by Scott Blade
The early morning hours of the hospital room must’ve shrouded me in just enough shadows to cover my face because when I turned around completely, the police deputy jumped back a little like he had seen a monster. I wasn’t a pleasant looking man, not in the wrong kind of light, and darkness had been the wrong kind of light.
I’d been told that in the darkness I looked like something out of a nightmare. I’d been told that if I walked into a casting call for an actor to play the killer who comes out of the swamp and never dies, then they’d hire me on the spot. That’s one of the things that made me perfect for the SEALs. The best weapon that a SEAL has in the field is his mind, but being scary-looking wasn’t a bad thing either, because fear and intimidation were just as valuable as bullets and bombs. Being able to terrify enemies in the dark has benefited me all over the world. But I wasn’t trying to scare this small town deputy. So I said, “Relax.”
The deputy said, “Hands up! Keep em where I can see em!”
He was early thirties, maybe not the best specimen for a cop, but I didn’t know the guy. It was just a first impression, like an occupational habit. He visibly trembled.
He had what looked like a Glock 41, which was a fairly standard law enforcement sidearm. I wouldn’t know because I didn’t use Glocks on a regular basis. At the moment, I didn’t use any guns. I had been stationed in Coronado Naval Special Warfare in California—technically. But only technically, because I was undercover and my assignment had been to pose as a former SEAL.
My CO had me dishonorable discharged, with a made up criminal record, the whole nine yards. I spent a year growing out my hair and beard, just so I’d look the part. Like a Navy SEAL has-been. All part of an operation that I spent a year preparing for. Of course, I wasn’t there now. The investigation was all wrapped up anyway, but I got the news right at the end of it that Sheriff Deveraux had been shot. So I left.
Before that operation, whenever I wasn’t investigating a crime, I often got stationed in various places to maintain my cover. The SEALs are a relatively small military outfit like a family. We had known each other or heard of each other or we all knew a guy who knew the other guy. It wasn’t very productive to put me into hotspots as an undercover operative and then pull me out when the job was done because eventually the other SEALs would figure out that I wasn’t really one of them.
I always had to go all the way. Sometimes, I had to go all the way to the edge, close enough to see over it.
I had to go where the SEALs went and train when they trained.
The Glock 41 was a big step up from the old guns that this county had issued to its police force many years ago. Back when I lived here.
The Glock was a weapon that all military forces respected. You didn’t have to like them, but they made fine handguns.
I kept my hands outward, palms open and facing him. I was calm and relaxed. Didn’t want him to shoot me out of some sort of deep-down primal fear like being afraid of the dark.
He said, “Step into the light.”
I stepped forward, one big step.
He stepped back in conjunction, but a smaller step, making sure to stay out of my reach. He looked at my arms and surmised that I could swivel fast, with little effort, and grab the gun right out of his hand. Then he decided to put more space between us and he backed out of the doorway even further into the hall.
A nurse stepped out from around a corner. Probably, heard the commotion. She was a black woman about forty-years-old or so. She had a cheerful demeanor about her and a friendly face. She wore loose, blue scrubs with blue tennis shoes that looked new and more like they belonged on the feet of a teenager who cut lawns for a summer to buy them. Which made me suspect that they were a gift from a teenage son.
She said, “Wayne. What’s going on?”
The deputy said, “Now, you stay back Gloria.”
Gloria said, “Who’s this guy?”
“I don’t know. But I find out. Now, who are ya?”
She said, “Son, you can’t be in here. There’s no visitors in critical care.”
She seemed to dismiss the sheriff’s deputy and his Glock. Maybe she knew him on a more personal level than just the way small town people were acquainted with each other.
The hospital was for the entire county and that was the only reason that it was even big enough to have a critical care unit. The state must’ve funded the construction of this hospital. It definitely wasn’t here sixteen years ago. And the equipment was relatively new, with new looking rooms and hospital beds. Only some corners were cut, accessories were better described as hand-me-downs or secondhand, like the TV in the waiting room or the old furniture, like the sofa.
The deputy said, “Damnit! Gloria! Get back!”
The nurse shot a look of shock at the deputy named Wayne, which must’ve been his first name because his nameplate read LeBleu. I took a glance at it.
Wayne LeBleu was a funny sounding American name, but not for Mississippi and especially not the deep parts, far from major cities, like the northeast corner. Here the nearest city on a map that mattered was either Memphis or Atlanta.
I stayed quiet, just watched their back and forth. I don’t think that they saw my eyes because my face was still in darkness.
LeBleu said, “Turn around, sir. Face away.”
He wanted me to turn back to facing away from him. I knew what that meant. In my experience it either meant one of two things. Either a bullet in the back or handcuffs. In this case, it meant handcuffs, which I really dreaded. I had been in handcuffs before and I had a feeling that I’d be in them again and again. I didn’t want to reject his command because he had that Glock 41 pointed at me and he was a cop. I was taught to obey the cops. So I twisted, slow and started to pivot on my right foot.
He said, “Slow, now!”
I grinned because this was slow for me, but I did as he asked. I adjusted my speed to virtually standing still.
Finally, I faced away from the two of them, but I craned my neck and looked back over my shoulder at them. I was ready for the cuffs.
KILLIAN CROSSING is the stereotype of a small town—the back of beyond. It was rural, but never dull, not under the surface. On the surface, things seemed quiet, but take a closer look and small towns have their secrets, like shadows stalking them.
I never lived in a city until I was seventeen, but I’d never been country or rural or redneck or however you want to describe someone from a rural area in the South. People from small towns don’t grow up to be that way, not always and not for the most part. Small town life isn’t like the movies.
Mine wasn’t.
In a small town, there was plenty to do and plenty that needed doing. We had to do for ourselves. I fired guns, hunted animals, fished, built campfires, survived out on my own, and I learned survival in some of the most rugged terrain available. The United States Army used to have an elite training base out here for Army Rangers; the 75th used to send the best of the best here to train for a time, back when I was young and before. It was quite a big deal for us. This town was built up around the base, no other real economy to speak of. And it only got worse over the years since the base closed and no major road passed through. No reason for anyone to stop.
The closing of the base almost killed the town and it may yet be a slow death. Many southern towns are in a sad state of disrepair: crumbling roads, closed stores, sunken economies, abandoned high schools, wastelands of empty plazas, shopping malls, graveyards for old trains, and like Killian Crossing, forgotten military bases.
Parts of Mississippi are like the third world. It took leaving the state for me to see that, because like I said, I never really knew any better until after the day that I fought with Sheriff Deveraux and left.
I grew up to be a big guy. It was a genetic thing which was, in part, a mystery to me. My mother was my only family and my father I had never known.
At the age of six, I was tough—got into my first fistfight back then. Kids learned quickly not to
mess with me. If they left me alone, then I left them alone. I wasn’t a bully. I hated bullies, a viewpoint that I never lost. Some of the other kids would pay me for protection from bullies and my first enterprise was born and my first sense of capitalism. I made a good profit in elementary school protecting smaller kids from the bigger ones. They paid me part of their lunch money like a recovery fee. A fine enterprise for me. I didn’t have many friends. Not really. I was like Frankenstein—everyone was afraid of me and I was misunderstood. Not-to-forget that I looked like Frankenstein’s monster. At the time, I was much bigger than the other kids.
The school’s coaches loved me. All the way through school they tried to get me to play football, and eventually, I did. I played for one season until I broke another kid’s jaw, not intentionally. The coach instructed me to tackle him—no holding back.
All season the coach had been riding me, accusing me of not giving it my “full potential.” He said that I had feral eyes. I’ll never forget that. Feral. I’d never heard that word before to describe another human being. It’s a great word. Feral.
It described that experience better than any other word because for a few seconds I lost control of myself. I went into a rage. I ran straight at this kid. He stood cocked down low on the line of scrimmage, in the ready position, less than a second after the ball was snapped—less than half a second.
No one was blocking him and my quarterback had been left wide open, baiting him, but instead of charging the quarterback like he had been trained to do, he simply stood there, frozen with his feet still firmly planted in the dried dirt. He had a clear shot. The quarterback was lined up in his mind’s reticle and he knew it—but something that he saw in his peripherals stopped him dead in his tracks. Something feral.
He had seen me. The sight of me, running him down had frozen him solid. In his quivering eyes, I could see the sheer terror that overcame him as he stared at a hulking goliath running him down like a freight train.
I ran behind the quarterback from the opposite side of the line. I ran past the other players and ran right at the kid. Headed straight for him. I was a fifteen-year-old freshman and he was a seventeen-year-old senior, but he was right to be terrified of me. I suppose that was the natural order of things.
The kid had no time to retreat and he knew it. In that split second, he had time for only one thing—that was to fear for his life.
For the first time in my life I performed an action that I’d never even thought of before. I achieved a feat that eighteen years later would save my life. Never had I been trained to do this move, not then and not now. And now I had learned a lot of combat moves. But this was all genetics, some kind of ancient warrior gene that lay dormant in my bones until that second. I ran at the kid, full speed, with no intent of braking, no flinching, and no hesitation. At the last microsecond, I reared my head back, contracted my neck muscles and shoulder muscles like a snapping turtle coiling his head back into his shell, and then I catapulted. My head whipped forward in a violent slingshot motion like a cannonball and I felt my skull lunge forward and my helmet whipped and crashed into the kid’s face, straight through the open-faced part of his helmet, and shattered the bones in his nose and jaw. The truth is that if his helmet hadn’t had the hard plastic face-guard on the front, the adults might’ve been cleaning up that kid’s face with a bucket and a shovel.
I delivered a colossal head-butt.
The force behind my blow had sent broken parts of his helmet flying off his head, the face-mask broke into pieces, and I had broken more than that. The kid’s nose splintered and cracked, his front teeth sprayed out of his mouth: two white incisors and three broken canines. His chin-bone had pierced through his skin and his jaw snapped and split, everything broke.
Parents and school officials rushed the field to the kid’s side as he lay crying and wailing like a dying animal. Paramedics had to rush the kid off in an ambulance.
Two things happened after that: I never played football again, not in high school, not the Navy, or college, and that kid never looked right again. I never meant to seriously hurt him. I heard he had to wear a steel wire for six months. I heard he never breathed quite right after that. I learned a serious lesson about my own strength and I could never bring myself to play a full contact sport again. But I did learn that the head-butt was a powerful weapon to have in my arsenal.
Standing there, in Deveraux’s hospital room, it was no mystery to me why Deputy LeBleu and Nurse Gloria had that look of fear that I was so used to on their faces when they saw me in the light.
I stayed quiet and waited for them to speak.
Gloria muttered something that was like, “Wayne, who is he?"
“Gloria. Get back! I’m tryin’ to find out dat. Now, what are ya doin’ standing over the Chief like dat?”
I said, “Relax. I’m not here to hurt her.”
He asked again, “Why are ya here? Who are ya?”
I cleared my throat, not as a response or a comment, just because I needed to. I said, “I wanted to see her.”
“Turn around and face me. Hands where I can see them.”
He never put handcuffs on me. Not yet. I guessed that he wanted to get a look at me first.
I turned, slow and faced their direction. I moved slow enough so that he would feel reassured that I wasn’t going to make a move, which I could have. Easy as anything, I could’ve sidestepped into the hospital room, grabbed the big, heavy hospital door and waited for the deputy to follow with his Glock. Once he was in the doorway, I could’ve slammed the hospital door right into his gun hand. I could’ve broke his fingers at the knuckles with one good heave of the door, cracking bones in between the door and the frame, but I wasn’t going to do any of that.
I moved my hands slow up by my head, the surrender position.
“So what the hell are ya doing here? Why you standing over the Chief?”
“Visiting her.”
“Why?”
“She’s my mother.”
Gloria asked, “That’s your ma?”
I swiveled my head and looked at her with my hands still up by my head. I said, “Yes ma’am.”
The deputy asked, “Chief has a son?”
I didn’t answer.
He kept his Glock out, but he lowered it to a safe pointing position, at the ground. His finger stayed near the trigger.
LeBleu said, “Lower your hands.”
I lowered my hands back down to my sides, but I left my palms out so he could see them.
“Step out into the hall. In the light.”
I stepped further into the hall.
Gloria said, “You look just like her. Look at his face.”
The deputy took a good long stare at my face and then my eyes and back down my torso.
He said nothing.
Gloria said, “No offense. But you must get your size from your daddy. Because your ma is tiny.”
I smiled and said, “I never met him ma’am, but you’re probably right about that.”
She nodded and looked back at the deputy.
He said, “Let me see some ID.”
I kept one hand out extended as a gesture of submission and with my other I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a slightly bent and extremely used, dark blue US passport. I reached it out slow and handed it to him. He stepped closer and took it. Again, I could’ve swiped that Glock right out of his hand, fairly easy. But I wasn’t here to cause problems.
He sifted through the pages and studied them. His face turned to curiosity. He was glossing over all of the foreign stamps that I had had on my passport. There were a lot. Every page was drenched in faded stamps from foreign countries. The thing was practically filled up. I had travelled to a lot of places and most were on there, but some weren’t. Some of the places that I had been to were classified and I wasn’t actually supposed to be in them. It was a need to know/classified sort of deal.
He said, “Tehran? Where da hell is dat?”
I smiled and
said, “Iran.”
“What da hell are ya doing there? Isn’t that our enemy?”
“Not right now. They haven’t been our enemy in decades. Not really. It’s more of a PR problem than an actual enemy.”
“What you mean? An enemy is an enemy.”
“No. Not really. Just because some of them don’t like us doesn’t mean they are our enemy.”
He didn’t respond to that. He asked, “So what you doing with all of these stamps? Are you military or something?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, what exactly?”
“Navy.”
“What like a seaman?” He said, chuckled. He had said seaman, but he had meant semen or he had said semen and he had meant seamen. I wasn’t sure. I never really was, but it was a joke that I had heard a lot and so did every other Navy guy in the world.
He said, “I was in the National Guard.”
“Then we’re brothers,” I said, but I didn’t consider us that, not even close. But it’s good to add that kind of kinship to a conversation when you’re face-to-face with a redneck deputy pointing a gun at you. We weren’t family. I didn’t consider the National Guard the same as Navy. My only real family was dying twelve feet behind me.
The deputy flipped to my ID and stared at it and then read my name out loud.
“Jack Widow.”
I nodded.
He waited a beat and then was about to say something only Gloria interrupted and said, “I need to check her vitals. You boys want to move this conversation down the hallway? Let me do my job and let her have some quiet?”
The deputy flipped my passport shut and holstered his weapon. He returned my passport back to me, which I slid back in my back pocket.
He said, “Let’s head down to the cafeteria. Grab some coffee.”
I didn’t drink coffee, but I said, “Sure.”
He led me down the corridor and we winded through a couple of corners and made our way to the cafeteria.
I went over to the soda machine, reached into my pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill, wrinkly. I force-fed it to the cash reader and waited for a second for the machine to take it. Then I pressed the button for bottled water, a Coke Company owned brand came tumbling out.