The Cascading: Knights of the Fire Ring

by CW Ullman

  The following morning, Cindy became very upset when she discovered Molly was gone. She was completely deflated when Charlie said her car was also missing. She had not felt this hopeless since she suffered the stillbirth ten years before. While Charlie tried his best to be empathetic, he could not disguise his anger.

  “What are you going to do?” Cindy asked.

  “I have to report it to the police. I mean, she’s fourteen for God’s sake. Can she even drive a car?” Charlie asked.

  Cindy felt resigned. She wanted to stop him, protect her daughter, and get the car back, but she had no strength left to put up a struggle. Knowing Charlie was incensed, she tried lamely to entreat him to slow down.

  Charlie’s frustration with all things Molly finally exploded. “I can’t, Cindy. I can’t hope she’s just out for a joyride and she’ll bring the car back. Not only can she hurt herself, if she hurts someone else, we’re responsible. We have to notify the police.”

  “What will they do?” she asked.

  “They’ll probably put out a stolen car report and they’ll be looking for it around here – if she’s still around here,” Charlie said.

  The desk sergeant asked Charlie to come in behind the plexiglas partition to fill out the necessary paper work. While filling out the form, he sensed a person looking at him. He figured one of the cops recognized him from the surf shop. Because he gave a discount to the Hermosa cops, they frequented the store. He did not want to look up because he was already embarrassed enough to shrink into the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a large uniform step from behind his desk and walk towards Charlie.

  “Sir, why don’t you follow me, where we can give you a little privacy,” the policeman suggested.

  He showed Charlie an office with a large desk and pointed to a chair in which Charlie could sit. He then went around to the other side of the desk and sat in a large chair.

  “I haven’t seen you in a long time,” the officer commented.

  Charlie looked up to fully appraise the man who had a vaguely familiar face, although Charlie could not place him.

  “You come in the shop?” Charlie asked.

  “What shop is that, Charles?” the cop asked.

  “I own Girl’s Eyes Surf Shop and I give a ten percent discount to the local police,” Charlie said, wondering how he knew his name.

  “No, can’t say that I have. No, you probably don’t remember me very well because the last time we met you were in pretty bad shape on a road in northeastern Nevada,” the officer remarked.

  Charlie looked at his name tag which read, Biwer. Charlie remembered the cop who let him off with a warning for pissing on people’s car. If he was embarrassed having to report his daughter stole his car, he was now turning crimson remembering that encounter during which Charlie was naked and drunk. While hoping Officer Biwer would not remember the entire incident from sixteen years ago, Charlie introduced himself.

  “What brings you down here to Hermosa?” Charlie asked.

  “I’m your new Hermosa Beach Police Chief. I had been applying to beach cities for ten years and got the job a year ago when the Hermosa City Council was looking. What brings you down here, Mr. Palmer?” Chief Biwer asked.

  He did not want Chief Biwer to think he was a complete loser. He would rather have met the new police chief in his store. Now, he felt stigmatized asking the police force to find his daughter and get his car back.

  “We’ll do our best to find your daughter and the car, Charlie. Do you think she might have a drug problem?” Chief Biwer asked.

  The Chief of Police asked whether his daughter was high on drugs while Charlie could only think of the wretched condition he himself was in the first time he and the chief had met. Charlie’s neck was hot with embarrassment as he shared the details about his life and family.

  “We got a problem in this city with drugs. Besides pot, there’s cocaine, and the youngest ones are into amphetamines. Could that be the issue?” Chief asked.

  Charlie could only hang his head at the realization he was a part of this. He had judged people in a similar position as being bad parents too self-involved to pay attention to their kids. He was experiencing the one thing he hated: lack of control. That Molly was rebellious came with being a teenager, and in every family teenagers challenged their parents, but only the “bad” parents had kids strung out on drugs with criminal records. He now was that parent. Molly was causing the Palmer name to be linked with criminal behavior. He grew angrier at being dragged into this sordid mess. If Cindy would have acted sooner, none of this would have happened. Instead, the Hermosa Beach Police Chief was asking him the most humiliating questions regarding his wife’s daughter. It was the first time he thought of Molly as being Cindy’s child.

  “You’re guess is as good as mine. We did find some small plastic bags awhile ago. We thought we nipped it in the bud,” Charlie answered.

  Charlie’s embarrassment compelled him to enlighten the chief about his involvement with the community. He desperately wanted to dispel any notion that he was some disengaged parent. Even though the chief never alluded to any of that, Charlie felt he needed to buttress his good name.

  “I took her to Indian Princesses. Her brothers look up to her. She helped out on Rotary projects. Honestly, I don’t know what happened,” Charlie said.

  “I was a member of Rotary in Wendover. I was looking to join a club here,” Chief Biwer said.

  Yes, Charlie thought, finally recognition that Charlie was not a bum, but a member of a prestigious organization.

  “We meet Monday mornings at the Marriott. Why don’t you come this Monday and be my guest,” Charlie said.

  The Chief agreed. He took the report from Charlie and told him when they picked up his daughter he would contact him. He put his hand on Charlie’s shoulder.

  “This kind of thing happens even in the best of families. We’ll do our best to find her,” Chief Biwer reassured.

  Charlie was relieved, though he was not clear whether it was that the police would do their best to find Molly, or that the chief grouped him into the best of families.

  <>

  Five days after Charlie filed the complaint, the Hermosa Police Department called to say the car had been involved in an accident. The occupants of the car were injured and had been taken to Little Company Hospital. Charlie asked who was in the car, but the dispatcher did not know. Before Charlie could ask the seriousness of the injuries, the dispatcher hung up.

  Charlie drove to the house to collect Cindy and go to the hospital. They were let into the ER, a large open bay with beds separated by drapes. The doctor told them Molly had snapped her elbow backwards and would need surgery to reset it. They found Molly in one of the beds with abrasions on her face and her arm packed in an air cast. She was cursing at the nurse.

  A police officer from Torrance, where the accident happened, took them aside and said she was being charged with several misdemeanors, including underage drinking, drug possession, and drug paraphernalia. Charlie would later find out that Chief Biwer had talked the Torrance Police Department into dropping grand theft auto charges because the car technically belonged to her family. Due to the amount of drugs, it was possible she could be charged with felony possession with intent to sell. Chief Biwer also asked if she could be given a pass on the distribution charge as this was her first arrest. The policeman added that the car had hit another vehicle causing serious injuries to the two occupants.

  Charlie felt he needed to apologize to the occupants in the other car, so he went down the hall to do so. Molly’s car was being driven by a twenty-five-year-old male she met in one of the cheap hotels where she had been staying. Molly’s driver had a police record and was being charged with a number of felonies. At the time of the accident, they were trying to elude a police pursuit. They eventually ran a red light and broadsided a van, knocking it over on its side. There was no one conscious to whom Charlie could apologize when he arrived at their area in the ER. One was too
groggy to talk to and the other was unconscious on a ventilator. After looking at these two victims, he turned to go back to Molly and became angrier with every step. When he got back to Molly’s bed, he could not believe what he was hearing.

  “Wanna say ‘I told you so’? Go ahead. I don’t give a fuck,” Molly barked.

  “We would never say that. We’re just glad you’re okay,” Cindy consoled.

  “Okay? How am I okay? I feel like shit,” Molly harangued.

  Charlie snapped.

  “Listen to me. Do not talk to your mother like that! You are lucky to be alive. The car is totaled and you hit a van causing serious injuries-,” Charlie was interrupted by Molly who started to speak until Charlie clamped his hand over her mouth. Molly and Cindy were stunned because they had never seen him so enraged.

  “You’re not going to talk, you’re going to listen. Do you know who you hit? Do you?” Charlie said with a low growl in his voice. Molly was terrified. The force of his hand on her mouth made it hard for her to shake her head “no”, or to even breathe.

  “You’re wanna see the damaged you caused?” Charlie snarled

  Before she could respond, Charlie had pushed Cindy aside and grabbed Molly by her good arm and the hair on her head and yanked her out of the bed. She was screaming as he dragged her across the floor of the ER. The arresting officer was outside in the police car, so he was not there to stop Charlie. Orderlies were summoned, but they were no match for Charlie’s rage as he brushed them aside. He hauled Molly down the bay where the occupants of the other car lay. Cindy, who was stunned into paralysis, finally gathered herself to try and stop Charlie, who had already arrived at the beds of the van’s occupants with a howling Molly. He pulled back the curtain so she could see who was on the ventilator.

  “You hit a van with Sister Marie Celeste in it,” Charlie yelled. “Look, goddam you! Look!”

  Charlie held her by the hair forcing her face forward. Sister Celeste had black and blue marks on both arms; her face was swollen beyond recognition, she had a broken nose causing bilateral black eyes, and she was wearing a cervical neck brace. Molly stopped crying. It was the wrist band that identified Sister Celeste. Molly was gasping at the consequence initiated with the theft of her mother’s car. She was staring at the distorted figure of her favorite teacher and Charlie’s old friend. Charlie slowly became aware that everyone in the ER was looking at him holding his daughter by the hair. One of the doctors approached.

  “Sir, you need to let us do our work. This girl needs to be back in her bed,” the doctor said.

  Charlie was not sure what he had heard. His entire body was flexed and he could not feel Molly’s weight. He had a semicircle of people around him, in too much fear to touch him. In the distance, he saw a familiar face walking towards him. As he approached, Charlie let go of Molly, who was taken back to her bed by the medical staff. The familiar man was Chief Biwer, who stopped a yard from Charlie.

  “Please, you need to get me out of here,” Charlie pleaded. “Now.”

  The chief took Charlie by the arm and pulled him through the crowd outside into the parking lot.

  “Can you hear me, Charlie?” Chief Biwer asked.

  “Yeah, I can hear you,” Charlie answered.

  “You going to be okay?”

  Charlie did not say anything for a while, as he and the chief walked around the parking lot. When they had finished a lap, Charlie walked down a side alley and stopped.

  “I was afraid I was going to…-,” Charlie was interrupted by the chief.

  Chief Biwer cautioned. “Kids can do that to you. They don’t understand the effect they have.”

  “I’ve been putting up with her and her mouth and I just lost it in there when I saw who she had hit. It was her teacher from school, Sister Marie Celeste, a very dear friend of mine. Goddamit, Chief. That woman is on death’s doorstep because of this self-centered little shit,” Charlie stopped and just yelled. He wanted to explode and beat something. He knew if he had stayed in the emergency room, he would have beaten Molly and there would have been no one who could have stopped him. He yelled again and again. The rage at Molly, at himself; the regret for Sister Celeste – he had to yell.

  They stayed in the parking lot until Charlie regained his composure. After twenty minutes, they went back to the ER where a sedated Molly was sleeping. Charlie introduced Cindy to Chief Biwer. The chief told Charlie he would contact him later and left.

  “I don’t want to go home. I don’t think it’s a good idea. I need some time alone,” Charlie informed Cindy.

  Cindy did not know what to say. Molly wrecked her car, was a drug dealer, and caused a horrific accident that might have killed her teacher. Charlie was as angry as she had ever seen anybody and he had just informed her he was not coming home.

  “Where…are you going? When will I see you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he answered and gave her the keys to the car. He turned and walked to the end of the bay to look in on Sister Celeste. He stood near the head of the bed, stroking her short hair. He leaned down and kissed her forehead and whispered gently in her ear.

  “You can hear me…Teresa, this is Charlie from Tulsa. I don’t want to lose you. Do not die.”

  The next morning around six, Molly snuck out of her room. She limped down the hall quietly and turned into one of the rooms. She was very sore despite all the pain medication. She slowly pulled back the curtain and looked in on Sister Celeste who had three tubes inside her mouth. She had never seen a nun out of her habit. It was almost as though the habit was their skin and the veil was their hair. She thought the ventilator was almost violent the way it forced air into Sister Celeste’s lungs. It was different from the movies where people on ventilators breathed easily. The ventilator actually injected a blast of air that suddenly expanded the rib cage. It did not look restful; instead it looked like Sister Celeste was going through a vigorous workout while sleeping.

  When Sister Celeste taught in the classroom, she appeared taller and had a certain regalness about her. Molly stood at the end of the bed and teared up, staring at a face she could not identify.

  She whispered, “I’m sorry, Sister Celeste. I swear to God I didn’t know this was going to happen. I am totally sorry. You are my favorite teacher and I can’t believe we hit you. I told Juan to slow down, but he wouldn’t listen to me. I almost got killed twice and…,” Molly started to cry, “I had it coming. I feel so bad. My dad hates me and my mom thinks I’m a bitch. You’ve always been real nice to me and I can’t believe I made this happen.”

  She composed herself and wiped the tears from her eyes and prayed, “Jesus, you can’t let Sister Celeste die or Charlie’s gonna kill me. She is a real good person and the best nun at American Saints. Please tell God not to take her, okay? I’ll say the rosary everyday if you let her live. Please? In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.”

  Someone had been standing outside the room listening while Molly was on her knees at the end of Sister Celeste’s bed. Getting down to kneel was hard and getting up was almost impossible. The person outside the room saw her struggle to get up and came in to assist her. She turned and saw Charlie with tears in his eyes, and was not sure of his state of mind until he hugged her, cupping her head to his chest.

  He said, “I love you, Molly.”

  She burst into tears and with her good arm hugged him hard, then cried, “I’m so sorry, Charlie. I really am. I promise I’m going to be good. I want to pray with you so Sister Marie Celeste will live. Mom always said you had something special when it came to prayer.”

  Charlie knew he had nothing special, but he was so moved by Molly’s request that he helped her kneel again while he knelt next to her.

  She said, “Dear Jesus, please let Sister Marie Celeste live. I did a very bad thing and she is suffering for it…”

  Charlie was listening with his eyes closed and head bowed forward when Molly’s voice trailed off. He was about to open his e
yes to see what happened when he again felt the Presence, similar to his experiences years ago at his first meditation and the baptism. His eyes suddenly brimmed over with tears, but this time it felt slightly different. His body trembled and the air seemed to become thicker as he felt squeezed. When he opened his eyes, he saw light emanating from the edges of the room and Sister Celeste’s face looked porcelain white. For an instant, the color of her face reminded him of his daughter, Samantha, who died in birth. He heard two breaths and realized they were his own. He imagined Sister Celeste was breathing through him and his heart was driving hers. He felt her go.

  While Molly’s head was bent forward, Charlie reached up to the bed and held Sister Celeste’s foot to bid her farewell. As he had come to know her, he realized she was uncomfortable in her skin. He knew the girl he met in 1967 was searching to be made whole through physical liaisons and the woman as nun was trying to fill an endless abyss with service to others. He imagined her imprisoned in her body, experiencing continual discordance. Molly’s car accident gave Sister Celeste the peace she had sought – but then her foot moved.

  The bruises reappeared and the ghostly whiteness left her face and faded to a haze around her head. He could once again hear Molly.

  “…and God please hear my prayers. In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  Molly leaned into Charlie and buried her head into his chest. She said nothing while he watched Sister Celeste. The light in the room and around her head was gone. He could no longer feel the Presence and if Sister Celeste had been trying to leave her body, she had somehow been thwarted, as witnessed by her twitching hand. Charlie pointed it out to Molly who burst into tears.

  “She is going to be okay, Charlie, I know it’s because you’re here. She knew you did not want her to leave you. I know it. This is totally rad, totally,” Molly said.

  “It’s just not her time to go. You were praying and God answered your prayers,” Charlie said. He was uncomfortable talking about what had just happened and changed the subject. “How are you doing? How’s the arm feeling?” Charlie asked.