Death of the Extremophile

by Stuart Parker

  *

  Hope ran into a Monterey style house attracted by its red brick and the kind of hardness that bullets did not easily penetrate. The door was open and there was no one immediately within. Hope ran up the stairs without looking any further to introduce himself. He burst into a second floor bedroom. It was empty and immaculately clean with two small beds against opposite walls the main features. Hope scooped up a chair on which some ratty teddy bears had been carefully arranged and tossed it hard through the gabled window. He jumped out onto the sloping roof and as he slid down the slippery tiles he used the height to scan the terrain ahead. There was farmland and woods. And no sign of the men with guns. Hope reached the siding and let himself go airborne. It was only then he turned his attention to what was directly below him. At least this time there was no rancid quarry. Rather, there was a cabbage patch with a scarecrow that appeared about Hope’s size. Hope landed nimbly in the forward roll of a paratrooper and promptly set about swapping clothes. The scarecrow was wearing a buttonless brown flannel jacket with split seams at the shoulders and certainly came off better from the exchange as Hope draped his black silk jacket over the sticks it passed for shoulders.

  Hope was quick to set off again, aware that he was just as likely to be shot at by an irate home owner defending his scarecrow as he was the army’s finest or the big cop out of New York - when Hope got the chance, he really would need to nail down who that was: he would enjoy working the name into a conversation with Errol Jones at the Underhill Cigar Club - he would pass a comment or a judgement and blow some smoke into the air.

  For now, however, he was content to tear into the forest in this strange new sport, which consisted of running so hard he could not be followed. Clawing under houses, leaping off their roofs, running across roads without regard for the traffic and now bounding over boulders and into gullies he wanted to think he was reaching an Olympic standard of evasion - losing that sniper was bound to be worth a medal. His pursuers had wanted him alive and then they had wanted him dead and still they had neither. Hope’s wounded shoulder was starting to throb again, the adrenaline starting to wear off.

  Hope came across a fallen, rotten cedar tree and stuffed the cargo bag into it. He considered taking the black handkerchief with him, but decided against it, stuffing it in underneath the bag: there needed to be nothing linking him to what had taken place. He discarded the scarecrow jacket as well. Then there was merely a man taking a brisk stroll in the woods, just as he had been doing a lifetime ago with Hawkshaw.

  Had she made it back home? It was time for Hope to do some chasing of his own.