by Gabi Moore
I silently offered a prayer of thanks to the zoning commissioners who had permitted this next building only had about five feet of space between this building and the next. With a philosophy more closely resembling folly than anything worth advocating to others, I quickly turned around and lowered myself onto the ledge of the building with only one hand still clinging to the edge to anchor my weight.
My feet were firmly planted on the wall, and when I looked down below, I got a head rush and realized that while the brickwork would provide a bit of grip on the way down, there were no sizable objects, railings, or window inlets to aid me in my descent. I was thirty feet above the ground, and a five-foot gap had been placed between myself and the adjacent wall. With a firm breath for resolve, I planted my feet as firmly apart as they would manage and pushed my hands across the gap.
Making my way down the building was not an easy process, but it was possible. There was enough space so that it made things a bit strenuous, but not so much that I didn’t have enough leverage with my knees and elbows to firmly press into the adjacent building.
In a consciously repeated pattern, I worked my way down toward the walking path below. My heart was beating fast, but I felt momentarily secure in my efforts.
Just like basic… I tried to remind myself, taking care to keep my eyes on my hands and not on the ground below.
Look down once from a spot like that, and you can recover. Look down twice, and you might end up committing to a fall that you weren’t entirely prepared for; some people claim they can do it, but I’ve always found it to be easier for me if I focus on the placement of my hands and feet. One step at a time.
My concentration was disturbed when I heard the loud boom of a motorcycle turn the corner into the narrow walkway below. The sound reverberated through my body as it echoed up between the two brick walls.
Hazarding a look, I turned my head down and made eye contact with the officer. I was only about 10 feet down, and the cop was already radioing my position into everyone else in the area.
I was fucked, and I knew it.
Knowing it was now or never, I pushed one leg toward the opposing wall, and allowed my body fall at an angle, into the other building. 10 feet passed before my eyes, and I kicked off that wall, turning around in a rapid 180-degree rotation toward the other wall. Just before hitting the ground, I kicked off with my right leg, thrusting myself backward toward the end of the alleyway that wasn’t yet occupied by a police officer.
Seeing my descent, the cop revved the engine of his motorcycle and closed the distance between his body and mine. I came into a backward roll, still losing momentum from my fall. Another pain in my muscles from that fucking pack jarred my consciousness, but I got through relatively unscathed. When I rose up from the roll, I saw the police officer headed toward me on his bike with his baton out like some kind of hellish, urban knight.
I didn’t think.
I was operating strictly on kinesthetic intuition at that moment, and I decided to jump. My body still had a slight bit of backward momentum from popping out of the roll, and with the jump, I was essentially leaping backward through the air in the same direction as the approaching officer. I arched my back and stuck out both legs toward the cop’s midsection. He tried to swerve out of the way of my body, but his eagerness to move in for the capture was too strong.
His helmet connected solidly with both feet, and the bike skidded against the wall passing between the two of us. The officer’s momentum pushed his body into mine, and he got laid out underneath me. When I fell, I came down on his midsection hard with my elbows. A satisfying crack informed me that his ribs were now broken, and he would be officially out of the hunt.
Getting up quickly, I stomped down on his wrist causing him to release his grip on the baton. I swooped the baton up with one hand and turned it in the air. Dipping down, I slammed him in the crotch with the nightstick and then dipped down to undo his pistol from his holster. The officer rolled over on the ground, a broken heap of nerves and pain, while I sprinted to right the fallen bike.
Only moments had passed since the fall, but both ends of the alleyway were now cornered by officers in patrol cars.
As they got out of the cars, and laid their sights on me, I squatted over the bike and held on tight. The baton was dropped behind me, and the firearm secure in my pants with the handle of the weapon raising up into the small of my back. I revved the throttle and shifted the bike into gear.
Zooming down the final forty yards of the alleyway, I kicked the bike into the highest gear and flooded the engine with gas. The bike’s front tire lifted, and I pushed off the bike, launching the damn thing straight at the police car. Both of my feet hit the ground running, but only for a moment. As soon as I hit the ground, I fell into the movement with my legs and then bounced up once more to leap after the bike.
The move was risky, but I had no other choice.
I watched from the air while the back tire of the motorcycle crashed the window, hooked the police car on the side, and lifted the vehicle sideways. The officers in the car screamed in shock, and I hit the ground just as the car had reached its peak, almost perpendicular to the ground.
Almost.
The car began to sink back toward me, while the bike flew over the top. I darted to the side, and escaped the path of the vehicle just before it fell back down onto the ground; its axles bottoming out below it. The car was sunk, and I was sprinting as fast as possible toward the northeast. I wove through streets and narrow alleyways until I was completely out of breath, and had reached the point of adrenal exhaustion.
All throughout the night, I heard the patrol cars swarming around me. They only let up at about midnight, though I swore I could feel them circling like sharks; silent in the water.
I ended up coming to a place of rest somewhere along the water in commercial boat repair warehouse. The owner didn’t lock the windows on the second floor of his building, and I found a place to pass the night in the rafters above the projects below. There was a sense of safety in that place. I knew I had been lucky, more times than not lately.
As I drifted off to sleep, I could only hope that my luck had not yet run out.
Chapter 15 - Tyler
I was sure to be up before dawn because I didn’t want to get caught in the repair shop.
I was out without a trace while the mist still hung low to the ground on the bank. My estimation, I was somewhere just north of the fisherman’s shack. I had a feeling that he too would be up early, and I wanted to get down to where his boat was before dawn had a chance to fully come into being.
I didn’t see a soul for the entire walk down the shoreline. All of the colors of the morning blended together, and there was a stiffness in my limbs from the day before. All of that movement had left me with more than a few scrapes and sore muscles. My body wasn’t exactly a wreck, but I was tired, and I needed a place to rest. Not seeing how I was going to get that anytime soon, I made up my mind to take a stretch, and then keep walking.
The movement in my body felt great. I’m always shocked at how much pleasure and relief can come about simply by getting up in the morning and getting my body going somewhere.
Within a half hour, the scenery started to get a bit more familiar. I had been careful to take certain details of the environment into my mind when I left the shack for the first time. There was a sunken ship statue off in the water just a half mile away from the neighborhood where the fisherman’s home was located.
I reasoned that the police would be squatting around the house in surveillance mode. Likely they had already stopped by and spoken with the man. As far as I knew, I had everything that would have been problematic for him latched onto my back, so it seemed likely that they would simply be waiting in an effort to catch Piper if she went to him for help.
I was cold, but I didn’t want to get seen by anyone on the shore. Taking the chance of getting into another police confrontation this early in the morning wasn’t something that I wa
nted to avoid at all costs.
Walking down a nearby alleyway, I stripped several garbage cans of their bags and turned them inside out. Next, I emptied the contents of the bag into the bags, inverted their position, and added another layer. After each layer was secured, I made sure to tie everything in place. In the last bag, I tied up my clothes.
It was time for a bit of a morning swim.
Diving into the water was a shock, but also a type of blessing. I was reminded of when I was a younger man, and a bit less stressed. I can’t account for why the nostalgia came on so strongly when my body breached the water, but I accepted the feeling and felt a strong sense of peace about the dive. The water was dark, and I preferred things that way. With a silent, but steady stroke, I made my way along the shoreline toward the dock outside of the fisherman’s house. The sound of the water gently lapping up against the shoring of the boardwalk covered up the most diminutive sounds of my passage. The siding up the way to the boardwalk was high enough so that if anyone had been standing on the side, looking out at the water, I might have slipped right under their nose. As it was, nobody was out, and any cars that may have been posted outside of the fisherman’s house were safely ignorant of my presence.
I wasn’t sure which boat belonged to the fisherman, but there was a moderately sized vessel docked just outside of the shack, in addition to a sailboat and a small dinghy. I decided to wait just outside of the boat, and wait until he came out. I estimated that the water was in the high fifties, so I knew I could count on being submerged for another thirty to forty minutes or so without losing too much range of motion.
Silent and meditative, I waited for the fisherman to exit his house.
My eyelids were heavy, but a flash of light in a thin trace of movement caught my attention.
My eyes turned to track the object, as I didn’t dare move my body to make a sound. A hand rolled cigarette floated on the surface of the water a few feet away from my position.
He’s here, I thought, sensing a deep relief within my body.
A voice began to sound off through the muffled fog.
“Ah, Officer,” the fisherman called out in Italian, “looks like an uncomfortable place to spend the night. You should have let me know you were here, I have a spare room!”
I could tell the fisherman was more than a little perturbed to see the cop. I had lost track of time, and the cold was starting to cause my muscles to ache. I could hear the sounds of his boots walking on the dock, and then onto the deck of the ship. A rope hung loosely from the railing of the ship in a low arc. I allowed my body to drift over to the space between the ship and the dock, so I might grab ahold of the rope, and be carted off to sea. As long as the ship turned out toward the sea, nobody on shore would have a chance to see the fisherman trolling me along the surface of the water. To my relief, the ship began a casual turn out toward the ocean, and I made every effort pull myself on board.
For all of my effort, my arms were tired, and a bewildered fisherman had to help pull me over the side of the deck.
“Jesus,” he exclaimed when he saw me.
Just having him there to help me out was a bit relieving. I needed to rest, and I was glad to be in a place where I could finally relax. I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t be bothered to talk at that moment. It was enough to simply be in the boat. The fisherman seemed to understand the context of the situation and went on the deck for a moment.
I sat huddled on the dock, holding my knees, and rubbing the sides of my body. When the fisherman came back, he had a fresh set of thermals, as well as a wool blanket.
I got dressed immediately and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders. Taking quick breaths through my nose, I stood up and worked to revitalize myself through some calisthenics.
The fisherman let me be for a moment and set about piloting the ship.
“I see you’ve still got that bag,” he called out. “I was hoping that you hadn’t gotten picked up when you visited my daughter. I know that the police stopped by. They have been camping outside of my home ever since this yesterday afternoon.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice cracked and broke.
The fisherman shook his head as if to suggest I was an amateur and then walked over to offer me a flask of spirits. The alcohol cleared my throat with a cough and a brief sputter.
“Christ,” I swore, the whiskey having brought a croaking sort of life back to my throat.
“Medicine,” the fisherman nodded, standing in front of me now and looking into my eyes expectantly.
“She didn’t get picked up then,” I said, putting the pieces together as I sat there.
The words of the fisherman echoed into my mind as he addressed the officer, and I nodded to myself; it’s amazing how sluggish the mind can get when putting under stress for a long enough period of time. The clarity of my purpose came back to me and met the eyes of the fisherman.
“I need you to tell me what your daughter is into,” I said, zeroing my focus in on the man. “I’m not sure if she’s alright or not, and I’m not sure if you know what’s in the bag…”
I paused.
“Do you know where she is at?” he insisted. “I need to know if my daughter is okay.”
“I have to say, I’m not impressed with the people your daughter associates with. They’re armed, and they are involved in illicit trafficking. I killed one of them, but I think they have a vested interest in keeping your daughter alive. After all, I’ve got her bag.”
“I’m not sure I can share much information with you. I have deduced a few things about her activities, and I have had some conversations with her, but Piper is a very proud woman.”
“The more you can tell me, the better.”
He nodded in response.
“Well, all I can really tell you is that even though the people are into the things you say they are into, my daughter is not.”
He sniffed.
“I raised a good girl, and she has a good heart. She treats her body well, and I feel like she only got involved with them at first because she believed what they claimed to represent.”
“They look like thugs to me,” I said.
He shook his head and wrinkled his nose.
“They are thugs, but I believe they are entrenched in a type of idealism which enables their behavior. When Piper started working with them, she was doing small things, and she would tell me excitedly about how she was learning more about anarchism, and social reformation. Naturally, I was very excited for her, as the subject has interested myself in the past as well.”
He nodded and sniffed once more.
“Then I noticed that she was continuously speaking around one set of opinions — a set that was predominantly concerned with ‘Direct Action’. I didn’t try to raise an impressionable girl, but when you admire someone, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. We had one argument when I tried to tell her that the line between what is an acceptable form of Direct Action, and what is not acceptable can only be determined by the individual. However, I also told her that I believe that each individual has a moral compass that we must share with others on an intuitive level.”
“A conscience,” I offered, flatly, to indicate that I was following.
“Indeed. That is one way to put it. Unfortunately, when people get wrapped up in personal ideologies, and fail to see their connection with the rest of the world, their concept of empathy becomes withered, and eventually disintegrates; when this happens, in my perspective, they lose the only thing that made them human — and I no longer care for whatever ideas they claim to be so revolutionary.”
“Philosophy in response to fascism,” I said, linking the historical anecdotes from my previous conversation with the fisherman to the current topic.
He scratched the side of his head and turned away from our conversation.
“Fascism is a systemic representation of a specific behavior set,” he replied. “There is no fascism, there are only people and their choices.
I used to think that there was no such thing as a bad man. I swore up and down that all men had the possibility for good, and that there was no such thing as a man who was beyond redemption.”
He turned around and yawned, looking tired, and worried.
“I don’t mean redemption in some kind of biblical sense,” he continued, “but I mean, truly — a reformation of character, demonstrable through action. Now, I have come to the realization that this is not the case, and it is by their own doing. I suspect this is the origin of the saying, ‘He who makes a beast of himself, rids himself the pain of being a man.’ The only difference, is I no longer share any sympathy for such beasts.”
“It’s hard to know where I stand on that continuum at times.”
He looked at me in a strange and penetrative way, as though I was slow to pick up on something important.
“I think not,” was all he said in response.
After our conversation, he began to pay more attention to the trajectory of the boat. We had been headed straight out into the Adriatic, but at the behest of the fisherman, we were now headed in a loop back toward the south.
“Doing much fishing today?” I asked, trying to get a bit of a hold on where we were headed.
“A long time ago, when my daughter was first growing up, I was involved in some activity that made me unsure as to whether or not things would be safe for my family. As it turns out, things weren’t safe for everyone, but there was one spot that has always been kind to us.”
“You think your daughter will head there?”
The man didn’t respond. He looked emotionally distant, and under a great deal more stress than he was letting on.
“It is a small island called Ottagono San Pietro or Bastion,” he said. “The island is abandoned, though it used to have military defense functionality during World War Two. I believe it is privately owned, but whoever owns it doesn’t care enough for it to take care of it. A man could live there and fish, if he had a sufficient supply of water. As it stands, there is only enough room on Bastion for a small grove of trees.”