positions in the perimeter aisles, looked to the Reverend for the command to take action. The Reverend shook his head and said, “There is only one Way to salvation. The people outside are confused and bitter. They deserve our pity, not our condemnation.”
Kenneth had never seen his father show such restraint, but he knew it had to do with the cameras. The world was watching, and the Church of the American Way had developed a reputation for harsh retribution.
The Reverend reclaimed his flock by returning their focus to the special occasion at hand. Then from outside, a man shouted, “No! Don’t!”
The crash made Kenneth jump back, but he was still showered with pieces of stained glass. A tiny shard sliced across his right cheek, but the rest bounced off his sparkling white suit and the ridiculous shoulder pads.
Kenneth opened his eyes as the last bits of glass floated to the sanctuary floor. He faced the crowd, hands covering their mouths. He tried to stay calm, certain they could hear his ragged breathing. The Reverend brushed off his son’s suit, took out his handkerchief and wiped the blood from Kenneth’s cheek.
Through clenched teeth, the Reverend said, “Stop shaking. There is no fear in this house.”
The Reverend turned to the congregation. “Everyone, please take your seats.” He picked up the dirt-encrusted brick, grabbed Kenneth’s arm and dragged him down the aisle.
As they approached the giant oak doors, the Reverend motioned for the bodyguards to take position.
Kenneth said, “We should call the State. Let them handle it.”
The Reverend spun, pulled Kenneth close, their noses almost touching. “There is only one authority on this earth. Ours.” He pointed at Roger, a tall man with thick glasses. “Stay with the money.”
Roger slipped behind the counter piled high with signed copies of The Only Way as the Reverend threw open the double doors and burst out into the mid-morning sunshine, brick in hand.
The ushers surrounded Kenneth and his father as they headed for the protestors, only fourteen of them, not a real threat. Most of the protestors wore bandannas over their mouths or full-on masks. There were even a few rubber ones of the Reverend. They held picket signs: The Wrong Way. Five Minutes Too Long. The Fourth Has Been Forgotten. One Way to Hell.
Two men in skeleton masks stood by the broken window.
The camera crew followed, and the Reverend slowed down to make sure they didn’t miss this. An usher snapped out his baton, but the Reverend shook his head. They filed in behind the Reverend as he held up the brick.
“Who dares to throw stones at a house of God?”
A man in black, one of the few without a mask, whispered to a stockier, bearded man with clenched fists. The man in black turned to the Reverend and said, “We apologize for our actions. The window will be replaced.”
“The cost is not the concern. The glass cut my son.”
“Who gives a shit?” the bearded man said.
The man in black pulled back his friend. “I’ll pay for it myself, if I have to. It should not have happened.”
“Do you have any idea how much time and effort went into that creation?”
A voice from somewhere in the group called out, “Like you don’t have the money!”
Another voice said, “Yeah, you probably get that from one appearance.”
The Reverend inhaled through his nose and flashed that famous smile. “I do not deny my successes, and what I have made has been returned tenfold to those across this great land. But who among you can offer more than derision and scorn?”
The man in black unzipped his windbreaker, his white collar now visible to all. “I believe I can answer that challenge. I am Father Potter of St. Luke’s Church, and I am here as a voice of gentle opposition to this abomination.”
The Reverend held the brick to the cameraman. “If this is what they consider gentle opposition, I’d hate to see them angry.”
“I don’t condone what happened. I tried to stop it. But by His good name, this is no house of God. This is nothing but business, a shelter of greed.”
“Greed?” The Reverend laughed. “Our money flows through the people of this country, not through your golden palaces in Rome.”
Potter’s face flushed red. Kenneth saw his father was staying true to their concept of never defend, always attack.
Potter said, “The money you donate to the government comes back to you multiplied by a number far greater than ten. You know it, even if your blind flock does not.” The Reverend started to speak, but Potter raised his hand to silence him. “I’ve seen the provisions of this tax bill you’re pushing. Your church is the only one to receive anything from the collected funds.”
“Because unlike you, we guarantee it will be spent on the people.”
A frail woman stepped forward, her grip tight on a picket sign. “You just want to take everything. So you can control our country.”
“And what exactly is under control now? The traffic? The pollution? Corruption? Scandal? The education of our young?”
“My brother’s dead because of the laws you support,” a voice shouted.
“And my father,” another announced.
Kenneth stared at the shell of a woman, a blond, thirty-something clutching an upside down picket sign to balance her withered leg. Her sunken eyes were dull gray like she’d been slowly poisoned. The sign read, “The Fourth Forgotten” in blood-red letters.
Potter put his arm around her and said, “Her husband was murdered in one of your raids for supposedly not turning in a registered gun. A gun they never found.”
The protestors grumbled in anger, booed the Reverend, called him a charlatan.
“And what exactly would you call this so-called ‘priest?’”
The bearded man lunged forward, his stick drawn. “Murderer!”
Potter and a young man, with a blue bandanna covering half his face, grabbed his arm, urged him not make matters worse for himself, for all of them.
“But worse is exactly what will happen,” the Reverend said. “As long as the needs of the few outweigh those of the many, then suffering is all that awaits.”
The protester, dropped his picket sign, took off his bandanna and stepped toward the Reverend. “And what would you know about suffering?”
For the first time, the Reverend stepped back. The protester was just a teenager, but his eyes looked like they’d seen years of death. It took a few seconds, but Kenneth recognized the kid. Justin Adams, the brother of that girl who had been raped and murdered. Justin’s face had been splashed on every news station. That vacant stare, his chin dripping with blood after his five minutes.
Wayne stepped in, put his hand on Justin’s chest, but Justin just kept walking. The crowd closed in. The ushers formed a line.
Wayne said to Justin, “You want to get sprayed?”
The protesters stopped. The blue dye took over a week to wash off and it was reason for any citizen to be picked up for questioning.
Kenneth said, “Do it!”
One of the protestors in the Reverend mask started for Kenneth, who nearly tripped as he backed up. The protester said, “Look at me, I’m Chosen, I’m Chosen.”
Another one danced back and forth. “Me, too. Me, too.”
Kenneth felt his cheeks flush. He wanted to shout, to tell these nothings they didn’t deserve to live in this country, but he felt the stutter, the affliction he’d worked so hard to overcome, swirling around his mouth.
Several of the protestors shoved their camera phones in his face. One of them said, “Save us, Chosen One.” They all started laughing.
The Reverend grabbed Wayne’s hand, lowered it from Justin’s chest. “No one will be sprayed.” He leaned into Justin’s ear, but spoke loud enough for the cameras. “I feel your anguish. But you don’t have to carry this alone. We are here for you, son.”
Kenneth watched Justin’s eyes. The anger was starting to dissipate, but then Justin’s hands drove into the Reverend’s gut. The bodyguards snapped out their batons. The protesters drove them back.
Wayne pulled out a canister, shook it, pressed the button. A blast of blue sprayed Justin’s eyes. Screams and the burning mist filled the air. Potter grabbed Justin and pulled him back, emptied a water bottle over the kid’s face. Kenneth barely saw the woman pulling something from her purse, but he heard the shot. Saw the flash. The exploding hole. The blood sprayed across his face and dripped down his cheek. The Reverend collapsed, his head smacking concrete.
An usher pulled out his gun, returned fire, the woman a marionette dancing in the wind. Potter crawled toward her while the rest of the protestors ran, spread out like fireworks.
Kenneth fell to his knees, cradled his father’s head. Their brand new suits covered in red. The hole gushed the contents of his father’s heart.
The Reverend’s mouth moved, but there wasn’t a sound.
Kenneth took his father’s hand. “Don’t talk. It’s going to be all right.” Kenneth screamed for someone to help. He stroked his father’s fiery hair and felt something gripping his jacket. His father’s hand.
“You must lead them,” the Reverend gasped. “Through everything.”
“Dad…”
“It’s all yours now.”
Kenneth watched the brick fall from his father’s hand and gave a small, silent prayer. He sensed the cameras zooming in, the world watching, waiting to see what he’d do next. Kenneth simply drew a deep breath and looked around at the scene. He saw the woman flat on the ground, her chest still rising and falling. He crawled over and bowed his head in prayer. He kissed her forehead to tell everyone watching she was forgiven. Then he leaned into her ear and whispered so only she could hear. “I doubt five minutes will be enough.”
Thirteenth on the List
September 11, 2041
The sun inched over the mountain, and light slid across the massive facility nestled at the bottom of the valley. Forty yards up, Jeremy Adams lay motionless, blending in between two boulders, his tan cloak perfect camouflage against the desert rock. He counted sixteen men down below in beige fatigues, but Jeremy didn’t have anything against them. He placed his eye to the Bushmaster’s scope and panned to the heavily secured front gate, the one area not protected with electrified razor-wire fence. Six guards with light machine guns. Two more in the security booth. Another eight were spread across the grounds, moving along the perimeter and watching over the massive white silos Jeremy had been instructed to avoid.
There was no way of knowing exactly how many men were inside the massive storage area built into the mountain and the blue building in the corner, which served as the Bradfords’ living quarters.
Jeremy zoomed in on the tallest guard at the front gate. For private security, the man was well-equipped. His precise gait and perfect posture meant ex-military. Jeremy tracked one guard after another. Most of them were in their thirties or forties. Their experience didn’t worry him. Jeremy was only twenty, but in the three years he’d been in the field, he’d probably killed more men and women than these guards combined.
He took his first life at fifteen, and recruiters immediately recognized his determination and complete lack of emotion. While his brother and former classmates had fucked off in high school, Jeremy’s handlers trained him in the art of death. Killing became his business and these days business was booming.
Jeremy adjusted his position against the rock and ran the numbers in his head. He earned one hundredth of one percent off each hit, but the combined net worth of the first twelve people on his list totaled fifty-three billion. The Bradfords added an additional eighteen, meaning Jeremy would clear over seven million, tax-free. Maybe if his family heard that they wouldn’t be so quick to judge.
He needed to focus. The string of recent deaths had put the wealthy on alert. Some went about their lives hoping it was just a coincidence. Others hid. Most, though, hired security details like this one. But Jeremy knew that it was all false hope, no one was ever truly safe.
He checked his watch. If intel could be trusted, Jeremy only had to wait another five minutes. Every Saturday at that time, Kyle Bradford opened the living quarter’s door, walked his wife down the short-walled path, kissed her goodbye, and watched her drive off to pick up their son. When Deborah crossed the front gate, Kyle would head into the mountain and begin work. Only today would be different. There would be no goodbye kiss.
Deborah’s silver Hummer and Kyle’s black Jeep were parked a dozen yards from the building’s door, a mere seventy-three yards from Jeremy’s position, no wind to deter his shot. He’d take out Deborah and then Kyle before she hit the ground.
Jeremy pulled his eye away from the scope and stared at the picture of his sister taped to the stock. Photos were forbidden on missions, but Jenny went with him everywhere. She started him down this path and it was to her he repented before every hit.
After a few silent words, Jeremy set his sights on the blue building. He ran the plan in his head. Two rapid shots, possibly three, empty the ten-round magazine on the closest guards, then retreat up the mountain. He’d be back at his car within five minutes, gone in fifteen.
Movement at the gate. A flashing red light at the top of the booth. A car approached on the lone road that sliced through the desert. A black bottom, red top town car, silver-tinted windows. Official car of the Church of the American Way.
Jeremy threw protocol out the window and clicked on his earpiece. He should’ve been alerted.
The car stopped at the gate and a guard approached the window.
In the quietest whisper Jeremy said, “We got company.”
“It’s just support.” Captain Hayden sounded pissed. “Now get off the channel.”
Jeremy didn’t typically work with others, especially the Way. “Negative. Shake them.”
“Do as you’re told,” Hayden said.
The earpiece went silent and the front gate rolled to the left. The town car drove around the blue building. It parked. Jeremy could only see one side. The passenger door opened and a young man in a silver suit stepped out. He combed his slick black hair, looked right at Jeremy’s location and gave a little nod.
Jeremy ignored the goose bumps and the little voice telling him to fall back to the car and never look back. He told himself that having some help only increased his odds.
Silver suit stayed where he was. He spoke with the driver. A few seconds later, the building’s front door opened. Jeremy laid his finger against the trigger guard and steadied his breath. With a twist of the scope, Kyle Bradford’s profile filled the sight, the crosshairs rising and falling from the top of his thick eyebrow to the bottom of his ear. Jeremy zoomed out and watched as Deborah met the morning, the sun blasting off her long blond hair.
The Bradfords headed down the walkway. Jeremy hoped they’d say goodbye in front of their vehicles. Otherwise he’d have to deal with the waist-high wall. If he missed, the target could drop and hide.
The Bradfords continued down the path. Jeremy zoomed in on Deborah and relaxed his breathing even more. He cut the target area to the quarter-sized spot around her temple.
Deborah stopped and hugged Kyle. Jeremy’s finger inched off the trigger guard and slipped inside it. The groove of his knuckle settled against the metal. As he was about to take the shot, Deborah bent down like she dropped something, ruined Jeremy’s sight picture.
When she stood, the back of Deborah’s head filled the sight. Jeremy held his breath and applied more pressure on the trigger. Deborah turned slightly, holding their two-year-old son in her arms. Jeremy jerked the rifle to the right just as the shot fired.
The boom echoed through the mountains and the bullet punctured the side of the Hummer. Kyle grabbed hold of Deborah and rushed her and the child toward his Jeep as the facility’s alarm blared.
Kyle threw open the Jeep’s front door and Jeremy squeezed off another round. The bullet struck Kyle in his side and knocked him to the ground. Kyle got to his knees and waved Deborah away. She disappeared behind the wall with the boy.
Jeremy waited to finish Kyle. He hoped the man’s suffering would draw out his wife. Kyle started to pull himself into the vehicle, which forced Jeremy to take the shot. The fifty-caliber round splattered Kyle’s head against the inside of the door.
Bullets peppered the mountainside as the guards blindly fired in Jeremy’s general direction. He had to kill both Kyle and Deborah for the mission to succeed, but she was behind cover and if he took another shot, the guards would pinpoint his location. Some of the bullets had already come close.
The guards stationed around the silos were closing the distance. So were the ones walking the perimeter. The ones at the gate kept their posts, guns aimed at the mountainside. The tall guy loaded a rocket launcher.
Jeremy couldn’t rely on the Way to finish the job and it was too late to retreat. He had one option and it wasn’t good.
His first shot split the brow of the guard with the rocket launcher. His second knocked down the one running for the fallen weapon. The third and fourth shots stopped two guards rushing toward the base of the mountain. The fifth missed the guy firing from the side of the living quarters, and Jeremy fell behind the rock as the gunfire found him. Dirt and chips of rocks filled the air. There were at least ten guards left, no sign of the Way, and a loaded rocket launcher. Time to move.
Jeremy freed a smoke grenade and rolled it down the hill. The heavy white clouds rose and Jeremy flipped down the face shield of the helmet hidden under his cloak as he ripped Jenny’s picture from the rifle. He leapt to his feet and took off running.
A round hit Jeremy’s chest, bounced off his body armor and staggered him. Before the smoke cleared, Jeremy pulled the M-14 slung across his back and dropped down behind a cluster of rocks fifteen yards from his original spot. They’d know he was in the vicinity.
The smoke was gone. The shooting stopped. Looking through a crack between two boulders, Jeremy could see Deborah crouched behind the wall, her blue shirt barely visible. There were two guards kneeling beside her with their guns aimed at the last place Jeremy had been. Another guard was positioned by the Hummer waving her toward him.
Jeremy eased the barrel of the M-14 into the crack and tracked the guard who had retrieved the rocket launcher. Killing Deborah was a top priority. Living to see payment, even higher.
The man fidgeted with the weapon, couldn’t quite balance it on his shoulder. Jeremy’s round punched through his forehead, dropping him and the launcher onto the ground.
All guns turned toward Jeremy’s location and opened fire. He got off two more lethal shots before pulling back. Jeremy blocked out the deafening roar of guns and the piercing alarm and visualized where each of the remaining guards were positioned. The biggest threats were the ones at the fence line near the rocket launcher and the three by Deborah.
Jeremy took a grenade from beneath his cloak and pulled the pin. He couldn’t throw it anywhere near the child and there was no way he could reach the fence line, so he lobbed it at the corner of the living quarters.
The grenade bounced to a stop by the feet of the firing guard, gave the guy just enough time to stare down before it exploded, shredding his body and blowing a hole through the wall.
Jeremy scrambled to the left, jumped over rocks, his feet sliding on the slippery terrain as bullets whizzed around him. A rocket slammed into the boulder he’d been behind and blasted him off his feet.
Jeremy flew through the air, his right cheek smashing into a rock, shattering with a loud crunch. If he stayed still, he’d be dead. He hugged his weapon to his chest and threw himself on his side, rolling down the mountain, his armor only providing minimal protection against the jagged rocks.
He tumbled down the last twenty yards, braced himself for the impact, and barely felt the sharp sting of a bullet rip through his calf. Several other bullets bounced off his armor as he banged down the hillside. His left forearm snapped when he slammed into the ground.
Staying down meant death. Jeremy got to his feet and brought up the M-14 one-handed, his aim unsteady. He pivoted toward the walkway and saw Deborah behind the wheel of her vehicle. Three guards surrounded her, fired at Jeremy and yelled at her to drive.
Headshot, headshot, short blast to one guy’s chest. All three dead just as Jeremy got floored by a blow that felt like a baseball bat.
He rolled onto his back and looked toward the mountain. The massive foot-thick gate was stuck halfway open. A guard racked another slug into his twelve-gauge. Jeremy took aim, put the guard down then turned toward the squeal of tires.
Rubber spun on the warm concrete. The Hummer’s rear snaked back and forth. Jeremy hobbled toward the jeep and stepped over Kyle as the Way car screeched around the corner. The silver suit on foot high-tailed it toward the silos with his pistol dangling at his side.
The keys waited in the ignition. Jeremy started the bullet-riddled jeep and floored the gas as the Way car flew past the Hummer and disappeared into the mountain.
The Hummer sped by the silver suit. The guy never even raised his gun. Instead, he faced Jeremy’s jeep and aimed.
Jeremy flicked on his earpiece. “Support hostile. Repeat, support is hostile.”
Jeremy swerved. A bullet smashed through the windshield, knocking out his rearview.
A thunderous explosion ripped through the day. The jeep shook as a blast of heat shot out from the mountain. The man in the silver suit kept his feet and tossed something small beside the silos. He smiled big. No fear of death, only expectation in his eyes.
Jeremy spun the wheel, but it was too late. Everything was red, the air an oven of fire. All four wheels were off the ground and Jeremy’s world went black as he flew end over end.
The pain was so intense he had to be alive. Jeremy slid the vial from his collar, injected it into the unroasted side of his neck. The effect was immediate, although temporary.
Jeremy cracked the helmet free from his skull. He felt for the earpiece and instead found a lump for an ear. His right eye was stuck shut, but his left eye could open.
A fiery inferno rushed from the mouth of the mountain and merged with the silos. It seemed to Jeremy like a tongue lashing back and forth, its brilliant blue tip scorching the sky black with dark smoke.
Jeremy pushed onto his side and found himself on the concrete facing the gate. The jeep was a burning wreck, a permanent part of the guard house. Everyone was dead or gone. Except Deborah. Instead of racing off to Indian Springs or Las Vegas, she sat in her idling Hummer down the road. Then it moved, creeping toward him.
Jeremy took a grenade and held it close to his chest. The Bradfords had been smart enough to will all their fortune to a charity if something happened to their son. If Jeremy blew up both Deborah and Cody, the US government got nothing. If he could somehow get her by herself, his employers would get fifty percent instead of only ten once the new tax law took effect.
The Hummer continued to inch forward. Jeremy set the grenade by his side and reached for the forty-five in his waistband. His fingers wrapped around the handle when Deborah stopped fifteen yards away. The driver’s door opened, and Jeremy slipped the gun from its holster and held his breath. He hoped he looked as dead as he felt.
Deborah stepped out of the Hummer. The opened door blocked most of her body. Her blood-speckled face peered through the window. No longer confident of his aim, Jeremy hoped she’d come a little closer.
She stayed there for several seconds then ducked into the idling vehicle. Was she going to run him over? That’s what Jeremy would have done. A moment later, she came back out holding something in her hands. Even through one narrowed eye, Jeremy could see it wasn’t a gun.
A flash blinded him. He raised the forty-five and fired one, two, three times, but she dove into the Hummer. Jeremy continued to fire as the SUV flew in reverse.
Jeremy got to his feet and limped out the front gate. He stopped where Deborah had been only a moment before. A small puddle of blood pooled on the concrete. With any luck he had hit something vital and she’d bleed out before she made it to town.
Either way, Jeremy was screwed. The Way had let Deborah escape and tried to kill him. He’d been set up and cut off. He should have known better than to trust the Controllers.
It wouldn’t be long before jet fighters out of Nellis Air Force base responded to the explosions. The charred vehicles inside the facility were no longer an option, so Jeremy headed for the top of the mountain to retrieve the rental car with the documents tying this to the Muslims. Only Jeremy wouldn’t be driving to the pickup location as originally planned.
He was on his own.
Nine Months Later
December 18, 2042
Maria Salazar’s six hours were up and, although it would do little to ease her suffering, she wanted her Motrin. Last night, just before the midnight cutoff, she’d delivered naturally, refusing the epidural and narcotic offers she couldn’t afford.
Ignoring the burning from her sutured tear, Maria steadied her cot and rolled onto her side, facing the doorway and the other women filling the small room. Just past the narrow aisle lay a gray-haired woman, her face wrinkled, her breasts sagging onto her cot. Next to the old woman was a young girl who was probably not yet in junior high. At first glance, Maria thought the girl was the granddaughter but they looked nothing alike. The girl’s belly was still swollen, and the hospital would never allow a cot to go unused, even for a moment. The last two women were both turned toward the doorway, waiting for miraculous news to arrive or simply unwilling to face the rest of the room.
Maria wondered if any of the other women had planned to become pregnant. Maybe they’d been waiting because they couldn’t afford a child. Maybe they hadn’t been sure they wanted to bring a child into this world. Had any of them seen their baby before the nurses whisked them off to the nursery? Or been told what sex their child was, if it was healthy, if it was even still alive? She wanted to ask them how they were dealing with all of this, if they felt hollow, like someone had stolen part of their soul. Maria didn’t need to say a word. The tears and muffled sobs said it all.
If she and Enrique hadn’t been so careful, they could’ve been pregnant years before. There was no denying it would’ve been difficult to provide for a child on their measly salaries, but it would’ve been better in so many ways. For one, she would’ve been by herself in this room, not having to smell the soiled sheets, unchanged dressings, and sour stench of fear. She would’ve bonded with her baby after the delivery. She would’ve arranged a payment plan with the hospital. They would’ve made it work and there wouldn’t have been a question of whether she would ever see her only child.
But they had waited and now here they were, 2042, the year of the baby. The year that man’s foolishness had finally caught up with him. The year every woman with a uterus became fertile with one act of terrorism, the explosion in the desert changing everything.
Maria’s gaze traveled from the door to the clock and back to the door. It was almost twelve-thirty. The nurse was running late.
A few minutes crawled by before a shadow crossed the doorway. It was Enrique. Black circles of sweat surrounded both armpits of his grease-stained jumpsuit.
Enrique treaded quietly across the room with his eyes on his boots. Maria could tell he’d been crying. Enrique never cried.
“Oh my God.” Maria clutched the gown to her chest. “What is it? Enrique, what is it?”
Enrique motioned for Maria to calm down as he knelt at the foot of her cot and stroked her calf.
Maria didn’t care if she upset the other women. Something was wrong. Not lowering her voice, she said, “Tell me. Tell me what’s wrong. Is it dead?”
After shushing her, Enrique cleared his throat. “Everything’s fine,” he said, an obvious lie. “I just stopped by the nursery.”
“The baby’s okay?” Without giving him time to answer, she asked, “What is it? Is it a girl?”
“Maybe it’s best not to know. That’s why they didn’t tell us.”
Maria grabbed him. “Tell me.”
“It’ll make things harder.”
“Damn it, Enrique, don’t talk like that. I’m taking my baby home. Now tell me what we had!”
“It was a girl.”
Maria’s heart melted. She’d known it was going to be a girl all along. “Vanessa.”
Enrique nodded then glanced at the clock.
“You’re not going to leave already?”
“What do you want me to do? It takes me ten minutes on the bike and if I’m late again, I’ll be fired.”
“We only have until midnight.” Maria struggled to remain calm. “How are we going to come up with the money?”
Enrique shook his head. “We can’t. There’s no way.”
“We have to.”
“It’s too much. Where can we get the money? We’re still three thousand short.”
“What about your boss? Can’t he give you an advance?”
“I already asked him, and even if he did, how would we ever make ends meet after?”
“I’ll keep driving,” Maria said.
“We already said this was your last year.”
“We need the money.”
“I’ll work doubles,” Enrique promised.
“On your salary you’d have to work four shifts a day.” Maria hadn’t meant it to sound mean. “There are three of us now.”
Enrique started to speak, hesitated, then said, “Maybe it’s better if it’s just you and me. Better for her and us.”
If he’d been closer, Maria would’ve slapped him. “Don’t ever say that.”
He stroked her leg a little harder. “You know I don’t want that. I want a child more than anything.” He fought back tears. “What can we do? Even if we could get the money, what kind of life could we give her?”
“A good one. We’d love her more than anyone else ever could.”
“All the love in the world won’t give her shelter if we can’t pay our rent. It won’t feed her if we can’t buy food. If we let the Church adopt her, she’d have a chance at a better life.”
Maria glanced a few cots away at a woman in fetal position, heaving, her face a frozen shriek.
“We are not giving up our daughter. And especially not to that cult.”
“The Way isn’t a cult. They’re helping the government make the world a better place.”
“You believe everything you see on TV?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.” Enrique held his head in his hand. “I don’t know what to think.”
“I’ll die before I let them take our little girl.”
“Calm down, Maria. You’re still emotional because your hormones are messed up from having a baby.”
“A baby I’ve never seen! A baby I carried for nearly nine months!”
“I’m sorry. I know how you feel.”
“You can never know how I feel.”
Enrique let go of her calf and stood. “Then where does that leave us?”
“What about the Family Support Specialists?”
“They’re nothing more than well-dressed loan sharks. Thirty percent interest with an extra ten percent fee tacked on. How could we ever pay that? You know what they’ll do if we don’t?”
“We’ll find a way.”
“I don’t even know if they’d approve us.”
“We have to try.”
Enrique looked at the clock. “Fine. I’ll go after work.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t get your hopes too high, Maria” He headed for the door. “It may not happen.”
After Enrique left, the old lady turned to Maria, her stale breath blowing into Maria’s face, making her nauseous. “Is this your first?”
Maria nodded and pushed herself into a sitting position. Carefully, she swung her legs off the cot and onto the cold floor. She pulled the slushy ice pack from her underwear and set it on her sheet, gingerly got to her feet and hobbled over to the wheelchair in the corner. She needed the Motrin, but wasn’t about to wait in this depressing room for it.
Maria eased into the wheelchair and rolled out of the room. Both sides of the hallway were lined with expectant mothers lying on cots. As she wheeled down the corridor, several of the women asked her questions. Maria pretended not to hear and headed for the lobby.
Vanessa’s delivery was a few minutes before midnight, and Maria was one of the last natural birth mothers. All of the unfortunate women on either side of the hall would be having c-sections, the government’s answer to the overwhelming surplus of pregnant mothers. Some of them might not even mind, but a c-section had been out of the question for Maria. Not only was it more expensive, it would’ve taken her longer to recover an
KND Freebies: Rave-reviewed novel THE ALMOND TREE is featured in today’s Free Kindle Nation Shorts excerpt
4.7 stars – 148 reviews!
“The Almond Tree is an epic novel, a drama of the proportions of The Kite Runner, but set in Palestine. A beauty…I predict it will become one of the biggest best sellers of the decade.”
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Torn from today’s headlines and written by a Jewish-American woman in the voice of a Palestinian Muslim male, this moving novel’s universal message of resilience, hope and forgiveness is having a profound impact on
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The Almond Tree
by Michelle Cohen Corasanti
Gifted with a mind that continues to impress the elders in his village, Ichmad Hamid struggles with the knowledge that he can do nothing to save his friends and family. Living on occupied land, his entire village operates in constant fear of losing their homes, jobs, and belongings. But more importantly, they fear losing each other.
On Ichmad’s twelfth birthday, that fear becomes reality.
With his father imprisoned, his family’s home and possessions confiscated, and his siblings quickly succumbing to hatred in the face of conflict, Ichmad begins an inspiring journey using his intellect to save his poor and dying family. In doing so he reclaims a love for others that was lost through a childhood rife with violence, and discovers a new hope for the future.
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an excerpt from
The Almond Tree
by Michelle Cohen Corasanti
PART ONE
1955
Chapter 1
Mama always said Amal was mischievous. It was a joke we shared as a family – that my sister, just a few years old and shaky on her pudgy legs, had more energy for life than me and my younger brother Abbas combined. So when I went to check on her and she wasn’t in her crib, I felt a fear in my heart that gripped me and would not let go.
It was summer and the whole house breathed slowly from the heat. I stood alone in her room, hoping the quiet would tell me where she’d stumbled off to. A white curtain caught a breeze. The window was open – wide open. I rushed to the ledge, praying that when I looked over she wouldn’t be there, she wouldn’t be hurt. I was afraid to look, but I did anyway because not knowing was worse. Please God, please God, please God…
There was nothing below but Mama’s garden: colourful flowers moving in that same wind.
Downstairs, the air was filled with delicious smells, the big table laden with yummy foods. Baba and I loved sweets, so Mama was making a whole lot of them for our holiday party tonight.
‘Where’s Amal?’ I stuck a date cookie in each of my pockets when her back was turned. One for me and the other for Abbas.
‘Napping.’ Mama poured the syrup onto the baklava.
‘No, Mama, she’s not in her crib.’
‘Then where is she?’ Mama put the hot pan in the sink and cooled it with water that turned to steam.
‘Maybe she’s hiding?’
Mama’s black robes brushed across me as she rushed to the stairs. I followed closely, keeping quiet, ready to earn the treats in my pocket by finding her first.
‘I need help.’ Abbas stood at the top of the stairs with his shirt unbuttoned.
I gave him a dirty look. I had to make him understand that I was helping Mama with a serious problem.
Abbas and I followed Mama into her and Baba’s room. Amal wasn’t under their big bed. I pulled open the curtain that covered the place where they kept their clothes, expecting to find Amal crouching with a big smile, but she wasn’t there. I could tell Mama was getting really scared. Her dark eyes flashed in a way that made me scared too.
‘Don’t worry Mama,’ Abbas said. ‘Ichmad and I will help you find her.’
Mama put her fingers to her lips to tell Abbas and me not to speak as we crossed the hall to our younger brothers’ room. They were still sleeping, so she went in on tiptoes and motioned for us to stay outside. She knew how to be quieter than Abbas and me. But Amal was not there.
Abbas looked at me with scared eyes and I patted him on the back.
Downstairs, Mama called to Amal, over and over. She ransacked the living and dining rooms, ruining all the work she had put in for the holiday dinner with Uncle Kamal’s family.
When Mama ran to the sunroom, Abbas and I followed. The door to the courtyard was open. Mama gasped.
From the big window we spotted Amal running down the meadow towards the field in her nightgown.
Mama was in the courtyard in seconds. She cut right through her garden, crushing her roses, the thorns tearing at her robe. Abbas and I were right behind her.
‘Amal!’ Mama screamed. ‘Stop!’ My sides hurt from running, but I kept going. Mama stopped so fast at ‘the sign’ that Abbas and I ran right into her. Amal was in the field. I couldn’t breathe.
‘Stop!’ Mama screamed. ‘Don’t move!’
Amal was chasing a big red butterfly, her black curly hair bouncing. She turned and looked at us. ‘I get it,’ she chuckled, pointing at the butterfly.
‘No, Amal!’ Mama used her strictest voice. ‘Don’t move.’
Amal stood completely still and Mama blew air out of her mouth.
Abbas dropped to his knees, relieved. We were never, ever, supposed to go past the sign. That was the devil’s field.
The pretty butterfly landed about four metres in front of Amal.
‘No!’ Mama screamed.
Abbas and I looked up.
Amal made mischievous eyes at Mama and then ran towards the butterfly.
The next part was like slow motion. Like someone threw her up in the air. Smoke and fire were under her and the smile flew away. The sound hit us – really hit us – and knocked us back. And when I looked to where she was, she was gone. Just gone. I couldn’t hear anything.
And then the screams came. It was Mama’s voice, then Baba’s from somewhere far behind us. Then I realised that Amal wasn’t gone. I could see something. I could see her arm. It was her arm, but her body wasn’t attached to it anymore. I wiped my eyes. Amal was torn up like her doll after our watchdog ripped it apart. I opened my mouth and screamed so loud I felt like I was going to split in two.
Baba and Uncle Kamal ran up, panting, to the sign. Mama didn’t look at them, but when they got there she began to whimper, ‘My baby, my baby …’
Then Baba saw Amal, out there past the sign – the sign that said Closed Area. He lunged towards her, tears flooding down his face. But Uncle Kamal grabbed him hard with both hands. ‘No …’ He held on.
Baba tried to shake him off, but Uncle Kamal hung on. Fighting, Baba turned on his brother, screaming, ‘I can’t leave her!’
‘It’s too late.’ Uncle Kamal’s voice was strong.
I told Baba, ‘I know where they buried the mines.’
He didn’t look at me, but he said, ‘Direct me in, Ichmad.’
‘You’re going to put your life in the hands of a child?’ Uncle Kamal’s face looked like he was biting into a lemon.
‘He’s no ordinary seven-year-old,’ Baba said.
I took a step towards the men, leaving Abbas with Mama. They were both crying. ‘They planted them with their hands and I made a map.’
‘Go get it,’ Baba said, followed by something else, but I couldn’t understand him because he turned away towards the devil’s field – and Amal.
So I ran as fast as I could, grabbed the map from its hiding place on the veranda, swung around for Baba’s walking stick, and ran back to my family. Mama always said she didn’t want me to run when I was holding Baba’s stick because I could get hurt, but this was an emergency.
Baba took the stick and tapped the ground while I tried to get the wind back in me.
‘Go straight from the sign,’ I said. My tears blinded me, the salt stinging, but I wouldn’t look away.
Baba tapped the ground in front of him before every single step and when he was about three metres out, he stopped. Amal’s head was approximately a metre in front of him. Her curly hair was gone. White stuff stuck out in places where the skin was burned off. His arms weren’t long enough to reach it, so he crouched and tried again. Mama gasped. I wished he’d use the stick, but I was afraid to say it to him, in case he didn’t want to treat Amal that way.
‘Come back,’ Uncle Kamal pleaded. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘The children,’ Mama cried out. Baba almost fell over, but caught himself. ‘They’re alone in the house.’
‘I’ll go stay with them.’ Uncle Kamal turned away and I was glad because he was making things even worse.
‘Don’t bring them here!’ Baba called to him. ‘They can’t see Amal like this. And don’t let Nadia come down here either.’
‘Nadia!’ Mama sounded like she had just heard the name of her eldest daughter for the first time. ‘Nadia is at your house, Kamal, with your children.’
Uncle Kamal nodded and continued on.
Mama was on the ground next to Abbas. Tears streamed down her face. Like someone cursed and frozen in place, Abbas stared at what was left of Amal.
‘Which way now, Ichmad?’ Baba asked.
According to my map, there was a mine approximately two metres away from Amal’s head. The sun was hot, but I felt cold. Please God, let my map be accurate. What I knew for sure was that there was no pattern because I always looked for patterns and these were random, so no one could figure them out without a map.
‘Walk a metre to the left,’ I said, ‘and reach again.’ Without even knowing it, I had been holding my breath. When Baba lifted Amal’s head the air spilled out of me. He took off his kaffiyah and wrapped it around her little head, which was pretty much destroyed.
Baba reached for her arm, but it was too far away. It was hard to tell if her hand was still attached.
According to my map, there was another landmine between him and her arm, and it was up to me to direct him around it. He did exactly what I told him because he trusted me. I got him close and he gently grabbed her arm-bone and wrapped it in his kaffiyah. All that was left was her middle, and it was the furthest away.
‘Don’t step forward. There’s a mine. Step to your left.’
Baba cuddled Amal close to his chest. Before he stepped, he tapped the ground. I guided him the whole way; it was at least twelve metres. Afterwards, I had to guide him back.
‘From the sign, straight out, there aren’t any mines,’ I said. ‘But there’re two in between you and that straight line.’
I guided him forward, then sideways. Sweat dripped down my face, and when I wiped it with my hand, there was blood. I knew it was Amal’s blood. I wiped it again and again, but it wouldn’t come off.
Strands of Baba’s black hair lifted off his face in a gust. His white kaffiyah, no longer covering it, was soaked with blood. Red blossomed down his white robe. He held Amal in his arms the way he did when she fell asleep on his lap and he carried her upstairs. Baba looked like an angel from a story bringing Amal back from the field. His broad shoulders were heaving, his eyelashes wet.
Mama was still on the ground, crying. Abbas held her, but had no more tears. He was like a little man, watching over her. ‘Baba will put her back together,’ he assured Mama. ‘He can fix anything.’
‘Baba will take care of her.’ I put my hand on Abbas’ shoulder.
Baba knelt next to Mama on the ground with his shoulders by his ears and rocked Amal gently. Mama leaned into him.
‘Don’t be scared,’ Baba told Amal. ‘God will protect you.’ We remained like that, comforting Amal, for a long time.
‘Curfew begins in five minutes,’ a soldier announced through his megaphone from his military Jeep. ‘Anyone found outside will be arrested or shot.’
Baba said it was too late to get a permit to bury Amal, so we brought her back home.
Chapter 2
Abbas and I heard the cries before Baba. He was focused on inspecting our oranges. He was like that. His family had owned the groves for generations and he said it was in his blood.
‘Baba.’ I tugged on his robe and broke his trance. He dropped the oranges in his arms and ran towards the cries. Abbas and I followed closely.
‘Abu Ichmad!’ Mama’s screams echoed off the trees. When I was born, they had changed their names to Abu Ichmad and Um Ichmad so as to include my name: that of their first son. It was the tradition of our people. Mama ran towards us with our baby sister Sara in her arms. ‘Come home!’ Mama gasped for air. ‘They’re at the house.’
I got really scared. For the last two years, when they thought Abbas and I were sleeping, my parents talked about them coming to take our land. The first time I heard them was the night Amal died. They fought because Mama wanted to bury Amal on our land so she could stay close to us and not be afraid, but Baba said no, that they’d come and take our land and then we’d either have to dig her up or leave her with them.
Baba took baby Sara from Mama’s arms and we ran back to our house.
More than a dozen soldiers were fencing our land and home with barbed wire. My sister Nadia was kneeling under our olive tree holding my middle brothers Fadi and Hani while they cried. She was younger than me and Abbas, but older than the others. Mama always said she’d make a good mother because she was very nurturing.
‘Can I help you?’ Baba asked a soldier, between gulps of air.
‘Mahmud Hamid?’
‘That’s me,’ Baba said.
The soldier handed Baba a document.
Baba’s face went white like milk. He started to shake his head. Soldiers with rifles, steel helmets, green military fatigues and heavy black boots surrounded him.
Mama pulled Abbas and me close, and I felt her heart beat through her robe.
‘You have thirty minutes to pack your possessions,’ the pimply-faced soldier said.
‘Please,’ Baba said. ‘This is our home.’
‘You heard me,’ Pimply-face said. ‘Now!’
‘Stay here with the little ones,’ Baba told Mama. She burst into tears.
‘Keep it down,’ Pimply-face said.
Abbas and I helped Baba carry out all one hundred and four of the portraits he had drawn over the last fifteen years; his art books of the great masters: Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Rembrandt; the money he kept in his pillow case; the oud his father made him; the silver tea set Mama’s parents gave her; our dishes, cutlery, pots and pans; clothing and Mama’s wedding dress.
‘Time’s up,’ the soldier said. ‘We’re relocating you.’
‘An adventure.’ Baba’s eyes were wet and shiny as he put his arm around Mama, who was still sobbing.
We loaded the wagon with our possessions. The soldiers opened a hole in the barbed-wire fence so we could get out, and Baba led the horse as we followed the soldiers up the hill. Villagers disappeared as we passed them. I looked back; they had completely fenced in our house and orange groves with barbed wire, and I could see them beyond at Uncle Kamal’s, doing the same. They hammered in a sign: Keep Out! Closed Area. It was the same wording that was in front of the field of landmines where my little sister Amal had died.
I kept my arm around Abbas the whole time because he was crying hard, like Mama. I wept too. Baba didn’t deserve that. He was a good person, worth ten of them. More: a hundred; a thousand. All of them.
They led us up the hill through thickets that cut into my legs until we finally arrived at a mud-brick hut that was smaller than our chicken coop. The garden in front was overrun with weeds, and that must have made Mama feel bad because she hated weeds. The shutters were dusty and closed. The soldier cut the lock with bolt cutters and pushed the tin door open. There was only one room, with a dirt floor. We unloaded our belongings and the soldiers left with our horse and cart.
Inside the house there were rush mats piled up in the corner. Goat skins were folded on top of them. There was a kettle in the hearth, dishes in the cabinet, clothes in the closet. Everything was covered in a thick coat of dust.
On the wall was a portrait of a husband and wife and their six children, smiling. They were in our courtyard in front of Mama’s garden.
‘You drew them,’ I said to Baba.
‘That was Abu Ali and his family,’ he said.
‘Where are they now?’
‘With my mother and brothers and Mama’s family,’ he said. ‘God willing, one day they’ll come back, but, until then, we’ll have to pack their belongings in our crate.’
‘Who’s this?’ I pointed to the portrait of a boy my age with a thick red scar across his forehead.
‘That’s Ali,’ Baba said. ‘He loved horses. The first time he rode one, the horse bucked and Ali fell to the ground. He was unconscious for days, but when he woke, he went right back on that horse.’
Baba, Abbas and I organised our birthday portraits on the back wall in a bar graph. Across the top, Baba wrote the years, starting with 1948 until the present year, 1957. Mine was the only portrait in 1948. We continued with every year, adding the new children as they came. I was at the top followed by Abbas in 1949, Nadia in 1950, Fadi in 1951, Hani in 1953, Amal in 1954 and Sara in 1955. But there were only two portraits of Amal.
On the side walls, Baba, Abbas and I arranged the portraits of our family members who we knew were dead: Baba’s father and grandparents. Next to those, we hung up our family in exile: Baba’s mother embracing her ten children in front of the magnificent garden that Mama had built at Baba’s family’s house before they were married, when her parents were migrant workers in Baba’s family’s groves. When Baba came home from art school in Nazareth and saw Mama tending her garden, he had decided to marry her. Baba hung the portraits of himself and his brothers – watching their oranges loaded onto a ship at the port of Haifa, eating at a restaurant in Acre, in the market in Jerusalem, tasting the oranges of Jaffa, vacationing at a coastal resort in Gaza.
The front wall we reserved for immediate family. Baba had drawn many self-portraits while he was in art school in Nazareth. Plus there was: us having a picnic in our orange grove, my first day of school, Abbas and me at the village square looking into the box holes of the moving picture show while Abu Hussein turned the handle, and Mama in her garden – that one Baba had painted with water colours, unlike the others, which he had drawn with charcoal.
‘Where are our bedrooms?’ Abbas scanned the room.
‘We’re lucky to get a home with such a beautiful view,’ Baba said. ‘Ichmad, take him outside to see.’ Baba handed me the telescope I’d made from two magnifying glasses and a cardboard tube. It was the same one I’d used to watch the soldiers plant the landmines in the devil’s field. Behind the house, Abbas and I climbed a beautiful almond tree that overlooked the village.
Through my telescope, we took turns watching the new people, dressed in sleeveless shirts and shorts, already picking oranges from our trees. From our old bedroom window, Abbas and I had watched their land expand as they swallowed up our village. They brought in strange trees and planted them in the swamp. Right before our eyes, the trees grew fat from drinking the fetid juices. The swamp disappeared and in its place rich black topsoil appeared.
I saw their swimming pool. I moved my telescope to the left and could see across the Jordanian border. Thousands of tents with the letters UN littered the otherwise empty desert. I handed the telescope to Abbas so he could see too. One day I hoped to get a stronger lens so that I could see the refugees’ faces. But I’d have to wait. For the past nine years, Baba had been unable to sell his oranges outside the village, so our market shrank from the entire Middle East and Europe to 5,024 now-poor villagers. We were once very rich, but not anymore. Baba would have to find a job, and those were hard to come by. I wondered if that would make him worry.
***
In the two years we had lived in our new house with the almond tree, Abbas and I had spent many hours in the tree watching the moshav. There we’d seen things we’d never seen before. Boys and girls, older and younger than me, held hands and formed circles and danced and sang together, their arms and legs naked. They had electricity and green lawns, and yards with swing sets and slides. And they had a swimming pool that boys and girls and men and women of all ages swam in, wearing what looked like their underwear.
Villagers complained because the new people diverted the water from our village by digging deeper wells. We weren’t allowed to dig deeper wells like them. We were angry that while we had barely enough water to drink, the new people were swimming in it. But their swimming pool fascinated me. From our almond tree, I would watch the diver on the board and think how he had potential energy while he was on the platform and how that energy was converted to kinetic energy during the dive. I knew that the heat and wave energy of the swimming pool couldn’t throw the diver back onto the board, and I tried to think what physical laws prevented it. The waves intrigued me in the same way that the children splashing among them fascinated Abbas.
I knew from a young age that I wasn’t like the other boys in my village. Abbas was very social and had many friends. When they gathered at our house, they would speak of their hero Jamal Abdul Nasser, the President of Egypt, who had stood up to Israel in the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis and was championing Arab nationalism and the Palestinian cause. I idolised Albert Einstein.
As the Israelis controlled our curriculum, they always supplied us with ample books on the accomplishments of famous Jews. I read every book I could find on Einstein and after I fully understood the brilliance of his equation, E=mc2, I was amazed at how it came to him. I wondered if he really did see a man falling from a building or if he had just imagined it while sitting in the patent office where he worked.
***
Today was the day I was going to measure how tall the almond tree was. The day before, I had planted a stick in the ground and cut it off at my eye level. Lying on the ground with my feet against the standing stick, I could see the treetop over the end of it. The stick and I made a right-angled triangle. I was the base, the stick was the perpendicular and the line of sight was the hypotenuse of the triangle. Before I could calculate the measurements, I heard footsteps.
‘Son,’ Baba called. ‘Are you alright?’
I got up. Baba must be home from his job building houses for the Jewish settlers. None of the other fathers worked in construction, partly because they refused to build houses for the Jews on razed Palestinian villages and partly because of the Israelis’ policy of ‘Hebrew Labour’: Jews only hired Jews. Many of the older boys at school said bad things about Baba working for the Jews.
‘Join me in the courtyard. I heard a few good jokes at work today,’ Baba said, before turning and walking back towards the front of the house.
I climbed back up the almond tree and looked at the barren land between our village and the moshav. Only five years earlier, it had been filled with olive trees. Now it was filled with landmines. Landmines like the one that killed my baby sister, Amal.
‘Ichmad, come down,’ Baba called.
I climbed down the branches.
He pulled a sugar doughnut out of the crumpled brown paper bag in his hand. ‘Gadi from work gave it to me.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve saved it all day for you.’ Red gel oozed from the side.
I squinted at it. ‘Is that poison leaking out?’
‘Why, because he’s Jewish? Gadi’s my friend. There are all kinds of Israelis.’
My stomach contracted. ‘Everyone says the Israelis want to see us dead.’
‘When I sprained my ankle at work, it was Gadi who drove me home. He lost a half-day’s pay to help me.’ He extended the doughnut towards my mouth. ‘His wife made it.’
I crossed my arms. ‘No thanks.’
Baba shrugged and took a bite. His eyes closed. He chewed slowly. Then he licked the particles of sugar that had gathered on his upper lip. Opening one eye just a little, he glanced down at me. Then he took another bite, savouring it in the same way.
My stomach growled and he laughed. Once again he offered it to me, saying, ‘One cannot live on anger, my son.’
I opened my mouth and allowed him to feed it to me. It was delicious. An image of Amal rose, unbidden, in my mind, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with guilt at the flavour in my mouth. But…I kept eating.
Chapter 3
A brass tray of coloured tea glasses scattered the sunlight that streamed through the open window like a prism. Blues, golds, greens and reds bounced onto a group of old men in battered cloaks and white kaffiyahs secured by black rope. The men of the Abu Ibrahim clan sat cross-legged on floor pillows placed carefully around the low table now holding their steaming drinks. They had once owned all the olive groves in our village. Every Saturday they met here, only occasionally exchanging a word or greeting across the crowded room. They came to listen to the ‘Star of the East’, Um Kalthoum, on the tea house’s radio.
Abbas and I waited all week to hear her sing. Um Kalthoum was known for her contralto vocal range, her ability to produce approximately 14,000 vibrations per second with her vocal chords, her ability to sing every single Arabic scale, and the high importance she placed on interpreting the underlying meaning of her songs. Many of her songs lasted hours. Because of her great talent, men flocked to the only radio in the village to hear her.
Teacher Mohammad wiped the sweat that trickled down his nose and dangled there, about to drop onto the playing board. We both knew there was no way he could win, but he never quit and I admired that trait in him. The cluster of men gathered around the backgammon board teased, ‘Well, Teacher Mohammad, it appears that your student has beaten you again!’ ‘Concede already! Give someone else a chance to take on the village champion.’
‘A man never quits until it is over.’ Teacher Mohammad bore a chequer off.
I rolled a 6-6 and lifted my last chequer from the board. From the corner of my eye I saw Abbas watching me.
A smile blew across Baba’s face and he quickly took a sip of his mint tea – he never liked to gloat. Abbas didn’t care. He didn’t try to conceal his smile.
Teacher Mohammad extended a sweaty hand to me. ‘I knew I was in trouble when you started off with that 5-6.’ His handshake was firm. After my initial high roll, I’d used the running strategy to beat him.
‘My father taught me everything I know.’ I looked at Baba.
‘The teacher is important, but it’s the speed at which your brain fires that makes you the champion at only eleven years of age.’ Teacher Mohammad smiled.
‘Almost twelve!’ I said. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘Give him five minutes,’ Baba said to the men who’d gathered around us in the hope of playing me. ‘He hasn’t even had his tea yet.’
Baba’s words warmed my insides. I loved how proud he was of me.
‘Great game, Ichmad.’ Abbas patted me on the shoulder.
Men reclined on floor cushions, clustered around low trestle tables set up in lines down the length of the room on top of overlapping carpets. Um Kalthoum’s voice overpowered the medley of voices from the men.
The attendant emerged from the back room with a pipe in each hand – long, coloured stems hanging over his arms, charcoal glowing on the tobacco – and set them in front of the remaining men of the Abu Ibrahim group. They thickened the air with sweet-smelling smoke, which mixed with the smoke from the oil lamps hanging from ceiling rafters. One of them told a story about how he had bent down and ripped his trousers open. Abbas and I laughed with them.
The Mukhtar entered, raising his arms at the door as if to embrace the entire tea house at once. Even though the military government wouldn’t recognise the Mukhtar as our elected leader, he was, and men with disputes came to him. Every day he held court in the tea house. The Mukhtar was making his way to his spot in the back, but stopped to clap Baba on the back. ‘May God bring peace upon you and your sons.’ He bowed before us and shook Baba’s hand.
‘May God bring peace upon you as well,’ Baba said. ‘Have you heard that Ichmad is being promoted by three grades in the coming year?’
The Mukhtar smiled. ‘He will bring great pride to our people one day.’
As men entered, they came over to Baba to greet him and introduce themselves to Abbas and me. When I first started coming with Baba, I felt strange because this was the domain of adult men who looked at me strangely. Only a few had wanted to play me at backgammon; but after I proved myself, I became a welcome and honoured guest. I earned my position. Now I was sort of a legend, the youngest backgammon champion in the history of my village.
When Abbas heard of my victories, he began to accompany us. He wanted to learn to play like me. While I played, he spent much of his time socialising with the men. Everyone always liked Abbas; even from an early age he had charisma.
On my right was a group of men in their twenties, dressed in Western clothes: trousers with zippers and button-down shirts. They read newspapers, smoked cigarettes and drank Arabic coffee. Many of them were still single. Abbas and I would be with them one day.
One of them pushed his glasses up with his index finger. ‘How am I supposed to get into medical school here?’ he said.
‘You’ll figure out something,’ the sandal-maker’s son said.
‘Easy for you to say,’ the bespectacled man said. ‘You have a trade to go into.’
‘At least you’re not the third son. I can’t even marry,’ another said. ‘My father has no land to give me anymore. Where would my wife and I live? Both my brothers and their families already live with my parents and me in our one-room house. Now, Jerusalem…’
The radio’s battery went flat right in the middle of Um Kalthoum’s song, Whom Should I Go To? Villagers gasped and voices rose. The owner scurried to the large radio console. He turned the knobs, but there was no sound.
‘Please, forgive me,’ he said. ‘The battery needs to be recharged. There’s nothing I can do.’
Men started to get up to leave.
‘Please, wait.’ The owner made his way over to Baba. ‘Would you mind playing a few songs?’
Baba bowed slightly. ‘It would be my pleasure.’
‘Gentlemen, please wait – Abu Ichmad has agreed to entertain us with his wonderful music.’
Men returned to their spots and Baba played his oud and sang the songs of Abdel Halim Hafez, Mohammad Abdel Wahab and Farid al-Atrash. Some sang along with him, others closed their eyes and listened, while still others smoked their water-pipes and sipped tea. Baba sang for over an hour before he put down his oud.
‘Don’t stop!’ they cried.
Baba picked up his oud and started again. He hated to disappoint them, but as dinner approached, he had no choice.
‘My wife will be upset if her dinner gets cold,’ he said. ‘Everyone, please join us tomorrow night after dinner to celebrate Ichmad’s twelfth birthday.’ As we left, villagers cried out thanks and shook Baba’s hand.
Even this late in the day, the village square still bustled with activity. In the open-air market at the centre, pedlars lined the ground in front of them with clay pots filled with combs; mirrors; amulets to keep away evil spirits; buttons; threads; needles and pins; bolts of brightly coloured fabrics; stacks of new and second-hand clothes and shoes; piles of books and magazines; pots and pans; knives and scissors; field tools. Shepherds stood with sheep and goats. Cages held chickens. Apricots, oranges, apples, avocados and pomegranates lay on tarps next to potatoes, squash, aubergines and onions. There were pickled vegetables in glass jars; clay pots filled with olives, pistachios, and sunflower seeds. A man behind a big wooden camera, half hidden under black fabric, snapped a picture of a family in front of the mosque.
We passed a man selling the paraffin that we used to fuel our lanterns and to cook with, then the herbalist, whose fragrant wares disguised the petroleum smell of his neighbour’s. There were dandelions for diabetes, constipation, liver and skin conditions; chamomile for indigestion and inflammatory disorders; thyme for respiratory problems and eucalyptus for coughs. Across the way, we could see women gathered at the communal ovens chatting while their dough baked.
We passed the now-vacant Khan, the two-room hostel where visitors once stayed when they came to sell their goods in our village, or for festivals, or during harvest season, or on their way to Amman, Beirut or Cairo. Baba told me that when it was open, travellers came on camels and horses, but that was before there were checkpoints and curfews.
The roar of military Jeeps speeding into our village silenced the chatter. Rocks flew through the air and pummelled them; engines screeched to a halt. My friend, Muhammad Ibn Abd, from my class, ran past us, through the square, with two steel-helmeted soldiers with face protectors and Uzis on his heels. They threw him down on a tarp of tomatoes and drove the stocks of their Uzis into his skull. Abbas and I tried to run to him, but Baba held us back.
‘Don’t get involved,’ he said and pulled us towards our house. Abbas’ fists were clenched. Anger bubbled inside of me too. Baba silenced us with a glance. Not in front of the soldiers, or the other villagers.
We made our way towards the hill where we lived, past clusters of homes like ours. I knew each of the clans that lived in these family groups, as the fathers would split their land among their sons, generation after generation, so the clan stayed together. My family’s land was gone. Most of my father’s brothers had been forced into refugee camps across the border in Jordan twelve years ago, on the day of my birth. Now, my brothers and cousins and I would have no orange groves, no houses of our own. As we passed the last of the mud-brick homes, my head pounded with rage.
‘How could you stop me?’ The words burst from my mouth as soon as we were alone.
Baba took a few more steps, then stopped. ‘It would accomplish nothing but to get you into trouble.’
‘We need to fight back. They won’t stop on their own.’
‘Ichmad’s right,’ Abbas chimed in.
Baba silenced us with his look.
We passed a pile of rubble where a house used to be. In its place was a low tent. Three little children held onto their mother’s robe while she cooked over an open fire. When I looked over at her, she lowered her head, lifted the pan, and ducked into the tent.
‘For twelve years, I’ve watched many soldiers enter our village,’ Baba said. ‘Their hearts are as different from each other’s as they are from ours. They are bad, good, scared, greedy, moral, immoral, kind, mean – they’re human beings like us. Who knows what they might be if they were not soldiers? This is politics.’
I gritted my teeth together so hard my jaw hurt. Baba didn’t see things the way Abbas and I did. Uncollected rubbish, donkey dung and flies littered the path. We paid taxes but received no services because they classified us as a village. They stole the majority of our land and left us with one half of a square kilometre for over six thousand Palestinians.
‘People don’t treat other human beings the way they treat us,’ I said.
‘Ichmad’s right,’ Abbas said.
‘That’s what saddens me.’ Baba shook his head. ‘Throughout history the conquerors have always treated the conquered this way. The bad ones need to believe we’re inferior to justify the way they treat us. If they only could realise that we’re all the same.’
I couldn’t listen to him anymore and ran towards home, shouting, ‘I hate them. I wish they’d just go back to where they came from and leave us alone!’ Abbas followed on my heels.
Baba called after us, ‘One day you’ll understand. It’s not as simple as you make it out to be. We must always remain decent.’
He had no idea what he was talking about.
The flower scent reached me about halfway up the hill. I was glad we lived only five minutes from the square. I wasn’t like Abbas, outside playing games with friends and running all the time; I was a reader, a thinker, and this running fast made my lungs burn. Abbas could run all day and he’d never even perspire. I couldn’t begin to compete with his athleticism.
Bougainvillea in shades of purple and fuchsia climbed the trellises that Baba, Abbas and I had made to run up the outside of the little house. Mama and Nadia were taking more trays of sweets to their storage place under the tarp near the almond tree. They had been baking all week.
‘Go inside,’ Baba said as he trudged up behind Abbas and me. ‘They’re starting curfew earlier today.’
***
Sleep could not find me. My anger made me invisible and when it visited the rest of my family, it overlooked me. So I was the only one who heard the noises outside. Footsteps. At first I thought it was the wind in the almond tree, but as they drew louder, closer, I knew it was not. No one was ever out after dark except soldiers. We could be shot if we left our homes for any reason. It must be soldiers. I lay very still listening for the pattern, trying to discern how many feet. It was one person, and not in the heavy boots of the soldiers. It must be a thief. Our home was so small that, in order for everyone to lie down, we had to place many things out of doors. The food for my birthday party was outside now. Someone was creeping up on it. I stepped over my family’s sleeping bodies, afraid to be seen outside, but more afraid to let someone steal the food Mama and Nadia had worked so hard to prepare, and that Baba had saved all year to buy.
The chill caught me off guard and I wrapped my arms around my chest as I picked my way along, barefooted. There was no moon. I didn’t see him. A sweaty hand clamped over my mouth. Cold metal pressed against the back of my neck – a gun barrel.
‘Keep your voice down,’ he said.
He spoke in my village’s dialect.
‘Tell me your full name,’ he demanded in a whisper.
I closed my eyes and envisioned the tombstones in our village cemetery.
‘Ichmad Mahmud Mohammad Othman Omar Ali Hussein Hamid,’ I squeaked, wishing to sound manly, but sounding like a little girl.
‘I’ll cut your tongue out if I catch you lying.’ He spun me around and jerked me backwards. ‘What’s a rich boy like you doing in my house?’
The scar on his forehead was unmistakable. Ali.
‘The Israelis, they took our land.’
He shook me so violently I feared I might vomit.
‘Where’s your father?’ He jerked me further backwards. I grabbed onto his arms with all my might and thought of my family asleep on their rush mats in our house, Ali’s home.
‘He’s sleeping, doctor,’ I said, adding the title as a show of respect so that he might not slit my throat there, next to the birthday pastries.
He thrust his face into mine. What if he asked what Baba does?
‘Right this very minute, my comrades are burying arms throughout this village.’
‘Please, doctor,’ I said. ‘I could pay attention much better if I were vertical.’
He slammed me backward before he yanked me upright. I looked at the open bag next to his foot. It was filled with weapons. I looked away, but it was too late.
‘See this gun.’ He shoved the pistol in my face. ‘If anything happens to me or my weapons, my comrades will chop your family to pieces.’
I nodded, mute to this horrible vision.
‘Where’s the safest place to hide them?’ He glanced towards the house. ‘And remember, your family’s lives depend on it. Don’t even tell your father.’
‘I would never,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t understand. We have no choice. Hide them in the dirt behind the almond tree.’
He walked me over with the pistol against the back of my neck.
‘There’s no need for the gun.’ I lifted my hands away from my sides. ‘I’m quite willing to help. We all want freedom for ourselves and our brothers in the camps.’
‘What’s under the tarp?’ he asked.
‘Food for my celebration.’
‘Celebration?’
‘My twelfth birthday.’ I could not feel the gun against my skin anymore.
‘Have you a shovel?’
He followed me.
***
When we finished, Ali stepped into the trench and laid the bag of arms down the way a mother would place her baby in his bassinet. In silence we scooped dirt from the mound beside the trench until we covered the bag.
Ali grabbed a handful of date cookies from under the tarp and stuffed them into his pockets and mouth. ‘Palestinians trained to use these weapons will come.’ White particles sprayed from his mouth. ‘You’ll protect them until the time is right, or your family will be killed.’
‘Of course.’ I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to become a hero of my people.
I started to return to my rush mat inside the house, but Ali grabbed my shoulder. ‘If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you all.’
I turned to face him. ‘You don’t understand. I want to help.’
‘Israel has built a house of glass, and we’ll shatter it.’ He cut the air with his fist then handed me the shovel.
There was a skip in my step as I returned to my house. I lay again in the darkness next to Abbas, my body and mind charged with the thrill of what I’d participated in. Until it occurred to me – what if the Israelis found out? They’d imprison me. They’d bulldoze our house. My family would have to live in a tent. Or maybe they’d exile us. I wanted to talk to Baba or even Abbas, but I knew Ali and his comrades would kill us. I was caught between the devil and the fires of hell. I had to move the weapons. I’d tell Ali they weren’t secure. I couldn’t dig them up now. Where would I put them? During the day, someone could see me. I’d have to wait until curfew. The whole village would be at our house this evening. What if the soldiers came? What if my family noticed, or someone from the party? The village cemetery. New plots were dug there almost daily. I’d go after school to scout out a place.
… Continued…
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ONE
Mojave Desert – October 2012
Flying a helicopter requires a clear mind, concentration, balance and a delicate touch.
Flying a helicopter you are unfamiliar with, in the dark, with two nasty bullet wounds in a body that has not slept in thirty hours, is an exercise in surreal survival. I had ten hours flight time in this model MD 902 Explorer, so it wasn’t total guesswork.
I made sure Julie was strapped in tightly and flipped on the switches. There wouldn’t be enough time to sit and let the engines warm up completely. We needed to get airborne before the local police showed up. In the distance beyond the factory building, where the car exploded in the arroyo, a pall of smoke billowed into the moon lit night sky.
Once I got the machine off the ground, stabilised and then flying on the heading Danny had given me, I asked Julie to call him and write down the co-ordinates of the destination, then talked her through entering the figures into the GPS navigation system while I concentrated on the instruments. All I had to do was make sure I didn’t hit anything flying at an altitude of fifty feet across the desert, following the route on the EFIS from Mojave to Desert Rock airstrip, wherever the hell that was in the vast expanse of the Nevada desert.
As we flew, the rising sun glimmered just below the horizon to our left. Dark sky turning light blue just before the sun appeared as an orange-white ball throwing shadows across the desert. The distant terrain rose in craggy rock mountains, rising ever higher to about five thousand feet, and I had to fly the aircraft through the narrow gorges maintaining the pretence of a special operations training flight at ultra-low level.
“Can you see if there are any sunglasses in the side pocket,” I asked Julie, feeling my left arm begin to stiffen.
“Here you go.” Her voice sounded strangely distorted in my headphones. Or perhaps it was just my mind beginning to shut down as my body leaked valuable blood onto the seat from the wound in my side.
“Thanks.” I tightened the lock on the collective and flexed my left arm, ignoring the pain, just trying to get some feeling back into it. Estimated flight time was just under an hour and a half, and I wasn’t confident of being able to last that long.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” I said stupidly, as if what I said would make any difference.
“I could have said no.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Nope. Don’t ask me why, but I didn’t.”
“Did you get the bug into the computer before they ambushed us?”
“I did.”
“Well at least one of us accomplished something today. How’s your head?”
“Hurts like hell. How’s your…?” she paused looking across at me. “Everything?” She laughed. A desperate sound hurled against a bleak outlook.
We hurt more than either of us could describe.
We didn’t know what the future held for us, but we laughed anyway as the sun rose across the desert, and I banked the helicopter into the first of the rising mountain ravines.
After an hour throwing the helicopter through the narrow canyons and rocky gorges, I could feel my strength and concentration ebbing slowly away. But that seemed inconsequential in the surreal experience that was the excuse for reality.
Julie massaged her temples, and when she spoke her speech was slow and slurred. I knew she was concussed and slipping into shock.
By ‘red-lining’ the helicopters engines I could force more speed, but as the sun came up the temperature would rise, and everything could go very wrong very quickly.
But there was no choice.
I inched up the collective, dropped the nose and advanced the throttle a touch, watching the gauges creep toward the danger zone.
Waves of nausea blurred my vision, so I used the only tool I had to sharpen my mind.
Pain.
By wriggling in the seat I could press against the wound in my lower abdomen, not too much, but enough pain to sting my sagging consciousness into wakeful concentration. Now was not the time to sink into peaceful, blissful oblivion. I had a precious cargo to deliver, a woman I loved more than my own life.
At any other time, flying low level through the desert canyons as the sun rose above the horizon, would have been an extraordinary experience. One of those almost vivid adventures that stays in the memory forever. But I wanted this experience to be over as soon as possible.
Every part of my body and soul willed the airstrip into view.
Flying is a slow inevitability.
You know you’re going to get there, and yet the more desperate you are to arrive, the more time drags.
Another rising ridge after fifteen minutes of undulating desert, and the sweat dripped down my face, arms and back, seeping into the wounds and causing more pain as my body salts stung raw flesh. I glanced quickly at Julie who sagged forward against the seat harness, semi-conscious, head flopping as the helicopter rose, fell, and banked through the ravines. I just wanted to take her in my arms, hold her and tell her everything was going to be fine, but now was not the time to drift into sentimentality, there was still the task of getting this machine on the ground.
The gauges swam in front of my eyes as I struggled to pick out the speed dial. That and the vertical speed indicator were my guides as we crested the ridge and Desert Rock airstrip lay in front of us just beyond a dry lake bed.
Was it a lakebed or a mirage?
I dropped the collective and pulled back slowly on the cyclic, slowing the aircraft down, establishing an approach to the runway. The speed bled off and I nosed down a little to keep the aircraft’s forward speed at forty knots, but my eyes refused to focus properly, and darkness appeared at the corners of my vision as if I was looking through a telescope at an image that kept getting smaller. No matter what my mind was telling my body it wasn’t responding, running out of blood and slowly shutting down.
But not before I got this machine on the ground.
Only a few more feet.
Maybe twenty-five, maybe thirty-five, maybe….
I didn’t know anymore.
Then I saw the FIM-92 Stinger ground-to-air missile spearing up toward us from a far ridge.
My reactions were slow and for a fatal moment I watched the white smoky trail from the rocket motor arc its way through the sky. I pulled on the collective and kicked the anti-torque pedals to port, almost escaping the oncoming death, but the rocket slammed into the tail boom.
The earth spun in a lazy arc as the helicopter arched over backwards at fifty feet above the rocky desert as I lost control, spiralling to the ground, pieces flying in all directions, the only section remaining relatively intact being the forward cockpit, saved because the main rotor head deflected the impact.
There was no pain, just a smashing, grinding, splintering sound. I felt a violent lurch as my head slammed into the side door, then silence. Almost lying on top of me, held by her seat harness, Julie stared into my eyes, blood dripping from her nose and ears, trying to speak.
“Julie,” I gasped trying to reach up and touch her face, but my arm wouldn’t move.
Car engine noises.
Voices.
I was struggling with consciousness.
With reality.
Where was I? What had happened? I didn’t know.
Images from the past flashed through my mind.
My father’s dead face.
Julie naked on the catamaran.
Julie. My Julie.
Then nothing.
TWO
Belfast – Six Weeks Earlier
It was an odd experience to look down on the dead face of the man who had once been my father. Not that I was unfamiliar with seeing dead bodies, I’d seen too many in my previous job, it’s just that I never expected I would be staring at him.
A single shot to the forehead had killed him instantly. The hole small and dark, not marring the rugged good looks of the man, but I knew that the back of his head would be non-existent. A round fired at close range from a powerful modern 9mm semi-automatic doesn’t leave much behind. I felt neither revulsion nor sorrow, somehow those emotions didn’t seem to fit with the sterile scrubbed surroundings, and perhaps he would have smiled and approved of my stoicism, or maybe just shaken his head and wondered what had happened to me over the years we hadn’t spoken. I knew the lack of emotion I felt meant I had not lost my edge, that I was still a soldier with all the instincts that had been honed in combat. But this wasn’t combat. This was murder.
“If you would please sign for these, sir.” The white-coated official stood with my father’s belongings in an incongruously cheap plastic bag. I duly signed. The formalities over, it wasn’t long before I was loading the body bag into my Cessna Citation Mustang 510 jet at Aldergrove Airport. An undertaker had been instructed to meet me at Norwich airport with an appropriate coffin, and until we landed it was just myself and the black rubberised bag lying on the cabin floor. Yet another reminder of my past, and images of dead soldiers insinuated themselves into my thoughts.
As the jet burst through the top of the clouds into bright sunlight, climbing to a cruising altitude of 31,000ft, my mind drifted back to what I thought was an ideal life in paradise.
Lying in the cabin on my catamaran, a lone fifty-seven foot Fountaine Pajot anchored in the crystal clear blue waters off the north western tip of the Mediterranean island of Gozo, waking from a disturbed sleep with one of those unsettling disconnected thoughts that the shit was going to hit the fan in a big way, was not the best way to start the day.
You know the feeling, that odd clawing at the pit of your stomach. A slight headache even though you’d stayed off the booze the night before. I hadn’t slept well, but that was nothing new, and it wasn’t the reason I felt like crap. What disturbed me was that the odd, undefined, premonition had no logical reason to be in my head.
Cold water and the sight of Julie standing naked on the aft deck washed away the uncomfortable feeling that crowded across my mind. She showered with fresh water from the transom faucet, head back eyes closed, then stood letting the sun dry her bronzed skin as the water ran in rivulets between her perfect breasts.
“I can feel you staring, Thomas,” she laughed and squeezed the water from her long blonde hair, her light New England accent drifting gently on the slight breeze.
“Can’t think of a better way to wake up,” I said, as the last images of the bloodied bodies of my colleagues faded from my ongoing nightmare. Eighteen months and it still seemed like yesterday. “Coffee?”
“Juice please. Pineapple and orange.”
I took the jug of freshly prepared juice from the fridge, and popped an ice cube into a tall glass as the coffee percolator started bubbling on the stove.
“You had another nightmare last night. Scared the hell out of me,” her voice drifted through from the cockpit. “Thrashing about and shouting.”
“Really? I don’t remember.” I did but there was no sense in talking about it. I carried a mug of coffee and the juice into the cockpit.
“Thanks.” She took the glass and drank a third quickly, and tossed her head back savouring the morning. “I’d like to go to the festival in the village tonight. Maybe we can eat at Lorenzo’s.”
“Sounds good.”
“And before that I thought we might take the horses out for a trot, have lunch at Godwin’s cafe…” she paused and reached her hand to my face, smiling wickedly, “…and then make love in our favourite grotto.”
“Got it all worked out, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
I slid from her grasp before she started something I couldn’t stop, and fled to the safety of the galley to prepare breakfast.
“Coward,” she shouted happily, wrapped a powder blue sarong around her slim tanned body, stretched out on the starboard cockpit settee, and sipped her juice.
“Want some melon with prosciutto?” I said, preparing two plates in anticipation. I leaned over and turned on the stereo, already tuned into the BBC World Service. It was my morning fix, that and the coffee.
“Yes please.”
“….and now at the top of the hour, the news headlines from the BBC World Service read by Jonathan Davis.” The familiar music played for a moment or two before the newscaster began talking, and for a few minutes I forgot about my self-imposed, albeit luxurious, exile.
“On his recent trip to the United States, the leader of the new British National Independent Party, Nicholas Hansard, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, that the Governments of both countries ‘have skewered National Defence’ with their failure to increase military spending, and left the door open for increased terrorist activity….”
‘Yet another extremist group leaping to the forefront. Left wing, right wing, they’re all the same,’ I thought cynically wondering why I listened to the news at all, but the BBC World Service was a comforting connection with home.
“Republican Tea Party leader, Wesley Bradford, welcomed his remarks. The recent elections in Israel have seen the Prime Minister and the Likud Party retain control but with a much reduced majority, and the extreme Zionist Ysrael Party led by American born software billionaire Elias Stevens claimed eleven seats in the Knesset….”
“Great. More Middle East problems,” I said, aloud this time, thinking of my friends and former colleagues who were still serving in Afghanistan.
“I can hear you muttering, Thomas,” Julie called from the aft sun-bed.
“Just bringing your breakfast, milady,” I answered in a mock English butler accent, walking through to the cockpit.
“…Sir Ivan Gunn, the billionaire chief of Gunn Group Industries, has been kidnapped in Belfast. Details are not available and a spokesman for the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) has stated that no ransom demands have yet been received. Sir Ivan, a leading and-influential industrialist…”
I didn’t hear the rest; just felt a numbing sensation between my ears and let the plates crash to the deck.
To me funerals are a morbid display of egoistic emotion, but that’s probably my own denial having had to attend too many of them. The experience was uncomfortable, and I was glad to be back in the car headed home. My stepmother Mary had recovered somewhat from the initial shock but tired easily. She lay back in the soft deep leather seat with her eyes closed. Heavily applied make-up did little to hide the lines around her eyes, and when she spoke her voice was thin, brittle.
“You are the head of Gunn Group Industries now Thomas. Control of the company should remain in the family. I know you don’t like the idea, but you are just going to have to get used to it.”
“This is not the time to discuss it, Mary.”
“This is the right time.” Her eyes became bright, burning, feverish. “You are going to do it. Tell me you’ll do it. Tell me now.”
“Let me think about it.”
“No. There is no discussion. No debate. You will do it just as your father wanted. What you or I want is immaterial. You’ll do it because it is the right thing to do.” Her voice rose to a shout, loud enough for Henderson to glance in the rear view mirror.
Julie sat quietly listening to the exchange. “Mary’s right. It is the Gunn family company and you are the only one left.” Her remark surprised me and I looked angrily at her. I knew they were both right, but I just didn’t want the job. I wanted to go back to Gozo and resume my life with Julie. Laze around in the sun, make love, and forget everything. For years I had lived off the family fortune without contributing anything. Now it was time to assume responsibility and I felt the shackles closing around me.
“OK, I’ll do it,” I said gently, thinking that at least being on the inside I’d have a better chance of discovering why my father had been murdered.
Mary visibly relaxed and closed her eyes again.
The wake that followed the funeral was like a subdued cocktail party. Everyone making meaningless small talk, knocking back as much free booze as possible and pretending all was right with the world. However, it did give me a chance to corner Adrian Newell and tell him the news.
“Don’t worry, Thomas, you will pick up the reins in no time.” Sarcasm rested easily with Adrian Newell. “If you need to know anything just ask. Your father left a lot of the running of the business in my hands. He didn’t like to meddle too much in the mundane day-to-day dealings.” I could see what he was angling for. If he could keep me under tight control and out of the running of things, then he would be the man in charge. I must say the idea did have its attractions, a thought he must have known had obviously crossed my mind otherwise he would not have been so open in his suggestion.
“I do plan to find out all there is to know about the way the Group operates, Adrian,” I said watching the CEO of my father’s company’s eyes carefully. I didn’t like him and I didn’t trust him. “What was my father doing in Northern Ireland?” I was expecting a reaction, but not quite as dramatic as he visibly turned pale and I thought his eyes would pop into his champagne glass. “Is anything wrong, Adrian?” I asked.
He coughed and made little choking noises. “N… n… no. It’s OK. I just swallowed a large mouthful of champagne. It went the wrong way.” He coughed again and recovered his composure. Adrian seemed to have developed a nervous tick at the corner of his right eye. “It’s a new project. A proposed micro-electronics factory to be constructed just outside Belfast. It was your father’s own personal project. I’m afraid I don’t know much about it.” His composure returned and before I could question him further, he excused himself and mingled with the other guests. I let him go as this seemed hardly the time or place to pursue him with the ferocity I felt.
“Adrian seemed to be in a hurry to escape from you.” The voice of Hamish McDougall came from behind and I turned to see his friendly face smiling at me. He had been my father’s closest friend since before I was born. An MP and Minister of State for Trade and Investment, he seemed to drift through life, tidying up other people’s problems quietly and efficiently. He would never be Prime Minister, he just didn’t have the flair, but then again he was quite happy looking after his constituents and carrying out a worthwhile job in the Government.
“Yes. I seem to have struck a nerve, though why I don’t know.” I took a sip of champagne. “Presumably you’ve heard that I’m taking over as head of the Group?” He nodded and patted me on the arm.
“Yes, I’m glad. It’s about time you came out of yourself. You’ve been ducking and weaving for too long.” I tensed ready to let my anger rise again, when I caught his eyes. They were laughing at me. “You have to learn to control that quick temper of yours, too. It just might get you into trouble and there is no room for histrionics in the Board Room.” He was right, of course. The shock of grey hair, laughing eyes and relaxed attitude of the man always defused any situation.
“Listen, if you need someone to talk to, just give me a call. Mary has my number.” At that moment Julie came over and told me that Mary had gone to rest. Hamish excused himself and we were alone.
“How is she?” I asked.
“Just tired. She’s more relaxed than she has been for a long time, probably relived that you’ve taken the job. Doesn’t like Americans much does she?”
“I’m sure she’ll make an exception in your case. And she already has in my case.”
“How so?”
“I have dual nationality, my mother was American, born in Santa Barbara California.”
“I knew that. Well your step mother is relying on you to pull the family together.” She hesitated and then, with a touch of mockery, added. “She also wants to see you married and have an heir.” She looked at me with a sideways grin, gauging my reaction to the comment.
“No way. Not yet. I like the practice we are getting, but I don’t think I’m ready for children.”
“That’s what I told her. Well, not in so many words, but close enough.” We both laughed, awkwardly. Julie had changed over the past few days.
When I first saw her, she was a dream vision floating through the evening twilight and soft streetlights. A sophisticated poised and confident beauty that most men hungered after and very few had the balls to approach. Her grey/green eyes and direct look I knew could freeze any unwanted attention without her having to utter a word, and I was immediately fascinated. I was sure I had seen her on the cover of Vogue, or Elle magazine and continued to watch her easily brush off the young rich ‘bar-flies’ that frequented Café Carlo.
Perhaps it was the scar that looped across my forehead where the shrapnel had carved my flesh open and cracked my skull that caught her eye, or that I sat quietly watching her, frankly admiring her beauty, amused by the murmur of excitement that ran through the restaurant in Capri.
She turned and saw me, smiled, and walked over, much to the dismay of would-be suitors who were left standing at the bar with their mouths open.
“Carlo tells me that the Fountaine Pajot Sanya 57, is yours.” Her New England accent surprised me as I had assumed her to be European.
“It is.” I stood and indicated a seat for her to sit down, which she did with the elegance and assurance of a Royal Princess. “My name is….”
“Thomas Gunn,” she interrupted easily, smiling. “I do my research, something my father taught me was very important.”
“Then I am at a disadvantage, Miss….”
“Sutton. Julie Sutton.”
“And your interest in the yacht?”
“Purely selfish. I was looking for a private charter for a week or two and Carlo said you were available.”
“Carlo said that did he?”
“He did.”
“And how much did you pay Carlo to ensure I was available.”
She laughed quickly, a musical sound and mischief in her eyes. “A lot. Too much. Money is not the issue, my privacy is. And I like adventure. You seem to fit the description.”
“I wondered why I suddenly had no business this week.”
“You are available then? As I said I will cover whatever you lost on your previous charter.”
“If you have done your research then you know money has no interest for me. I’m sure Carlo told you that too.”
“He did. But I like to pay my way.”
“Privacy does have a price.”
“I see we think alike.”
We fell in love on the second day and sailed to Gozo, where we stayed, anchored in a solitary bay for six months. Julie refused all work, much to her agent’s frustration, and I had little to do anyway during my extended convalescence, until the real world crashed our paradise.
Julie squeezed my arm, snapping me back to the present and my duty as host as some of our guests were leaving.
With most of the people gone, I cornered Adrian again and told him that I would be down at Head Office some time during the week to make a start on learning the business.
“I want to know everything about this micro-electronics factory in Belfast before any more decisions are made,” I told him firmly.
“But there are still some negotiations to be completed, and other formalities. I really think they ought to be dealt with now, not later,” he said in a tone that implied I should let those who know about these things get on with it.
“No. Under the circumstances I’m not rushing us into any decisions.” I took vicarious pleasure watching him squirm.
“If you insist,” he said stiffly and walked out to his waiting car.
“You seem to have ruffled his feathers a bit,” said Julie, standing beside me. “Something tells me you are not going to have an easy time with him.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“Is that why you’re goading him? Or do I detect a spark of interest in the Group?” She was laughing at me again.
“I want to know why my father was murdered, and my gut tells me it has something to do with this new project in Northern Ireland.”
I knew that the Gunn Group was complicated. It controlled many companies in the fields of electronics, engineering and chemicals. The assets were enormous and profits almost equal to the largest of multi-nationals. No mean feat for a privately owned business. Obviously with the amounts of money involved, there must be very tight controls on security, especially as the areas of micro-electronics and chemicals were high risk and the competition cut throat. I could understand Adrian’s reluctance to talk business at the wake, but still there was this nagging doubt in my mind.
“I think I’ll have a talk with Mary. Perhaps she can shed some light on the matter.”
Julie shook her head. “Don’t disturb her just yet. It is the first real rest she’s had. How about taking me for a walk around the grounds instead?”
“You’re right and they’re quite beautiful at this time of year.”
We passed the rest of the afternoon wandering the grounds talking. It was the first time since we arrived that we had been alone for any length of time and now that the funeral was over we could look forward to happier times ahead.
I led Julie around to the nondescript barn set aside from the main Hall. The only thing that could give away the fact that the barn was an aircraft hangar was the small round concrete helipad thirty metres from the hangar building.
Julie looked at me askance. “A helicopter?”
“Wealth does have its perks.”
“A private jet and a helicopter?”
“Well actually the Gunn Group has two helicopters and two more private jets.”
“Of course it does,” she said sarcastically.
The electric hangar doors slid open at the touch of the ‘app’ on my iPhone and revealed the interior of the barn, aside from the helicopter, there was a small yet comprehensively equipped workshop and maintenance area, and outside a five hundred gallon tank of Jet fuel. Julie watched as I wheeled the aircraft out of the hangar onto the pad, disconnected the ground handling wheels, stowed them back in the hangar and checked the fuel. My father always kept the helicopter fully fuelled and ready to go at any time. It made trips to London easy and quick.
It had been a while since I flew the Eurocopter, demanding a different set of skills to the fixed wing Cessna Mustang. This one was equipped with a full EFIS (Electronic Flight Information System) digital ‘glass’ cockpit, so I could fly ‘blind’ from Norwich to the London Heliport in Battersea on the river Thames only eight miles from the Gunn Group offices. This particular aircraft had been configured for right seat flying. I liked it better than flying from the left seat, as I could lock off the collective and use my left hand for changing radio frequencies and other instruments.
“When was the last time you flew this?”
“About two years ago. We’ll take it tomorrow, I need to make an appearance at the office.”
“You’ll take it, I have my own business to run and that means mollifying my agent and getting some work.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“You get some practice in then we’ll talk about my sense of adventure.”
Mary reappeared for dinner. The rest had done her good.
Some of the old bounce was back in her walk and conversation. I didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere so suppressed my desire to bombard her with questions. There would be plenty of time after the meal.
She had been through a lot in the last eighteen months, having just recovered from a serious car crash the previous year in which two of her closest friends had been killed. After a long period in hospital and private nursing home she had pulled through.
“Mary, there are some things that have been worrying me about Dad,” I said, as tactfully as possible. She sipped the brandy delicately. “I keep wondering about this Northern Ireland deal. This afternoon I tried to talk to Adrian about it, but he brushed me off, virtually saying it was none of my business.” I paused, waiting for a reply. There was none. “Well, don’t you think it is more than just a coincidence?”
She placed her brandy glass carefully on the side table and shook her head. “The police came to the conclusion that it was probably a case of mistaken identity. If there is anything they will find it Thomas.” She smiled. “You concentrate on learning the business. Leave the investigating to the experts.”
“I need to know what the Northern Ireland deal is all about. Adrian just said it was one of Dad’s personal projects. If I’m going to learn about the company then it seems to me to be a good place to start. Did he say anything to you about it?”
“No, of course not. You know what your father was like about business. No work at home. All business was to stay where it belonged, at the office. Perhaps Adrian was just honouring your father’s memory by not discussing it here. I’m sure he will tell you all about it when you go in to work.” She drew a weary hand across her face. “I must go to bed, Thomas. I’m not really as together as I look.”
“Of course.” I helped her up and watched as she walked slowly across the room. “Are there any papers that Dad would have left in the house? Presumably, if he was handling the deal on his own he would have something here.” I felt I needed to press her on the subject. It was so strange that nobody seemed to know much about it at all. I know that the old man liked to keep business away from his private life as much as possible, but I also know that there were times when he brought very important documents home. Particularly those pertaining to projects in which he was personally involved.
“Please, Thomas. Enough. I never pried into his business affairs at all. Perhaps if I had I could have been a better wife to him. Now please, we can talk again tomorrow, but there is nothing much I can tell you.” She stopped at the door, turned and looked at me carefully as if trying to tell me something by telepathy. “I want you to do a good job now that you’re in charge,” she said, tipped her head on one side as if asking a silent question, then turned and left the room.
Still feeling very much in the dark, I went to my flat in what used to be the old servants quarters. It was private in a separate wing of the Hall and had it’s own entrance through the kitchen. Julie poured us two glasses of Pusser’s rum, a silent reminder of the catamaran and sunshine, and we sat in front of the large window looking out over the peaceful moonlit countryside.
“I know what you’re thinking, Thomas. And I know you want answers. But you’re not going to get them tonight.” She leaned across and nibbled on my ear, then got up and slowly took off her dress. Beneath it she was naked. She turned and headed for the bedroom
Well at least in this upside down world there were some things that had not changed. I downed the rum, picked up the discarded dress and followed her.
THREE
London – September 2012
The offices of Gunn Group Industries were not in Central London, as people would expect. They were situated in a tall building in Twickenham. Close enough to the hub of things, but far enough on the outskirts of the City to be easy to get to from the country. The building was called Gunn House and was, appropriately, built by a subsidiary company, Langhorne Construction Limited. It was an eyesore, as are most buildings of this type. I was still contemplating the follies of modern architecture as the lift carried me to the top floor, home of the offices of the Board of Directors.
The collar and tie felt uncomfortable and the suit as if it was four sizes too big. Julie had assured me it wasn’t, and Mary also made the correct noises. I was not convinced. The lift bumped to a stop, jerking me out of my daydream and the doors hissed open to reveal the reception area.
Directly opposite the lift was a desk at which sat a beautifully dressed and perfectly made-up young lady who looked up coolly as I walked towards her.
“May I help you, sir?” The standard question used a thousand times a day in a million offices.
“Mr Gunn,” I said.
“I’m sorry, sir, but Mr Gunn is not in.”
“I am Mr Gunn. Mr Thomas Gunn, the new Chairman.”
The girl looked at me blankly until she suddenly grasped what I had said.
“I’m sorry, sir. We aren’t expecting you. Mr Newell didn’t warn me at all.” I held up my hand to stop the flow. A young-looking thirty, with long fair hair, I didn’t look the part of a city tycoon.
“Would you just point me in the right direction for my office and tell Mr Newell I’m here. I’ll see him in ten minutes.” I hoped that sounded as a chairman should and having received her directions, she headed off for the office.
The old man really did believe in the Chairman having an office worthy of the position. It was huge. A thick carpet covered centre of the expanse of wooden floor; mahogany desk in front of the window, and table with settee and easy chairs for entertaining associates. Original modern paintings adorned the walls and the view across Twickenham and the Thames was breathtaking. Beside the desk was a complete console with a computer terminal, closed circuit TV and the usual intercom system. So this is where the Gunn fortune was generated. I could see why Adrian wanted to keep me out of the way. If this was a yardstick with which to judge the power wielded by the Chairman then he must be very upset that it was in my hands.
There was a knock on the door and a very correctly dressed, slightly overweight and rather severe looking woman in her mid thirties entered.
“Mr Gunn, my name is Jennifer Jordan. I am your assistant. I do apologise we weren’t expecting you. Would you like some coffee?” She stood in front of the desk, expressionlessly, waiting for a reply.
“Yes please. Milk, two sugars, thank you.” I said. She turned and made for the door. I stopped her before she reached it. “Jennifer?” She turned and looked enquiringly. “Please smile, I like happy faces around me.” She dropped her chin, smiled shyly, opened the door and left. She returned a few minutes later with a tray of coffee, followed by a tight-lipped, somewhat irritable looking Adrian.
“Thank you, Jennifer. Good morning, Adrian.” I knew the use of her first name would annoy him, and that was just what I wanted to do. To make sure that he knew who now sat in the chair. “Please don’t say it. I’ve already heard it twice this morning.” He looked a little nonplussed, as if I had just robbed him of a key phrase.
“You could have given me notice that you were coming in.”
“Why? What I want from you is a run-down on everything this Group owns, part owns or whatever. I reckon that would be the best place to start.” I hoped I sounded as if I knew a little about business. I hadn’t a clue and was going to have to do some pretty rapid learning.
“If you had given me some warning then I could have had all the files ready for your inspection. As it is it will take time to get them all together.” He spoke stiffly, with his head held up, looking down at me in disgust. Adrian categorised everyone as either a businessman or a layabout. I was one of the latter.
“Adrian, in this day and age all I need is the computer login passwords and I can get all the information I need by just pressing these little buttons.” I indicated the terminal by the desk. He had the grace to flush.
He glared at me tight lipped, turned and left the office. I swung the chair around and stared out over the city, watching the slow-moving traffic like a giant worm threading its way through the undergrowth of houses.
I hated cities. Hell I hated offices.
But somehow up here away from the noise, the colours, shapes and shadows had a dream-like quality. I thought through the exchange with Adrian. Why all the blocking manoeuvres?
What was it that he didn’t want me to see? Perhaps I wasn’t a businessman but eight years as an officer in the Parachute Regiment as part of SFSG (Special Forces Support Group), had given me a suspicious mind and a nose for trouble. Something was afoot, and sure as hell it involved the old man and the kidnapping. There was a knock on the door and Jennifer entered carrying a bulky, blue file.
“Sir Ivan’s personal files and computer login passwords, Mr Gunn,” she said. “You’ll be needing them.
“Thank you. Can you give me a walk through on how the system operates?” In the modern world where access to information was vital, everyone needed reasonable computer skills. As a member of Special Forces I was pretty educated on most systems, but I needed people in the office to think I was a little naïve.
She smiled awkwardly and came around to the side of the desk, laid the file down and opened it at the first page of the text. “You will find all the necessary instructions here. Sir Ivan insisted that the whole system be made as simple as possible. He said he didn’t want some computer programmer knowing more about the operation of the Group than he did.”
“That definitely sounds like my father. Was there any information that is not on the computer?”
“Not as far as I am aware, except for the design drawings for new projects, building plans, machinery and electronic devices. They are carried on a completely separate set of servers. Only the Chief Designer, the Chief Executive and the Chairman have access to those.”
“So the entire Gunn Group, its accounts, day to day running, personnel wages and everything are available from this terminal?”
“Yes. The file you have there has a limited circulation, again only to Board members. Other personnel in other departments have access to information that applies to their department only. Likewise with the Managing Directors and Chairmen of the subsidiaries.” She stopped talking and waited for my response. It was certainly a very neat way to keep abreast of all events. And all controlled from this office.
“What about the personnel files of all the Group Board members?”
“They are kept in the wall safe behind the Picasso.” She indicated the painting that hung on the wall above the small cocktail bar. I was beginning to get to know why Adrian was so against my appointment. I’m sure he would dearly like to have all the information that was in those files. People are most vulnerable through their personnel files and bank accounts. If you have neither, then as far as the world is concerned you don’t exist. Identity is a plastic credit card.
“Thank you, Jennifer. Oh, by the way, who appointed you as my secretary?”
“Sir Ivan. I’ve been with him for four years. Mr Newell was a little annoyed.” She seemed a little embarrassed and dropped her head, not meeting my eyes.
“In that case, Jennifer, I hope you stay on.”
She smiled, excused herself and left.
Well, at least, my secretary would not be one of Adrian’s pawns, yet another thing that was going to annoy him.
The rest of the morning was spent going through the blue corporate file, trying to make sense out of the meaningless letters and figures. By lunchtime I reckoned to have sorted out enough to be able to make a start removing the information stored in this vast system of circuit, breakers and microchips. Jennifer popped in at about midday to say that if I wanted lunch brought up to the office that could be arranged.
“Please, thank you. Tell me, do you know anything about the project in Northern Ireland?”
“No. I heard some talk, of course. There’s always that in an office of this size. Nothing of interest though, just people wondering if they would be promoted and transferred when the factory started up properly.”
“Why would anyone be transferred from Head Office? Surely that would be considered a demotion?”
“Oh no. It was common knowledge that the new factory was top secret and under the personal control of Sir Ivan. All the office staff and management would have been selected by him, therefore it must be considered a promotion?
“You say ‘would have been’. Why? Surely the project is still underway? There is no reason to stop it is there?”
“I don’t suppose there is. It’s just that we all considered it to be Sir Ivan’s own baby and nobody else knew any of the details including the Board. He was negotiating direct with the Government.” She turned to me frowning. “You do know that the factory is to be built with a Government loan of two and half billion pounds, don’t you?”
“I knew there was a loan, but not the amount. I’m intrigued to know how you know so much about it.”
“You really don’t know much about office life, do you?” she laughed. “The grapevine is as good as jungle drums. All you have to do is interpret the sounds. You should hear what the information is on you. Even the best of bosses thinks that his assistant is a mere typing machine and not capable of rational or logical thought. There is a lot of information passed in the Ladies’ Room which should be classified under the Official Secrets Act.”
“I shall have to remember that in future. Do you know anything else about the Northern Ireland deal?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Let me know if you hear anything.” I turned my attention back to my father’s personal files and ran through a breakdown of all the companies owned by the Group. I knew the Group was extensive, but had never known just how big it was. Each company had its own unique identity code, and all I had to do to get a detailed look at a specific company, was to enter it along with a confirmation password.
I was so engrossed that I didn’t hear the door open and Adrian come into my office.
“I see you’re hard at work, Thomas,” he said without smiling. “I wondered when you wanted to call a board meeting. The circumstances dictate that we should have one and I’m sure you are anxious to meet the other members. I think we had better clear up the obvious rift between us. I am quite prepared to hand in my resignation if you so wish,” he said formally, standing in front of my desk hands clasped behind his back. I looked at him and decided I needed to try another approach if I was to get anything out of him.
“Adrian, this is a private company and I am the majority shareholder, but I do I know my limitations, and I need somebody to teach me. We don’t have to like each other just so long as we respect each other’s position. If you feel you must leave, then that’s up to you.” My acting is quite good and I hoped I had just the right amount of sincerity in my voice to catch him off-guard.
“Very well. But I must be allowed to carry out the normal business. With respect, I know this company inside out, and therefore it seems right that I should run it. Your father never interfered with me at all.”
“Let’s call it a truce, then. Can I count on your support for information and advice?”
He inclined his head. Perhaps his loyalty to the company was stronger than his mistrust and dislike of me. He left without another word, and I sat for a long time thinking about him, wondering just where his loyalties lay. It was my suspicious mind hard at work again. There were so many things I didn’t understand, so many things that seemed very strange. Staring out of the window did little to add to my knowledge so I let my mind drift back to the time I told my father that I wasn’t going to enter the family business, but join the Army instead.
There had only been a few times in my life when I had truly seen my father’s dark side. I knew it existed, every immensely wealthy man was ruthless to some degree, but he had always been careful to hide it at home.
“Ungrateful little prick,” he exploded, throwing down his serviette and knocking over the glass of wine at his right hand. “You’ll get nothing.”
“I didn’t ask for anything,” I replied standing, pushing the dining chair back and nearly sending the servant tumbling as she walked behind me. “It’s my life and I will live it the way I want.”
“There are responsibilities.”
“To what?”
“To me. To this house. To the company.”
“What about my responsibility to myself?”
“Grow up.”
“And be like you? I’d rather not.”
He stared at me, his face puce with rage knowing that physically he was no longer a match for me, but I could see that if he had a shotgun in his hand instead of a dinner fork, then my life would quite possibly have ended at that point.
Eight years later, he came to my hospital bed. Sat with me while I lay unconscious hovering between life and death, until I slowly returned to the land of the living. The fury I saw in his eyes was not directed at me, but at the circumstances that nearly killed me. Circumstances that he had been unable to control, and I realised why he had been so angry all those years ago.
Angry because he could not express the fear he felt.
Angry because he loved me and wanted only what he thought was best for me.
Angry because he knew he could not keep me safe forever.
He held my hand and his eyes softened. “Come back to me Thomas. When you are healed, come back to me. I need you now. I need your help. I need your skills.”
At the time his words seemed odd, poorly chosen. I didn’t feel that he had ever needed me.
His eyes burned into my soul, and I shivered as if a cold wind had blown into the office, then his face faded from my mind, replaced by the grey London skyline, and I had the feeling that whatever had caused his death was already in play on that day nearly eighteen months ago. Eighteen months when I could have been helping him instead of taking my own sweet time with my convalescence and juvenile adventures. That night I flew back to the Hall.
In the following days, Adrian proved to be a good teacher. I returned to the Hall and we communicated via Skype whenever I had a question. With the computer codes in hand, I didn’t need to be in the office as there was a desktop computer in the flat.
Besides, it was stifling. A claustrophobic cavern that philosophically I could never understand.
I liked action, not inaction, and wading through the politics and shenanigans of business were proving to be more and more irritating each day. The only reason I stuck at it was because I knew that the riddle of my father’s murder lay in the company he built.
Adrian tried his hardest to make the dry, dusty world of figures, balance sheets and contracts come to life, and I wanted to learn because I felt that a knowledge of the financials would help me get at the heart of my father’s murder. My mistrust of him remained unchanged and I took great pains to hide my true feelings.
Mary suffered from highs and lows. Some days she was her normal, witty, charming self, others she stayed in her room and shunned all attempts to bring her out of herself.
It was worrying but the doctor said that it was a pretty standard reaction to the situation. Julie travelled for a few modelling jobs much to her agent’s great joy, and when not on location occasionally spent a few days in Cambridge visiting her father, a Professor of computer science at the University, whom I’d met four months earlier when Julie flew him out to Gozo. They had different surnames. She reasoned that using her mother’s maiden name, Sutton, as a ‘stage’ name for modelling, sounded better than Oldfield.
I was still ruminating on Julie’s father when Jennifer called me on Skype.
“You have something for me?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “Not a great deal, just the minutes of a meeting. Seems out-of-place.” As my PA she had really settled into the job, taking all the mundane day-to-day problems away from me, allowing me to get on with my learning.
She sent me an instant message. “This is the passcode. OR – 41386/LN2.”
I typed in the code and rubbed my eyes waiting for the computer to access the file.
NEW PROJECT OR-41386/LN2
PROPOSED NEW FACTORY IN N.I.
The meeting was declared open by the Chairman, who handed out an outline sheet (see Annex A) to all members of the Board. Having read the details the members were asked to comment on them.
The Chief Executive, Mr Newell, agreed that the plan seemed a sound one, but wondered why the Board had not been consulted at the outset before the land had been purchased.
The Chairman replied that there was little time as the land is in a prime position and there were various tenders for it. He added that the CFO had been informed as had the Company Lawyer. Mr Newell asked if the negotiations for a Government loan had also been completed without his knowledge. The Chairman replied that a tentative approach had been made by himself, but as yet no final details had been decided. Mr Newell started to ask further questions but was interrupted by the Chairman who stated that he was taking full responsibility for the project and had merely approached the Board for their reaction before proceeding. The Chairman stated that because of the Top Secret nature of the company, few Board Members would have access to any information regarding its manufacturing processes.
There being no further business the meeting closed.
The meeting had obviously been very short and very sharp, and the minutes seemed something that a child might write, which struck me as very strange. Attached to the minutes of the meeting was an Annex that laid out the plan that my father had drawn up for the construction of the factory. Reading through it I could see why Adrian had been so upset. It was very detailed not only spelling out the exact nature of the business, the construction of micro-electronic components for the computer industry, but also down to a management and work force organisational breakdown. A footnote to the Annex stated that a complete list of equipment requirements would be available in a week. The minutes and the Annex were dated within a few days of each other. The following pages were the equipment lists, salary and wage structures, dated exactly one week after the first pages.
The last page
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an excerpt from
Unto These Hills
by Emily Sue Harvey
Prologue
From my upstairs window, the distant view of familiar hills and river swims before me. Home. My safe place. But today the vision fails to bolster me. Sweat gathers over my forehead in great beads. Nausea churns my insides and my icy fingers drop the simple four-line poem I’ve been reading, one I wrote — how long ago?
A lifetime. Was life ever that simple?
Panic spasms through me.
I’ve got to decide. Time’s running out. Which will it be?
He wants an answer today. What about my dream?
What dream, Sunny? Face it. It’s gone.
But what if —
It won’t happen. Grab this lifeline, girl! Are you nuts?
Slowly, I pick up the paper from the floor and I wonder where were you, God, when I needed you?
But then, you haven’t been doing me any favors lately. Tears blur the words of my girlhood ode:
UNTO THESE HILLS
Red clay dirt heaped round and high dips low then rises again to the sky… Hills they’re called. To me they’re HOME From them, my shelter, I will never roam.
By Sunny Acklin, age 14
And I remember another day — before innocence died.
Part One
“Who can find a virtuous wife? For her price is far above rubies.”
Proverbs 31:10
The late forties to the seventies
Chapter One
Four Years Earlier
That dawn remains, all these years later, etched in golden solar rays in my memory as the happiest morning of my life. It was in my fifteenth year. I arose early, dressed for the May Pole dance, and quietly stole from our two-story Maple Street dwelling planted amongst hundreds of Tucapau — South Carolina’s mill hill houses — all predominantly identical except for varying roof line pitches and story levels.
I spied Daniel across the street, tall, whipcord thin and magnificent as he slung the swing blade, shearing grass as easily as scattering dandelion tufts. A white cotton T-shirt rode his broad shoulders like a second skin. As always, the sight of his midnight dark head, bent to task, so intense, almost heated, stirred my senses.
He hadn’t yet seen me and, for once, I didn’t call out to him but slipped around the house to the alley and rushed on, zig-zagging a detour, intent on seeking out my harbor, my stronghold, so to speak: a knoll overlooking my domain.
Water lapped against land as I cut through Ash Street and neared the dam. I took a deep breath and pushed back the fearful awesomeness of the Middle Tyger River. I watched the sun break the horizon and happiness burst and splintered through me as I clasped my hands to my bosom in exultation.
Nothing of the splendid sunrise whispered of portent.
Forgotten in those precise daylight moments were Ruthie Bonds’ screams, that carried, two years earlier, over these waters that, nightly, transformed into murky black depths. Now, those same depths that nearly claimed her life rippled and reflected sun rays like tossed sequins, seductive…bewitching.
Forgotten today was that Ruthie bore a child within six short months, one called bastard, a beautiful little girl who, wagging tongues had it, was sired by Harly Kale, her rescuer on that fateful night. Harly was my friend Gladys’ sorry, no-good husband.
Forgotten for the moment was that, after that, Ruth’s stigmata and self-imposed exile terrorized me as much as those nighttime black waters.
Today, none of this rippled my peace. I D-double-dog dared it to as I forded the river by way of an ancient steel bridge, spanned a narrow road, then climbed precipitous concrete steps to the site that offered a panoramic view of my homeland.
Reverently, I ascended a steep hill where once the old schoolhouse perched. No longer. At its summit, my lids lowered and I inhaled the fecund vegetation-mud aroma that rode the breeze.
The wind was soft and gentle, ruffling my shorn hominy-white hair, the sun warm on my olive-complected skin, and my near-translucent blue eyes drank in the beloved sight.
Hope oozed through me like an endorphin overdose, one akin (I would much later discover) to orgasm. Today was a new beginning. I believed that as only a fifteen- year-old heart could.
I gazed out over the hills that birthed and nurtured me, to the river that winds lazily to the dam where, harnessed, water becomes the captured power of over a hundred horses. A furious sight when unleashed upon the rocky shoals below, a beautiful portrait when integrated into the womb of these hilly shores.
Today the orchestrated enchantment of bliss and water rushing over stony, undulating riverbed made music in my ears, music that set my feet to dancing and my heart a’soaring with the white clouds above me. The melody called out to me, lifted me above the fears that struggled to trickle through my euphoria.
Even as I danced, they were there, hovering like a daggum sulking thundercloud. I split in two: One smiling and dancing. The other hidden and vigilant.
Thoughts simmered, bloated, and then blasted out to the four winds. Please God. Let Mama and Daddy love each other…keep us together.
I flung the dark thoughts aside
My white dress flowed in the wind as I twirled and spun and leaped, lifting my face to the sky, excited about the here and now, the May Pole dance and for the sense of family that grappled for a secure place inside me. Mama and Daddy will be there.
So will Daniel, who just moved in across the street, and who makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt before.
And then, he was there with me in spirit, head thrown back in laughter, dancing with me in his loose, boneless way and I felt happier than I’d ever felt in my life, knowing he heard what I heard and felt what I felt. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t see him.
I felt him. My feet skipped and twirled me back down the stone steps, across the old bridge, where foaming river rode the rocks below, kicking up the wind to cool my warmed cheeks.
The happy notes detoured me up the alley behind the hotel, away from the men who sat on her rock wall corner, opposite the mill, waiting for the seven-thirty a.m. whistle to signal shift change. My celebration was not for them to see.
From maple and walnut trees birds harmonized with the music flooding my soul.
Main Street was just coming alive on this early May morning hour when I meandered from the alley, across the lush hotel lawn, and my feet connected with the big concrete sidewalk. From the old hotel where Mama served as a maid in her cute little black uniform with its frilly white apron and cap, Daisy the cook, taking a moment’s break from the hot kitchen, waved to me from the long front porch with its endless rocking chairs.
“Mornin’ Sunny!” she called, caramel-complected face a’beamin’. “You shore look purdy!”
I turned back and waved and, tamping down my crazy dancing feet, moved on past the village Doctor’s Office, which anybody and everybody on the hill frequented for anything from a hangnail to pneumonia. The visits had been more frequent hereabouts since Dr. Brock, the new, handsome young doctor had come to practice, taking up residence in the hotel. He looked a bit like Tim Holt or Alan Ladd.
“Hey, Sunny,” Mr. Mason called. He was proprietor of the Company Store, which insured that all villagers had food, even if on credit. I waved at Mr. Mason as he swept around the front doors.
And I exulted that all these entities were bonding forces, ones that declared each living, breathing resident thereabout as my family. On second thought, I will have to clarify here that almost all mill hill residents seemed like family. Almost. There were a rare few I didn’t claim. But I’ll get to them later.
The old movie house came into view, my favorite place of all, whose Saturday afternoon matinees turned the silver screen to magic with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Tim Holt, Lash LaRue, Humphrey Bogart and hosts of other actors.
“Sunny!” called a deep male voice. I twirled toward the sound, heart a thumpin’ like a bass drum as I realized he’d been following me from the riverbank.
He’d been watching me from afar — had seen me dancing. I grinned even wider. I was glad he saw my joy! Oh it was so good to be alive and loved and to have both my biological and village family rally for this morning’s celebration.
“Daniel! Hey.” I felt myself flush, warm with pleasure as he joined me on my trek, slowing my feet down even more, At sixteen, he neared six-foot tall. And because he walked beside me I felt luminous and beautiful. His male splendor smote me like an invisible explosion that left every atom reeling
His family moved in across the street from us a few short months back. It’s kinda complicated, the Stone family. The family carries three different surnames: Stone, Hicks, and Daniel’s last name is Collins. Doretha’s stepfather, Ol’ Tom Stone, a former policeman from up North, married Doretha’s mama after moving South. Walter Stone, an older son, lived with them.
Daniel Collins was a foster-child, came to live with them when he was nine, right after the Stones married. The entire family loved Daniel. Except Ol’ Tom. To him, Daniel simply represented free labor and he took pure evil advantage of a good boy. But that’s another story entirely.
In short months, this family became central to my life.
“Wait up!” called Doretha as she rushed to catch up with Daniel and me. Slightly winded, she joined us on our walk to the celebration and as we locked arms I was reminded of the trio dancing their way to the Land of Oz.
I would, later that day, ironically reflect upon that moment’s sheer magic, wishing fervently to recall it.
“Sunny,” came Doretha’s whispery little voice, “you look sooo pur-dy.” And I smiled and leaned to give her a quick peck on her cheek. Doretha Hicks, Daniel’s foster-sister, blew into our lives — mine and my buddy Emaline’s — like a fragrant spring breeze, bringing to us a new, perpetual state of delight. Doretha’s childlike charm and ancient insight fascinated Emaline and me. In her presence we were somehow more. She had the indefinable ability to augment us beyond what we thought we could ever be.
She was my sister Francine’s age, sixteen. There, likeness ceased. Doretha — pronounced Dor-EE’-tha — was as unsophisticated as Francine was worldly. She was as plain, upon initial encounter, as Francine was stunning. She was small and reed thin, with her desolate youth shining from her eyes.
I adored her.
Soon, the village park came into view. First family member I spotted was my animated older sister Francine, in saucy pimento shorts and white gypsy blouse tied at the waist. Late April sun had already deepened her naturally olive-toned skin to bronze. A new guy, Tack Turner, sniffed around her, keeping at bay the rest of the male pack.
I disliked him on sight.
Next, I saw my best friend, Emaline. Pecan brown hair slicked back from her heart-shaped face, nape-tied by a white ribbon, coordinating with her billowy white dress that matched my own, both home-sewn by Renie, her sweet mama who today was all a’glow with pride in both of ‘her girls’, as she referred to me and Emaline.
Shorter and rounder than me, Emaline was, then and now, beautiful from the inside out. Though shorter by two inches than me, and brunette, at a distance and in her full, fluid white dress she could almost be my twin and we laughed as we rushed to hug, grasping hands and stepping back to examine each other from head to toe. Eight other teen girls, identically attired as we meandered about the May Pole, gingerly testing the elaborate long blue ribbons for tethering strength as they slowly orchestrated the upcoming choreography.
Emaline’s mama stood nearby. Usually pleasingly fluffy, Renie, recently suffering from mysterious headaches, had melted down till she scarcely resembled herself. But when she lifted her heart-shaped face and looked at me, her generous smile was pure Renie.
“Hey, darlin’,’ she crooned. It was her way of loving me. Her affection splashed over and soaked into me. Her validation was profound. Tears stung my eyes and nose. She always affected me that way.
How I loved my village family.
Then I saw them: Mama and Daddy. World War II had interrupted Mama and Daddy’s limping, bloodied marriage. This sunny May week reunited them when Daddy, looking more like Mama’s movie idol, Tyrone Power, than ever, reappeared on our mill hill scene, shining like a new silver dollar in his army uniform.
The war was over and his Peacetime Occupation stint in Japan had finally, five years later, ended. The fifties era had already surfaced. Dark wavy hair and eyes the color of our mahogany shift robe, flirted from beneath Daddy’s snappy cap and had Mama clinging to him like a morning glory vine.
A true miracle it was, this devotion-interval, given my mama’s lusty appetite for anything wearing jockey shorts. Or any other style, even butt- naked, truth be known.
I was so happy that they appeared so in love, I didn’t even mind that they’d immediately thrust us four siblings into Nana’s stringent care, then disappeared to the nearby Cotton Club to dance and drink the homecoming night away. I hoped that now Daddy was back, Mama would stop embarrassing me with her brazen ways.
Today, they looked as cozy as Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca.
I smell lemon-drops! The realization stretched my lips from ear to ear. I always whiffed them when happy. And right at that instant I could have reached up and touched the sky.
I waved to my parents. Blew them kisses, which they returned a’beamin’ all over themselves.
Please God. Let it last.
~~~~~
The Duncan High School Band, festive in navy blue, gold braided uniforms, struck up Country Garden and for the next five minutes we mill hill girls brushed up as close to Camelot as we ever again would. The performance ended with perfectly concerted pirouettes and we preened as the gathering of village-family, a goodly count of about fifty, applauded.
“Sunny, you were sooo good!” little sister, Sheila squealed as she and younger brother Timmy tackled me with bear hugs.
Then I felt his touch on my arm before I gazed up into those bottomless turquoise eyes that hid myriad emotions. But for me, they glimmered of deep caring. “Sunny, you looked like an angel out there. I love to watch you dance.” His voice rumbled smoothly — like no other timber I’d ever heard. Rich yet soft. Reminded me of Clark Gable’s. “And I love your smile,” he added.
He bent quickly, squeezed my upper arm and kissed the top of my head. I felt it all the way out my toes. He whispered, “gotta run. Ol’ Tom’ll miss me.” His grin was rakish, lop-sided, and decidedly defiant. “But it was worth it.”
I watched him rush off, strong legs eating up the sidewalk as he loped with stallion agility down Main Street.
Then other arms wrapped me. As laughter and warmth engulfed me, I inhaled two distinctive fragrances that, for my entire life span, would plop me right back to that particular time and place: Old Spice After Shave and Blue Waltz perfume.
“C’mon, Sunshine,” Mama gurgled with laughter, calling me by the full name she’d given me at birth, insisting I was her ‘sunshine girl.’ “We Acklins are a’gonna celebrate today. School’s out and there’s fun to be had!”
My heart soared because nobody, but nobody did fun like my mama. ~~~~~
We went back by the house where we dressed for comfort, except for Mama, who remained dressed-up all the way to her spike heels and Francine, who couldn’t actually strip down any more and not get arrested.
I traded my white dress for a modest buttercup-yellow sundress, whose handkerchief type straps tied over each shoulder.
Nana, Mama’s mother, eyed us speculatively. She pulled Mama into the kitchen as Daddy whistled and sang and cut up with Sheila and Timmy on the porch. I could hear her whispering to Mama and edged close enough to hear.
“Ruby, behave yourself, now, y’hear?”
Laughter. “Now, Mama. Don’t be such a fussy-butt. What in heavens’ name do you think I’m a’gonna do? Strip naked and do the Huckle-Buck?” More bubbly laughter.
Nana reached up to touch Mama’s cheek and said gently, “Just mind what I say, honey. Ever’thing’sa’goin’ right for you now. You just count your blessin’s and —”
“Aww, Mama,” my mother grabbed Nana in a big ol’ bear hug and kissed her soundly on the wrinkled cheek, “You worry too much.”
Ageless, white-haired Nana, a grass-widow, lived near us in her brother Charlie’s single-level village dwelling, several doors from our two-story mill hill house. But she was always on baby-sitting and housekeeping call.
As usual, today the only colorful thing in her apparel was her home-sewn floral apron. Black lace-up shoes and cotton stockings emerged below her nondescript dress. Her snowy hair, now in a sedate bun on her nape, could transform into witchy disarray when loosed at night, especially when she yanked Sheila from sleep and castigated her for bed-wetting.
Still, all these years later, those long nights flash before me, with Nana in her flapping flannel gown, long white hair flying loose, leaning over Sheila’s bed in the wee dark hours, looking chillingly witchy.
“You done soaked this bed, you lazy heifer! Too durned no-account to get up and walk to the bathroom is what you are.” And I see Sheila’s eyes, sleep- dazed, confused, and humiliated. I now cringe that I said nothing in her defense, even when Nana’s anger strongly peppered her language. But I cannot go back and relive one day. To her credit, Nana laundered the urine-soaked sheets and kept a rubber cover over the mattress to protect it. The daily toil must have been backbreaking for a woman her age. Now, past the age she was at that time, in retrospect, I recognize the effort she spent keeping two households up and running; Uncle Charlie’s and ours’.
Nana, despite her horror of Mama’s ways, indulged her green-eyed, utterly outrageous ‘baby’, Ruby, whom God, for whatever His reasons, blessed with a beautiful face and perfect curves that could cause a traffic pile-up.
I understood. Nana couldn’t help but adore Mama — despite her visceral condemnation of Mama’s whoring. Neither could I resist her. Neither could my handsome daddy, whose driving force had been, as far back as I could remember, to placate Mama’s incessant quest for thrills and anything zany.
Yet, despite all his efforts, on that lovely May day, during our exuberant family outing, failure smacked him broadside.
~~~~~
We ate an early lunch at Abb’s Corner, the village café hangout located downstairs from the Movie House. Outside steps took us down to the lowest level of the Community Center. Divorce Me COD spilled from the jukebox as we piled into a large booth and Daddy splurged to buy hamburgers, fries and tall frosty milk shakes for the lot of us, including sixteen-year-old Francine, who usually by-passed family things.
I hated the divorce song. Soon Frank Sinatra soothed the airwaves with Night and Day and I relaxed and counted my blessings that we were together.
I caught glimpses of conjecture on my sister’s cynical face and I knew. She, too, hoped Mama would for once in her screwed-up life be good, and think of us rather than herself. I frowned at her, discouraging her dark skepticism.
Afterward, at Mama’s request, Daddy parked the car on the curb near the post office, as close to the Company Store as he could get. Mama hopped out, then stuck her head in the back window, where we huddled, her offspring, beguiling us with Blue Waltz fragrance and her incandescent smile.
Her white silk, clingy shoulder-padded blouse, tucked into fashionable pearl-gray, loose-legged slacks, cupped what Francine had informed me were lush breasts — much like her own, she smugly added, which had drawn my dismayed gaze downward to my own comparatively small assets, ones that resembled two once-over-lightly fried eggs.
“Can we go, Mama?” whined Sheila.
“Nonono.” Laughter, rich as hot fudge, gurgled from her as she reached over to tweak the little freckled nose. “Doncha know I’m gonna get ya’ll each a surprise? Even Daddy gets one,” she said in her throaty way, rolling her vibrant greens at Daddy. I was just beginning to realize what everybody meant by ‘Ruby’s bedroom eyes’, when her lids lowered like a silk curtain, exposing only a sliver of sea mist glimmer.
“Now ya’ll be good for Daddy, y’hear? I’ll be a little while.” Her voice oozed slow and thick as honey. She wrinkled her perfect nose. “Promise?”
“Promise,” chirruped everybody except Francine, who considered such compliance unbearably soppy.
Nobody, but nobody could stir my butterflies like Mama. Fact was, with her infectious, teasing laughter and melodious voice, she had the power to sweep us all from calamity to ecstasy in seconds flat. And despite her equally quicksilver explosive fights with Daddy, and her loose ways, in that lovely sun-filled moment I adored her.
After all, my brain desperately let fly, this is a new beginning.
At the Company Store entrance, Mama turned and blew us a big ol’ kiss, gazing at us for a long, long moment before disappearing through the double glass doors.
I’m gonna get y’all each a surprise! Even Daddy gets one. I recall, in that heartbeat of time, I thought how Mama, despite her faults, possessed, when she had anything, a generous, giving spirit, fairly shoveling it all out to others.
We kids and Daddy waited patiently in our old 1947 mud-brown Ford, lustily singing I’m Looking Over A Four-leaf Clover while Mama shopped. Honeysuckle breezes wafted in through lowered car windows. We tried harmony with Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree, but, what with Daddy’s tone- deafness, ended up sounding like a Chinese laundry quartet. Francine and I laughed till we cried while Daddy remained oblivious.
Then Francine, who utterly idolized Hank Williams, did her nasal rendition of Your Cheatin’ Heart, as earnest and reverent as I’d ever seen her.
I didn’t take undue notice of Mama’s lengthy absence till Francine cranked up Hey, Good Looking, and Daddy’s brow furrowed when he hiked up his wrist to peer at his watch. Sensing the change in him, Francine fell silent, a phenomenon within itself because Francine’s focus usually opaqued anything beyond her immediate whim. Daddy kept checking the time, his brow corrugating deeper by the moment.
My stomach butterflies ceased their flapping, pushed aside by the dread that oozed inside me and settled like cold concrete.
Francine shot me a “here we go again” look, rolled her tiger-tawny eyes, almost the exact shade of her hair, folded her slender arms, and shifted to stare stone-faced — yet appraisingly — out the back window at the men perched like sentry hawks on the rock wall curb facing Tucapau Cotton Mill. While disparaging Mama’s whimsical nature, Francine was blind to her own like-quirks, remaining blissfully unencumbered by any big-sister responsibility.
That was left entirely to me. Timmy, at eleven, a small, dark carbon of Daddy, already harbored cynicism in his whiskey golden gaze, one much too somber and vigilant. I had my work cut out just keeping our heads above dank, murky waters that threatened to obliterate our family unit.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Daddy sprang from the car and dashed into the store, his movements jerky and desperate.
“Where’s Mama?” asked my little nine-year-old sister, Sheila. The picture of Mama, Sheila was perfection with big jade eyes and elegant oval features framed softly by russet and wheat streaked hair. She would someday, I suspected, be the family beauty.
“She’s inside the store,” I said, a bit more cheerfully than I felt. A vague premonition froze the smile that struggled to reach my lips. Instead, I patted her plump little fingers that laced loosely in her lap, their wiggly dance belying her calm demeanor.
Her resignation smote me. Then shot terror through me. I blinked and surreptitiously breathed deeply to allay anxiety, like Nana, in her stoical monotone, always instructed me. I groped for an inside button to turn off my roiling emotions. Finding none, I simply rode the bucking tumult.
Moments later, Daddy reappeared alone, pale as burnt out ashes. His hands trembled as he climbed into the front seat and gripped the steering wheel, anchoring himself as he stared off at some obscured horror, a stunned expression erasing all but ghostly laughter crinkles from his handsome features.
Long tense moments passed. Packed together like little sardines in the car’s back seat, neither of us four kids spoke. Were afraid to. Being accustomed to disappointment didn’t exactly inspire us to reach out and seize it.
I garnered courage. “Where’s Mama?” My voice rasped, quivered.
Daddy’s head swiveled and our gazes collided. The pain in his caused my breath to hitch. “Is she coming?” I ventured tremulously, weak from the inquiry’s effort.
Slowly, his head moved from side to side. “No, honey. She’s not coming.” Tears sprang to my eyes, of hurt, of anger. Of myriad, unnamable emotions. “Why?” I didn’t want to know.
“Because,” his knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “She’s gone.”
“Where did she go?” Hysteria shimmied my voice up to shrill.
Francine huffed in disgust, tossed her thick tousled wheat mane back against the seat, and melted into its crease. Sheila didn’t move an eyelash. She sat frozen, her fingers dancing…dancing.
Timmy’s big Cocker Spaniel eyes, focused on me, drew my notice — his dark lashes were as thick as any girl’s — and as I gazed into them, I saw a plea glimmering in the golden depths. Make it all right, Sunny, they whimpered.
I gulped at the enormity of his need. Thought I’d drown in it.
Daddy took a deep, ragged breath then slowly blew it out and, as he did so, his lean torso slumped and his forehead connected with the steering wheel. “Only way out was the back exit.”
Hope seized me. “But maybe — maybe she was inside and you just didn’t see her. Maybe she was —”
Beside me, Francine’s snort of dismay failed to dash my burst of optimism.
But when Daddy’s dark mahogany head lifted, pity spilled from his eyes, snuffing hope as a fire hydrant’s flush would a candle-flicker. “Mr. Mason saw her duck out the back door, Sunny. She got into a car there.”
“Why am I not surprised?” muttered Francine and viciously crossed long bronze legs protruding saucily from flaming shorts.
Because, the thought flitted through my reeling brain, it takes one to know one and was instantly ashamed of the disdain I felt for my own flesh- and-blood sister.
“What’s wrong?” Sheila’s green eyes gazed up at me with a trust that hit me like a sledgehammer. It scared the daylights out of me. Then, amazingly, calmed me. It made me able to smile at her, to pretend everything was okay. To toss Timmy a feeble wink of encouragement.
And in some fuzzy corner of my psyche my role snapped into place. I would be the kids’ caretaker. On some level I knew.
When Daddy cranked the Ford — an act that declared Mama gone — the mundaneness of the revving engine struck me as surreal.
And I knew. Deep, deep inside, I knew. Don’t know how or why. But I knew.
Mama was not coming back.
~~~~~
Three things blasted a mill hill woman’s good name to smidgens; sexual immorality, neglecting one’s kids, and a filthy house, in that order. Though Nana’s vigilance spared Mama from the latter, her own folly cost her the entire substance of respectability.
The horror of it all traumatized me in ways I’d never before experienced.
Men began leering at me, a thing that sent me scurrying home to soak for hours in our old rust-stained bathtub, trying to wash away the shame Mama had foisted upon me.
“Ruby Acklin’s name is worse than mud; it’s slime,” I murmured days later to a sympathetic Doretha as I swirled my straw in watery Coke at Abb’s Corner, where she, Daniel, and Emaline commiserated with me on the turn of events. From the jukebox, Jimmy Wakely empathized with One Has my Name (the Other Has my Heart). “People don’t blame you for her mess, Sunny,” insisted Emaline, sweet optimistic Emaline, her green eyes sad as a Bassett’s.
I snorted. “Not only has she done across-the-board adultery, this time she’s run off with the village doctor, who is,” I rolled my eyes, “ten years younger’n her. And to think, I used to think he looked like Tim Holt.” I shook my head in disbelief, scowled and blinked back tears. “Now he’s got horns and fangs that drip blood.” I gazed at my buddy through tears. “Our blood.”
I sighed heavily. “I’ll bet Doctor Worley don’t appreciate her tomfoolery forcing ‘im from retirement.”
Across the café I spotted teenaged Buck Edmonds, paying for his order and as he turned to leave he blatantly caught my eye and winked. Sneaky- like. So as not to draw Daniel’s attention. Then he nearly collided with Fitzhugh Powers, our village policeman, and his face composed into angelic repose. In blue uniform, Fitzhugh was formidable, a force to be reckoned with by mischief-makers. Underneath, he was every villager’s daddy.
Uggh! I hated Buck Edmonds. His interest crawled over my skin like a passel of loosed snakes. I shivered.
“Hey, ya’ll.” Fizhugh waved to us, sending me an especially sympathetic look as he slid his tight, toned form onto a red/chrome swivel stool at the counter for his daily coffee and chat with Abb, his buddy and our other father figure who always had time to hear our problems.
We waved back and Daniel leaned impulsively and kissed my cheek, encouraging my angry venting.
“Then — then she ran out on ‘er kids,” I added. “Tallied up in mill hill math, Emaline, Mama’s worth is a big fat zero. And I see how the men’re looking at me.”
“Who?” Daniel was instantly alert, like a jungle beast sniffing danger.
Uh oh. Back pedal. “Nobody in particular. Just — oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just imagining it.”
But I knew I wasn’t. I just didn’t want Daniel going and getting in trouble over something I couldn’t even prove if I wanted to. Besides, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Fair or not, some folks would think I’d done something to attract the men. Everybody in the village didn’t consider me as family, either.
Daniel, sitting next to me on the inside, settled against the wall. He grew quiet and still as death. Yet, I felt this subterranean wildness churning through him, sizzling, one peculiar to him, one that stands out till this day in my memory. And I knew not to say something to send him tumbling over the edge.
“Poor Sunny,” Doretha murmured, oozing with sympathy and her own brand of otherworldliness that she wore like a rare deep South fragrance. Emaline looked at her in wonder, awed.
A waif-like creature, a mill hill, poor version of Audrey Hepburn, Doretha effortlessly exuded power. She gave me one of her long, assessing looks. Seemed she could read things nobody else could — see things. “You think her whorin’s gonna drag you down, too, don’t you? Like — ‘cause you’re her’s, folks’ll think you’re like’er.”
I nodded. “The stinking feeling just clings, y’know?” I lolled against the red leather booth backrest. “Look — I know it don’ make sense to feel somebody else’s shame. But a mama’s not just somebody else. She’s the person who spawned you, who knows the feel of your skin and your smell — I can’t wash it away.” Tears puddled along my lower lids and I sat up straight and swiped them away. I swallowed a couple of times before speaking again. “I’m not like her.”
Daniel grunted assent and shifted sharply, his anger palpable. I knew it took giant effort for him not to bellow with frustration and rage.
“‘Course you’re not.” Emaline grasped my hand across the table and squeezed, blinking back tears.
“Daggum right!” I nodded, gazing at her. “I — I thought when Daddy came home from the war, things would change. I once thought the divorce thing was like a square block of wood being hammered into a round hole. Divorce on the mill hill just — wasn’t done. And now,” I splayed my fingers at the ceiling, “My own Mama and Daddy are getting divorced.” Anger surged through me. “I hope Mama’s satisfied!”
“She can’t help it. That’s just who she is,” Doretha said, coming around to sit beside me as I scooted over against Daniel to make room. She wrapped an arm around my skinny shoulders. “But she stole your childhood away from you, Sunny,” she said quietly, in her gentle, assured way. “She oughtta be ashamed of that, if nothin’ else.”
I looked at her in amazement. How could she know? But she did. That was the magic that was Doretha. “Remember you once’t told me you smell lemon-drops when you’re real happy?” She looked at me with the saddest eyes.
I nodded, wiping a tear from my cheek, and heard Emaline snuffle.
“Well, you don’ smell ‘em now, do you?” I felt Daniel’s strong fingers come up under my upper arm and squeeze and I gazed up into his solemn face. “No,” I said hoarsely, “I don’t smell ‘em anymore.”
His hand slid down my arm till his big, callused fingers clasped mine. “You will,” he murmured fiercely, nostrils a’flare. “I promise you, Sunny. Someday, you will.”
~~~~~
We Acklins each dealt with Mama’s unsavoriness in our own way. Daddy escaped up north to job-hunt, leaving us in Nana’s care.
Francine barricaded herself in our upstairs room, pulled hidden Camel cigarettes from beneath her mattress, threw open the window and inhaled like the smoke was water and her guts were on fire. Her nightly vanishing- out-the-window act increased.
I’d begun hearing asides about Francine, too, more lewd ones, but I’d pushed them away. They always made my insides squirm like a hooked- worm, even as I lifted my chin in defiance. I would not be like Mama. Or Francine.
Timmy and Sheila became my appendages, echoing my own erratic emotions during those first months. The Sunny they’d known before Mama’s abandonment had gone away inside herself. I’d always played with Sheila and Timmy, as into play-like as they were. Waif-like skinny, I’d have passed for a twelve-year-old any day of the week.
“It’s your eyes that give you away,” Doretha told me one night as we sat around on the Acklin couch next to the white plastic Philco table radio, listening to Our Miss Brooks. “They’re the eyes of an old woman,” she insisted in her insightful way.
“Yuck,” groaned Francine as she polished her fingernails.
Aunt Tina, Mama’s sister with whom she shared a mutual love-hate association, stuck her head in the front door, “Alvin wanted to stay here while I go to the company store for a few things,” she shrilled, announcing her son’s indolent entrance to join us. They lived down Maple Street, four doors away.
Alvin is the most un-animated person I’ve ever known. Compared to his Mama, he’s dead. Rigor mortis stage. This evening, he shrugged and exchanged a half-hearted, gauntlet-tossing gaze with Francine. Then he plopped, bored, down onto the sofa, whistling through his teeth as Francine dismissed him with a mere toss of thick, tawny mane.
I noticed, however, that one thing did hook his attention. Doretha.
Doretha never missed a beat extracting me from Francine’s talons.
“Never you mind, Francine,” Doretha gently scolded, “Sunny feels things deeper’n most folk.” Being her kind self, Doretha didn’t add ‘deeper’n you. “ I don’t mean she looks old. It’s just — her eyes show her hurts.”
“Mama used to sing and dance for us,” Sheila piped in, desperate to change the sad subject and, I suspected, to gain the spotlight. I was hoping that her flair for fabrication to get attention wouldn’t burgeon with the turn of events.
“Yeh.” Longing rode Timmy’s soft voice. “She was good, too.”
Emaline smiled and sighed. “She was sooo pretty in her white and black hotel maid’s uniform and apron. And that little triangle hat that tied like a nurse’s to her head. Shoot, she coulda been Betty Grable or Alice Faye singing and tap dancing across that big ol’ silver screen.”
“Shhh!” Francine snapped. “I can’t hear.” She pretended inordinate interest in Arnold Stang’s dialogue with Our Miss Brooks.
Alvin stared baldly at her, scrutinizing her audacity.
Ignoring her, Sheila gushed. “When she saw us watchin’ ‘er, she’d grab Grandpa Dexter’s old cane from the closet. He’d left it when he run off with that girl younger’n Mama.” Oh, how Sheila loved to repeat gossip and purse those little lips importantly. That always drew attention. “Mama’d sing Pennies From Heaven, making pennies fall through the air and land at our feet. Wouldn’t she, Sunny?”
I could still hear throaty belly-laughter erupt from Mama as she watched us scuttle about on our knees to scoop up the money and pocket it.
That was the blinding-fun side of her wildness.
“Yep,” I smiled at Sheila, “Mama was enchanting.”
“You sure use purdy words,” Doretha said thoughtfully, impressed. Because of her limited education, she thought I had the smartest brain wedged between two ears.
“Enchanting?” I laughed out loud and shrugged. “She was enchanting.”
Plain and simple, despite her careening excesses and self-absorption, we missed Mama’s magic.
“Huh,” Francine disparaged while examining her wet fire-red nails, blatantly refusing to reverence our nostalgia. “She wudn’t around long enough to make too much of a splash. Always gone somewhere or ‘nuther, ‘doin’ her own thing. Everything was about her. Always her.”
But then, Francine wasn’t inclined to enchantment. Except of her own making. And I thought how Francine had, to a tee, just described her own self.
~~~~~
More religion. That’s what I needed.
December sunlight warmed our faces and shoulders while an arctic breeze chilled our other parts as Daniel and I strolled, hand-in-hand, to the village outskirts. The hilly terrain was as much a part of me as the air I breathed. It undulated under and around me, securing me like a fortress. How I loved those gently sloping hills, whose paved avenues led to everything of joy and sustenance. To family and friends.
Today they led to church.
I’d finally talked Daniel into going with me to the little village Pentecostal Church, where I found respite from the hellish hopelessness that plagued me day and night. As I look back, I think it was my desperation, on that particular occasion, that overrode his aversion to anything remotely emotional.
Inside the church, Daniel and I sat with Gladys Kale, our friend and neighbor, at who’s nearby house we frequently hung out. That is, when her sorry, no-good husband, Harly wasn’t home. I learned that descriptive term from Gladys and, with reference to Harly, used it without fail: sorry, no-good husband.
Today, Daniel was a mite uncomfortable but I didn’t feel guilty a’tall that I’d finagled him into coming by telling him I needed him to go with me to church, that I needed something strong to keep me a’going, what with Mama’s shenanigans and all.
I knew what buttons to push in Daniel. He hated what both our mamas represented. So here he was, as uncomfortable as a long-tailed cat on the hotel porch with its endless creakin’ rocking chairs. I looked around. Emaline, my pal, was not there. She’d apparently decided to attend Tucapau Methodist Church with her mama, daddy, and grandparents.
My disappointment evaporated when the music cranked up and exploded, filling that little tabernacle till the walls seemed to expand and throb in time. Today’s service was especially lively, everything spiritual my daily, dark existence denied.
Daniel did okay until later, when an altar call issued forth.
“Come to Je-sus!” Pastor trumpeted like a bull elephant. “To-daaay!”
When folks started spilling down the aisle a’weeping and travailing and collapsing into heaps of agonized repentance at the rail, my heart tripped into a syncopated song of ecstasy. I clasped my hands to my flat bosom and just grinned and grinned. That Daniel stood beside me rigid as an oak, and that his hands clamped onto the back of the pew turned his knuckles whiter’n new snow did not disturb my bliss.
He grew more and more jittery as the pastor’s penetrating gaze swept the congregation for guilt-stricken countenances. Daniel’s poker face gained him a temporary reprieve.
Having weeks earlier done the long aisle walk, I now gaped at the spectacle around that altar, grinning, enraptured by all the hullabaloo, with its backslapping and admonitions to ‘hang on’ and ‘let go.’
When Daniel grabbed hold of my elbow and steered me outside quicker’n you could say ‘scat’ I didn’t worry. I just smiled and smiled as his brow furrowed and he propelled us down that village street faster’n two startled bobcats.
I knew.
Daniel would one day give in. And we’d have the best daggum marriage on the face of this earth!
~~~~~
One April night, we walked to our favorite retreat, the village park. The lush setting was deserted except for the two of us.
“Daniel,” I can’t believe it.” I was beside myself with joy. “You hit Ol’ Tom!”
I settled beside him on the bench. “Yeh. I let ‘im have it right between the eyes.” He didn’t look proud. That wasn’t Daniel. Just at peace that he’d finally, after all those years, settled it with the old man.
“What did Walter say about you hittin’ his daddy?”
“Said I shoulda done it a long time ago. ‘Course I’ve just now got enough size on me to give ‘im back as good as he gives.”
I laughed with delight. Walter, Daniel’s twenty-something foster brother, was okay.
“Huh. He won’t be bothering you anymore, I’ll bet.”
Daniel draped his arm around my shoulders as we snuggled together on the wooden bench, one of several that marked the expanse of grassy knoll punctuated by fir, maple, and oak trees.
I knew of the beatings Ol’ man Stone gave Daniel. Doretha had whispered of them to me. It broke my heart. Daniel never spoke of them, defiantly ignored them. Tonight, he broke that trend when he said, “I’d a’run away from that sorry trash before now, but I can’t leave you, Sunny.”
“So you just did what you had to do,” I said, grinning. Then I sobered. “Too bad you couldn’t trust him to treat you fairly. You deserve respect, Daniel.”
“I lost trust in adults long ago,” he said softly, almost to himself.
“I haven’t completely given up on ‘em,” I assured Daniel. Somehow it seemed important that one of us believe in humanity’s good. “I don’t exactly not trust. I just no longer live in a world where adults make everything all right. Y’know?”
Trust had begun to morph away from absolute.
Daniel gazed at me with pain-glazed eyes. Then he slowly shook his dark head. “You’ve got somethin’ in you I don’t have, Sunny. After what we saw your mama —” He stopped, squeezed his eyes shut and held out a hand in appeasement, then ran fingers through his thick hair. “I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t’ve said that.”
But my tears already shimmered, blinding me as I remembered that night….
“Mama — where you goin’?” I squinted up at her from my folding-seat in the dimness of the movie house. Beside me, Daniel squeezed my hand, sensing my apprehension.
“I’ll be back in a minute, Sweetie.” The drift of Blue Waltz did little to reassure me as Mama disappeared up the aisle. Fifteen minutes later, Daniel and I searched the lobby. Something deep, deep inside insisted I could save Mama from herself. Somehow, Daniel understood.
“She went outside. Said she wud’n feelin’ well,” said Lib, the ticket girl, cynicism and pity spilling from her big ol’ curious eyes. Outside, Mama’s rich, lusty laughter sliced through June’s thick, humid evening air. My younger siblings were at home after a long afternoon matinee. Daniel and I came with Mama tonight, at her request. I still wondered why the rare invitation.
“Wait,” Daniel touched my arm to stay me. Then he swiftly moved ahead to the parked car across the street, from whence spiraled Mama’s bawdy, animal noises. I followed him, knowing he wanted to protect me. But it was my mess, not his. Mama and Toy Narson didn’t even see us when we peered through the car’s half-open window.
“C’mon,” Daniel’s harsh whisper wasn’t soon enough. His fingers gripped my arm as he tugged me away and I knew his anger in part was because he’d failed to shield me. Worse still, I knew his rage was at my mama and her stud of the moment, a married man who this very moment rode her in that back seat like a rutting dog.
“My God,” he rasped, looking absolutely ill. “Don’t she realize how loud she is?” The shame of it was too much to bear and I tore off running down the street, tears streaming my face. When riled, I could, in my youth, run like a greyhound and Daniel didn’t catch up till I was nearly home, by now gasping and retching and sobbing intermittently.
“I’m sorry, Sunny,” he whispered as he steered then settled me on our back stoop. “I shouldn’t’a said that.” He turned me into his arms and comforted me with soothing, crooning words. “Don’t let ‘er get to you. She’s not you. Let it go.”
“Now I know why she a-asked me to go with her tonight,” I hiccuped, snuffling. “S-she just wanted to get around Nana. Nana’s been fussin’ at ‘er this week sayin’ ‘don’t see how you can roll over on your back for every Tom, Dick, and Harry’. She just used us, Daniel. And I thought she really wanted to s-spend time —” My sobs recommenced stronger than ever.
This time, Daniel turned me on the step and embraced me to his chest, his voice husky with feeling. “Don’t you dare give up, Sunny. These next four years’ll pass fast and then we’ll be married and nobody’ll hurt you again. Her shame ain’t your shame. Y’hear? It’s-not-yours.”
“It’s e-easy for you to say. Your mama don’t live right here, whoring right under everybody’s nose and —”
“She used to bring men in our house, Sunny. Think that don’t do things to you? So I understand how you feel.” His lips brushed my cheek and lips, soft as a butterfly a’lightin’. “We’ll get through this together, y’hear? Together.”
Daniel always calmed me with that magic word: together.
… Continued…
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by Rebecca Forster
Prologue
He shot the naked woman at nine thirty in the morning; the naked man was in his sights at nine forty-five.
Three more shots: the front door and address, the woman’s car nestled in the shadows of an Acacia tree, the man’s car parked in front of the house – as subtle a statement as a dog pissing to mark its territory. The camera started to whir. Archer decided he had enough to satisfy his client that the missus wasn’t exactly waiting with bated breath for him to high tail it home.
Archer reloaded and stashed the exposed film in his pocket then let his head fall back against the Hummer’s seat. Cradling the camera in his lap, Archer felt his body go heavy as his eyes closed. He was tired to the bone and not because he had another couple of hours to wait before Don Juan decided to pack up his piece and take his leave. This tired was in Archer’s soul; this tired crept way deep into that heart muscle and made it hard to pump enough blood to keep him going.
He moved in the seat, put one leg up and tried to stretch it out. There wasn’t a comfortable place for a man his size even in this hunk of Hummer metal; there wasn’t a comfortable place in his mind for the thoughts that had been dogging him for days.
He hated this gig, spying on wayward wives. No self-respecting cop would be doing this kind of work even if the wronged husband were paying big bucks. But then Archer wasn’t a self-respecting cop anymore. He was a part-time photographer, a retired detective, a freelance investigator and a man who was running on empty when it came to making ends meet this month. And then there was the anniversary.
He didn’t want to think about that either, but it was impossible to clear his mind when California autumn had come again, a carbon copy of a day Archer would just as soon not remember. It had been sunny like today: bright sky blue up high, navy in the deep sea. A nip in the day air. Cold at night. Lexi, his wife, was sick. And then there was Tim. God, he hated thinking about it. But on a day like this, with too much time on his hands, it couldn’t be helped.
Archer stirred and held the camera in the crook of one arm like a child. His other one was bent against the door so he could rest his head in his upturned hand. He moved his mind like he moved his body, adjusting, settling in with another thought until he found a good place where it could rest.
Josie.
Always Josie. The woman who saved him from insanity after Lexi died. They’d hit a little rough patch lately but even that didn’t keep the thought of her from putting his mind in a good place. Sleep was coming. What was happening in the house was just a job. The other was just a memory. Josie was real. Josie was . . .
Archer didn’t have the next second to put a word to what Josie meant to him. The door of the Hummer was ripped open, almost off its hinges. Archer fell out first, the camera right after. Off balance already, he was defenseless against the huge hands that grappled and grasped at his shoulders and the ferocity of the man who threw him onto the asphalt and knelt on his back.
“Jesus Christ. . .” Archer barked just before the breath was knocked out of him.
“Shut up.” The man atop him growled, dug his knee into Archer’s back, and took hold of his hair.
Archer grunted. Shit, he was getting old. The guy in the house not only made him, he got the drop on him. Archer ran through what he knew: the guy was a suit, one seventy tops, didn’t work out. He should be able to flick this little shit off with a deep breath.
Hands flat on the ground, Archer tried to do just that but as he pushed himself off the pavement he had another surprise. It wasn’t the guy in the house at all. The man on his back was big, he was heavy and he wasn’t alone. There were two of them.
While the first ground Archer’s face into the blacktop, the second found a home for the toe of his boot in Archer’s midsection. Archer bellowed. He curled. He tried to roll but that opened him up and this time that boot clipped the side of his face, catching the corner of his eye. The blow sent him into the arms of the first man who embraced him with an arm around his throat. Archer’s eyes rolled back in his head. Jesus that hurt. His eyelids fluttered. One still worked right. He looked up and stopped struggling.
The guy who had him in a headlock knew what he was doing. If Archer moved another inch and the man adjusted his grip, Archer’s neck would snap. As it was, the guy was doing a fine job of making sure Archer was finding it damn hard to breathe.
His eyes rolled again as a pain shot straight through his temple and embedded itself behind his ear. He tried to focus, needing to see at least one of them if he was going to identify them when – if – he got out of this mess. They could have the car. No car was worth dying for. But he couldn’t tell them to take it if he couldn’t speak and he couldn’t identify them if he could barely see. There was just the vaguest impression of blue eyes, a clean-shaven face, and a checked shirt. Archer’s thoughts undulated with each new wave of pain. Connections were made then broken and made again like a faulty wire. The one that stuck made sense: these guys didn’t want his car but they sure as hell wanted something. Just as the chokehold king tightened his grip, and his friend took another swipe at Archer’s ribs, one of them offered a clue.
“You asshole. Thought you got away with it, didn’t you?”
That was not a helpful hint.
Roger McEntyre took the call at ten thirty-five without benefit of a secretary. Didn’t need one; didn’t want one. The kind of work he did wasn’t dependent on memos and messages. He kept important information in his head. If he shared that information, it was because he wanted to. If Roger wasn’t in his office, couldn’t be raised on his cell, had not told his colleagues where to contact him then he meant not to be found. That’s what a company guy did. He delivered what the company needed and was rewarded with the knowledge that he was the best in the business. Everyone had tried to hire him away: Disneyland, Magic Mountain, Knott’s Berry Farm but a company man was loyal. Roger was loyal to Pacific Park, the oldest amusement park in California, loyal to the man who had given his father a job when no one else would, loyal to the man who treated him like a son.
Now he was about to deliver a piece of good news the company needed bad. He was delivering it before schedule and that made him proud, though it was difficult to tell. Roger’s smile was hidden by the walrus mustache he had grown the minute he left the service. That was a pity because he actually had a nice, almost boyish grin when he thought to use it.
So he left his office – a small, spare space off a long corridor – and passed the two offices where his colleagues worked. One ex-FBI, the other a product of New York’s finest. Roger, himself, was Special Forces. Honorable discharge. Fine training.
He walked through the reception area of building three and gave the girl at the desk an almost imperceptible nod as he passed. She was a cute kid and Roger doubted she knew his name. Given her expression, he imagined she wasn’t even sure he worked there. That’s the kind of man he was. He walked like he knew where he was going and didn’t mess where he wasn’t supposed to. If he had been another kind of man that little girl would have been open season. She didn’t know how lucky she was.
Roger pushed through the smoke glass doors and snapped his sunglasses on before the first ray of light had a chance to make him wince. Thanks to the year ‘round school schedules the park was still busy even at the end of October. Halloween decorations were everywhere. On the 31st the park would be wall-to-wall kids causing all sorts of problems. Today there were none.
Roger dodged a couple of teenagers who weren’t looking where they were going, stopped long enough to oblige a woman who asked him to take a picture of her family, and noted that the paint was peeling on the door of the men’s bathroom near the park entrance.
He took a sharp right, ducked under a velvet rope and walked through a real door hidden in a fake rock. The air-conditioning hit him hard with an annoyingly prickly cold. Isaac liked it that way. That was strange for an old guy. Usually old guys liked things warm. Down a small hallway he went, through another glass door, across another reception area and into the executive suite. The receptionist there was of a different caliber all together. She was slick. Expensive haircut. Older. Had too much style to be stuck behind the scenes.
“Mary.” Roger nodded as he went by her.
“He’s waiting,” she said.
“Yes.”
Roger opened one of the double doors just far enough to slip through then stood inside the office, arms at his side, posture perfect as always. Isaac’s office was nice. Very adult, very sophisticated considering the kind of business they were in.
The silver haired man behind the mahogany desk was on the phone. That call wasn’t as important as Roger. The receiver went to the cradle, and Isaac Hawkins’ hand held onto it as if he were bracing for bad news. Roger’s mustache twitched. He didn’t want to get the old man’s hopes up so he made his report without elaboration.
“They got him. Everything’s moving forward.”
“Then it was true.”
Isaac’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly in his relief. Roger moved closer to the desk just in case he was needed. Isaac looked ten years younger than his years but even that would have been old.
“The District Attorney made the decision,” Roger answered as Isaac got up from his desk. “We just gave them what we had.”
Isaac Hawkins walked up to Roger. He took him by the shoulders, looked into his face and then drew him forward.
“Your father would have been proud. Thank you, Roger.”
“Don’t worry, Isaac.”
“I’m glad we did the right thing,” the old man said before he sat down again. “Let me know how it goes. You’ll do that, won’t you?”
“I will.”
Roger turned away; satisfied he had done his work well. At least that was one monkey off the old guy’s back – one that should never have been there in the first place. Not after all these years.
Of the five attorneys, five secretaries, two paralegals, receptionist, mailroom boy, suite of offices in Brentwood and shark tank, Jude Getts was proudest of the shark tank. It was a cliché, sure, but in his case it was a cliché that worked. Getts & Associates was not the largest law firm but it was the leanest, most voracious personal injury firm in Los Angeles. Lose a leg? A lung? A life? Jude’s associates put a price tag on everything and collected with amazing regularity. They didn’t as much negotiate with defendants as hold them hostage until they coughed up the big bucks; they didn’t try a case as much as flay it, peeling back the skin of it slowly, painfully, exquisitely. And, of all the attorneys in the firm, Jude Getts was the best.
Bright eyed, boyish, his blond tipped hair waved back from a wide, clear brow. Jude was tall but not too tall, dramatic without being theatrical, a master of the touch, the look, the smile. He had timing whether it was offered during closing arguments or a rare intimate moment with a woman chosen for the length of her legs or the look of her face. But what made Jude a really, really good personal injury attorney was that he loved a challenge more than anything else. He rejoiced in it. A challenge made his heart flutter, made him smile wider, laugh heartier, and made his work even more impeccable. What he was hearing on the radio as he drove to meet his client was making that heart of his feel like an aviary just before an earthquake.
Jude passed the keys to his car to the valet and said ‘keep it close’ before he bounded into the foyer of the Napa Valley Grill, past the hostess who was gorgeous but rated only his most radiant, thoughtless, everyday smile. He gave his drink order to his favorite waiter with a touch to the man’s arm, a tip of his head that indicated Jude really didn’t think of him as a waiter at all but as a friend. The drink arrived at the table just as Jude was sliding onto the chair, giving his very best professional smile to the man across the table.
“Colin,” Jude said as he snapped the heavy white napkin and laid it across his lap.
“Jude,” the other man nodded. He already had a drink. It was almost gone.
“They make a good drink here, Colin. Damn good drink.”
“I’ve had two,” the client noted.
Colin Wren was not a man who really enjoyed life, and insisting he take time to smell the roses, gave Jude an unprecedented kick in the ass. But while he was laughing on the inside, the outside was always respectful. Colin was, after all, the client.
“I’m sorry I kept you waiting but something came to my attention. It’s definitely going to change the course of our business, Colin.”
“I don’t want anything to change the course of our business,” Colin said quietly and finished his second drink. “I’ve waited too long.”
The eyes that looked at Jude from behind wire rim glasses were soft brown, gentle looking. They were the eyes of a priest. Colin Wren was not a priest, nor was he particularly kindly or likeable. An opportunity brought him to Jude, but every once in a while Jude had the sneaking suspicion the matter at hand was more than business.
“Well, Colin, I’m not sure you’ve got a choice. It seems our friends at Pacific Park have made a brilliant move.” Jude took a drink, put his glass down and crossed his arms on the table. “They handed the problem off to the district attorney and suddenly we’re talking a criminal matter here. Until John Cooper does what he’s going to do, we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of collecting on a civil action.” Jude picked up his glass again. “How’s that for a surprise, Colin?”
Chapter 1
“Ms. Bates,” Mrs. Crawford said. “I’m going to have to be brutally honest with you. Some parents are concerned about Hannah enrolling at Mira Costa High School. Ms. Bates?”
Startled, Josie shifted in her seat. She’d been watching Hannah through the little window in the door of the principal’s office. Hannah’s head was down as she dutifully filled out registration forms. She was already behind, starting more than a month late because of the trial. There was so much against her, not the least of which was the problems in her gorgeous head, that Josie couldn’t have felt more anxious if she was Hannah’s mother. Now she forced herself to look away, giving her attention to the principal, Mrs. Crawford.
“I don’t know why they would be concerned. Hannah didn’t kill Justice Rayburn,” Josie said.
“But they remember the trial. There was a great deal of publicity.”
“And there was even more when Hannah’s mother was convicted of the crime. Now her mother is in jail and all ties to her have been severed. If anyone is unaware of the outcome of that trial, I’ll be more than happy to fill them in.”
“Lawyers and educators both know that facts have nothing to do with emotional reality.” Mrs. Crawford smiled. “I doubt the reality of gossip, innuendo and curiosity on the part of the students or their parents is going to surprise you. What may surprise you are the consequences of all that. You don’t have children, do you?”
Josie shook her head, “I’m not married.”
Mrs. Crawford nodded. The world was a different place for someone without children. For those with children the world was a lunar landscape without gravity, full of potholes and insurmountable mountain rises in the distance. Even those born to be parents had a tough time navigating the terrain. Mrs. Crawford gave Josie Baylor-Bates a fifty-fifty chance of surviving unscathed.
“Then you haven’t had the pleasure of dealing,” she chuckled before sliding into seriousness. “Parents will be wary of friendships formed with Hannah. They won’t want her at their houses ‘just in case’ she’s a bad influence. Other students may try to take her on to see how tough she is. They’ll want to see how far they can push her. . . .” Mrs. Crawford hesitated. “They may want to see if she really doesn’t feel pain the way the papers reported.”
“Since you are aware of what might happen, I assume you’ll take every precaution to see that Hannah’s safe,” Josie suggested coolly, not unaware that Mrs. Crawford was trying to help.
“I’d like to be able to promise you that, but I can’t.” Mrs. Crawford sat back. “We have a lot of children who are targets of their peers for any number of reasons. Things have changed since you were in high school. Kids can be targeted because of their sexual orientation, their IQ or just the way they look. We do the best we can, but Hannah is a little different. She’s been to jail, she pled guilty to a murder. People will wonder; kids will get in her face.”
“I’m assuming this is leading somewhere, so why don’t we get to the bottom line,” Josie suggested, trying not to worry that the morning was flying by and she still had work to do. How real parents did this – sometimes with more than one kid – was beyond her.
Mrs. Crawford took a minute to gaze through the small window. She lifted her chin toward Hannah. When she spoke, her tone had softened and her eyes were back on Josie.
“Off the record, I think Hannah is a beautiful, smart, well-spoken young woman. On top of that, I think she’s incredibly brave and bizarrely selfless. I don’t think my kids would have gone to jail for me.” She tipped her head and held up her hands as if helpless. “But this is a big school, Ms. Bates, and we draw from three different districts. Hannah might do better in a smaller venue, a place where the student body is more easily monitored and the administration could better control the reaction to Hannah’s notoriety. Chadwick might be an option.”
“No, Chadwick isn’t an option. I’ve spoken to Hannah about that. She doesn’t want to go to a rich school. She’s had enough of rich people. She just wants to get back to school.” Josie glanced at her charge quickly. “As for the administration, I don’t think you’re going to have to control anything. Hannah is capable of doing that all by herself.”
Mrs. Crawford nodded. She picked up a pen and pulled a sheet of paper toward her.
“Okay, then. You’ve made your decision. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. Funding cuts have left us with only one psychologist on this campus. If Hannah needs help, she’ll have to understand she isn’t the only one who does.”
“No problem. Hannah’s trial isn’t going to be the talk forever. She’ll deal with things and, if she can’t, we’ll know sooner than later.”
“I hope so.”
“Take my word for it, we will” Josie said, thinking one look at Hannah’s arms was all it would take to know if Hannah was heading off the deep end. Josie shivered, remembering the first time she had seen the ugly roadmap of scars on Hannah’s arms. It was one thing for a child to be tortured by an adult, another to know that child had so much pain she cut herself to be rid of it.
“All right. I guess we’re clear.” Mrs. Crawford put on her glasses, sat up and pulled a file toward her. Josie paid attention. “You’re Hannah’s legal guardian?”
“I am. Her mother signed the papers last week.”
“And will Hannah need a parking permit?”
Josie shook her head. “Not yet. Her license was revoked. We’re going to be getting it back, but for now I’ll be picking her up. I’d like to keep a close eye on her for at least the first couple of months.”
Mrs. Crawford made a note, nodding her appreciation of Josie’s concern.
“I see that Hannah will have to miss sixth period every other Tuesday?” The principal’s eyes flickered up.
“She has an appointment with her psychologist. I figured since that was the PE period it would be better than missing math,” Josie answered.
“I imagine she’ll be making up her exercise since you live on the Strand. Does she run?”
Josie laughed, “No. Hannah’s artistic not athletic. I don’t think I’ll get her running anytime soon.”
“Too bad, I’d give anything to live down there. I’d walk every spare minute. Are you a runner?” Mrs. Crawford made small talk as she filled in forms and pushed them toward Josie for a signature.
“Some. Volleyball mostly.” Josie scribbled her name.
“That should have been my first guess,” Mrs. Crawford laughed. “My next guess was going to be basketball.
Josie signed the emergency contact card and pushed it back, grateful that there wasn’t going to be an extended conversation about her height.
“Well,” she said as she stacked the forms. “I think that does it. And don’t worry. We have a fine art department. I think Hannah will be a great asset.”
“Thanks.” Josie checked her watch. A bell rang. Even in the principal’s office Josie could hear the thunderous sound a couple of thousand kids made as they changed classes. It was time for her to go. She had a hearing at the pier courthouse in forty-five minutes. She got up. “So, do you need anything else?”
“Nope.” Mrs. Crawford stood up. “I’ll take Hannah around to the classrooms. I’ve arranged for one of our students to help her out for the next few days.”
“I appreciate that.”
Josie took the hand Mrs. Crawford offered. She hitched her purse and glanced at Hannah. Finished with her own paperwork, Hannah was looking right back at Josie with those clear, spring green eyes of hers. Josie smiled. Hannah was even more beautiful than the first day she saw her. The nose ring was gone. The tongue stud was gone. Her hair had grown back where the hospital had shaved it. Today she had wrapped a sky blue scarf across her brow, her long black hair fell in curls past her shoulders and her dark skin gleamed under the light that came through a high window. And Hannah’s fingers were busy. They gently touched the arm of her chair. Josie could count along with her – one, five, ten, twenty times. The doctors called her behavior obsessive/compulsive. Josie had another name for it: heartbreaking. It would end. It was already better. Hannah didn’t cut herself up any more and that was a big step in the right direction. All Josie needed to do was hang in there with that girl. Josie had saved her once. It was time to finish the job. Josie dug in her purse, turned around again and handed the principal a piece of paper.
“Look, I know this is a lot to ask, but Hannah’s terrified of being left or forgotten. If there’s ever a problem, that’s a list of friends you can call. Family really. If I ever get hung up and can’t get to a phone to call, I’d appreciate you calling anyone on that list. One of them will come get her. I’ll talk to Hannah tonight and tell her to come straight to you if I’m late.”
Mrs. Crawford looked at the list and then put it under the picture of her own family. It wouldn’t be forgotten.
“That’s something I can personally promise. So,” she put her hands together. “I guess we both better get to work.”
Hannah didn’t look back as she walked down the now quiet halls with Mrs. Crawford but Josie couldn’t take her eyes off the girl. She wanted to go with Hannah just to make sure she was fine. That was something a mother would do – just not something Hannah or Josie’s mothers had done. But Josie wasn’t a mother. She had taken in Hannah because there was no one else. That decision had changed Josie’s life and she wasn’t quite sure it was for the better. Archer would say it was for the worse and Josie thought about that as she walked across the campus, looked both ways before she crossed the street and tossed her purse and jacket in the back of her Jeep Wrangler. She swung herself into the seat and a second later her cell phone rang.
She checked her watch. Too early for the court to be calling to find out where she was on that settlement hearing, and the new client didn’t have her cell number. She was freelancing for Faye so no one expected her at the office. Burt wasn’t in the restaurant that day. Billy Zuni? Hopefully he’d be in school. Whoever it was, it couldn’t be all that important. It kept ringing as Josie rolled up her shirtsleeves and reached in back for her baseball cap.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered. Curiosity got the better of her. She grabbed for the phone, pushed the button. “Bates.”
Less than a minute later Josie was peeling down the street laying rubber as she headed to the freeway that would take her downtown to Parker Center and the detention cell where Archer was being held on suspicion of murder.
Chapter 2
Josie was twenty-seven when the call came that her father was ill. No, that wasn’t exactly right. A hospital administrator called and said her father had a heart attack. There was a difference between saying someone’s ill and saying they’ve had a heart attack. Josie didn’t care what the difference was. Her dad was hurting. He needed her. She took off in the middle of a trial and it almost ruined her career. The judicial system had ways to deal with personal emergencies in order to side-step sanctions. Josie didn’t have time to screw around with protocol.
She left Los Angeles on the next flight out to Hawaii. It was two a.m. For five hours Josie looked out the window onto a very dark night. She didn’t read or eat; she didn’t watch the movie or sleep. Above all, Josie Baylor-Bates did not speculate about what she was going to find when she reached her destination. Her Marine father had taught her better than that. She knew the basics. When she arrived in Hawaii Josie would kick into high gear and gather information, assess the situation, speak to the experts and make decisions to insure her father’s survival. Tears, fears, hope and prayers – those emotions were always kept behind the lines. They were an indulgence that Josie seldom allowed herself – until she arrived too late to help him. But that was the last time she had cried, the last time she had prayed. She knew he wouldn’t have minded. It was forgivable when a good soldier passed. But that was a long time ago and she didn’t allow herself to succumb to fears or tears now as she parked in the lot next to the fortress that was Parker Center, headquarters of the LAPD.
No stranger to the place, she pushed through the doors, handed over her purse to be inspected, stated her business and waited for the officer who had given her a head’s up about Archer. She didn’t wait long.
“Josie Bates?”
“Yep.”
She twirled around. Josie had two inches on him, but the officer had a hundred and fifty pounds on Josie easy. He still wore the uniform despite his age and his girth. If he had more than a year to retirement Josie would be amazed.
“Newell,” he said and they shook hands. “I saw them bring Archer in. Didn’t get a chance to talk to him, but I know you two worked on the Rayburn thing together so I thought I’d give you a call.”
Newell steered her toward a corner. He wasn’t talking out of school but he didn’t exactly want to broadcast his involvement in this matter either.
“Why didn’t he call himself?” Josie asked quietly, respecting his position.
“I don’t know exactly what’s going down because we didn’t pop him. It would have taken an act of God to make anyone of us make the collar like that on one of our own,” Newell assured her. “DA investigators made the arrest and brought him here for booking.”
“Did they refuse him a call?”
Newell shrugged.
“Don’t know. I’m sitting the desk. They walked him right by me. It’s all pretty hush-hush, but I recognized Archer right away. We were in the academy together a hundred years ago. Never got close, but you don’t forget a guy like Archer.”
“The District Attorney’s investigators?” Josie prodded.
“Oh, yeah. I don’t know if they refused him. You know John Cooper? He’s one DA that plays things close to the vest. If he didn’t let us in on this then he’s looking for the glory – or something else. . .”
“Like what?” Josie pushed for information. But he took her arm and pulled her further aside as two officers lingered in the lobby.
“Maybe they wanted to clean him up. What I saw didn’t look good. Either Archer put up a hell of a fight or these guys have it in for him, if you know what I’m saying.”
Josie nodded. She knew exactly what he was talking about. What she couldn’t fathom was what had brought Archer to this place and put him in such a condition; Archer who never ran a red light, who lived and breathed the law. Newell put his hand on her arm. She had swayed without realizing it. Her father would have narrowed his eyes at her just enough to let her know it wasn’t time to get girlie. She put her hand over his.
“Thanks for the call. I’ll take it from here,” Josie said.
“No problem. I figured he needed some help. I’d sure appreciate someone stepping in if it was me.”
“I’ll keep it to myself,” Josie assured him.
“No skin off my nose. I retire in three months.”
Josie smiled.
”Still, you went out on a limb,” she said.
“Yeah, well, Archer did a friend of mine a good turn a few years ago. My buddy never got the chance to pay him back. This will square things.”
Newell left it at that. He paced off a few steps, assuming she’d follow but Josie had one more question.
“Newell.” She went close to him again. “Who’s the alleged victim?”
“Don’t have a name. Some kid. That’s all I know.” He shrugged. His shoulders swiveled. “So, now that you’re here, guess you want to see him.”
“Guess I do,” she muttered and followed him down the hall and to a room where Archer was sitting behind a closed door. The man standing outside that door looked less than friendly; she could only guess who was inside.
“I’m Archer’s attorney,” Josie announced. The man seemed unimpressed until she went for the door.
“We’re not done,” he said quietly, his hand clamping over hers. Josie looked at him, her blue eyes cold.
“Yeah, you are. I don’t care if the Pope sent you. You’re history until I talk to my client.” Josie took her hand from under his and pulled up to her full height.
“He didn’t call an attorney.”
“I don’t know what they teach you at the DA’s office, but you’re supposed to ask him if he wanted one before you questioned him. It’s kind of basic. Keeps your cases from being thrown out of court on a technicality.”
“And I don’t know what law school you slipped through, but you should know better than to assume. We offered. He declined,” the man shot back.
Josie stepped back, glancing through the small window in the door of the interrogation room. You didn’t have to be on top of Archer to see that this had not been an easy arrest.
“I would imagine my client didn’t have the wherewithal to understand that right. He might not have understood anything at all considering the shape he’s in. Now, unless your boss wants some very pointed, very public questions about how the District Attorney’s investigative unit does its job, I would suggest you let me in that room.”
They shared a moment, the big man and the extraordinarily tall woman with the exceedingly short hair. It wasn’t a pleasant one. When it ended Josie got her way. The man knocked with one knuckle, opened the door. His partner slipped out. Slimmer but no less arrogant, he gave Josie the once over as his friend announced ‘attorney’ with the kind of effort it took to hurl.
The two men left, sliding along the testosterone slicked hall until they were swallowed up by the bowels of Parker Center. Josie watched them go, her jaw tight, her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t concerned that they would come back. Those two would melt into the bureaucratic soup only to be fished out later and spoon-fed to a jury hungry for the particulars of this day. Those men would remember everything; Archer would remember next to nothing. Josie would have to sort it out for him.
She turned. She put one hand on the knob, the other flat against the door as she took a minute to look hard at Archer. She needed to ground herself before she spoke to him. At this instant she was an attorney, nothing more. Not a lover. Not a friend. She could not be a woman who adored – never worshipped – the ground he walked on. Josie catalogued everything she saw. The blank room. The dark table. The four chairs. Archer sitting with his legs splayed on either side of one. One arm crooked and his forehead cupped in his upturned hand. His shoulders were slumped, his other arm dangled between his legs. He was hurt, possibly broken and probably afraid.
A tremor of fear spidered out from Josie’s center, creeping into her arms, her legs, and up through her neck until her jaw was locked but her knees and hands shook uncontrollably, almost imperceptibly. Two shallow breaths through her nose and the vise around her lungs weakened. Another deep one filled them and she was ready. She pushed open the door, slipped inside and stood against it.
Archer didn’t move and he didn’t look up when he said:
“I don’t want you here, Jo.”
… Continued…
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LITERARY SHORT STORIES
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Amidst Traffic (Short Stories)
by Michel Sauret
Amidst Traffic is a collection of high-caliber short fiction, compiled from Michel’s best work over the years. Some of these stories have appeared in literary journals and publications internationally. Every piece is crafted with a sense of compassion for the human spirit, while seeking answers about the conflicts we experience in everyday life. The characters inside will make you care about their struggles and hope for their redemption.
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The Staring Game
I started the staring game because I wanted to see what it felt like to be God. To watch people closely, and judge who they are. To stare at them and develop a commentary about their lives. Inspect their cleanliness. Their demeanor. Their level of self confidence. Their gestures toward friends. Their words against strangers.
The game started when I was shaving in my small Chicago apartment one day. My bathroom window looks out to a back alley that’s filled mostly with trash. Drug dealers go back there to do their business. And normally I wouldn’t care. There’s nothing really interesting in people exchanging money for drugs.
But one Sunday morning I watched a young man and a woman meet a coke dealer together. The girl was beautiful, with wild, dark hair. She dressed like a hippy, with hundreds of bead necklaces and colorful bracelets. The thing that caught my eye, though, was her tattoos. Her body was covered in them.
They weren’t your typical tattoos. They were words. At least that’s what it looked like from three stories high. Her knuckles, her arms, her shoulders, her ankles… They were everywhere. When I first saw her, I was angry with her. Angry that she would ruin her skin and her body by covering herself in words like that. But the more I saw her coming back, the more I felt compassion for her. She seemed trapped. Trapped in her tattoos and those words. Trapped in this city. Her gestures were jittery and distrusting. She seemed troubled. It made me wonder about her.
What kind of woman covers herself in tattoos like that? Just words. Not pictures or artwork. There was something poetic about it, but also disturbing.
The couple came to pay for their fix on a weekly basis. I watched the exchange from my private window, and I felt a little bit what God must feel like. High and above watching humanity effectively destroy itself.
Then one day, the guy came to pick up the cocaine, but the woman wasn’t with him. He was with a little boy. What kind of man brings a boy to a drug deal? And the dealer made nothing of it. Here’s your money. Here’s your drugs. Okay, have a wonderful addicted life now. Take care. Bye, little boy.
After that, I never saw the couple again. I never saw the woman with the tattoos. But by then, I was hooked. The staring game had taken hold of me, and now I needed my fix.
The rest of the dealer’s customers were boring. Just regular junkies. So I had to take my game outside of my apartment.
On my free weekends, I would go to a park, or a coffee house, or a bar at night, or anywhere crowded, and I’d pick a person and stare at them for a while.
There’s a coffee place by the lake where the girl barista has a tattoo of a flying crow on the back of her neck. She never smiled at women with children. She looked disgusted by their motherhood.
The businessman who walks his terrier in the park carries a green baggie with him, but never actually uses it to clean after the dog. He carries it in hand just for show. The terrier seems old. He lets the dog off the leash most days even though there are signs that prohibit it. He cleaned up after the dog only once, and only because he noticed me staring at him.
There’s a dago-looking dude at the Irish pub on the South Side who will drink nothing but Jagerbombs and Yuenglings. He never buys anyone a drink. Ever. He always leaves three dollars for a tip regardless of who is with him or how much he’s had to drink. He comes and goes with a different woman every week.
I thought I’d begin hating people rather quickly when I started this game. After all, if God exists, he’d hate us for sure by now. What else can you feel toward a people who ignore you for centuries, and whose favorite activities are consumption and self-gratification? What else can you feel toward a people who murder, lie, steal, rape and abuse their own bodies? Then they blame you for everything that’s wrong with this world.
But in playing my staring game, I didn’t get the benefit of watching people in their most vulnerable settings. In order to avoid getting caught, I had to play the game in thick crowds. I rode the public bus to work just so I could watch people during the week. There’s a man who thinks his shoes are talking to him. He’s young and handsome, and if he didn’t talk to his shoes, he’d look like a regular guy. From the look of it, his relationship with the shoes has gone sour. He does a lot of shouting.
But as the game went on, I was less interested in being secretive. In fact, most times I wanted people to feel watched. I wanted them to know I was there, judging their actions, decisions, discomforts.
I felt more a sense of amusement than hatred toward these strangers. Some of them were truly despicable people, sure; like the number of guys at the bar who got young women wasted just so they could drag them out to their car, practically carrying their drunken bodies on their shoulders. Or the drug dealer in the back alley, who will sell to anyone, even children. One time I watched him beat an old junkie to the ground and stomp on him because he owed him money.
What kind of God just watches these things happen and doesn’t intervene? How passive and removed can you possibly be from our suffering. It made me question whether he exists at all.
I watched the junkie lie on the ground for a long while.
God, do something! Help him out!
I’m not sure if that was a prayer or what. Did God enjoy watching the man suffer? I felt repulsed by it. Saddened.
I thought I was going to watch this man die right before my eyes, but several minutes later, he stumbled away. He was okay. He was alive, at least.
No. It wasn’t hatred that I felt toward these people. Perhaps a sense of pity. But who was I? Just some guy with an office job and a slight addiction for watching people. Who was I to hate them?
But I would discover hatred. Not my hatred toward them, but their hatred toward me.
That’s the first thing I discovered from the game: That people hated the idea of being watched. Of being studied. Judged.
I watched the barista girl hold the biggest grin as she served an espresso to a punk-rocker kid with messy hair, and then dropped that smile completely as soon a woman with a baby on her hip ordered a pumpkin spiced latte.
I spent three hours in the coffee house just staring at her.
At one point, she became noticeably tense. The place was pretty empty, except for a girl waiting for her drink to go. The barista made her coffee, but she tightened her lips and shot glares at me the whole time. I never looked away. I didn’t care. This was my game. This was my experiment. I wanted to know what people would do if they knew they were being watched all the time. I wanted to know what people might say to God if they had a chance to confront Him.
The customer got her drink and left.
The girl with the crow tattoo came up to my seat.
“You’re going to have to leave, now,” she said.
“I like your tattoo,” I said.
This paused her, but only for an instant.
“Listen. I don’t know what your problem is. But you have to go.”
“My problem? I don’t have a problem. I’m just people watching.”
“Go. Just, get out…”
“Why do you hate mothers?” I said.
She didn’t answer me. Instead, everything on her face tightened. Her brow, her cheeks, her chin. Everything.
“Get the hell out of my coffee shop right now!” she screamed. “You insane creep!”
Insane? I wasn’t insane. I was just watching her. I didn’t wish her any harm. I just wanted to study her and make a judgment of her character based on her actions and interactions with others.
This was my first experience with her hatred, anyone’s hatred, toward me. And I was quite taken aback by how convulsive she had become; how aggressively she had exploded. When I started this game, I figured that at some point people would confront me. I wanted that. But I thought we’d go into it with a chance to explain my experiment.
I stood, slowly, and she took a step back. She stared me down as I walked out of the coffee shop. I didn’t like the feeling of her eyes on me. I hadn’t done anything to her.
But that wasn’t my worst interaction.
The guy from the Irish pub was worse.
I knew he had finally noticed my staring when he kept making comments at his girl and pointed at me from the other end of the bar. The girl would half-drunkenly pat his chest, trying to tame her man, dismissing his overly exaggerated rage.
I knew he would come confront me at some point, so I ordered a Yuengling and a Jagerbomb. I sat them down in front of me. It took him longer to come up to me than I thought. The beer glass began to bead with sweat.
When he finally came up to me, I said, “Here. I got you your favorites,” and nudged the two drinks toward him.
“What the hell is your problem?” he asked.
“That’s the same thing the girl at the coffee shop wanted to know,” I told him.
He winced at my comment, like he had no idea what I was talking about, which, of course, he didn’t.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means sit down, have a drink with me, and I’ll tell you what my problem is,” I said.
“Dude. I don’t want nothing to do with you. Just leave me alone and quit staring at me. I don’t like it. I see you looking at me one more time, I’m going to beat your eye sockets into your skull.”
“I’m just looking, man. I didn’t do anything to you.”
“Well, stop.”
“Before you go…” I grabbed his wrist. He looked down at my hand, and I let go.
“What?” he groaned the word.
“Why don’t you ever buy anyone a drink? Why do you always tip exactly three dollars? Why do you come here with a new girl every week?”
The look on his face was appalled, and I thought maybe I was striking a chord. Maybe we would get to the root of his weekly routines. We might be able to discover something together here.
“Why are you so sad?” I asked, thinking that question might break his silence and we could sit together and enjoy a few beers over deep philosophical matters.
But a rage set off in him that I didn’t expect.
He grabbed my neck, and before I could slip away or push him off, he slammed me against the bar. The edge caught my cheek and blood poured from my face. But he wasn’t satisfied with that. I was on the ground and he was upon me with fists and jabs and kicks and knees. All I could do was go in a ball, but I caught a look in his eyes that was filled with hatred so pure that the look of it hurt as much as the blows he delivered.
Eventually people stopped him and pulled him off me. But by that point my face had bled down to my shirt and my body hurt so bad that I had to be dragged out of the bar. I didn’t make it home that night because I could hardly walk. I hobbled to a side alley and spent the night with my back against a brick wall, crying out in misery and pain.
But despite the pain, the beating, the hatred—I couldn’t stop this game. There was still the man who walked his dog at the park in a business suit.
The next morning was Saturday. I regained some strength and made it to the park.
I sat down at my usual bench. As people walked by and saw me, saw my bloodied shirt, my busted lip, my swollen eye, their look of disgust was petrifying. You don’t know me, I wanted to tell them. You don’t know anything about me. I’m not a bad guy.
Their stares made me feel exposed. I felt like they could see past the bloodied shirt and the bruises. They could see my inability to keep a girlfriend. They could see me wasting hours on my work computer playing meaningless games instead of doing actual work. They could see the time I ran over a dog and didn’t stop to see if it was okay.
Later, I felt bad for that dog. I felt bad for whatever family it had belonged to.
Now I felt like all of my mistakes, my sins, had bled onto my shirt for everyone to see. None of them liked what was there or what I had to offer.
The man with the terrier showed up at nine in the morning, just like every other Saturday. Except, this time he paused, looked at my beaten body and walked up to me.
He sat down next to me with the green plastic bag in his hand, empty.
“What happened to your face?” he asked.
I didn’t want to answer him.
“Why don’t you ever pick up after your dog?” I asked him instead.
“So you have been watching me.”
“I have.”
“Are you one of them?” the man asked.
“Am I one of what?” I mumbled through my busted lips. My vision was blurred through my right eye. My brain hurt.
The man opened his lips to say something, sighed, and then thought better of it.
“Never mind,” he said.
The terrier sat quietly next to the man’s feet. No leash needed. The dog panted as he watched people go by.
“I’m Jack Carlos, by the way,” he said, extending a hand for me to shake. I didn’t take it.
“I’m no one,” I said.
He dropped his hand.
“Why have you been watching me?”
I brought my hands to my face. I tried to massage some of the pain away. It didn’t work. A strong gust blew from the lakefront. It almost blew the dog away, but the terrier held his ground and the wind passed.
“It’s just something I’ve been doing. It’s an experiment. I wanted to know what it felt like to be God.”
“That’s perhaps the weirdest response you could have given me,” the man said.
“What did you think I was doing?”
“I thought you were… someone else. You haven’t been the only one watching me, I think.”
Great. This guy was a skitzo.
“I’m not crazy,” the man said.
“I didn’t say you were.’
“No. But you were thinking it. And I don’t like that. I don’t like that you would judge me without even knowing me.”
There was a pause, and I could tell by watching the man’s lips move that he wanted to ask me something.
“Ask,” I told him.
“What did it feel like? To play God?”
“Hated,” I said.
“Hated?”
“People hate you when they feel judged by you. Even if you’re just looking. Even if you haven’t figured them out yet. It’s like how that saying goes.”
“Which saying is that?”
The terrier jumped on the man’s lap. Jack pet him.
“Hell is other people. A French philosopher said it, I think. People hate looking at themselves through the mirror of other people’s eyes. We stand in perpetual judgment when we feel watched by others. We don’t like what other people see in us. It makes us uncomfortable and vulnerable. We feel exposed. Like we have been called out on the fraudulent show we have been putting on. Our mask is lifted.”
The man seemed to reflect on this for a moment.
“I know what you mean. When I was younger, like fourteen or fifteen, I met a little girl who was six years old, and she had a stare that could penetrate right through you. Even if you smiled at her, she didn’t smile back. She just glared with those wide eyes. It made you feel like she knew everything about you. Every sin. Every fear. Every weakness.”
“Maybe that’s why so many people hate God, or pretend He doesn’t exist,” I said. “We can’t stand the idea of being under His microscope.”
“How can you be sure God exists?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I wish He didn’t.”
Across the park, three men in dark suits stood watching the lakefront, but at times it felt like they were watching us. Again, I felt exposed. Maybe I should quit the game. It hadn’t won me any friends, and my face sure wasn’t any prettier from it.
“If you were God,” I began, and paused.
“What?” Jack asked.
“Never mind. Maybe the question is all wrong.”
“Ask me,” he said.
I breathed heavily. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk anymore. I wanted to go back to my apartment and sleep. Or maybe I wanted to board up the little window in my bathroom and put an end to the game completely. I didn’t want to watch people’s silent suffering any longer.
“Why doesn’t He stop this?” I asked. “Why doesn’t He stop our suffering if He really is there?”
Jack pondered this for a while. A very long while. We passed that stretch of time in silence, watching people live their lives moment by moment. A man walking his dog seemed to be flirting with a woman walking hers. A mother and father encouraged their child as he made an effort toward his first step. The three men in dark suits were still standing there, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, looking past us.
“I think the better question is, why do we cause such suffering to one another?” Jack said. “What kind of people are we, setting fires, raping women, flying airplanes into buildings…”
I dismissed that last part because I had no idea what he was talking about.
It was late August, and that catastrophe hadn’t happened yet.
“I watched an old man get beat up by a drug dealer last week,” I told him. “And I didn’t do anything to stop it. I called out to God to intervene, to help the poor man, but I just stared at him as he lay motionless on the ground. I didn’t run down to help him off the ground. It’s no wonder we hate God. We blame Him for the things we do, and expect him to act when we don’t do anything ourselves.”
Jack didn’t respond. Instead his eyes were fixed on the three men in the distance. I wonder what he found so interesting about them. They began to walk toward us.
“Let’s go, Blake,” Jack said to the dog.
The terrier jumped down from his lap and Jack stood to go.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I’m going to have to go. I think you should stop your game. You’re not going to solve anyone’s problems by playing it. You’re not God. You can’t pretend to be God. And you certainly don’t want the burden of knowing the things He knows. Have a good life…” he tried to remember my name, but then realized I never gave it to him.
“I’m Eran,” I told him.
“Okay. Bye Eran. Have a good life.”
With that, he left. He walked away quickly. The terrier’s tiny steps scurried behind to keep up.
The three suited men walked the opposite direction and left.
How strange. And perhaps meaningless.
Jack was right. I wasn’t God. I couldn’t pretend to be able to piece these things together. I didn’t know why the girl with the crow tattoo hated mothers or why the guy at the bar got so angry when I asked him why he was sad. I didn’t have enough knowledge to judge these people.
Eventually all of these strangers disappeared from my life. I never saw Jack come back to the same park after that day. I wasn’t allowed into the Irish pub any more. Even though I wasn’t the one who started the fight, I was known as the guy who stared at you. People didn’t like that. I walked past the coffee shop several times, but I never saw the girl barista work there again.
They had all escaped from me.
How do I escape your watchful eye, oh God?
When I returned to work, I made a commitment to play less on my computer. I bought a small, dark curtain for my bathroom window. But I was still terrible with women, and I often thought about the dog I ran over and left for dead on the road.
A few weeks later, 9/11 happened. My first impulse was to ask God why he’d let such a catastrophe to happen. But every time that question came up, I remembered the old junkie getting beat up in the back alley. Why didn’t I do anything to stop it? Why didn’t I help him up off the ground and take him to a hospital?
Those questions silenced me.
They humbled my desire to play God.
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