by Glenn Trust
The nickname from his mother had come possibly because she thought it a cute name for her cute little boy. She had told him in his younger years that ‘Lylee’ was how he had pronounced his own name as a toddler, and so she had started calling him that. It was hard to believe that there had ever been any motherly affection in the life of this quiet, sullen man but, in fact, he had had a mother who thought he was the center of the universe. While they had lived on the edge of poverty, she worked hard to make sure he had the nice things that other children had.
That was a bone of contention between his mother and father, a man who worked at menial jobs trying to support his family and who felt that they shouldn’t put on airs to be like others. The dead-end work and endless poverty had led his father to drink, and eventually an early grave.
The departure of his father from their life was hardly felt by Lylee. His mother had kept him isolated from the only man who could have been a part of his life. He belonged to her and no one else. He was her little Lylee.
It hadn’t always been so. The pride of fatherhood had brought them together as a family, at first. Although Lylee had no memory of it, and his mother would never have shared it with him, Bud Torkman had been as devoted to his son as the boy’s mother was. But tension had grown between them as it became clear that she considered Lylee hers, not their son…hers.
Eventually, the tension with his wife and the burden of barely being able to provide for his family had worn him down. The alcohol and the emotional distance he put between himself and wife and child were a barrier. It kept them out and him in. In the end, the old man just came and went to work and barely spoke to his son or acknowledged his existence.
The loss of his father was not tragic. In fact, it didn’t register at all to Lylee. The event had no significance and meant nothing to him. The boy continued in school as an average student. He had no extracurricular school activities, but did have an after school job at an early age. He was considered a good worker by a succession of employers, but none ever asked him to stay when he left. An air of inapproachability surrounded the young man. He moved through the world invisibly.
The only relationship in Lylee’s life was with his mother, who became increasingly possessive with age and the barrenness of her own life. Relationship was, in reality, a stretch in describing the interaction between mother and son.
She doted on him and demanded a level of affection in return that he was not able to provide, nor inclined to return. For his part, he tolerated the woman who had given him birth, but just barely.
Eventually, he left for good. Some said that it was his mother’s possessive clinging that had driven him away. Most people just knew that Lylee was destined to leave, and if he never came back, so much the better. He was a creepy kid anyway.
It was, perhaps, self-preservation and not an actual awareness that pushed him finally out of the front door and as far away from his mother’s presence as he could get. The solitary young man put himself through technical school, studying computer programming. It was a vocation ideally suited to him, requiring minimal interaction with other persons, and then only about the technical aspects of programming.
Hovering over a keyboard inputting code, required no unwanted contact or office bullshitting with co-workers. As long as he did his job, his employer was happy. The fact that he was an almost anonymous employee to even his closest supervisor was actually a benefit from a management perspective. He required little of their administrative time, never complained, and worked well without requiring much supervision. They cared not at all about his activities outside of work.
Visits to his mother became exceedingly rare, and when he did visit, there was nothing to say. She chattered as always about her little Lylee who had come to visit. It was a fantasy.
He knew that he had never been the cute, bubbly boy she babbled on about, and they had never been the happy family she portrayed them to be in her rambling monologues while he sat with a glass of cold lemonade dripping in the humid air over his fingers and onto his lap. He made the visits because it seemed that was what he was expected to do, although not sure who it was that expected it of him or why he cared.
Why did he care? That thought became the moment of awakening for him. Why should he care? He didn’t care.
Somewhere deep in his psyche, awareness grew that he need only do what he wanted. It was a liberating concept for Lylee, and eventually the visits home ended.
From that moment. he was liberated by the isolation in his life and separation from the shreds of family memory that only barely existed at best. It was freedom to him, and the power he felt within grew as his separation and distance from the rest of the world increased.
At the age of fifty-six, his mother followed her husband to an early grave, probably feeling much the same isolation and desperation he had felt. The loss of her Lylee had been too much. She died alone and unremembered by her only son, her Lylee.
Now, he lived invisibly and alone within the isolation that brought him security and freedom. And with that freedom, came great power. And the power brought him…everything.
Invisible and solitary, it grew within, the power. It raged and roared to be unleashed. And then one day, he opened the door. Instinctively, he became the predator.
The truth is that his family life probably had little causative effect on what he had become. It was coded deep in his genes. The sad and pathetic childhood he had endured, the absence of a strong fatherly influence, and the cloying possessive nature of the relationship with his mother only made it easier to transform into his true nature. It would have happened, sooner or later.
With the transformation, the world jumped into focus for him. A different light shone around him. Invisible to others, it illuminated the world around him differently than the normal light that others used to discern their surroundings.
Becoming the predator, his view of his environment and perception of others evolved into something not human. He learned the techniques of preying, carefully selecting the weak and the unaware. His runarounds were training exercises that honed his predatory skills. His power increased with each hunt.
The pain he inflicted on his victims was important only because it brought him greater power. He felt no more for them than a coyote does for the jackrabbit in its jaws. A true sociopath, it was right because it was good for him. That was enough.
28. Too Complicated
George Mackey dropped his Sam Brown belt with its gear on the weathered boards and plopped his ass down into a porch chair. Flipping up the lid of the scuffed and ever-present cooler, he grabbed a beer, popped the seal on the can, and held it to his lips for a long pull with his head tilted back.
“Little early, ain’t it?” The old man came walking around the side of the house and deliberately took the three steps up to the porch, holding the handrail. The morning was turning hot, and on reaching the porch, he stopped and wiped the inside of his hat with a dirty handkerchief, then set the straw, wide brimmed hat back on his head.
“Had a long night,” George replied taking another sip from the can.
The old man nodded and eased himself slowly into the other porch chair. They were really kitchen chairs that had become porch chairs when they had been dragged outside sometime in the past, long before George had taken up residence at Fel Tobin’s place.
“Believe I’ll join you.” Tobin reached into the cooler and pulled out a beer for himself. By mutual, unspoken agreement, the cooler was always between the two porch chairs and was absolutely never empty. Both men threw the beer contributions in when it got low and added ice periodically.
George had come across the old man while looking for a place to stay during a drawn out and messy divorce. His friends all told him that divorce was an occupational hazard in law enforcement, even for deputies in a rural Georgia county. He had a different theory. His ex-wife, Darlene, hated him. It was a theory, elegant in its simplicity that seemed reasonably sound.
He admitted t
hat she probably had good reasons. The list included her husband’s good old boy, country ways, always worrying about the next paycheck and which bills to pay, the small, plain house they would probably spend the rest of their lives in, and the fact that Pickham County was what it was. Darlene wanted more, and after the new had worn off their marriage, she had filed for divorce.
To her credit, it had taken ten years and two daughters to bring her to that point. In the end, it all boiled down to the same thing. She hated the life they had led while they were married, which meant that by default she hated him. At least, that’s how George saw it.
He had asked her once during the fighting why she hated him so much. The question had made her catch her breath.
After a few seconds of silence, she had looked him in the eye and said, “Because you’re late, George. You are always late. Late to pay the bills. Late to come home. Late to make sergeant at the Sheriff’s Department. Late to apply for the Patrol. You were even late for the births of our daughters, busy with something or other in the county, but late just the same.” She had taken a breath and ended with finality, “Late, George. You are always late and always will be.”
For his part, George had quietly signed the papers and given her everything she wanted, which was everything. It didn’t matter. It was the price of peace, and it was worth it.
He understood. It was true. He was always late. Late to be what she needed and to give her what she wanted. Darlene had remarried a year later to a man who was a supervisor at a paper mill plant out on the Georgia coast, and who was never late. George had found old Fel Tobin. It was a good trade to his way of thinking.
The day he had moved out of the house, he had gone to the grocery store bulletin board in Everett, the county seat. Everything was advertised there, free of charge.
A card with a telephone number had the words ‘Room to Rent’ printed in pencil in large block letters. As it turned out, it was two rooms and a small bathroom over an old barn. He went to the location and found an old man riding randomly around on a lawn mower, not really mowing anything in particular. It was a quick deal. George looked around and handed old Fel Tobin some cash, and it was done.
“So. You gonna say anything about it?”
“What? Oh, the night.” George sipped his beer. “Had a stabbing last night. Old man was stabbed in the A.M.E. church parking lot out on Jax Highway. He’s dead.”
“The hell you say. Stabbed dead in a church parking lot? The hell you say.”
“Yep. He’s dead, and we don’t know who did it, but it was a real bad person.”
“Well, it would have to be a bad person to stab someone to death in a churchyard.”
“It’s more than that. Person who did this, did it to cause a lot of pain.”
“Oh,” Fel thought this over a bit, sipping his beer. “Who was it?”
“Don’t know. We’re looking for him now, but not much to go on.”
“I mean the person that got stabbed. Who was it?”
“Oh,” George said trying to shake out the memory of Mrs. Sims’ pointing finger. “Harold Sims. He and his wife live over on Power Line Road.”
“The hell you say. I know Harry. Bought a hog from him once. Damn, stabbed in a churchyard.” He sipped his beer again and then repeated for emphasis, “Damn. You sure he’s dead?”
“He’s dead.”
“Damn. Harry Sims stabbed dead in a churchyard. Damn.”
“Yeah,” George nodded in agreement and sipped his beer.
Minutes ticked quietly by, broken only by the sound of George retrieving another beer and popping the top. Although still morning, the day was heating up, and the heat filled the air with the rich aroma of green living things.
Grasshoppers buzzed around in the scalped grass that Fel never stopped mowing. A bluebird swooped to the ground from its concealment in a forsythia and impaled a grasshopper, darting quickly back to its perch.
The two spent a lot of time on the porch. Cold, sweating beer cans in hand, they might not say much, just sitting there in the humid evening, watching the twilight and then full night coming on.
To say that they sat there contemplating the meaning of life would have been too grand a description. Usually, they just sat watching drops of water slide down the cold cans and drip onto the dusty planks of the porch, considering the puzzle of life. Sometimes it seemed that the puzzle pieces were pushed around and forced together, causing the picture to warp and buckle.
George stood up and tossed the empty can into the old wooden crate by the front door. It clanked against the fifty or so others that had been deposited inside. He picked the Sam Brown belt up off the porch and slung it over his shoulder, the handcuffs and keys jingling, and the pistol thumping him in the side.
“Well, guess I’ll turn in,” he said starting down the creaking steps. “You mowin’ today?” He threw the question back over his shoulder, knowing the answer.
“Yep. Just like always.”
George nodded and walked around the side of the house and across the yard towards the barn where his apartment was. An acorn thumped onto the hood of his county pickup parked under an old oak. As he climbed the steps outside to the second floor of the barn, the sound of Fel’s lawn mower sputtering and then roaring to life filled the air. George knew he would spend the morning mowing before the day got too hot.
It all seemed so natural. The acorn dropping, the grasshoppers in the grass, the bluebird in the forsythia, the smell of the vegetation, the noise of the mower. How could those things exist in the same world as the dark stain in the gravel and dust of the church parking lot, and the old woman’s brown, weathered hand pointing at him. “You catch him Deputy. You catch the person who did this to my Harold.”
It was too complicated for George, and he was too tired to think about it. He hoped he would sleep.
29. Things Less Clear
The glow of the Savannah city lights ahead had been slowly overpowered by the sun rising to the east over the Atlantic. Cy wondered how breakfast at the I-95 Diner had led to this. Dropping the girl off at the truck stop seemed a simple task, but it had the feel of something different, and he wasn’t sure what. It was something just beyond his ability to discern and understand.
It was clear that Clay felt it too, and was being taken in; maybe sucked into a situation they were happily ignorant of just a couple of hours earlier. As the light coming in from the east was changing the way things looked over the Georgia countryside, things for the brothers looked different than they had just a few hours before. Cy was not happy about it.
Up ahead a large sign lit in red, white, and blue letters said ‘AcrossAmerica’. Cy took the exit, turned right and then left across the road into the lot. The old pick up bumped over potholes and gravel at the entrance torn up by the heavy truck traffic.
The truck stop located on the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia was a hive of activity. To one side there were big rigs fueling at the wide lanes around the diesel pumps. On the other side of the main building were gas pumps for cars and smaller trucks. The smell of diesel fuel and exhaust hovered in the air. Air brakes hissed, engines rumbled to life, and transmissions shifted quickly through the lower gears as trucks flowed back towards the interstate and the river of traffic that passed north and south along I-95 and to the west on I-16 towards Atlanta.
This was a full service truck stop, which meant that truckers could have their rigs serviced, take a shower, relax in the lounge, or play video games or pool while they waited for their next load. A small, attached motel offered cheap rooms for those who had had enough of the cab sleepers in their trucks or for those whose cabs did not have sleepers.
Services included a diner, general store, and a gift shop. A few older couples who had stopped for a meal or to gas their motor homes wandered uncertainly across the lot from the pumps to the store. They looked out of place in the midst of the truckers.
Cy guided the pickup to the few lined parking spaces for cars in front of the main
building and parked at the entrance to the ‘diner-cafe-restaurant’. It seemed like a good place to look for a ride for the girl. Lyn, he thought, Lyn, although he didn’t want to attach a name to her. The more anonymous she was the better for them, at least as he saw it.
Clay pushed the creaky truck door open and held it while Lyn climbed out. He pulled her small bag out of the bed and walked inside with her. Cy followed. The plan was to get some coffee, scout things out, and see if they could hook her up with a ride. Someone they could trust.
Kathy’s instructions, orders really, from the diner still rang in their ears. She had entrusted Lyn to them, and they knew they had better make a good faith effort to find her a ride, a safe ride, or at least as safe as they could reasonably ensure.
Finding a table in the restaurant, they ordered coffee, and the boys began looking around. Cy could tell that Clay was having a hard time letting go of the idea that the girl could stay with them, or maybe just letting go of the girl.
He had never seen his brother like this. Clay was always the stud with girls lined up, none of them serious, and he moving through them unattached, enjoying whatever they were willing to offer, but oblivious to their attempts to hold him to something more.
This girl…the name Lyn crept into his brain although he tried to force it out…was different. Best to find her a ride quickly then. Let her climb into one of the rigs headed north, and let the brothers get back to business.
The dining room was a busy clatter of dishes and cups punctuated by the scent of eggs and bacon. Truckers were downing coffee and huge platters of eggs in various forms and with assorted other food items in the eggs or on the side. Oatmeal and bran muffins were apparently not on the menu, or at least were not being consumed. A few read newspapers, others sat in the smoking lounge and chatted with other truckers.