Vacant Shore

by Jack Hardin

  The area around Virgil’s knee was sending hot throbs of pain up into his thigh. He started to press the button on his morphine drip and paused. If he was going to find a way out of here he needed to do it now. His old training meant that he could push through pain better than grogginess. As it was, he figured he had enough morphine in his system to give him at least a half hour before the pain became incapacitating.

  Virgil looked toward the window. His room was on the fourth floor and the windows were full-panel; nothing to slide up or away. It didn’t matter. In a healthy condition he might consider finding a way to get it loose and make a rope out of sheets and towels. But he was certainly in no condition to attempt that. He’d end up a pile of ravioli on the landscaping.

  The next option wasn’t much better.

  Virgil spent the next several minutes honing his breathing, gaining control of his mind. He was going to have to pull this off with one arm and one leg, hovering somewhere between grogginess and undermedicated.

  Might as well bet on the Browns winning the Super Bowl, he thought.

  Still, he had to try.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ringo’s Mercedes coasted along the old country road beneath a canopy of dark clouds. When he rolled down the window, fresh, cool air poured in, charged with the promise of rain. He slowed and turned off onto a dirt road where a slash pine and two banana trees grew together at the corner. He went on another mile and turned into a small clearing hedged in barbed wire. Aldrich was leaning against the back bumper of his Camry. His arms were crossed. Ringo pulled in next to him and unlocked the doors. Aldrich got in and shut the door. Ringo lifted a cigar from his shirt pocket. He lit a match and set it to the end of the cigar. He puffed at it until the tip glowed orange and smoke curled into the canopy.

  “I don’t like it,” Aldrich said.

  Ringo blew a ring of smoke out of the window and watched it break up as it drifted away from the car. “You’re free to walk away.”

  “I don’t understand why you have to choose.”

  “When life gives you lemons, you sell cocaine. I have no more lemons to speak of. My life, for now, is all roses. I have no desire to torch the flower garden.”

  “We have a good thing going here.”

  “And your cousin will have the helm. Nothing will change for you.”

  “If you’re leaving then I want a bigger cut.”

  Ringo smiled over the cigar clenched in his teeth. “Quinton never told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  “I don’t take a cut. Never have.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not keen to repeat myself.”

  Aldrich rubbed at the back of his neck. “Well, either way. I still want a bigger cut.”

  “You’ll have to take that up with your cousin.”

  “So that’s it?” Aldrich said. “You’re just walking away? Just like that?”

  “And why do you care?”

  Aldrich shrugged. “I just don’t like the change. I have a lot to lose too, you know.”

  “And yet, you won’t step away.”

  The car was silent for several moments. “No, I don’t suppose I will.”

  Ringo inspected his cigar. “Guyana,” he said, “is a small country on the North Atlantic coast of South America.”

  “I’m familiar.”

  “Do you know, Aldrich, that deep within its rainforests there are people known as the Katowami? They are uncontacted, indigenous Indians who abide in clay huts and cover their nakedness with loin cloths made from the dried leaves of the rubber tree. Each year, their version of a shaman works a tattoo beneath the skin of every male. A small line the thickness of pencil lead and the length of a trimmed fingernail. They do this even to the babies. When a man has received twenty of these marks across his back he is given a sharp stone fashioned from volcanic rock and is sent alone to a predetermined place in the rainforest. There he makes a fire and rubs red clay across his face and his genitals and chants to the gods of his ancestors. When the night comes he takes that stone, lays his right arm across the exposed root of a ceiba tree, and proceeds to cut his arm off at the elbow.” Ringo took another slow draw off his cigar. He closed his eyes and breathed out. “Each male over the age of twenty lives the rest of his life with an arm and a half. Would you like to know why they do this?”

  “Sure, Ringo.”

  “In generations past, the men of the tribe used to rape their women. The men, as a whole, were sexually violent toward their females. When their babies began to die in childbirth they went and inquired at their shaman. The shaman reported that the spirits were angry because they had chosen the females of the tribe to bear forth the spirits in human form and that the men must cease from their abuse. By cutting off half of an arm they made it so that a women could resist a man full of inordinate desire. And this, a tribe that had never heard the words of Jesus: ‘If thy hand offend thee, cut it off.’” Ringo smiled. “Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m telling you this.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Aldrich, I see that you’re close to becoming a Katowami male with two good arms. Your ambitions will lead you into power struggles that will be difficult to come back from. If you continue down this path you won’t like where you end up. Of all of us, you are in the most precarious position of all.”

  “If that was just the long way of telling me that I need to watch where I step then considered your point received.”

  Ringo chuckled. It was deep and guttural and its sinister resonance sent an icy track down Aldrich’s spine. “For someone as smart as you are,” Ringo said, “you can be a bit slow to catch on. No, I was not—am not—telling you to watch where you step, Aldrich. I’m not speaking to your actions. I am addressing your soul. You desire too much and for all the wrong reasons. There was only one reason I allowed you to come on with us. And you know what that reason was.”

  “Thanks, Ringo, but I think I can take care of myself.”

  Ringo ignored him. “The scales of your morality tilt too heavily toward the wrong side. In the modern world we call that greed. The Greeks called it avarice. The Hebrews referred to it as covetousness. In the last days of the Roman Empire, when they had reached the pinnacle of decadence, they were calling it glory. Be careful that your shame does not become your glory.”

  Aldrich absently worked his jaw as he stared out the windshield. “I wish you well with your rose garden.” With that, he opened the door and stepped out into fat raindrops that had just begun to fall.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Virgil looked down on the sling covering the right side of his body. He sighed slowly through his nose and pressed the call button.

  A minute later Linda entered, followed by one of the guards. “Do you need something?”

  He grimaced. “I think...I felt something warm down my left side. I don’t know if I’m bleeding or not.”

  “Let me check,” she said. She came over and started to lift up the collar of his gown.

  “No, I’m sorry. I meant my right side. Sorry, still a little fuzzy.”

  “Okay.” Then she did what he had anticipated—what he had hoped. Rather than moving to the other side of the bed, she simply leaned across him and reached over, lifting the top of his gown and assessing his bandages. Virgil reached around her and plucked out a bobby pin from the back of her hair. A brown strand fell down her neck and she brushed it aside. The guard had not noticed. Her body was in the way.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said, and stood back up. “You’ve been through an ordeal so you might feel things that aren’t there for the next few days as your body starts to heal.”

  “Of course. Sorry for the hassle.”

  “Do you need anything else before I leave?”

  “Yes. Can I get some help to the bathroom, please?”

  She frowned. “With the nature of your injuries and the amount of blood they had to give you, I think the doctor would prefer you to use the bedpan. At least for t
he next day or so.”

  “Linda,” he smiled weakly at her. “I’m about fifty years out from using a bedpan. Really. Please.”

  She looked unsurely at him, started to protest, but then paused and nodded. “One moment.” She went to the door, opened it, and walked out. The guard remained in the room. A couple minutes elapsed before she returned with a wheelchair. She rolled it up to the bed and unlatched the side rail, then looked at the guard. “Would you mind helping me get him into the wheelchair?”

  “Of course.” He addressed Virgil. “I’ll uncuff your ankle from the bed, but I’ll need to secure it to the wheelchair.”

  Virgil offered up a sneer. “You know one of my knees is kaput, right? Afraid I might out hobble you?”

  “Sorry, protocol.” The guard, whose metal name plate read ‘White’, came to the foot of the bed and unlocked the cuff from the bedframe. Linda pressed several buttons on the monitors and disconnected the wires that ran to leads on Virgil’s chest. She removed the oxygen clamp on his finger. “You’ll need to take your IV in with you,” she said, the line of which ran to a PICC on the top of his hand. After she helped Virgil sit up, he swung his legs off the bed. The guard assisted Linda in getting Virgil into the wheelchair. “How are you doing?” Linda asked. “If it’s too much then don’t do it.”

  A false confidence spread across his face. “I’m great.”

  The guard secured the loose cuff to the wheelchair. “There’s enough slack on the chain for you to move from the chair to the toilet.”

  Linda wheeled him into the bathroom, pulling the IV pole with them. “Do you need help getting on the commode?”

  Virgil started to shake his head, but a wave of weariness washed over him. The morphine still had him drowsy and a little nauseous. He would have to push through. If he could. If not, he was sure he would be dead by the end of the day. “I’ll manage, really.”

  Her frown said she wasn’t convinced. “I think you’ll need some assistance.”

  “I’ve got it, really.” He tapped the top of his right thigh. “Still have a perfectly good leg. If I have any trouble, I’ll have Mr. White here come get you.”

  “All right,” she conceded. “But if you pop any stitches I’m going to get a talking to for letting you out of bed. Don't you go putting any weight or pressure on your left leg. None at all. And watch your shoulder,” she added.

  “I’ll be careful. I promise,” he said, feeling bad enough that, if his plan worked, she was going to get a talking to for a lot more than a few torn stitches.

  “Just let Mr. White here know when you’re done, and I’ll come help you back to the bed. There’s an alarm cord right here you can pull for help if you start getting dizzy.”

  “Thank you.”

  No sooner had she shut the door than Virgil gently pressed in the lock on the door handle, trying as best he could to cover the soft click with a cough. He produced the bobby pin, bent it outward, and placed an end in his mouth, then worked the soft plastic nipple off with his teeth until the thin metal tip was exposed. He leaned over, but as he reached for the cuffs at his feet his vision started to swim and a high-pitched ring started in his ears. He sat back up. After breathing several controlled breaths he tried again.

  Police-issued handcuffs operated on a ratchet system, utilizing a metal lever that sat over the teeth. Where the ratchet and teeth began to meet there was a tiny hole—enough room to slip in something thin and narrow and release the internal lock up from the teeth. Virgil had the cuffs off in twenty seconds and quietly tucked them into the inside edge of the wheelchair. Grabbing the edge of the sink counter he heaved himself up and out of the chair. A hot pain shot up through his bad leg. He grimaced through clenched teeth.

  He looked up. I hope the Browns win the Super Bowl this year.

  Besides the toilet there was a shower with no bathtub ledge and the small counter that held the sink. He grabbed the edge of the formica counter and tested it by pulling and pushing on it. When it gave slightly from the pressure he decided he didn’t trust it to hold all of his two hundred and fifteen pounds. He had one shot at this and he wasn’t going to go tumbling onto the hard tiled floor because of bad judgment.

  That left the toilet, whose chromed flush valve stood out from the wall. Virgil disconnected the IV line from the PICC on the top of his hand and then removed the sock from his right foot. He grabbed the wheelchair for support and navigated his good leg onto the edge of the toilet seat before setting his weight into it and carefully standing up. The ceiling was now just two feet above his head. Balancing himself on one foot he reached up, pushed on a tile, and slid it back over its neighbor. He repeated the same thing for the next tile. Working as quickly as he could he slipped a towel off the chromed bar and, reaching up, wrapped a portion of it around the thin metal strip of the steel ceiling grid. Then he wrapped his fingers around it the way an eagle's talons grip its prey and pushed off the toilet with his good leg while using his arm to pull up.

  His foot found the top of the flush valve and as he set all his weight into it the piping groaned inside the wall. A knock came at the door and Virgil froze. “Hey, you doing okay in there?” It was the guard.

  Virgil leaned down to get his head a little closer toward the door and when he did a wave of nausea soured his stomach. He gagged and coughed. He brought his head back up and swallowed hard. “Yeah...fine,” he grimaced.

  “All right.”

  His chest rose and fell as he took in a couple deep breaths. The nausea stayed with him as he leaned his head against the wall and reached up to feel along the top ledge, which ended several inches above the ceiling grid. The steel girders which formed the base structure for the floor above were a couple feet above that. Enough space for him to slide beneath them. Enough space for this to possibly work. If, that is, he could get up there.

  He wrapped his large hand over the top of the ledge of the wall and got a firm grip. Then he pushed off the toilet valve and immediately set the ball of his foot against the wall for leverage. As his arm took most of his weight his spine crackled, as though it was the only reasonable voice present to object to his intended course of action. The veins in his neck corded as he strained upward, and his eyes bulged with a fixed intensity as he pulled with his arm and kept pushing off the wall enough to get his foot incrementally higher up the wall.

  He was halfway there. All he had to do now was to give himself one final pull, but hard enough so he could get his forearm clutched around the other side of the ledge. His bicep and lat felt as if they had turned into liquid fire, and it took every ounce of self control he could find to keep from grunting loudly against the burn in. Virgil wasn’t out of shape. He may have spent the last couple of years running a charter in Panama, but that didn’t mean he had given his body over to a lifestyle of overdrinking and overeating. Still, at this moment Virgil was cruelly reminded that his physical strength was underperforming what it would have if he were still with TEAM 99.

  Facing the wall, he readied himself, and, pushing himself off with his foot a final time, he pulled up and shot his forearm over the ledge. His chest and shoulders hit the top of the wall, and he nearly screamed from the pain. He winced and couldn't hold back a groan. Below him, his foot was searching frantically for purchase. When it found the wall again he rolled his good shoulder downward and brought his torso on the top of the narrow, five inch ledge. Then, still using his forearm, he dragged himself across the ledge until his bad leg was now up there with him in the ceiling and he was lying fully horizontal. Virgil closed his eyes and took a minute to catch his breath. A bead of sweat ran down a temple and tracked down his neck. He knew time was against him, so he cut the break short and slowly, awkwardly, painfully, backed himself up inch by inch, until his head was over where he knew the toilet in the next bathroom would be. He reached out and plucked up a tile from his neighbor’s bathroom ceiling. As he did so some of his weight shifted from the right side of his chest onto his bad shoulder. He could hear stitc
hes pop and tear along his shoulder and it was only the small amount of morphine that was still in his system that kept him from passing out from the stabbing nature of the pain. He grimaced hard and blinked a trickle of sweat from his eyes.

  He looked down. His neighbor’s bathroom was empty, its door open a few inches. All he could hear was the low cheering of a crowd coming from the television. With his luck, the room would be full of a dozen people representing five generations, all huddled around the bed as they waited for the family patriarch to pass.

  He pivoted on top of the wall and clumsily maneuvered forward along the narrow ledge until his feet were over the opening he’d created in the next bathroom’s ceiling grid. Grabbing the top edge of the wall again, he lowered himself down inch by burning inch, reversing the manner in which he had come up. With vessels in his neck and forehead pulsing and his heart nearly pounding out of his chest, Virgil extended his arm as far as he could and then he let go. His foot landed in the center of the toilet lid. He quickly steadied himself by resting his hand on the wall. After taking a few moments he bent over and grabbed the toilet valve, then awkwardly transitioned from his foot to his backside.

  He sat down, leaned forward, and took in deep lungfuls of oxygen. He reached out and grabbed the small counter for support. His vision started to blur and he could feel a warm patch of fresh blood oozing from his shoulder and soaking into his sling.

  He didn’t feel right. Not right at all. His eyes found a single thing to focus on—the corner of one of the floor tiles—while he tried to subdue the nausea. It didn’t help. He could almost hear his brain communicating with his stomach, betraying him, telling it to let it all go.

  No. NO.

  Virgil knew then that he had overexerted himself. That he wasn’t getting out of here. He leaned forward, lacking even the energy to swivel toward the shower. Cold shivers ran beneath his skin. His stomach entered a slow forward roll, and while its contents sprayed haphazardly over the floor he wondered just how they would kill him.