Knack (Benjamin Brown Book 1)

by Tom Twitchel

  In 1939 Germany, Hitler had finally invaded Poland and at the time that I dreamt of winning back my Sonja, Hitler was coming to Berlin to celebrate the inauguration of the Axis, the unholy alliance that split Poland in two and pushed the whole world into war. His motorcade route had been talked about openly for days. I knew where his car would be and at what time.

  Without having actually lived through it, no one can understand what it meant to be a German, not a Nazi, at that time. Hitler destroyed our history, our culture and for many, the soul of our country. If I were to assassinate Hitler, the most detestable war criminal in modern history, I would be a hero. My disenfranchised countrymen would cheer me. My fellow German Jews would crawl out from their hiding places, turn their faces up to the sun and whisper my name as a savior. The world would extend me a pardon for taking his life. And maybe, maybe my wife would come back to me.”

  As I listened to his story unwind, I experienced a now familiar feeling of distortion. It was surreal. What he was saying, his matter-of-fact tone, the subject, I couldn’t take it in.

  He sighed and continued. “But it never came to pass. I was there in an abandoned shop, of which there were many in Berlin that year. I had broken a small hole through a window and I had a rifle. I was ready. There was no possible way I could miss. The motorcade drove by, his head passed into the crosshairs of my site, and then they passed on. I froze. I was too afraid. I didn’t take the shot that would have spared the world. I was a coward and the thousands who had died in Poland would not be avenged. And the over fifty million who would die over the next five years? Their blood was on my hands. Fifty million people, Benjamin, and it was my fault. Those families, my countrymen, my brethren who were persecuted? All of it on my hands.”

  Taking his glasses off his face, he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped them. His face was wet with tears, but he didn’t dry them. I felt for him, but I was frightened too. Where was this going? Why was he telling me this?

  Clearing his throat again and putting his glasses back in place, he stared out the window. A freight train thundered by and the walls shook slightly.

  “I left Germany. I left behind the chance to reunite with Sonja. But that was after a few years of reading the papers and counting the cost for my cowardice. I couldn’t bear to watch what was happening to my country, and my faith; my knacks marked me as well. I left the continent and immigrated to America. And let me say, there was no love for a diminutive German Jew in the United States. I took the most menial jobs, whatever would feed me. Slowly, I built up enough money to buy my first business. I sold that business and bought another and then another. And then properties, like this building you live in. And while I was accumulating wealth, I started to wake up. I started to care again, about people, about my adopted country and also about myself.”

  I made a decision, Benjamin. I decided that I wouldn’t hesitate if the opportunity came again. I renounced my fear. But my problem was that society doesn’t give birth to psychotics that present themselves as brazenly or obviously as Hitler had, at least not most or not the ones I had the good fortune to have cross my path. I promised myself that when a man or a woman with bad intentions came into my path, I would not fail to fulfill my duty, my obligation.”

  Gooseflesh broke out on my arms and neck.

  As if reading my mind, he said, “So, Mr. Benjamin Brown, that brings me to the “what” now that you know the “why.” The man who came into my shop that day? I changed his will. If he could learn to discipline himself and make a decision to change, to leave others alone, to respect the boundaries of what belonged to him and what didn’t, none of my meddling in his mind would affect him. But, if he planned to engage in acts that would harm others and take what wasn’t his? Well, he would just slow down until the compulsions stopped, until he ceased thinking about murder, thinking about taking what wasn’t his. And if he couldn’t, then he would stay slowed. He had control over his future. He had a choice.”

  Underneath my shirt, I was bathed in sweat. There was a code, a foundation of logic woven through what he was saying but how could I agree with that? People can be sick. If that man had been mentally ill, how could he control his urges? Mr. Goodturn was playing God, had been playing God for a long time. How many people had he slowed down to the point that they passed away?

  “How can you know? What if those people could change on their own? Without you doing anything to them?” I asked.

  Shaking his head, he sighed and allowed himself to slide forward so that his feet set firmly on the floor. Standing, he looked at me sadly.

  “Benjamin, in my experience, unless there are very special circumstances, bad people do not change. Man must suffer to learn…and so many run from their suffering.”

  “But that isn’t right. You can’t decide for other people. There’s a system. There are laws.” I felt my face getting hot.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Like the ones that protected you when you were attacked? I wish that man had come into my shop so that I could have saved you all of that pain. If someone hadn’t interceded, someone who just might look at things the same way I do, you wouldn’t be here now.”

  Shuddering again, I looked down at the floor. Oso—his motivation had been similar to Mr. Goodturn’s, but it hadn’t been born of some altruistic code. It had just been brutal street justice. The lines of morality blurred.

  “I can see you thinking it through. You can’t know what I feel Benjamin. You’re so young. But that leg, and your eye, before our friend, Dr. Yosh, fixed it, your need to be here, they all happened because of the real evil that I decided never to turn my back on again.”

  My head was pounding. “Like Miss Hoch?” I blurted.

  Raising his eyebrows he replied, “The CPS worker?”

  “I saw her! On a bus! She quit her job and can’t remember ever meeting me! Did you do that?” I stood up too, feeling dizzy and nauseated.

  “Ah. That.”

  What had he said? That was no answer! “Yeah, that? Was that you?”

  He looked down at his hands. “Benjamin, we know quite a bit about each other. We represent a subset of society that has a very small membership. Sharing any of our gifts and experiences with anyone would be met with, at a minimum, disbelief and, at worst, cause some very unpleasant reactions from uninformed normals. You’re struggling with a lot of information. I think you need some time to think it over and come to a place where we can discuss it intelligently and perhaps more dispassionately. But keep this in mind: nothing I have done, or would do, is perpetrated upon an innocent.”

  “You haven’t answered me! Was it you?” I had started to shake.

  “Friends don’t make demands of each other. Asking doesn’t automatically beget an answer.”

  “Was it?” I pleaded. I could hear the desperation in my voice.

  He looked down and gave a shake of his head. He turned and started to walk to the door.

  “Was it?”

  Pausing at the door, he glanced back as he put his hand on the doorknob.

  “You have no idea what that woman had planned for you. Yes, it was me.” I stood there wondering what that meant.

  Once again, I was standing looking at my door after someone I cared about had walked out on me. Using my knack to flip the deadbolt, I went into the kitchen and grabbed a cola out of the fridge. I flopped onto the couch, stunned and confused.

  My safety, my life and health were owed to two people who had made life and death decisions based on their own set of guidelines. What did that make me? I felt cut off. Who could I ask for help? Calling Baffle was out of the question. He would go off, and start ranting about Mr. G. Irony and not a little hypocrisy threaded through his mental process when it came to ethics and morality. Baffle found no problem with Witkowski’s sociopathic behavior, but circumstantial proof of Mr. Goodturn’s supernatural meddling was fair game. When we had argued, Mr. Goodturn never admitted causing anyone to die. Did that mean they had died from other causes?
Whether that was true or not, wasn’t he responsible anyway?

  My head hurt.

  Texting or calling Maddy didn’t seem like a good idea either. She had been the first one to raise concerns about Mr. Goodturn. Wouldn’t she just tell me that she had told me so? Was that unfair, or maybe shortsighted of me? I tortured myself thinking that over for a few hours until I finally decided that calling her would just be counting on her to do my thinking for me.

  Then I tried to break down my conversations with Breno and Mr. Goodturn. What had I been trying to accomplish? Discover details about his past: check. Get specifics on Mr. Goodturn’s messing with people’s minds and possibly hurting them: Bingo. Find out more about what Mr. Goodturn had done before he immigrated to the US: Yahtzee. Discover what had happened to Miss Hoch: score.

  And what had that gotten me? Nowhere. Mr. Goodturn hadn’t stormed out. His departure had been painful but filled with sadness, not anger. His pain and guilt had been heart-wrenching to hear and see. I wasn’t truly afraid that he would throw me out on the street, but my mentoring relationship was on thin ice. He had said that he had never interfered with an innocent. How did that work with Miss Hoch?

  Breno had hurt people and been out of control as a fifteen-year-old. Blame for what had happened to his parents didn’t seem to be black and white, but he had certainly caused it. And Miss Hoch? Fear of her blowing up my living situation had been real, but screwing with her career and causing her to forget a huge chunk of her life didn’t seem justified. I felt responsible. What had he said? That I had no idea what she had intended to do? What did that mean? Did it explain why a social worker was doggedly hunting down one boy, one case over a two-year period? That was hard to understand, let alone reconcile with what had happened to her.

  Counting on others to protect me was getting old. I needed to start figuring out how to protect myself and do it without counting on the help of people whose grasp of ethics was slippery. And possibly protect myself from them.

  I went into my bedroom and booted up my laptop. What had started as a mid-level machine had been upgraded by Baffle so that I now owned an extremely fast, and completely digitally invisible PC that more than met my needs.

  First, I researched buying a gun. It took all of twenty minutes to determine that, short of buying one on the street (wouldn’t that be a stupid idea), it was impossible to buy a gun at the ripe old age of fifteen.

  My second search focused on personal devices like Tasers and electrical deterrents. Tasers, the guns that shot out darts connected to the gun by fine wires had the same age restrictions and were too expensive. But the electrical devices were within my budget and were much easier to get online. I ordered one and patted myself on the back that I was at a minimum going to be less of an easy target in the future.

  Thoughts about knives, archery equipment or pellet guns all led to similar conclusions: either too bulky to carry or could potentially be used against me. I didn’t have any illusions about my physical strength. Browsing several sites that promised amazingly fast results for building muscle seemed overstated and the ones that weren’t featured equipment that was also too expensive. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? Being able to defend myself hadn’t been a priority.

  Pushing away from my desk and shutting down the computer, I went back to the living room and spent the rest of the night experimenting with ways to use my knacks to protect myself.

  I decided that I was done being a victim and wasn’t going to depend on other people to defend me anymore.

  BOOK FIVE

  Sophomore Year or From Bad To Worse

  CHAPTER ONE

  While I struggled with making sense out of the load of crazy Mr. G had dumped in my lap, the new school year arrived. Sophomore year in high school is very different from freshman year in many ways. In other ways, it’s depressingly the same. Kids are nervously attempting to redefine themselves, convinced that over the summer they have changed and that the next year at school will be much different, in a better way. Other kids are busy reestablishing their position in the leadership hierarchy and aggressively dealing with anything that might get in their way.

  It also brings with it a new kind of freedom for the older students in the sophomore class: a car. When I hopped off the bus and walked across the student parking lot, I saw Baffle surrounded by a small group of students. He had his hand resting possessively on the hood of a shiny SUV. As I drew nearer, the dynamics of the conversation became clear; my friend had a new car.

  Being one of the oldest students in my class, Baffle was sixteen and had already been through driving school and acquired his license, but the black Land Rover I was looking at was a big surprise. His parents were not overly wealthy, which was why my brainiac friend attended public school.

  “All mine,” he said to the envious onlookers. A blond girl, who wouldn’t have even noticed Baffle the year before, ran her hand along the front grill.

  “How did your parents manage that, Sam?” she asked.

  Baffle beamed, enjoying his moment in the spotlight. “We made a deal and they had to keep up their end of the bargain. But it’s really cool. And like the stereo, it’s really good. I don’t have an auxiliary cable yet so I can’t use my phone yet. But I’m, you know, working on my playlist. And it’s fast too. But I’m not… I don’t speed—much.” He was blushing so hard that you could count every freckle on his face.

  There were awkward laughs at his rambling, but the appreciative whistles and sprinkling of admiring comments washed over him. The first bell rang and the crowd started dispersing. I tried to catch Baffle’s eye as he watched the blond walk away, swinging her hips and smiling at him over her shoulder.

  “Hey, take a picture. It’ll last longer,” I teased.

  Blushing a little, his grin still in place, he quipped, “Maybe I won’t need a picture. She might need a ride home. Do you think she would want a ride home?”

  “Oh dude, are you going to have a size extra-large head now that you have a car?” I asked

  “It’s always been extra-large. Need the room for all the brains.” He smirked.

  I made a rude sound. “What was the deal with your mom and dad?”

  His grin faded slightly, “If I aced every camp competition over the summer, they said they’d buy me this.” Baffle’s parents had forced him into attending several camps that focused on science and math as opposed to wood lore and campfires.

  “Nice.” I had to admit, I was a little jealous. It would probably be years until I could afford a car and it wouldn’t look like Baffle’s.

  “It’s not new, but it’s in really good shape. I played up the safety features with my mom. Dad had been looking at a hybrid compact.”

  “I wouldn’t complain about a hybrid.”

  “Yeah, well, I got the car I wanted.” He looked at the SUV with obvious pride.

  “I’m happy for you dude. You must have worked really hard to earn it.”

  We started walking toward the school entrance, Baffle turning around every few minutes to look back at his truck.

  When we got to the hallway, the second bell rang and we hurried to class, promising to get together at lunch, our only period together.

  Homeroom for me was down the first hall from the main entrance so I had no problem getting to class on time. The class was loud and busy with students laughing, commenting on clothes, talking about their summers and picking out seats. I headed to a seat near the front of the class as far from the door as possible. No sooner had I sat down than a familiar brunette seated herself next to me.

  “Hi Benny. How are you? Did you have a good summer?” asked Justine.

  Conflicting emotions zipped around in my head. Attention from Justine was pleasant and she was making it clear that she was happy to see me, which didn’t feel bad at all. I was more than a little thankful that Maddy and I attended different schools and that there was virtually no chance that she would see Justine talking with me. But the problem Maddy and I had gon
e through still made me seriously uncomfortable as far as Justine was concerned. It was probably better for me to ignore Justine altogether.

  “I’m good. My summer was really…interesting. How was yours?” I replied.

  Flashing a big smile at me, she laughed lightly. “Oh, we went to Oregon, which was fun but you know, same ole, same ole.”

  No, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t tell her that. Cutting the conversation short would hopefully convince her to ignore me for the rest of the semester and keep me out of trouble with Maddy.

  “Oregon? That was probably cool. When did you go?” My mouth, obviously disconnected from my brain again, was running on autopilot.

  “Right after school got out. Who’s that? Is that you?” she asked pointing at the picture of Billy that I had taped into my binder.

  Closing it, I said, “Yeah, when I was little. Doesn’t look like me much anymore.”

  “It’s cute. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a boy keep a baby picture of himself in a schoolbook before though,” she said teasingly.

  “Yeah. I think my mom actually taped it there.”

  “Well, it is cute, even if it doesn’t look much like you anymore. Hey, I saw on Facebook that you got hurt. It sounded serious. Are you okay?” she asked, her expression full of genuine concern.

  As a rule, I wasn’t a Facebook guy. I had an account but never updated it and never posted anything. The whole public display thing was fraught with problems for me. Justine must have been following someone else’s timeline if she’d heard about my hospital visit online.

  “I’m fine, but I was laid up for almost the whole summer.” Stop talking, I told myself.

  “You look good. You…look different but good.” She giggled.

  “Yeah? That’s probably my eye. The doctors worked on it a little.”

  Our homeroom teacher, Mrs. Sayles, tapped on her desk and the noise in the classroom went down a notch. Justine and I faced front, but not before she gave me another friendly smile. My face felt hot and I wondered what the heck I was doing. I didn’t want to risk Maddy being ticked off at me again but having a pretty girl pay attention to me, actually seek me out, felt pretty good.