by Lyle Howard
The stranger tried to interrupt Nancy, but she persisted with her diatribe. “We came to Washington of our own free will as soon as I thought Lance was old enough. They didn’t have to send for us, we came on our own looking for answers. My son has been to hell and back, when all I wanted was some help.” She paused when she felt the emotion creating a lump in her throat. Then she held up her tickets. “This is the only help they gave me … two lousy plane tickets home!” She opened her palm and pushed the stranger backward. “So screw you, we don’t want your help!”
The officer looked sympathetically at Nancy and then at Lance with an apparent understanding of his situation. It was the first demonstration of compassion that Nancy had seen in the past forty-eight hours. “Mrs. Cutter, please, I don’t have much time,” the stranger said as he checked his watch. “We really should go somewhere private to talk.”
Nancy looked at the officer’s chest pocket to where his nameplate should have been, but it was suspiciously missing. Noticing her stare, the stranger self-consciously felt for the nameplate he had purposely removed before entering the terminal. “My name shouldn’t be important to you, Mrs. Cutter,” he said matter-of-factly.
Nancy crossed her arms on her chest and looked at the officer defiantly. “You’ve got to be kidding me! You won’t give me your name, and you expect me to trust you?”
The stranger scratched his head. “I know how it must sound to you, Mrs. Cutter, but I don’t have much time. If they find out that I’ve made contact with you … well, I don’t want to think about that.”
Nancy looked down at Lance who was staring up at her. “Go ahead, Mom. I’ll be fine here. There’s a million people around.”
Every fiber of Nancy’s being told her to remain by her son’s side, but if this man could shed any light onto the dark mystery of Lance’s condition, then perhaps this wild-goose chase to Washington would not have been in vain. She took Lance’s hand and squeezed it gently. “Are you sure?”
Lance smiled and nodded. “If there’s any sign of trouble, I’ll raise holy hell. You know I can!”
Nancy glanced over at the stranger who was reassuringly shaking his head. “There’s not going to be any trouble,” he said, crossing his finger over his heart. “I promise!”
Nancy hesitated for a moment, but then acquiesced and reached for her purse. “I’ll just be across the terminal in the cocktail lounge. Five minutes … that’s all, and I’ll be gone.”
Lance considered the stranger as he walked away with his mother. The officer paused for a step and looked over his shoulder at Lance, mouthing the words, “Maybe ten minutes.” Lance didn’t like being separated from him mother in this unfamiliar place, but he nodded his understanding. The man seemed likable enough, but there was an aura of corruption about him that Lance intuitively didn’t trust.
The cocktail lounge afforded the same privacy that a statue would enjoy in a public park. A swarm of restless travelers were lined up five deep at the bar, all indifferently screaming out their drink orders to an overworked and underpaid bartender who was on the brink of quitting.
Trying to stand in one spot was like trying to remain steady on the deck of an ocean liner in fifteen-foot seas. “This wasn’t a very good idea, was it?” The stranger asked sarcastically.
There was a din in the cocktail lounge that Nancy had a problem speaking over. “Well, where do you want to go?” she shouted.
The stranger cupped his hand over Nancy’s ear so that he wouldn’t have to yell back in kind. “Why don’t we just take a walk up the concourse? We can talk and walk at the same time.”
Nancy didn’t like the idea of distancing herself further from her son, but it was true that there was no way they would be able to talk here in the bar. “Let’s walk.”
The officer tried to hide his delight, but his mouth couldn’t conceal a victorious smile. By taking full advantage of a mother’s most basic emotion, the welfare of her only child, he had managed to turn that emotion into a handicap and isolate the boy.
As the pair ambled through the busy concourse, Nancy slowed her pace. “So, what is it you want to tell me?” Nancy asked as they passed a frozen yogurt stand.
“There are a group of high-level officials who are very interested in your son, Mrs. Cutter.”
Every time Nancy would hesitate or try to stop, the officer would continue forward. It was as though he was trying to lead her somewhere specific.
“So, why haven’t they tried to contact us before?” It was when they reached the up escalator that Nancy first glimpsed, out of the corner of her eye, another man keeping up with them, but ten paces back. He gave the appearance of just an ordinary businessman, but it was his distinctive, familiar, close-cropped hairstyle that made her suspicious.
“We had no idea you were alive, Mrs. Cutter. I guess we all assumed that there were no survivors in that tragic explosion. Imagine our tremendous surprise when you came waltzing into our offices yesterday.”
Fear gripped Nancy’s heart like a vice. He said “we,” like all of a sudden he was one of them! What had she done? How stupid could one person possibly be? How could she have left Lance sitting all alone?
“I’ve got to get back to my son. I think we’ve walked far enough.”
The officer grabbed at her elbow, but she jerked it away defensively. They had traveled halfway up the slow-moving escalator when she spotted a third man loitering at the top. Now there were three of them.
“What’s gotten into you, Mrs. Cutter?” the stranger inquired, “I’m here to help you!”
Weighing in at a measly one hundred and sixteen pounds, Nancy was at an indisputable disadvantage. She would have never envisioned herself using it, but she thanked her lucky stars that her mother insisted that she carry mace with her!
Nancy looked below and behind her as the second conspirator was now climbing, instead of riding, the stairs on a head-nodding signal given by the stranger standing at her side.
“Mrs. Cutter?” the officer pleaded as he groped for Nancy’s arm.
With one fluid motion, Nancy reached into her purse, found the small canister, popped the cap, turned and fired into the stranger’s shocked face at point-blank range. He recoiled, covering his expression, and screamed like a wounded animal as the spray dripped into and tortured his unprotected eyes. Nancy put her head down and butted through the unprepared assailant waiting for her at the end of the escalator.
The other man who had been behind her was busily checking on the stranger’s eyes as they stepped off the escalator.
“She’s heading out to the street!” the one offering assistance announced.
“I’ll get her,” the other one yelled, as he massaged his bruised abdomen.
The stranger stiffened, rubbing his irritated and swollen eyes. He put up his arm to obstruct the soldier that had volunteered to go after Nancy. “We can’t let them out of here alive! You two, go get the boy! This slippery bitch is all mine,” he sneered.
It was a pitiful display of human behavior that no one would get involved. Nancy pushed her way through the crowd yelling for help, but her solicitations went ignored. The occupants of the terminal were too busy standing idly in serpentine-roped lines, waiting for their long-overdue boarding passes to lend a hand to a young woman in obvious distress. The reopening of the airport had turned each and every passenger into a self-centered idiot.
The officer, running at full tilt fifty yards behind Nancy, never lost sight of his quarry. Although his vision was clouded and distorted, he still managed to shove anyone, or anything, out of his way as he closed the gap between the woman and himself. She was just out of arm’s reach when she entered the revolving doors leading out to the street.
The snowstorm outside had slackened into a light, but lingering flurry. A line of cars was backed up at the curb in front of the terminal, as passengers unloaded their luggage and wished family members their heartfelt farewells. In the next lane of traffic a fleet of taxis, ma
nned by frustrated cabbies, circled the airport looking for fares. But because of the inclement weather, those paying passengers wouldn’t exist for another hour or so.
In the last lane, a mixture of family vehicles of every shape and size jockeyed for position while trying to outmaneuver the more experienced cabs on the icy roadway. It was like a child’s game of musical chairs, with each driver braking and sometimes skidding at the first sign of an opening by the curb that they could call their own … temporarily.
Nancy found a gap between two taxis and darted through it with her leather-soled shoes scratching for traction on the slick pavement. Two hundred yards to her left, through a sheer white curtain of snow, she could see a policeman directing traffic at a crosswalk. She knew that if she could reach him, she would be safe. She ran with her arm extended, fully aware that the gesture would never be able to stop a speeding car in these hazardous conditions.
Twenty feet behind her, the stranger was once again in hot pursuit. The cold air felt soothing to his inflamed eyeballs, but it did nothing to appease the burning rage in his gut. To hell with my superiors, he told himself, when I catch her, I’m gonna take her to some deserted warehouse and kill her slowly!
Nancy paused between the second and last lanes of traffic. There was an opening in the line of passenger cars that she could have crossed safely to reach the far sidewalk, but she waited. She stalled on purpose.
A bright yellow minibus that continuously looped the airport picking up rent-a-car customers slowly materialized through the veil of snow. It was near enough that Nancy could smell it’s caustic diesel fumes and see the driver wiping off the inside of the windshield. Behind her, a taxi blasted its horn as the stranger narrowly missed being bounced off its hood. Only a few more yards and he would finally be upon her like a starving hawk on a frightened field mouse. The only difference being the field mouse would meet a gentler fate.
Delaying her action until the very last possible second, she waited … waited … then sprinted for the distant sidewalk with the stranger following close enough behind to wash her hair.
The cunning field mouse reached sanctuary, but the predator hawk did not.
The bus driver slammed on his brakes, causing the vehicle to fishtail in a counterclockwise skid. The rear of the mini-van sailed around until the entire vehicle was moving perpendicular to the road. Nancy dove to her left to avoid being hit by the grille of the bus and landed softly in a drift of freshly plowed snow. The stranger’s sickening cry was drowned out as his brittle torso was unmercifully plastered against the side of the screeching vehicle. Brutally, his head was pulverized into nothing more than a chunky red stain smeared across one of the side windows. This gruesome sight came as a bladder-releasing shock to many of the passengers clinging for their lives to the overhead straps inside of the rampaging van. The dark gray slush coating the street was stained with a long crimson streak, as the uncontrollable vehicle dragged the stranger’s lower body heedlessly beneath its chassis.
As a horrified crowd of curious onlookers gathered around the grisly accident scene, Nancy wobbled to her feet and fought courageously to regain her composure. She couldn’t wait for the police, she decided. They would only waste what precious little time Lance might have left by asking her stupid questions that she probably couldn’t answer anyway. She had to move fast. There was no time to stand around basking in the glory of her triumph.
Her only son was in danger, and he would need her help.
Lance could sense them coming. Call it instinct, call it radar, or just call it “Good Vibrations,” but he knew that a threat was imminent. He slapped shut his magazine and stood pensively in front of his seat. It was obvious that his mother hadn’t returned in five minutes as she had promised.
He couldn’t see anyone just yet, but he suddenly felt a claustrophobic sensitivity that warned him something ominous was closing in. It was a knack he had learned to trust very early in his childhood.
The meaningless chatter of the people surrounding him melted into a soft drone as his uniquely perceptive senses accelerated into overdrive. As his darting eyes probed through the flood of passengers milling about the gate area, Lance’s mind strayed back to the first time he had ever been overcome by this animal-like awareness of danger.
With no friends to speak of, growing up in a trailer park in western Dade County would be an uphill climb for any seven-year-old boy. Lance never faulted his mother for the isolated existence they lived, and it never really bothered him that they never seemed to settle down in one place for longer than a year or so. His mother would always repeat the same excuse that, wherever they were living at the time, it just wasn’t right for them. Paranoia and fear were two powerful emotions that she thought he was too young to understand just yet.
Lance was the epicenter of his mother’s world and she would do anything to make him happy … except plant roots. His mother worked long hours at a nearby grocery store and always made sure that there was plenty of food on the table. More importantly than that, she was always there whenever he needed her. So their vagabond lifestyle was something he just learned to accept.
It was a hazy July morning in 1972 and school was recessed for the summer, thank goodness. The Dade County school system would be granting him an intermission from the relentless taunting from the other students for another six weeks.
As he stood alone, throwing a poorly mended basketball at a weathered backboard that one of the neighbors had nailed to the side of the community recreation hall, he couldn’t help feeling like he was living in exile. None of the adults in the park would let their kids associate, much less play, with him.
The early sixties were supposed to be the years founded on peace and love, but there was absolutely no understanding of that concept at the Shady Grove Mobile Home Community. To the rest of the population of the trailer park, Lance was just the neighborhood freak. Forget the fact that he could run faster, jump higher, or outwit any of the neighbor’s children that were twice his age … all that mattered to the dimwitted bumpkins that inhabited the trailer park were his eyes.
If the two red corneas bisected by black vertical slits for pupils were the only difference between himself and the other children, Lance would have found himself a sharp stick and plucked them out … but he knew better.
In time, Lance was confident that his mother would reveal to him why he was so unique, but he would never press her for the reason. As if physical superiority weren’t enough, Lance was also gifted with an uncanny insight into human emotions, and he was certain that when she was ready, she would explain everything. Little did he know that his mother concealed no answers.
He was dribbling the lopsided ball backward toward the hoop, when his hand suddenly froze in mid-dribble, causing the ball to roll indiscriminately through his legs. The entrance to the trailer park was a quarter of a mile away but his attention was focused on the vine-covered front gate as if he was expecting a long overdue package from the mailman.
Like most people get goose bumps, Lance’s arms suddenly prickled with a sensation he would later equate to static electricity. The sound of the warm summer breeze rustling through the leaves on the huge banyan tree that draped itself over the recreation hall was smothered by a complete and suffocating silence. The wind was still blowing, evident by the sea grape leaves that cart wheeled down the street caught in a draft, but Lance could no longer hear it. All of his senses were unexpectedly deadened so that his mind could concentrate on what his eyes were searching for.
At that moment, a long white convertible turned the corner and entered the trailer park. The driver was alone, but his visor was down, covering the top half of his face. As though the man was standing right next to him, Lance’s extraordinary eyesight zoomed in on the driver’s arm that dangled over the side of the car. The driver’s forearm bore a tattoo that read “Buck.” The name was inscribed in bold block letters, with a jagged lightning bolt cutting through the B.
Lance stood
motionless as the car drew closer, while maintaining the park’s posted five-mile-an-hour speed limit. Inexplicably, Lance began memorizing everything he could about the driver and the automobile. Buck had crooked teeth and hadn’t shaved in a few days. The car had a small dent on the front bumper and a cracked left headlight. Buck was wearing a stained white t-shirt that was torn at the collar, and he smoked or drank a lot of coffee, because his teeth were yellow, just like Lance’s neighbor Mr. Murphy. The car was missing its hood ornament.
Two hundred yards in front of Lance, the car made a right turn down Waterford Lane. He didn’t know why he was drawn to the car and its occupant, but Lance found himself steadily walking toward the street where the car was turning. As the car rounded the corner, Buck spotted Lance and pivoted his head. He was wearing dark sunglasses and had just a hint of gray in his flowing black hair. Buck flashed a broad but guarded smile at Lance that revealed either a gold or silver tooth in the back of his mouth that glimmered like a gem in the early morning sunshine. There was nothing unusual about Buck compared to most of the other beer-swilling male population of the trailer park, Lance thought, so why did he feel so compelled to follow him?
Lance watched the car crawl to a stop in front of a double-wide trailer at the far end of the block as he sprinted for cover. He maintained his investigative vigil concealed behind the bed of a pickup truck that was raised onto concrete blocks four trailers away. A neighborhood mutt patrolled the deserted street, lifting his leg to mark his territory at every opportunity. The dog looked over at Lance, sniffed nonchalantly at the air, and then continued on his rounds.
Buck stepped out of the car and surveyed the street carefully. Except for the wandering pooch, the street was empty. He walked around to the trunk, opened it with a twist of the key, and withdrew the bolt-action rifle. The rifle’s stock was smooth and cool to his touch even though it had been laying in the hot trunk all morning. He rubbed his palm along the eighteen-inch barrel and felt the heavenly rapture of vengeance in his grasp. Buck knew she was inside. Ever since she left him, she had been threatening to move in with this guy. She was probably in the back bedroom wrestling under the sheets with him at this very moment. Wasn’t life just chock-full of surprises?