Living in Quiet Rage

by Michael English Bierwiler

  “Did you know that as a young pup she had a thriving career in vaudeville as a standup comedienne?” There was soft rustling as the young officers packed up to leave. “Yes, indeed. Lassie was a standup comedienne in vaudeville specializing in biting satire…” The room quickly cleared to the painful groans of the few who caught the joke.

  James the Elder and James the Younger saddled up their respective patrol cars and rode off into the night with the rest of the team. Doc stood watch at his office window as the clockwork changing of the guard proceeded. The first wave of officers claimed the remaining cars on the lot. The rest appropriated the cars of the incoming shift as they hit the lot.

  Shortly after midnight an alarm went out to St. James Academy on the side door to the play area. Gar and James the Elder arrived to find all the doors and windows locked and secure save for the door listed in the call details on the mobile computer. The keyholder showed up as they finished clearing the inside of the school.

  Gar met with the young woman who showed up with the keys and relayed his findings. She had been saddled with the name Barni by well-meaning parents in search of a unique moniker. She was relieved that he promised to walk her out to her car in the dark parking lot after she secured the door. It was a pushbar fire door used in many commercial buildings. Gar and Barni quickly realized that there was no deadbolt or keyhole to match her ring of school keys.

  After several minutes of examination by the two police officers and Barni, they discovered a recess under the pushbar that indicated a multi-sided round key was necessary to loosen the locking mechanism. Barni searched the teacher’s desk, Gar brainstormed other methods of securing the door while James the Elder roamed the halls looking for a janitor’s room with tools. Barni came up empty-handed, Gar’s brainstorming only hurt his head and James the Elder returned with a selection of flat and phillips screwdrivers that did not advance their cause.

  Doc was in the area and stopped to make an appearance since it was a slow night.

  “It’s some weird kind of keyhole under the pushbar, boss. By the way, Doc, this is Barni, Barni, this is Doc. He can figure out anything.” Gar turned back to Doc. “The pressure is on now, boss. Work a miracle and lock this doggone door for us, please.”

  Doc took a moment to bend over and examine the lock, then felt along the top of the door frame. He paused a moment upon finding no key and sidestepped to the adjacent window feeling the top of the trim above the window.

  “Probably looks like this, folks. They always hide the key on the ledge, above the door, under the mat. People are basically lazy. They never hide it much more than five feet away and always in an obvious spot to burglars.” Doc handed Gar the hex shaped key to lock the pushbar on the door.

  Gar was embarrassed, but still bragged to Barni, “I told you he’d work a miracle.” Gar stared down Doc and James the Elder until the two officers headed out to their respective marked cars.

  “I think Gar needs a few minutes alone to get her name and number for his worksheet, so you can go ahead and clear the call,” he instructed James the Elder in the parking lot. James the Elder was relieved to get away from Doc. The older man always seemed to be sizing him up. Doc was aware that James the Elder was having difficulty on the home front, but James the Elder kept him at arm’s length. There were plenty of people willing to run James the Elder’s life if he ever abdicated control. Doc surmised that control was far more important to James the Elder than happiness.

  Since James the Elder staked a claim of self-sufficiency, Doc set out to find an ear to bend. James the Younger always appreciated a good conversation whether it was theology or politics or somewhere in between. He stopped by the Plaza Center at Hulen Street and the freeway to rattle a few doors first. It was not unusual for at least one door to be unlocked. Sometimes the wind or a storm would break the circuit on the door to set off an alarm. Doc surmised that at other times, the unlocked door went untested until the first employee in the morning discovered it and either ratted out the person who closed the night before or pocketed a future favor from that individual. On that particular night the businesses were all closed and locked.

  Doc walked the line of shops below the magnificent chapel on the hill. The chapel once stood as a lonely sentinel with broad, neatly trimmed fields of grass for a block in each direction when Doc’s career was young. His reflection stared back from the plate glass of the store window. The dimly outlined figure did not conjure up a recollection of anyone he knew. The hairline had receded with gray-white borders in a semicircle above the ears although he just celebrated his thirty-eighth birthday that spring. The jowls were puffy giving his face a haggard appearance. The sleek body had been undergoing an imperceptible yet insistent demolition at the hands of time.

  Doc had seen this man a thousand times in the mirror at home, but now, for one horrific moment, he studied his features carefully. A crease zagged down just in front of his temple to an inch above his right eye. His neck was beginning to sag like a turkey that survived many Thanksgivings. The bright white sclera of his eyes had turned ivory while the eyebrows thickened and reached out to each other. The skin on his arms and hands was no longer the smooth, pliable texture he had as a young man.

  Time was the enemy. Doc was beginning to know this axiom to be fact. He was entering a time when life ceased to be a three dimensional here and now and became a two dimensional reflection of what has been before. Instead of experiencing life as an intimate partner of the verdant palette of blues and greens around him, he was looking at the flat matte memories of years gone by. From his swollen feet to his aching hands he was aware that time was indeed his master. He felt his spirit being absorbed into a sinking chasm where souls rest until they are forgotten.

  The night was quiet. With no one on call Doc figured there would be a friendly ear on the levee, so he picked up a couple cups of coffee at the stop and rob and headed out to the levee for a victim.

  James the Younger was perched on the hood of his Crown Victoria entrenched in the solitude of the levee darkness. He sipped his coffee slowly and pensively with his back to the levee wall. The March night was crisp and fresh, cool but no longer cold. The cut of the chill of the night temperatures retained only a shadow of its former hold. The sensation of air movement along his dry skin caused the hairs on his arm to stiffen. It was going to be a sunrise to match his mood. He faced east toward the street lights lining Oakhurst Drive on the hill across the river.

  James the Younger found a peaceful sadness alone with his thoughts on the lonely levee. He resigned himself to the fact that life was permanently changed. He lived a perfect life in his twenty-five years starting with terrific parents and a great childhood. The love of his life joined him during his military service, and they were on the cusp of living the American dream with their own small home with room for a couple kids. Now his wife was gone and no amount of wishing and hoping would change things. It was too late to bargain with God as James the Younger would never see her again in this life. Their future was erased.

  The night was still. The only sound was labored breathing and the quick, light snap of the waves against the rocks that were strategically placed across the river to break the speed of the current in times of flooding. One could say that James the Younger had time on his hands, but more accurately, he was trying to catch time in his hands as if it were a hard spring rain. When she was with him, his cupped hands were full and time spilled out in cascades, but without her, time was lost, drained through his shaking fingers like a sieve.

  James the Younger unsnapped his holster, pulled out his automatic and cradled it in both hands, rubbing his left thumb back and forth along the dull black slide covering the barrel. God was there and God heard, but like in the times of the Old Testament, He chose not to answer. If James the Younger insisted on pursuing life on his own terms, wrestling with his grief alone, He would not intervene.

  It was a sharp, metallic taste that caused his mouth to salivate and the metal fillings o
f his teeth to ache. Perhaps it was the coldness of the metal slide over the barrel, so smooth to look at and yet possessing a cutting acidity to his tongue. The pungent smell of gun oil irritated his nostrils. The time had come to escape from the drudgery of everyday. James the Younger promised himself early on that he would not be one of those men who lived a safe and predictable life in vain, yet there was an attraction to the status quo he had known when he held her close.

  Risk looks most attractive during the contemplative phase. Once a decision is made, risk becomes the beast. The act of daring the metal beast to take his life made him realize that it would solve nothing. At least pain kept one aware the life does go on. Pain was the unresolved, discordant notes that ached until the music transcended into a final chord that allowed the mind to experience peace once again. He could feel the wet metal barrel under his tongue and the sights scraping slowly, slightly, tentatively against the inside edges of his front teeth.

  Death would be the black rain Doc taught about on one of their long conversations. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the immediate survivors experienced soul-wrenching burns all over their bodies from radiation as they tried to walk out of the inferno. Their throats were parched from the dust and soot raised by the explosion and subsequent fires. Suddenly, rain came down from the clouds and they tried to catch the raindrops with their gaping mouths turned up to the skies to bring a little relief to their parched throats.

  But it was a ‘black rain’ of water mixed with radioactive particles trickling down their throats to radiate an even more deadly curse upon their bodies over the next hours, days, or perhaps weeks until their tolerance for the poison wore out. Black rain. James the Younger would not allow himself to succumb to his own black rain. He pulled the handgun out of his mouth and stared down the barrel. Living seemed the lesser of two evils. He reholstered the gun and wondered how he could ever pick up the pieces of his life.

  The moonlight had stopped reflecting off the dry, yellowed grass of the levee road. The pale haze of omniscient pre-dawn gray was invading. James the Younger was still leaning against the buddy bumpers of his car when Doc pulled up. James shot a quick glance at the driver and continued concentrating on the reflections of light on the water. Doc got out and approached cautiously until he was close enough to turn toward the river and lean back against the driver’s side of the front bumper. He set both styrofoam cups of coffee on the hood of the car just behind them.

  “Peaceful out here.” Doc detected James the Younger’s serious mood, but could not ascertain its depth.

  James the Younger nodded in agreement. It was quiet for several minutes except for the increasing frequency of James’ sniffing back his runny nose and wiping away the tears with the back of his hand.

  “You holding up okay?” Doc inquired without expecting an audible answer. He fielded another nod without eye contact from James.

  “Jimmy, I know you don’t believe me now, but you’ll pull through this. The sun comes up in the morning every day as far as I can tell. Hasn’t failed me yet. There have been times in my life when I couldn’t see as far as tomorrow. Sometimes things get better and sometimes you just learn to live with it.”

  James the Younger remained silent, afraid that speaking would set loose his emotions of fear and anger and hopelessness. Doc pressed the issue again. “A wise man once put it to me another way - sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. It was Gar if you can believe it.”

  James the Younger tried to chuckle, but immediately started breathing quick, shallow breaths just short of hyperventilating. Doc moved in closer and put his arm around James the Younger as the emotional levee burst through the fading traces of bravado.

  After a few minutes James the Younger was worn out from grief and embarrassment. He stood up and move a few feet away, facing away from Doc to drink his coffee. He could not reconcile the recent loss of his young wife. He and James the Elder had been best friends since they were boys in Wheat Plains, Texas, but James the Elder was not up to consoling his friend. James the Elder and Doc suffered the same emotional disconnect with those to whom they were closest, but Doc was learning from his past mistakes.

  “My stepfather, John, was a terrific guy - the most intelligent and caring man the world has ever known,” Doc ventured. “He used to tell me about the scar he had on his hand. Long story. I’ll spare you the details. He ripped open the palm of his hand as a kid and it healed back up with an ugly old scar all the way down the inside of his hand. He said that at first all he could do was think of how much it hurt, but then it healed and as the years went by, he could look at it and remember the pain without feeling it. He called it his badge of courage.”

  James the Younger, still facing away from Doc, concentrating on the river, rolled his eyes. Doc could not justify comparing a scar on the hand to a scar on James the Younger’s soul.

  Doc paused for a moment, then wrapped up his message. “What I’m trying to say is that as awful as this it for you, you’ll be able to handle it without the terrible pain someday. The pain won’t encompass every moment of every day. One of these days you will have your life back. It will be a different life than the one you planned, but no one’s life is ever really scripted. John Lennon used to say that life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”

  A fresh set of headlights came over the crest of the levee and stopped in a cloud of dust. “Friend of yours?” Doc asked although he would lay good money on James the Elder coming up to spend some down time on the levee with his ‘partner in crime’ as Doc referred to them.

  “Reckon so,” James the Younger agreed.

  “Is he waiting for an invitation or just waiting for me to leave?” Doc pondered.

  “Dunno.”

  “He’s probably afraid that this is the night I’ll give in and tell him to stop screwing up his life with Ell. He’s got a great wife, good friends and a steady job, yet nothing seems to make him happy. Don’t know what makes that boy tick, but somebody needs to slap him upside the head and knock some sense into him. You up to the job?”

  “Not me, Doc. Wouldn’t take the pleasure from you.”

  “It would give me a certain pleasure to get his mind straight for him.”

  The headlights backed down the other side of the levee and the sound of the roaring motor dissipated into the receding darkness. To the east a predawn hue was approaching, an illumination signaling that the sun is imminent, but hasn’t yet revealed itself.

  Doc sipped sullenly in the background waiting for a cue of what to do next. James stared into the impending sunrise trying to empty his mind of emotion. The impasse weighed heavily as neither man could tell whether the other had reached a saturation point from the encounter. The dispatcher refereed the stalemate when James the Younger was assigned a hospital call on a motor vehicle accident victim.

  The timing would be about right, he figured. The report would be done by the top of the hour in time to request a dinner break with James the Elder. Eight minutes should get him to the hospital, four more minutes to the victim from the parking lot, twenty minutes to get his report information to write up on the proper form after dinner, and plenty of time to make it to the all-night diner.

  He stepped quickly from the patrol car parking spaces to the emergency room door marked for authorized personnel only and punched in the familiar code. His favorite emergency room nurse, Mary Wood, paused from her search for twenty missing pages of freshly transcribed medical records to indicate the third treatment room on the right. James the Younger laid eyes on the worn out woman in the blue striped hospital gown and recognized his frequent flier immediately.

  “Mrs. Garner, how did this happen to you?” he routinely asked recognizing the victim. Dolly Garner was laid out on the hospital bed with cuts and scrapes to match the call details of a woman falling out of a car.

  “I fell out of the car. I guess my sleeve caught in the door handle and the door flew open. Next thing you know I’m roll
ing in the street.”

  Mary Wood interrupted by signaling James the Younger to meet her outside the treatment room curtain. “An older man - a bum if you ask me - brought her into the waiting room and high-tailed it out of Dodge. We thought he just went to move his car, so we don’t have a vehicle description or license plate number for you. Your vic says the guy was just passing by and stopped to give her a lift to the hospital. Yeah, right.”

  James the Younger returned to Dolly’s bedside. “Who was driving the car?”

  “Just some guy I got a lift from to get to the store.”

  “What could you possibly need that badly in the middle of the night?”

  “I needed cigarettes.”

  “Where did you meet this guy? Does he have a name?”

  “He’s just some dude that hangs around. I don’t know where he stays or what he calls himself.”

  “But it seemed like a good idea to you to ride around with some strange guy in the middle of the night? Where was Aaron?”

  “He stayed home to watch TV because he has to work in the morning. Some guy is going to give him a job at a warehouse tomorrow.”

  “So he’s resting up by watching TV all night?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Moving right along, what kind of a car was it? Two door, four door, truck, van, SUV?”

  “It was dark and I can’t tell cars apart. Maybe a Chevy or a Jaguar. A dark color maybe.”

  “Okay, unknown male in unknown car of unknown color. How’d you fall out?”

  “I think my sleeve caught on the door handle and the door opened and I fell out.”

  “Alrighty, and the guy driving didn’t notice you falling out of the car? He just kept on trucking, oblivious to the fact that you were gone and the passenger door was swaying in the wind? I take it you weren’t wearing a seat belt?”