My King The President

by Tom Lewis

  But the worst lie of all was that his wife, Abigail, now “in seclusion in an undisclosed location” had told the Commission that her husband had been depressed, more and more withdrawn from her and their children for the past four years, and that she had been afraid he might take his own life.

  The whole thing made me sick to my stomach.

  When I got to Knoxville, I was able to buy a copy of both the News and Observer and the Charlotte Observer, and read them on the local bus to Asheville. The front pages of both those major Carolina papers were filled with much the same, but there was a little more written about me as well. It was quite an odd feeling, reading my own obituaries. I never knew I was so important! The story of my death was about what I had expected, neatly spun out by Cal before he’d left Washington; tragic series of events… Shot to death in downtown Washington hotel… Robbery the obvious motive. No mention of Walt or poor Cecil.

  The last few miles, I couldn’t help wondering how some other people might be reacting to my published demise. Ernie, for instance, and President Fordham. I was more concerned that Betty might have read about it, and dutifully reported it to her husband. I wasn’t too worried about how the good people in my home town might feel, since I knew I’d be resurrected one day, hopefully soon, and with a hell of a story to tell. For a few others, it was possibly just as well if they thought I was dead. Father Flaherty and the Reilly’s, who were known to have had some contact with me, would maybe be in a lot less danger now.

  The bus dropped me off half a mile from Cal’s cabin gate. Twenty minutes later, I walked part way down the drive, turned one of its sharp curves, and practically ran right up the barrel of the shotgun Sammy Tyson was holding. “Jesus Christ, Jeb. I almost didn’t recognize you. I coulda shot you! Where the hell have you been, anyway? Your dad is goin’ nuts.”

  Cal didn’t show much temper. “Take a shower, for God’s sake. I have an idea I know where you went, but we’re too busy right now to talk about it.”

  I took the longest shower in history, but didn’t shave. Something in the back of my head told me that if I was to remain incognito for a while, I might as well alter my appearance some, not that it would matter much. No one was any more likely to spot me hiding up here than anybody had years ago when old Erik Rudolf dodged the FBI and local authorities for so long he had practically achieved folk hero status in these mountains Charles Frazier had written so eloquently about at around the same time. It was nearly dark when I emerged from the empty cabin and went looking for everyone. I was puzzled when I noticed that Pete Suggs’ pickup had been parked half way up the drive. I was even more curious to find out what he, Sammy, Cal, and even Liz were up to.

  I stopped Cal, who was crossing the drive, carrying what looked to be a speaker and a spool of thin wire. “What’s going on? What are you guys doing?”

  “You can help. We’re setting up a warning system. By the way, you had a beautiful funeral service. The whole town showed up. Not a dry eye in the bunch. But more about all that later. Here, give me a hand.”

  I followed him through the dense bush to one of the pines he had set a ladder up against. I had to look closely to see the wires leading up the trunk. Quick as a spooked raccoon, Cal climbed the ladder, carrying the speaker, which he then hooked up to the wires. “There, that makes eight. Four to go.”

  Before dark, my admiration grew a ton for my father, Sammy, and especially Pete Suggs, who had apparently learned a good deal about booby traps during his stint as a Navy Seal. The small cave was full of car batteries, wired separately to a DC sound system, and connected to several areas around the perimeter of the cabin, along with dozens of carefully camouflaged trip wires.

  “When we’re done, not even a salamander could sneak up on your cabin,” Pete said, grinning. “And if your mister Hemiola shows up, he’s gonna get the biggest surprise of his life. I’ve planted small charges all over the place, and your Dad’s sound system would scare the living shit out of anybody trying to sneak in here.”

  I went straight to the cave. Cal was busy wiring up three tape recorders to the batteries.

  “Got the tapes from the radio station,” he told me. “Sound effects of small arms, shouting, whistles, sirens, you name it. If anybody trips over one of those wires, it’s going to sound like World War Three around here.”

  “I’m impressed, Cal, to no end. But why do all this? Is there some problem I don’t know about?”

  Cal straightened up, the look on his face dark. “A small one, but it could be disastrous. Liz was concerned that Professor Johnson and his wife would be out of their minds worrying about her, so she called to let them know she was okay.”

  “Damn!”

  “Don’t be too hard on her, pal. She didn’t realize… Anyway, Liz has worked like a Trojan to help us while you were so conspicuously absent. She’s quite a girl, that one.”

  Since I had not done much of the hard work, I was the designated cook for the night, and managed not to burn the steaks Liz had thawed. The picnic table in the small clearing that served as the cabin’s front yard was quickly occupied by one hungry crew. Between bites, Sammy wanted to know what a Hemiola was. I nodded to Cal, who explained. “It’s mainly a musical term, Sammy. You’ve heard mariachi music in Mexican restaurants, I’m sure. They mix up their rhythms a lot, especially in three-quarter time. It alternates between two beats and three beats within the same measure. Ever heard Bernstein’s West Side Story?”

  “I think so. Years ago, maybe.”

  “Right. Well, he used it very effectively in one of the songs in the show.” Cal sang, in a reedy tenor, “Life if all right in A-mer-i-ca

  If you’re all white in A-mer-I-ca.”

  “Take your word for it,” Sammy said, laughing, “And don’t quit your day job.”

  “Why would a killer use that for a nickname or calling card, as Frye put it?” Pete asked.

  “No idea,” I said. “But if he shows up here, you guys have prepared a royal reception for him.”

  “You got that right,” Pete said. “We’ll be done by noon tomorrow, and starting tonight, we’ll go on military watch. Guard duty. Two at a time, four hours each.”

  “Whoa!” I said, looking at him hard. “No way I’m going to let you hang around here. You’re going back to Tryon’s Cove. You and Sammy both. I’ve gotten too many people killed already.”

  A lively argument erupted, and lasted half an hour. I lost.

  I stood my midnight-to-four shift halfway up the path from the cabin, armed with Sammy’s twelve gauge and one of the Walkie-Talkies Cal had brought, glad I’d put on extra clothing plus an old gray wool turtleneck sweater. I was also glad that the rain had stopped, but the cold wind portended an early winter. I had no trouble staying awake, either. The roaring of the Quail, embellished by the fascinating cacophony of night creatures around me was plenty of company. That is, until Liz walked up the drive and sat down next to me.

  “I’m sorry I screwed up, Jeb,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have called the Johnsons.”

  “It’s all right. I should have thought to get word to them somehow myself.”

  She slid closer. “Forgive me?”

  “Sure I do.”

  She took my free hand and pulled it under her flannel shirt, then up. She wasn’t wearing a bra. “Prove it.”

  I swear, if it hadn’t been so damn cold, I might have forgotten all about safety and ripped all the rest of her clothes off, but prudence prevailed over passion, and I tried to send her back with the longest kiss I dared chance.

  “Okay, I’ll behave, but I’m not going back, Jeb. I’m staying here with you.”

  It was an acceptable compromise. We sat there in silence, our warmth coming from each other, a long two hours before Sammy relieved me.

  I gave Sammy his shotgun, clapped him on his broad shoulder, and led Liz back down to the cabin. I didn’t see either Cal or Pete, and figured right away that Pete was doing an extra watch somewhere, and Cal had gone to the
cave where he’d already stashed a sleeping bag, and so his finger would be only inches from the switches, just in case.

  I was tired, but when Liz poured two glasses of wine instead of making cups of hot chocolate, I knew I was not going to get any sleep right away. “I’m going to take a shower, Jeb. You used up all the hot water this afternoon, but it’s probably warm enough by now. Don’t go away.”

  I had two, maybe three sips of the wine, and was starting to pull the sweater off, when all hell broke loose. It was as if all the trip wires had been sprung at once. I jumped off the sofa like a rocket, started to run outside, but remembered where Liz was, and hesitated. The noise outside the cabin became enough to wake people up two counties away: Cal’s recorded gunfire, some of Pete’s explosions, whistles, sirens, shouting, including Pete’s voice coming through the Walkie Talkie. “It’s a whole fucking platoon, Cal.”

  Then, Cal’s voice, under control, “Bat Man to Robin. Respond.”

  I took the cue. “Robin here.”

  “Shoot the moon. Don’t wait. No time. Shoot the goddamn moon!”

  I dropped the Walkie Talkie and ran to the back room just as Liz came out of it, half in and half out of Cal’s white terrycloth robe, her eyes full of terror. “Jeb?”

  I grabbed her hand, and with my other one, a butcher knife from the kitchen table. Not taking the time to look around for a flashlight, I yanked her through the back door just as I heard a round from something a lot more powerful than a rifle crash into the living room wall. “Don’t talk, Liz, come on, we have to get to the boat.”

  Halfway down the treacherous path to the boat shed, Liz snagged the robe on a limb, causing her to stumble. “Forget it!” I screamed. “Just leave it there.” I forced myself to go slow enough not to slip, turning every other step down to help Liz, ignoring her nakedness.

  We reached the lean-to where the Zodiac hung from its lashings. My eyes had almost begun to adjust to the lack of light, and I noticed new raindrops between Liz’s face and mine when I grabbed her by both arms and yelled, “Listen to me, Liz. We only have a few seconds. This boat is our only chance. I have some experience with it, but not when the river was anything like—”

  A crash came from above and behind us. Then a flare exploded above the river, illuminating for a second the unholy look of fear in her eyes. She was trying to say something, but no sound was coming out. I cut the first two leather straps. The rear end of the rubber boat dropped down to the ground. I pointed to the inside straps. “Hold on to these. I’ll try to steer. Whatever you do, hold on to those straps. Don’t let go, no matter what happens.”

  She nodded, and I cut the remaining two straps. The nose of the boat fell and we pushed it to the edge of the small, level clearing that was now only inches from the water. I grabbed a paddle, threw it into the bottom of the boat, and helped Liz climb in. When I was sure her feet were secured and she was holding tight to the side straps, I pushed the nose into the river and dived in myself. We were instantly caught up in a maelstrom. Images flew past my eyes at speeds no camera shutter could possibly capture. Black, heaving walls of forest sped by, split by the yellow inferno of crashing water that had enveloped us, moving faster than from a broken hydrant. Spray, cold as liquid ice soaked me to the skin in seconds.

  Several times, the rubber boat, thrown by the river’s centrifugal force in the curves, brushed scrub bush limbs and pine needles, scourging our faces and shoulders. I lost my steering paddle within the first thirty seconds of our ride into hell, and like Liz, held onto the straps with all my strength. Before we had been carried downstream of the winding river more than half a mile, probably no more than five hundred yards from the cabin as the crow flies, one final explosion lit up the night sky behind us. The resulting sound took a second longer to beat against our ears, over the awesome sound of the water. I knew in that millisecond that the cabin was gone. Forever.

  The next thirty minutes held at least that many miracles. I tried to anticipate turns and wave action, but the river was sending the Zodiac down the twisting, freezing, yellow liquid valley willy-nilly, like an out of control bumper car traveling at Nascar speed. Twice, I was thrown over the side, but managed to somehow crab-crawl back in, losing both shoes somewhere in between. I will never know how Liz found the strength to hold on. The rain was now coming down in sheets, at forty-five degrees to the river, but felt like a warm shower compared to the ice water spewed up and over us by the Quail. I think the only thing that saved our lives was that the water was too high to expose the boat’s thin bottom skin to the rocks I knew were there when we hit the rapids. We were simply carried over the tops of all of them, too terrified to realize how cold it was. Too numb to even pray. Maybe our fingers had frozen around the straps. Before I knew it, two more miracles happened. The river smoothed out a little, and the rain let up some. Soon, we drifted into an area where the Quail broadened considerably, and a few minutes later, the current carried us well into the reservoir.

  Exhausted and shivering uncontrollably, I was suddenly aware it had stopped raining. I had no idea when it had quit. Had I blacked out? I don’t know. The Quail’s tempest had pushed us half a mile or more into the flat water of the broad lake. Soon as the boat’s motion was quiet, I looked up to see a half moon trying to break through the scudding clouds, then I lowered my eyes and dully watched Liz give up her own consciousness. At the same time, I heard the thumping. At first I thought it was an echo in my ears. I was so tired; I didn’t realize it was a helicopter until we were speared by its nose light.

  I had always thought of helicopters as the ugliest of all aircraft. Unlovely and unnatural. Ugly as beggars. Whores of the sky. But this one was an angel. Sent down from heaven by God. Somewhere, I found enough strength to peel off my soaked sweater, and help Liz, who was moaning like a keening widow, to get her arms and head into it. My hands were so frozen, I could hardly grasp the heavy wool material enough to drag it down over her breasts, but some inner force in me not yet called upon desperately wanted to warm her, and cover as much of her nakedness as possible from the leering white Cyclops sweeping over us. Its curious light was intermittently showing me her body was already a dangerous shade of blue. I pulled the sweater down far as I could, then fell back into the Zodiac’s flooded floor.

  Sharp lucidity and total blackness visited me by turn during the next series of mini-nightmares: The frogman creature who appeared from the lake. The sight of Liz’s nearly nude body in the harness, swinging like a pornographic pendulum over me. Myself in the sling that cut into my armpits and crotch. Watching the tiny orange boat shrink even smaller, buffeted now not by the Quail’s wrath, but by the angel’s breath. Two pairs of strong arms pulling me inside. Liz, covered by a blanket. A blanket for me, too. No wind any more. No rain. Pretty little colored lights everywhere. A metal door slamming shut. Another miracle that tasted like brandy. A voice. Close up. The angel? The angel’s voice? No. NO! I knew that voice, and it was from no angel. The voice of the fucking devil himself.

  “Welcome aboard, Jeb,” Thurmond Frye was saying. “Looks like you’ll live after all. And now you owe me one.”

  Chapter 13

  The first thing I saw was Lucille Sweeney’s face.

  When I was a kid, maybe eight or nine, the Sunday edition of Cal’s paper still carried several of the old-time comic strips; reprints of some that had been popular when he’d been a boy himself, including a few that dated from as far back as the 1940’s and ‘50’s, such as “Li’l Abner”, “Dick Tracy”, “Terry and the Pirates”, along with my favorite, “Buz Sawyer.” One of the chief characters in that series was a female football player named Lucille Sweeney. Lucille had a face that would scare Dracula and a fullback’s body that could run over an eighteen-wheeler. She was also the friendliest, kindest soul imaginable, and unless she was badly provoked, would never have harmed a fly.

  But this Lucille Sweeney wore a white uniform, smelled like a mixture of carnations and Johnson’s baby oil, and had great hands
! She had apparently finished massaging my back and was trying to turn me over so she could do my front when I woke up. I slowly realized that except for the towel discreetly draped over me just south of my Mason-Dixon line, I was naked, but I didn’t care. Didn’t give a happy damn. I was dry, I was warm, and I was alive. Every muscle in my body was screaming. Even those that controlled my eyelids, but good old Lucille was well on her way to kneading out the knots in every single one of them. “Where am I, Lucille?”

  “Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Willard. My name is Mavis, not Lucille. Mavis Zinman. I’m a nurse. Just take it easy. We’ll have you back to your old self in no time. You’ve been asleep fourteen hours, and your girlfriend is still asleep, but don’t worry, she’s fine otherwise.”

  I absorbed this information in silence. From where I lay, I could see that the ceiling of the room I was in was high; a single light fixture recessed in it. The walls were papered, but sported no pictures. Old fashioned, yet odd. Farmhouse? The soles of my feet were touching the foot of a brass bed, and over the tips of my toes, I could see a single window that had no curtains. Venetian blinds had been pulled up, and I could see blue sky. Nothing else, which told me the room was on at least the second floor of whatever building I was in.

  Lucille/Mavis was talking again. “That must have been some ride. Took me quite a while to get you both cleaned up. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  I managed to turn my head to the side, noticing the table by the bed, on top of which were a large, half-full washbasin, and a bar of soap in a dish next to my wallet. My clothes were nowhere in sight. She still hadn’t told me where we were. I asked her again, and, “What about my father and the others?”

  “You’re in one of the safe houses we occasionally borrow from our CIA cousins. I’m not allowed to tell you where, or anything else. Please be patient. Mr. Frye will be back soon. I’m sure he will answer all your questions.” Her hands and fingers increased their expert pressure on my upper thighs. “You have an athlete’s body. Nice. Very nice. No wonder you survived. You must be hungry, too.”