by Clint Kelly
“Well, James Carter, now that we’re all friends, how about you stop driving at granny speed and get us to Depoe Bay in, say, the next fifteen minutes?” The gun lay on the seat between Richie and Shirl. “And I ain’t no kid. I turned twenty-two last month.”
“You know, Richie, when you think about it, isn’t it amazing that twenty-three years ago, you didn’t exist at all and now here we are taking a drive down the Oregon coast together? God is an amazing God.”
“He’s right, Richie, ya know. He is so right.” Though she didn’t know it, Shirl, God love her, had shifted from Richie’s antagonist to my accomplice.
“The Creator’s got an amazing life ahead for you, Richie.” He no longer seemed concerned at my looking into the rearview mirror, so I looked.
The fingers of Shirl’s hand were interlaced with his. She nodded sweetly at her friend. He shook his head, bewildered.
“Jesus loves you, Richie,” I said. “Jesus loves you.”
Now I was shaking my head. God, what in the Sam Hill…
“Of all the people in all the world to kidnap, I had to pick a Christian.” Richie’s words came low and husky.
And of all the people in all the world to be kidnapped by, I had to be picked by one who recognized a Christian when he saw one.
“I’m sorry I said shut up, Shirl.”
“It’s OK, Richie. I know you didn’t mean it.”
“Turn in here, right here!”
Devil’s Punchbowl.
I turned into the expansive parking lot and maneuvered around two Goldwing motorcycles and a Land Rover festooned with sea kayaks and bicycles and pulling a trailer load of ATVs. I eased the car into a parking slot just as with a mighty hiss and a splash, a cascade of foaming seawater burst skyward from a hole in the slick rock escarpment in front of us.
Families and lovers jumped back from the spray and oohed and ahhed and giggled their delight.
We were parked, along with a hundred other people, at one of the coast’s most popular natural attractions.
“This isn’t going to work, baby. Let’s put our trust in Mr. Carter, OK? I need a bathroom.” Good ol’ Shirl. For her, the novelty of their little escapade had rapidly worn off.
“Go, Shirl, just go. The can’s right over there.”
She left at a trot.
We sat in silence, me sneaking glances in the mirror at a brooding Richie, arms crossed, staring forlornly at the happiness all around.
At last he said, “It’s not loaded, you know. I get that it doesn’t change what I done, but I never meant to hurt you. Only reason I have it is for protection on the road. Shirl hates it. We slept in a picnic shelter last night and I woke up just in time or she woulda pitched it into the ocean. Now I wish she had.” He flung his head against the back seat and jammed the heels of both hands into bloodshot eyes. “Oh man, I am such a screw-up.”
If I had a buck for every time I’d reached that conclusion about myself, I could buy lunch for every man, woman, and child at the Punchbowl.
“How come you don’t just jump outta the car and scream for help?” Richie sounded resigned to the fact that I might be on the verge of doing just that.
I watched a black-and-white mutt leap for a Frisbee and miss. I practiced breathing. “Beats me. If yours is anything like my life lately, you might be slowly coming to the same conclusion I am: It doesn’t do a bit of good to run. God’ll find you.”
I turned around and faced him. “You gave me a pretty good jolt back there.” He dropped his hands and stared at the floor. “On the other hand, you cleared my mind of a lot of deadwood.”
He managed to raise his gaze and meet mine. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Maybe you’ve heard the expression, ‘God has a plan for your life’?”
He nodded.
“Well, I believe that. And sometimes that plan might come in specific, short-term assignments with very real long-term consequences. I came down here thinking I could escape God’s plan for me, when all along, He was sending me on assignment, see?” My chest swelled with excitement at this line of logic.
Richie looked out the window now, eyes searching for Shirl. I’d lost him.
“Richie!” In the confines of the car, the name sounded louder and sharper than I’d intended, but I needed his attention.
He faced me, expression etched in worry and pain.
“God sent me here to stop you from ruining your life. God sent you and Shirl here to keep me from missing out on the best part of being made in His image.”
He looked cornered, truly repentant for picking this car and this driver.
“Discerning His will and acting upon it!” I hit the top of the seat between us with a clenched fist.
The boy flinched. “Wh-at?” He pressed back against his seat and looked more sorry that he’d confessed the gun wasn’t loaded.
I tried on my most winsome smile but imagined it was about as reassuring as the grin on a Rottweiler. “Don’t you see, Richie? God says we’re made in His image. He wants us to be alert to His will and then go make it happen. He gives us the privilege of being His boots on the ground, understand?”
He looked a little bluish, as if he had come to understand a great many things this day, of which “never get into a stranger’s car” was near the top of the list.
I changed tack. “You bring a phone?”
The old defensive surliness returned. “Yeah, what of it?”
“Why don’t I call Shirl’s dad and let him know she’s OK? It’s cruel to keep a parent in the dark where their kid is concerned. What’s his name?”
“Roger McClain.”
“Good. That way, Mr. McClain will have time to cool down while I drive you to her house. I’ll stay with you just as long as you need me to.”
He shook off his sullenness and stared out the side window. “You’re not pressing charges?”
“Nope,” I said, “but only if you tell the police what you did. It was pretty stupid, Richie. You need to own up to it so it never happens again. Guns, loaded or empty, are no laughing matter.” I’d had entirely too much experience with handguns. Bea McCutcheon’s, fully loaded, was seconds from sending her to kingdom come.
“The cops’ll throw my butt in jail!”
As much as I liked the idea of Richie spending a night or two behind bars for the scare he’d given me, I kept seeing a reckless teenage me in his haggard body language. “No, they won’t. They’ve got too much to do. And if it comes to that, I’ve got a lawyer friend who can help us.”
Richie shook his head. “How come you’d do this for me?
“‘Let the one without sin cast the first stone.’”
“What’s that?”
I liked the genuine curiosity in the question. “That’s from the Bible. Jesus challenged the religious leaders who wanted to stone to death a woman who had committed adultery.”
“Let me guess,” Richie said, eyes wet. “No one lifted a finger.”
“You win the stuffed elephant. The leaders left one by one, their stones uncast, until it was only Jesus and the woman. He told her He wasn’t pressing charges against her either, that she should go home and stop sinning.”
Richie wiped his nose on a sleeve. “I’ve messed up big-time.”
I smiled, reached over the seat, and slapped his knee. “Me too. You wouldn’t believe the month I’ve had.”
“I’m sorry. Sorry I put you through all this, sorry I threatened you. I just panicked, I guess.” The tears and the snot were running freely now and I handed him my handkerchief. “Here. It’s clean. It’s yours.”
“Thanks.” He took it and blew loud and long. “Her dad wants me in jail. I’ll never see Shirl again.”
With a hissing whoosh, another spout of water exploded from the rock in front of us and shot for the sky. The onlookers standing at the safety fence fell back, shrieking in awe and delight.
“I’ll give the gun to the police so it can be taken out of circulation. But, Richie, you can’t act on your emotions this
way. This is how people die. If the police see a gun waving around, they shoot now and ask later if it was loaded. Shirl deserves better than that. And unless I miss my guess, she needs a couple more years to finish school and leave home on good terms. You need a good counselor, someone to be your advocate. What about your parents?”
It stabbed me in the heart to see the anguish on his stubbly face. “Mom’s dead and Dad might as well be for all he gets involved. Last I heard, he’s in Jersey, living paycheck to bar. No room for me, I can tell you that.”
“Other relatives?”
“Just a distant uncle who works the oil rigs in the Gulf and lives out of a duffle bag.”
It was as if Ruth herself dug me in the ribs.
Richie looked over at the restrooms, clearly wondering what was keeping Shirl. I hoped she hadn’t jumped ship and decided to stow away with the ATVs.
His next words surprised me. “There’s a man at this church in Longview who said I could rent a spare room in his house until I figure something out. Said his family wouldn’t mind.” He wiped his eyes, but didn’t look at me. “I haven’t done it ’cause I didn’t want to be preached at, ya know?”
I knew.
“Thing is, you’ve had lots of time to preach at me and you haven’t. That story about Jesus, that true?”
“Yes,” I said. “Many of the writers of the Bible were eyewitnesses to what Jesus said and did. And Paul, a great writer and preacher who came along not long after, even persecuted Christians at first before he fully understood what Christ was all about. And several historians who didn’t write the Bible agree that Jesus was an extraordinary person. He spoke to people and listened to them in ways no one else ever had. More amazing than that, He still does it today.”
I stopped a minute, waiting for the word hypocrite to appear in the clouds. For someone to stick his head in my open car window and tell me to take some sea bass to a widow in Astoria. For the airbag warning on the dash to morph into “For God so loved the world…”
“Mr. Carter, you OK?” Richie eased forward on the seat, eyes old with concern, offering me the gun butt first. And my wad of cash.
I laid the gun on the floor and stuck the money in my pocket. “I’m OK, Richie. I was just thinking how God will use anything to get our attention. Here comes Shirl. Are you ready to make that call?”
He nodded, fished a slim cellphone out of his shorts pocket, dialed, and handed it to me.
Shirl got into the car, slid across to Richie, and pulled him close. He told her what we had agreed upon and she kissed him. They watched as two state-patrol cars whipped into the parking lot and screeched to a halt behind the rental.
I took a deep breath. “Hello, Mr. McClain? My name is James Carter, calling to tell you that your daughter Shirl is safe and sound. Yes, sir, she’s right here. I can have her to you by this evening. Yes, yes, I’ll put her on.” I handed over the phone, sent up a ten-second prayer for guidance, and opened my door to the law.
16
Wheels Fontaine took a long draw from his water bottle before again attempting to form the question. His muscular dystrophy made speech a laborious proposition, but on the bright side it meant parking his chair in disabled seating at the front of the bus and preferential treatment from the driver.
“I…said”—each word was filled with effort, and his water bottle jerked wildly for emphasis—“where… do…pigeons…go…to…die?”
Rainbow Man rolled his eyes and tried with a pale white finger to dislodge from his molars some of the saltwater taffy I’d brought back from Lincoln City. His frizzy hair in multicolored pastels rendered him a walking snow cone. His powder-blue pants and shoes, pale blue eyes, white ruffled shirt, and white-powdered face went well with the carnival-colored taffy.
Timer got on at the next stop and announced, “You’re late!” It was the same thing the short, bald man always said upon boarding the bus, whether the driver was in fact early, on time, or behind schedule. I offered him a piece of taffy. He took a lemon one and fished around for another.
Wheels wasn’t done. “Seattle’s… covered…in… pigeons…but…you…don’t…see…piles…of…dead…
pigeons…anywhere…When…it’s…time…where…
do…they…go?”
It was Thursday and the day a random bus commuter posed the Question of the Week. Wheels had been thinking on his for some time. “Where?” he demanded.
The force of his inquiry, not a word of which they understood, set the Five Happy Housekeepers to tittering full volume in rapid-fire Mandarin. The quintet of Asian women, who got off at the Marriott Hotel where they worked as maids—hence their nickname—moments before had been prying taffy from their own teeth. Now they must be debating something, perhaps how West Coast American candy stacked up against Chinese sweets.
Tall Hat, an elegant gentleman in copper-red hair and black cowboy hat, boots, and floor-length greatcoat, and who referred to the Chinese women less charitably as The Chairman’s Harem, said, “Pigeons have property next door to the elephant graveyard. They go there.”
Two beats later, he threw his head back like a moonstruck coyote and howled. Wheels and I joined him. Following our lead, the Five Happy Housekeepers tittered. Even Tai Chi Man and Knitting Needles Lady, who did not laugh, managed to look merry.
I loved my little bus family. Strange, unconventional, even disturbing as they might be, each was an original. Certainly they were as human and vital as the executive in the Lexus who worked on the twenty-seventh floor of high-rise real estate and thought buses were for clock punchers and street dwellers who spent their days riding the bus to nowhere just for something to do.
They were why in the end I bypassed shopping for a beach cottage and drove Shirl and Richie home to Longview to face the music from her parents.
The police were at first highly skeptical of my motives not to press charges against the kids, especially Richie. In fact, it was Richie who bore witness by telling the officers about Jesus and the woman. To the credit of Mr. and Mrs. McClain, they did not sever all contact between the two lovebirds or clap Richie in irons, but did harshly chastise the kids’ stupidity, limit visits to weekends (to be supervised for six months), and told Richie to get a job. I drove him to the church deacon’s house. The man, though taken aback, reaffirmed his offer to let Richie live there as long as he was looking for a job or had one, four hundred dollars a month to generously include rent, meals, utilities, and living-room access. It looked light years better than prison. I promised to check in on them periodically and gave them my contact information.
Richie and Shirl still had to go before a judge, but between my testimony and the pro-bono representation of my lawyer friend, they’d probably get probation.
The police took a bit of convincing to let the matter drop. The testimony of the Winslows at the Sea Brine, especially Patty’s assessment of the “shifty Romeo and Juliet,” took some overcoming. I assured them it was a matter of interpretation—“troubled kids in need of perspective”—and in the end, my word prevailed. The Oregon State Police did seem happy to take one more handgun out of circulation.
I know now I wouldn’t be good as a beach bum without Ruth to share it. My work—and “family”—are in Seattle.
The 17 was a block from where Big Pearl sat when the balloon popped. Within the confines of the bus, it was the sound of sniper fire from an enemy position high on the opposite ridge. With a shout of warning from the aisle next to me, Semper Fi hit the bus floor, trembling palms covering the back of his head. A child near the back of the bus burst into tears, despite a mother’s comforting words that next time, they would ask for two balloons.
We pulled to the stop, and before I exited, I helped the aging Nam vet regain his seat. He grabbed my jacket lapels. “Never ever pop a balloon in a downtown bus, Jimmy boy, never ever,” he said in a fierce whisper. I knew he was headed for the VA and now doubly in need of the anti-stress pills that kept his keel even. A disproportionate number of mili
tary veterans used public transportation and many of them lived with their demons in subsidized housing on the borderlands of the commercial district.
With a squeeze of his shoulder, I left him the bag of taffy and walked to the front exit. Elaine, Bill’s replacement at the helm of the 17, asked if Semper Fi would be OK. I nodded. She told me to watch my step. “In here or out there?” I said, with a wave at the street.
“Out there,” the tiny slip of a driver responded. “They say the Eye Doctor has returned.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.” I stepped onto the curb. Over my shoulder, I said, “Wonder if he ever went to medical school?”
“Sure he did.”
I turned.
Elaine gave me a wink. “He’s a proud alum of Transylvania U.” Her horsey laugh followed me down onto the sidewalk. I was glad we’d hit it off. Nice enough she was, but no Bill.
The 17 snorted away from the stop, and Pearl roused from a catnap. “What news, Horatio?” she called.
I handed her a fresh pack of gum, the extra-large-size Juicy Fruit she adores. “I know about a special surprise for the wedding Saturday that you don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t say?” She slid two sticks of gum between her teeth and sucked them before biting down. “Well, that makes two of us. I know about a special wedding surprise you don’t know about.”
“This isn’t the surprise,” I said, “but the Seattle Times is sending a photographer. Could be a major Sunday spread.”
“It better be,” Pearl said. “Some whiz-bang reporter spent a half-hour interviewing me yesterday afternoon. He wanted all this personal information on Doomie and Stella. I don’t have much on those two. He also wanted to know where to find you. Said he tried your place but you’ve not been answering.”
“Took a little trip and didn’t get back until yesterday.”
“Got a girl in some other port, sailor?” The mirth in Pearl started somewhere deep inside, swirled up into her throat, and set her chins to jiggling.
I leaned against one side of Pearl’s flophouse doorway. “No, ma’am, but I can see how some hotshot newshound would love to link someone named Doomie to the Caped Crusader.”