The Folds

by Clint Townsend

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, son!” Tommy replied, swaying with his boy.

  Late that night, Tommy and Sarah woke to the sound of Danny screaming. After rushing down the hall, they threw open the bedroom door to find their son sitting upright in his bed, yelling “He shot her! Dad! He shot her!”

  “Whoa, whoa! Sshhh,” Tommy comforted. “You’re all right! Nobody shot anyone. It’s just a dream. You’re okay.”

  “Tommy, he’s shaking!” said Sarah, hugging her son.

  “Get him some water, will ya, hon?” Tommy asked. “Danny, look at me! You’re okay, it was just a dream.”

  “Dad!” Danny said. “I saw him! I saw him shoot her and she fell out of the—”

  “Okay, okay. Slow down,” Tommy interrupted. “Tell me now exactly what you saw.”

  “He…well, he…” Danny began, then stopped to rub his eyes.

  “What’s wrong? Your eyes bothering you?”

  “I can’t see…it’s…red!” he answered, opening his eyes wide then squinting.

  “Red?” Tommy asked concernedly. “What’s red? What do you mean?”

  Danny rubbed his eyes once more, pointed to over Tommy’s right shoulder, and explained, “That light…it’s red!”

  “Son…what light? Where do you see it?”

  “Right here,” Danny answered, slowly reaching up.

  Unbeknownst and invisible to Tommy, just above his right shoulder was a thin strip of brilliant red light. Shaped like an oversized toothpick, the light glowed with a slight pulse.

  Danny waved his finger into the red light. He suddenly flung himself backwards backward onto the bed with animalistic moans emanating from his open mouth.

  “Sarah! Call an ambulance!” Tommy screamed, thinking Danny was experiencing what could be more readily identified as a diabetic seizure.

  Danny’s body lurched, contorted and twisted as his mind was overrun by the entire history of Tommy’s life in pictures. Like going to a large drive in movie theatre, Danny saw a big screen of memories and events from Tommy’s life, with hundreds of tiny television sets surrounding it, showing the smaller, less significant snapshots of his life. His seizure lasted the entire ambulance ride from the house to the hospital. While being wheeled to the ER, the tiny televisions in Danny’s mind abruptly stopped. The big screen took over and rolled by what looked more like a movie preview than a memory. Although slightly blurred, he could see the distinct images of two figures moving about. He also heard the sound of a single, muffled voice and heavily pouring rain. In his mind, he saw one of the figures lift its arm and aim a gun…

  ‘TIS THE SEASON

  A few hours later, Dr. Rankin reviewed the X-ray results with Tommy and Sarah. “From the pictures we took the day of the wreck,” he explained, pointing to the older set of proofs, “we weren’t able to see any hemorrhaging or major damages to the spine…the cervical disks were all right…no compaction or pinching of the spinal cord. He did, however, suffer some whiplash, but for being in a coma and lying still for so long, he kind of underwent his own therapy without the need for drugs or a neck brace and so forth.

  “Now,” he said, holding up the newest set of prints, “we can almost lay tonight’s X-rays directly on top of the old ones…”

  “Could there be brain damage we can’t see? Something inside?” Tommy asked, looking closely at the negatives.

  “Well, sure,” Dr. Rankin agreed. “He could have something like axonal diffuse syndrome and we won’t know about it until later. We can only see so much with an X-ray. This won’t show every minuscule nerve or any deep internal damage to the white matter, but it does give us a good look at the big picture of what’s going on.”

  “Well, that doesn’t really tell us anything then, does it?” Sarah snapped as she lit a cigarette. “Why was he floppin’ ’round like that? His eyes rolled into his head then nuthin’! Nuthin’!”

  “What she’s sayin’ is…” Tommy began apologetically, taking the cigarette out of her hand, “if you’re not showing anything to be wrong with him, then what’s wrong with him?”

  “I can understand your frustration.”

  “Frustration?” Sarah blasted. “My son was rollin’ ’round in his bed lookin’ like, like…for twenty minutes! Frustrated?”

  Irritated with Sarah’s interruptions, Dr. Rankin slammed a file on his desk and sternly said, “Look! Danny had a closed wound head injury, whiplash, and a severe concussion. He was comatose shy of four months and woke up just six weeks ago. His friends are dead; he’s missing four months of his life and you just this evening completed the first of many counseling sessions! From what I can see, I can’t explain right now why he went into a seizure. But what I can do…is pray with you; keep him overnight, run some tests, and hopefully find what caused this and stop it from happening again!” He looked at the couple for a moment, giving them time to absorb the chastising.

  “Can I see my baby?” Sarah meekly asked.

  Danny was fast asleep as a nurse monitored and recorded his readings. She noticed Tommy and Sarah as they entered the room and greeted them, smiling. “All his vitals are stable. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but for what this boy’s been through tonight and these past few months, he’s got a lot of angels watching over him.” With that the nurse shook their hands and exited quietly.

  “He looks so peaceful,” Sarah commented.

  “Probl’y worn plum out…” Tommy added.

  Danny stirred briefly then fluttered open his eyes.

  “Hey! How ya doin’, Superman?! How’s my boy?” Tommy asked.

  “Dad!” he said, surprised. “You’re okay?” Danny sat up in his bed and hugged his father tightly. “What happened? I saw you…” he began, but stopped in midsentence and looked about the room.

  “What? Saw what?” Tommy asked.

  “What’d you see?” Sarah added.

  “You got shot! I saw you, by the car—” Danny exclaimed.

  “No, no, Daddy’s okay. I’m not shot. I’m right here,” Tommy assured him.

  The two loving parents tried to reassure Danny.

  “But I saw it!” Danny insisted with a quivering chin. “Just like before the wreck at the grocery store! You were—”

  “Hey, c’mon now. This was just a bad dream,” Tommy insisted. “That’s all there is to it. I know sometimes how bad dreams can seem real! But listen to me: I’m not shot now, haven’t been shot, and ain’t gonna be shot.”

  “Sshhhh, ssshhhh,” Sarah added, placing her finger over her son’s lips.

  Saturday, three weeks later, Tommy and Danny stood in the front door entryway, preparing to go into the city for some Christmas shopping.

  “Now ya’ll be careful!” Sarah warned as she entered the vestibule with Danny’s gloves. “The wind is supposed to be on the leading side of this storm and if it hits late enough, you’ll be sure to hit some black ice on the way home! So be careful! But hurry!”

  Tommy opened the door and an icy gust slashed through the foyer.

  “I love you,” she said to Tommy with a kiss then knelt down to Danny for a quick embrace. “And I sure do love you!”

  Father and son ran down the steps to the squad car and hopped in. As they pulled out of the driveway, Sarah waved good-bye, and then walked the length of the wraparound porch to the other side of the house. Dark, ominous clouds hung low on the horizon.

  Just as Sarah predicted, the winter storm hit hard and earlier than originally predicted. The storm also brought with it a rare and incredible show of green and purple strikes of lightning. Due to the tall downtown buildings and intensity of the lightning, Tommy was unable to tune into a radio station. “Man alive!” he declared. “I ain’t never seen so much lightning. You ever see lightning like this, Dano?”

  Danny shook his head as he gazed out the front windshield. “Nah…not like this.”

  “Augh! Stupid radios!” Tommy slapped at the dial. “More trouble than what they’re worth! Aw
ww! Now what?” he moaned as the traffic slowed to a complete standstill.

  “Why don’t you turn on your sirens and go see what’s ahead?” Danny suggested, sitting up to get a better view.

  “Well, son,” Tommy enlightened, “the bozos, I mean the locals, are on whatever it is, hopefully, and…I have no jurisdiction over city operations. Plus, we’re packed in, too! I’m afraid we’re stuck for a few. And with this bad weather, I think that…” Tommy’s words seemed to drift and fade as Danny noticed Dale sitting in a car, going in the opposite direction on the far side of the two-lane street. The traffic loosened up and both directions slowly resumed their movement.

  “Dad! There he goes! It’s him!” Danny hollered, slapping Tommy on the right arm.

  “Him?” asked Tommy “What are ya talking about? Him who?”

  “The guy who hit us and shot his girlfriend!”

  Tommy looked his son squarely in the eye. “Say that again!”

  “It’s the guy who hit us!” he cried. “Its the guy who shot his girlfriend and the couple at the store! It’s him!”

  “Son, who told you that?” Tommy questioned, attempting to play down the situation.

  “Nobody told me nothing! I saw it!” Danny insisted.

  “Come on now, stop it!” Tommy ordered, pulling his son back down on the seat. “That’s enough! Son, you weren’t looking, you were watching me…and you…”

  “Just go look! Please!” he implored. Tommy looked in his side mirror as Danny continued his begging. “You can at least go see. If it’s not him, then it’s not him, but you just gotta go! Dad?”

  “If you’re wrong, we don’t talk about this anymore. Okay?”

  Danny bounced in his seat with delight.

  “You get me? No more! But if you’re right, then, um, then, okay, you were right! But just this once!”

  “All right!” Danny shouted excitedly as he slapped at the dashboard.

  “Turn on my radio,” Tommy said, then called out on his CB. “Four twenty-seven to base, four twenty-seven to base.” The lightning was causing too much static to get reception.

  Danny turned around in his seat to watch the mystery car. “He’s getting ready to turn, Dad! He’s gonna turn!” he announced as Dale’s car stopped at the corner.

  “Four twenty-seven to base!” Tommy called once more but still received no response. He turned on his emergency lights and made with a couple of yelps from the siren as he made a U-turn.

  “Woo-hoo! Jus’ like Gene Autry!” Danny cheered, snapping his seat belt. “Go git ’im, Dad!”

  Tommy again called on the CB. “Four twenty-seven to base.”

  Dale heard the siren and saw the flashing red and blue lights in his rearview mirror. As soon as Tommy’s squad car completed the U-turn, Dale hopped the curb, riding halfway up onto the sidewalk, and then rounded the corner with a squeal of his tires.

  Tommy, too, rode up onto the edge of the sidewalk to make it past the slow-moving traffic. He accelerated so as to not lose sight of the fleeing vehicle as the rain beat down hard on the windshield. After traveling a couple of blocks, Tommy thought that he might have lost the mystery car. “Well, Dano,” he told his son, still panning the side streets, “looks like we—”

  “Dad! There it is! There it is!” Danny shouted triumphantly, looking back over Tommy’s shoulder.

  “Where? Where is it?”

  “Back there in the alley!” Danny answered. “Hurry!”

  Tommy fishtailed in the middle of the street, doubled back, and turned slowly into the remnants of an older warehouse district. He pulled up behind the parked and abandoned car. The engine was still running and both the driver and passenger doors stood wide open. “Four twenty-seven to base,” he called on his radio. “Officer needs assistance at the intersection of Patterson and Cunico. I repeat, officer needs assistance at the intersection of Patterson and Cunico.” Not wanting to wait for a response, he firmly instructed Danny, “Son, I need you to get on down in the floorboard!”

  Danny unbuckled his seat belt and started to climb over the bench seat. He paused to tell his father, “Thanks for believing me, Dad!”

  “Well, whoever he is,” Tommy continued, “whether you’re right or wrong, he sure took off. Got a guilty conscience over sump’n’. Question is, what?” They held each other’s gaze and shared a quiet moment before Tommy lovingly spanked Danny’s behind. “Go on! Git!” He exited the car into the pouring rain and opened the back driver side door. After pulling the seat back down to gain access to the trunk, he yanked out a blanket. “You stay down, ya hear? I’ll be right back. Right back! Okay?” He leaned in to give Danny a reassuring hug and kissed him on the head. Tommy closed the door and took stock of the situation. The weather, coupled with the lack of radio response and inhospitable surroundings, wedged an uneasy feeling in his gut.

  Danny watched his father until condensation covered the windows. Once Tommy departed, Danny laid himself down and pulled the blanket over his head.

  With his gun drawn, Tommy drew close to a corrugated-metal-covered warehouse. He poked his head around the corner and on the next building, noticed a large bay door drawn halfway open.

  “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” Danny whispered. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…”

  Tommy approached the warehouse and cautiously made his way inside. The only light in the building emanated from a few busted-out painted windows bordering the catwalk above. The sound of the rain on the metal roof was not only deafening, but disorienting and confusing. Because he could not clearly distinguish what sounds came from where, Tommy was constantly turning in circles as he crossed the warehouse floor. Near the end of the warehouse he spied a stairwell going down to a lower level. As he neared the stairs, he could see a metal fire door at the bottom, opened just slightly, no light. He looked above and all around, trying to muster the courage to walk down the dark concrete staircase. One by one, he crept down the musty steps. He braced himself against the wall and prepared to enter the basement, pulling his gun up close to his shoulder. Just as he placed his boot at the base of the door to give a kick, a gunshot rang out.

  Under their breaths, father and son called out to one another in quiet panic.

  “Dad!”

  “Danny!”

  Danny fervently prayed, “He leadeth me beside the still waters; He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness…”

  Tommy raced up the concrete stairs, through the warehouse, and into the rain, all the while repeating, “Danny! Danny!” He ran to the corner of the warehouse and snuck a quick glance around. The squad car and mystery car were just as he left them. He looked above and all around before making his way out into the open, then darted to the back of the squad car, careful to stay crouched down. He raised his head to see his son still hunkered down under the blanket. “Danny!” Tommy whispered coarsely. “Danny, it’s okay…it’s me. C’mon, it’s all right, you can come out now.”

  Danny heard the mumbling but hesitated to rise, unable to discern who was speaking.

  Tommy knocked on the window loudly and raised his voice. “Danny! C’mon, son! It’s all right!”

  All the while, behind Tommy and hidden by a stack of wooden pallets, Dale had been lying in wait. He stepped out from behind the stack of pallets and walked up to Tommy. Danny sat up on his haunches and completely lowered the blanket from his head. His heart skipped a beat as he suddenly found himself remembering the scene from the movie in his head. He watched, helplessly, as Dale placed his .38 revolver to Tommy’s right temple and squeezed the trigger. Blood and tissue splattered the window as the bullet breached his skull.

  Danny braced himself against the door, speechless and shocked at what he just witnessed. Dale then dashed to his car and drove away, leaving Danny in the back seat to himself, his prayers, and his dead father on the ground. Tommy’s body lay on the cold concrete in a spreading pool of blood. The rain was turning to ice.

  FOLD #2
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  November 1986. Danny maneuvered listlessly through the melee of teenagers as they rushed to beat the tardy bell for their next class. He, however, was in no hurry at all to reach Mr. Townsend’s biology class, a subject he had been performing poorly in all semester. Danny, now seventeen and a senior, was accustomed to a majority of his fellow students turning their backs to him as he walked the halls. His heart had grown calloused from years of rumors, speculation, horrible lies, and ridicule. He couldn’t help or hide his past, but that didn’t stop the cruel gossip and slander from spreading.

  Just as he was nearing the doorway of his classroom, coming from the opposite direction was Jamie Shipman, the starting varsity quarterback with his brood of jock henchmen in tow. They were the popular ones who either everybody hated or dreamed of being. Jamie spied Danny and ran straight at him, broadcasting loudly, “He has only seconds to go! Can he make it?” He then lowered his right shoulder and bulldozed into Danny’s left side, launching him violently against the wall. Jamie’s friends laughed and applauded as he smiled down at Danny and his books, sprawled out on the floor. He thrust his fists into the air victoriously, turned to his friends, and arrogantly declared, “He scores! The Mustangs win!” High fives and derogatory sneers filled Danny’s ears as the other players shuffled by.

  Sore and embarrassed, Danny picked himself up and entered the room. Keeping his head down, he attempted to pass Jamie unnoticed and take his seat in the last row of desks.

  “Watch this!” Jamie whispered to one of his teammates as he brought his fingers to his temples. He closed his eyes and started humming. “Hmmmm.”

  Danny stopped to listen, but did not turn to face him.

  “Ooo, I see an unstable dream king not passing his biology test!” Jamie predicted while his friends laughed pitilessly.

  Mr. Townsend suddenly appeared in the doorway just as the tardy bell rang. “Clear your desks please!” he instructed firmly from the hall while kicking up the doorstop. “Cutting it pretty close, aren’t we, Miss Holder?” he commented before shutting the door.