by D W McAliley
Terry twisted the class ring on his left hand as the thoughts rattled around like loose boulders in his mind.
When Marcus Attledge knocked softly on Terry's door, he didn't hear it at first, so the engineer stuck his head around the corner and peeked into the open office.
"Mr. Price?" Marcus asked. "You sent for me, sir?"
Pulled from his deep reverie, Terry nodded and stood. "Yes, Mr. Attledge," he said, waiving the young man in. "Please, come and have a seat. Close the door, if you don't mind."
Marcus closed the door as he stepped fully into the office, then walked over to the two chairs across the desk from Terry, and sat in the one on his left. Terry sat once more in his own chair and frowned hard as he tried to find a way to broach the subject he had called Marcus in to discuss.
"Everything okay, sir?" Marcus asked as the silence between them stretched.
Terry shook his head with a small shrug of his shoulders. "If it's obvious enough for you to ask that question, then the answer is quite obviously no," he answered. Terry pulled off this class right from his left hand and held it up to the LED lighting, admiring the detail and the clarity of the sky blue stone. "Do you know what this is, Marcus?" Terry asked, setting the ring down on the desk between them.
Marcus leaned forward and looked at the ring but didn't pick it up. He shook his head, and admitted, "Other than a class ring, not really.,"
"My Naval Academy ring," Terry said slowly. He sat for a long moment, staring at the ring on the table. Finally, he said, "I need you to do something, Marcus. Before I tell you what it is, I want you to know that if there was anyone, and I mean anyone, that I could send to get this done, I would. Truth is, I need you here, but there's just no one else I trust to do it."
"What do you need?" Marcus asked without hesitation.
Terry 's more serious tone caught Marcus' attention. "You need to think about this because it's the kind of thing that can get a person killed, Marcus. I don't ask it lightly, and you shouldn't commit to it lightly, either."
Marcus met his eyes with obvious respect. "Sir," he said softly, "you've done more for me in the past nine years than most people I've known my whole life. Whatever it is, I'll do it."
Terry couldn't help but smile at that. He leaned forward, slid the ring towards Marcus, and breathed a deep sigh of relief. "Then you'll need this," Terry said, pointing to the ring.
Marcus picked up the ring, turned it over twice in his fingers, and examined every detail quickly and carefully. Satisfied that he was acquainted with it, he tucked the thick gold band into a buttoned pocket on the left side of his shirt.
"Okay," Terry began, "you know the telemetry file that you said was deleted two days ago? Well, that was me. I deleted the file, and then wiped any trace that I'd done so, though apparently not quite as thoroughly as I'd thought."
"I'm not quite sure I understand," Marcus said. "Why would you delete an aberrant telemetry file and try to hide it?"
"I'm getting to that," Terry said, waiving one hand at Marcus. "Listen, I need you to take a trip..."
CH. 50
The Silence After
Joe stood on the front porch of the house and gave a few hand signals to Tom, "I'll be out in a bit," he said and turned his back before anyone either man outside could speak.
Joe closed the door and walked over to the dying man. His breathing was short and shallow. Judging from the expressions on the man's face, the pain was getting too difficult to bear. The man twitched occasionally and groaned under his breath. Still, when he looked up at Joe, his eyes were clear.
"They take it all?" the man asked, and Joe nodded. "Good. Someone should use it, and Lord knows it ain't gonna be me." The man breathed a little deeper and easier, though it made him wince hard with each exhale.
"Listen, we could help you," Joe offered, one last time, but the man shook his head.
"I told you not to blow your smoke up there," the man grated. "You and I both know these holes in my gut are gonna kill me. It might take another couple of days, but you could drop me on the roof of Walter Reed right now, and it wouldn't matter. Anything strong enough to kill the infection will tank my kidneys and liver, and I'm dead either way."
Joe took a deep breath but didn't speak. After a moment the man continued in a raspy whisper. "You know it, too. You just wanted to be sure. Okay, I don't blame you. Look into my eyes, man. I want you to do it, I know what I'm askin, and I mean it."
Joe swallowed hard, but he met the man's direct gaze without flinching. After a long moment, he said softly, "My name's Joe Tillman."
"Don't matter who you are," the man said. "Don't matter who I am."
Joe shook his head, his eyes grim as he held the man's stare. "I know your name. You should know mine. If I'm going to do this, you should know my name. I don't know you but I got that much off a clipboard."
The man nodded. "Yeah, you did. Your name’s on it too, right? Don't answer, man, I know it is. Listen....your name was on there, and my name was on there. Look at me now. You've got a family?"
Joe's silence was confirmation enough, and the man closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, he was calm, but serious. "You gotta get out of here, man. Any one that's on that list would tell you the same thing, if they were sitting where I am now. If you were me, and I was you..... what would you say?"
Joe stared at his hands for a moment. After a long moment he swallowed past the cold knot in his gut and forced himself to look away. His hands had never shaken before.
"I would say the same things you are," Joe replied finally. "Close your eyes, then."
The man shook his head and sat up straighter. "Nah," he said. "I ain't hiding from this. This is my choice. No pain. No suffering. Like flipping a switch. That's my way to go."
Joe stood and drew his Beretta.
The man's eyes focused out the window on the deep blue sky beyond the trees in the yard, and his lips moved silently for a moment. When they stopped, he breathed in deeply through his nose. Just as he began to exhale....
Joe squeezed.....
.....the trigger.....
Ch. 51
After A Good Rain
Levy picked his way carefully along the path through the woods. He paid close attention to where he placed his feet each time he took a step. The path leading down the gentle slope wasn't difficult or steep, and the deep layer of leaf litter and old pine straw made for a soft walking bed. He still had to be vigilant, though, because those leaves could hide copperheads, cottonmouths, and even the occasional canebrake rattler. Levy carried a cricket basket in one hand and two long, thin cane fishing poles in the other.
Eric followed his grandfather, picking his way by carefully following Levy's footfalls. Eric carried a small tackle box and a Cool Whip container of night crawlers in a five gallon bucket with one hand, and a Zebco spinner rod and reel combo in his other hand. The afternoon was hot and humid, but in the shade of the towering oak and pine trees, it felt almost comfortable.
As the pair reached the bottom of the hill, the ground leveled out and became slightly mushy from the rain and thunderstorms of the past few days. A cloud of mosquitoes and gnats followed them every step, buzzing and whining in their ears. Eric breathed a gnat in through his nose, setting off a fit of hard sneezing that left his ribs aching and his eyes watering.
The flood plain stretched a little more than a quarter of a mile from the bottom of the hill on which their family farm sat to the near bank of Cutler's Run. It was an easy walk along the clear, broad path with dense underbrush on either side. Birds scattered in front of them and sang from nearly every tree and bush they passed. The entire forest seemed to be absolutely vibrating with the lush exuberance of late summer.
The path they were following was an old logging road, and it turned to follow the line of the river. For a short time, Eric and his grandfather followed the road as it ran a good thirty yards from the river. After a while, Levy looked up and took his bearings from the towering pines and oa
ks along the river bank and nodded to himself. Another hundred yards down the road, Levy turned to his left and entered the woods. The road was about fifty yards from the river bank here, and the underbrush was thick. It was difficult to push a path through the river cane and briars, but with a little effort the pair was able to break a path through to the bank.
The river was broad and slow in this stretch, with deep water. On the opposite bank, a massive stone outcrop jutted from the ground, rising sixty feet into the air. It formed a massive rock wall along a two hundred yard stretch of the opposite bank, and the low hill it formed had earned the local moniker 'Little Big Rock'. Levy settled himself onto an old fallen pine tree and began unwinding the fishing line on one of his cane poles.
"After a good rain like we had the past few nights," Levy said as he threaded a worm onto his hook, "the fish will be lookin for food washed into the river. Give it a day or two for the mud to wash out of the water, and the fish start bitin like crazy."
Levy took his cane poll and swung the baited hook in a long arc out into the middle of the river with a plop. The bright orange cork bobbed up and down in the gentle current as the hook settled into the water. The river carried the cork very slowly to the left and Levy sat back to watch as it floated by. Eric finished tying a larger hook with a synthetic rubber night crawler on his Zebco, and he moved upriver a bit so his casting wouldn't interfere with Levy's bait.
"Gotta be careful with a spinner like that," Levy said, shaking his head. "There's trees and rocks and all kinds of trash piled up deep in this hole. You hit some of it with that hook, and you'll lose your worm."
"I know, Granddaddy," Eric said. "I'll be careful."
Eric cast his lure three fourths of the way across the river and began reeling it slowly towards him. Every few turns, he would jerk the lure a couple of feet through the water to imitate a jittery, injured worm trying to swim. Nothing bit on the first cast, so he tried again in a slightly different spot with the same result.
"I'm gonna move up a little ways," Eric said. "Maybe they'll hit it up where the water's a little less deep."
Levy just grunted. As Eric moved off, Levy's orange cork bobber disappeared beneath the water. Levy stood and pulled up sharply on the cane pole, setting the hook. He pulled a large, flat blue-gilled brim from the water and grinned over at Eric.
"Good luck," Levy said as he pulled the fish from his hook and dropped it into the bucket of river water. The fish flapped and splashed at first but settled down quickly. Eric shook his head and took his tackle box with him as he walked upstream far enough to be out of sight of his grandfather and started fishing.
After more than an hour of trying different spots and different lures, all with the same negative result, Eric was becoming frustrated. He'd lost three complete worm rigs and two shiny spinner baits to hidden obstacles in the murky water. He decided to go back and check on Levy and see if the old timer's luck had held. As he walked up to his grandfather, Eric could hear the fish splashing in the bucket by his side. Eric looked in the bucket and was shocked to see enough fish in the bucket to hide the white plastic bottom from view. Levy never said a word, just looked up and nodded as Eric set his spinner reel down and picked up the spare cane pole.
When Eric had unwound the fishing line and tied on his hook, he added a couple of small split-shot lead weights and a bright orange cork bobber. Levy pulled his line from the water and set his pole next to his log seat as he stood.
"Come with me, Doc," Levy said, and he grabbed the nearly empty cricket cage.
Levy led the way, pushing through the briars and brush until they were back on the old logging road. Levy scanned the trees for a moment, then snapped his fingers and pointed to a young tree that was no more than twenty feet tall at its highest point. The canopy the tree formed was broad and thick with wide flat leaves larger than a dinner plate.
"This here's a Catawba tree," Levy said as they reached the base of the tree. Levy reached up to one of the low-hanging branches and grabbed a broad leaf riddled with holes. He turned the leaf over, and smiled broadly, "And these," he continued, "are Catawba worms."
Levy began plucking the two inch long black caterpillars from the leaf and dropping them into the cricket cage. He left a few of the larger worms and moved on to the next leaf he could reach, repeating the process. Eric followed his grandfather around the tree, pulling worms off where he could reach as well.
"You never want to pick a leaf clean," Levy said, "and it's best to leave the bigger ones, if you can. That way you know there'll be more worms next year."
Eric nodded. "That makes sense," he said, "but what's so special about these worms?"
"It's the smell," Levy said. "You wouldn't believe it, but these things drive fish flat out crazy, Doc. You can have a bad day on every other kind of bait, but drop one of these sticky, stinky little worms in the water, and the fish'll be crawling out onto the bank to get more of it."
When they'd gone around the entire tree, there were about thirty worms crawling around inside the cricket cage. Levy tore off a few pieces of the broad, flat leaves and dropped them into the wire cricket cage with the worms. A few of the remaining crickets were able to use the leaves to mount an escape, but Levy didn't seem to mind.
When they were back at the river, Levy took one of the larger worms from the cricket cage and laid it flat on the log. With his antique Case pocketknife, Levy carved the worm into three roughly equal sections. As soon as he cut into the thick, rubbery hide, a slimy paste squirted out and Eric felt his stomach shift. Levy stuck one of the sections on his own hook and another on Eric's.
They swung the bait out into the water at roughly the same time. Eric turned to ask his grandfather a question and felt a sharp jerk on his line. When he looked back to the water, both his and his grandfather's cork bobbers were nowhere to be seen. For a moment, Eric stood with his mouth open, not quite believing the results he was seeing. Then, his rod jerked again, and Eric's attention snapped back to the water and the present moment. He pulled up sharply on the cane pole to set the hook and pulled a massive brim from the water as Levy did the same.
"You see, Doc," Levy said as they took the fish off and dropped them into the bucket to splash and thrash about, "you're used to fishing for sport and for fun. That's all well and good, but what we're doin now is different. If we don't catch fish, then we don't eat supper. Reelin in that eight or ten pound bass is a challenge, and it's a thrill, but if you don't get that big boy in hand, then all that time spent chasin him is just wasted."
Levy cut another worm, and they baited their hooks with it. Eric dropped his in the water first, and within a few seconds, the bobber bounced once and disappeared again. Eric shook his head but couldn't help chuckling to himself as he pulled another fish from his hook. In less than an hour, the five gallon bucket was so full they couldn't fit any more fish in it. Levy cut a branch and strung a dozen brim on it by running the thin end through one side of their gills and out their mouth.
"Granddaddy, there's just one thing I don't understand," Eric said as they were packing up their poles, the bucket, and tackle boxes to head back up the hill to the house.
"What's that, Doc?"
"Well," Eric said, should be "pointing to the bucket and the loaded branch of fish, "you can catch fish like that on your own, so why did you need me down here with you?"
"To carry the bucket back up the hill, of course," Levy replied with a chuckle and a wink.
CH. 52
A Long Way Home
Joe gripped the steering wheel hard, his knuckles white from the strain. The last building of the city fell into the dim shadows deep within his rearview mirror. The old station wagon thundered down the road and the wind tore at Joe's hair. The air was hot and muggy, but at least it was moving, and that helped.
Joe ground his teeth.
Two houses empty, and one he wished had been. They left the Chesapeake and Norfolk behind with many more questions than answers. The man they'd seen, t
he one they'd found shot, had said there were two groups that came looking for him, and the second one was the violent group. Joe wondered who the first set of visitors had been.
And he wondered who had sent in the A-10's. The National Guard can't respond to a threat with that kind of force unless some very specific conditions had been met. And even with everything he'd seen, Joe wasn't quite ready to go that far just yet. He shrugged his shoulders slightly and gripped the steering wheel tighter, trying to silence the doubts rolling through his mind.
Joe wondered which group he'd left hog-tied and without a ride outside Chris's home the day before. Were they the ruthless thugs that had put two bullets in the stranger? Or were they the ones that came first with questions and an open hand? Suddenly, Joe slammed on his brakes. The '58 slid to a halt, the back end starting to slide around to the right. Joe had to cut the wheel hard to keep the car from going into a spin.
He had almost driven past the faded gray mailbox and gravel driveway.
Joe pulled the station wagon into the driveway and started blowing the horn. A grizzled old farmer in dusty tan overalls came around the corner of the porch with a double barrel twelve gauge in his hands. He turned his head and spat a thick jet of dark purple tobacco juice to the side and arched it over the white railing of the porch.
"Whoever you are," Gilbert called, "you'd better stop right there! I'll shoot ya down if I have to, I swear to Christ!"
Joe stomped the brakes again and threw his empty hands out the window.
"Gilbert!" Joe called, "It's me, Joe. We need to talk, old man!"
Gilbert snorted and spat to the side again. "Well, Joe," he said slowly, "there's better ways of sayin that, but okay."
Gilbert flipped the shotgun around so the muzzle was pointing up and to the left, away from anyone in the area. Still, his right hand was close to the trigger, and he could swing the shotgun down quickly from that position. The old farmer fixed Joe with a hard stare.