Saving Medesha

by DK Land

  Across Main Street at the Sheriff’s Office, Mabel was sitting in a chair next to Harold’s desk. Harold was listening as she talked on the telephone. “No!” said Mabel with a smile. “You didn’t!… Did he really?… He said what?… Oh, that was sweet… Who showed up?… Larry Walsh? What did he want?… Oh, Honey! I’m so happy for you!… Yes, I know! So, I guess you’re having a happy holiday weekend… Okay, Honey… Congratulations.”

  When Mabel hung up the receiver, Harold said, “Who in the world was that?”

  Mabel replied smugly, “Just a telemarketer.”

  As he looked down at the pencil he was spinning on his desk top, he said with a hint of a smile, “A telemarketer huh?”

  Mabel answered, “Yup! A telemarketer!”

  With a sly look on his face, he said, “I don’t suppose this telemarketer was able to give you the name of a person who could get us those files from the Clinic?”

  Mabel drew in a quick breath and answered, “No, I didn’t think to ask. Well, you know how those telemarketers are. I’m sure they’ll call back.”

  He smiled as he rose from his desk. “I’m sure they will,” he said.

  He walked over to his office window and peered through the blinds. Shaking his head, he commented, “It never ceases to amaze me how drastically this town changes from the dead of winter to the summer fishing season.”

  Mabel walked over and stood beside him. “Gosh. Just look at that throng of people.”

  Out on Main Street, people were crowding the sidewalks and spilling over into the street as they headed in the direction of the lake for the start of the Parade. Some carried coolers, while others carried beach umbrellas. As the two of them watched the flow of people, Harold suddenly noticed something unusual. Like one lone trout swimming upstream, he could just make out a figure walking against the traffic across the street. The individual was dressed in black clothing and had long dark hair.

  He pointed through the blinds. “Say, isn’t that Lester over there?”

  “Lester?” said Mabel. “Where?”

  “Right over there in front of your diner. See? He’s just gone past your front window. Ah, crap! Now I lost sight of him.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Mabel. “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “Well, it sure looked like Lester. Would you mind staying here by yourself for a couple minutes while I take a walk over there to check it out?”

  “Go ahead,” said Mabel, “but, I think you’re wrong.”

  He opened the door and waded out into the mass of people. It was slow going just to reach the center of the street where the crowd was the thinnest. Once he was in the street, he was able to make better time as he began to walk west, away from the direction of the lake. He continued looking to the opposite side of the street, and thought he had spotted Lester again, when a huge umbrella blocked his view and he was never able to detect the dark figure again.

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled to himself. “It probably wasn’t him anyway. For all I know, it could have been some person trying to get back to their car to get something they forgot.” He turned around and headed back in the direction of his office.

  Across the street, at Ollie’s Service Station, Ollie had just returned after helping the guy with the Buick. He walked in the front door, and said, “Sheesh! See why I don’t bother opening up on Parade Day? There’s so darn many people out there, it’d be impossible for a person to get a car close enough to the pumps to get gas anyway.”

  Tandy chuckled. “I was just thinking about what it would be like to see this crowd from up in the air. They’d probably look like a huge swarm of ants. Did you get the car out of the lake okay?”

  Ollie laughed. “Oh, yeah! The guy was pretty upset, though. The carpet in his trunk and even in the back seat was pretty wet. I told him that he’d better take it into a detail shop as soon as he gets home so they can get that carpet and padding pulled out and dried. Otherwise, it’s gonna stink really bad and it’ll start to rust too.”

  Then his eyes met hers, and it appeared as if he were about to say something. Finally, he pulled a rag out of his back pocket and began wiping the dirt off his hands. “I’d better go get washed up a little.”

  He started walking toward the door that led out into the service bay when Tandy said, “Ollie?”

  He stopped and turned around. “Yes?”

  “Uh. Were you about to say something?” she asked.

  His face began to turn a subtle shade of red, as he answered, “No. I… uh…No!”

  He turned again toward the door and stopped. He turned slowly and said, “Well… Yes, I guess I was going to say something.”

  Nervously, Tandy said, “What is it, Ollie? Is it about what happened before Larry showed up? Do you feel that I did something that I shouldn’t have?” She took a deep breath as she continued. “I know they say that once two people have kissed, it changes everything between them. I’m sorry, Ollie. I don’t want things to change between us. Really I don’t!”

  Tears began to well in her eyes as Ollie answered, “I’ve done a lot of thinking about the two of us for a long time. Then, after what happened, I did a lot more thinking while I was down there pulling that car out of the lake.” He walked over and tentatively took her hand. “I know that we’ve been like brother and sister most of our lives. I also know that you’ve watched me as I made a fool of myself over Shauni Wheaton, and I guess I should explain myself a little bit.”

  Tandy shook her head and said, “No, Ollie. You don’t have to explain anything.”

  He held his hand up and replied, “Yes. Yes, I feel that I do need to explain. You see? All my life, there has basically been only two girls. One was like my sister, and the other one, I had absolutely nothing in common with. I was a jock all through school, and Shauni and I went to the prom together. The only problem was that neither of us ever had anything that we could really talk about. She always got A’s in Science and Chemistry, and I always got D’s. She loved that kind of thing and I hated it.” He began to smile a little as he continued. “I had a choice between chasing the one that I had nothing in common with and my ‘little sister’ that used to throw water balloons at me whenever she got the chance.”

  Tandy’s eyes bulged. “I’m sorry. I guess that’s the way a girl tells an older boy that she thinks he's a pretty cool guy.”

  “Well,” he replied. “I guess I thought that my ‘little sister’ would really think that I’d gone crazy if I’d tried to ask her out on a date, so I always figured that our relationship would never change. And another thing; sometimes I would feel guilty for wanting our relationship to change. It almost seemed like a sin to want to get romantically involved with my best friend.”

  Surprised, Tandy said, “You’re best friend? Oh, Ollie! That’s the best compliment I’ve ever had. Oh, gosh. If you had asked me out on a date, I’d probably have been so happy that my feet wouldn’t have touched the ground for a week.”

  “Do you really mean that?” he asked.

  “Of course I mean that!” She placed her hands on her hips. “Besides, don’t you think that people that are involved romantically should also be best friends? Ollie! That’s the very best kind of a relationship.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he answered. “I guess I never thought that it would ever happen to me.” He looked down at the floor as he continued. “I think that’s the reason I became so deeply involved in fishing.”

  “What do you mean? Why would fishing have anything to do with romance?”

  “Well,” he said. “Fishing can be anything you want it to be. It can be a time for people to get together to enjoy each other’s company, or it can be a time for a sad and lonely person to just be by themselves. You know? They can go off where they don’t always have to be pretending to be happy.”

  “Oh, Ollie! Is that why you’ve always been so devoted to fishing? Because you were lonely?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I really do love to fish, and I realize tha
t I’m not that much different from other people. I know that everybody has their own feelings of loneliness to deal with. I guess I’m just saying that fishing has always been the thing I’ve turned to in my attempt to deal with those feelings of being alone in the world.”

  “But, Ollie! You’ve always been so well liked by everybody. In high school, you were always hangin’ out with all the jocks and the cheerleaders.”

  “Hangin’ out with a crowd of kids doesn’t keep a person from being alone. In fact, I think that the only times that I remember really being content were those times when you and I would sit and talk on the bleachers at the football field after practice, and when Jimmy Sheldon and I would run around town after dark getting into mischief.” He smiled as he began to think back to those carefree days in high school. “Heck, I remember once when Jimmy and I came down here to the station one night; that was before I worked here, and we cut off ol’ Carl’s air hose that hung out by the pumps so we could make snorkels for swimming under water.”

  Tandy put her hands to her face and said, “No! Did you really? Ollie! That was nasty!”

  “Well, as it turned out, it ended up scaring the bee-jeepers out of both of us. There was probably forty feet of hose out there, and as soon as we cut about six feet off the end, that darn hose started jumping and swinging all over the place like a mad rattle snake. We could hear the air compressor in the service bay kick in, and it just kept runnin’. We didn’t know that ol’ Carl left the thing on all the time so people would be able to use it after hours.”

  Amazed, Tandy asked, “What did you do? You didn’t just run off and leave it like that, did you?”

  Ollie replied, “Heck no! We knew that if we left it like that, the compressor would run all night. We both liked ol’ Carl, and we didn’t want to ruin his compressor, so I finally was able to grab the end of the hose and bend it over and put a kink in it so the air would stop flowing. Then Jimmy ran back to his place and got a screwdriver and a pliers. It took him about twenty minutes to get back and all the while, I sat there hiding behind the gas pump holding that stupid hose. Anyway, we were finally able to get the air nozzle off of the end that we had cut off and put it back on the remaining part of the hose. We waited ‘til the compressor stopped running and then we got the heck out of there.” He grinned as he looked out the window in the direction of the gas pumps. “Ya know? I don’t think that ol’ Carl ever knew that six feet of his air hose was missing. In fact, to this day, that same hose is still hanging out there.”

  Tandy looked out toward the pumps and said thoughtfully, “Really? So, I guess when you bought the station, you actually ended up paying for the six feet of hose that you and Jimmy stole.”

  Ollie laughed. “I never thought of it that way before. Well, I guess that’s something I can stop feeling guilty for now.”

  Suddenly a far away look came over Ollie as he began to speak quietly. “Say, Tandy! I just had a thought!”

  She turned and looked up at him. “What?” she asked. “You’re not going to ask me to go snorkeling with you, are you?”

  “No,” he replied with a grin. “But, I would like to ask you if you’d like to go to the street dance with me tonight. Ah, that is, if you don’t have other plans. I mean… if you’re already going to the dance with someone else.”

  Tandy smiled as she reached her arms around his midsection and hugged him as tight as she could. “A date!” she exclaimed. “Ollie! You’ve finally asked me out on a date!” She looked up as she continued, “I would be absolutely thrilled to go to the street dance with you, Ollie Torgerson.”

  Ollie’s arms reached around and engulfed her as he said, “Oh, Tandy. I think this is going to be such a fantastic summer.”

  Abruptly, Tandy pulled back from his embrace and said, “Wait a minute. How could your stealing an air hose years ago remind you that you were going to ask me to the street dance?”

  Ollie laughed. “Oh! No! The thing with the air hose didn’t remind me about asking you to the dance. But, it did remind me of another goofy thing that Jimmy and I did one time.”

  “What was that? I’m amazed that the two of you didn’t grow up to be bank robbers or something.” She hesitated. “You haven’t robbed any banks lately, have you?”

  He defended himself, “No, Tandy! I have never robbed a bank. There are only a couple things that I’ve done that weren’t really legal. One was the thing with the air hose, and the other was what I would like to tell you about now. And the reason I want to tell you about it is because I think it might have some importance today.”

  Perplexed, Tandy said, “I don’t understand.”

  “Well,” he began. “This happened even before we cut the air hose. Jimmy and I had been out in his little fishing boat most of the day, and when we came in and tied up at the dock, I ripped a huge hole in my landing net when it got hooked on the oar lock of his boat.”

  “Ooo! A hole in your landing net! I bet that made both of you cry.”

  He looked at her sheepishly and said, “No, we didn’t cry. But, if you’re gonna go fishing without a landing net, you can end up with lots of problems. Neither of us had any money to buy a new net, so we came up with a plan. Do you remember several years ago when Vander-Wear used to make those hammocks for a while?”

  Tandy nodded.

  “Well, that night Jimmy and I decided to sneak into the factory and take enough of that netting they used for the hammocks so we could fix my landing net.”

  Tandy was aghast. “No! You didn’t!”

  “Yup!” he replied. “It was really easy. The windows on the back of the factory have those old twist locks that you can wedge a knife between and flip ‘em open in about three seconds. We crept in and found a big roll of that stuff and cut off a few feet and were back out of there in less than five minutes.”

  Tandy grinned, “Ollie! You and Jimmy were regular criminals!”

  He hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and looked down at her. “Aw shucks, Ma’am. We wasn’t criminals. We was just a couple kids in need of a fishin’ net.”

  Tandy crossed her arms. “Uh huh!” she said with a smile.

  “But, don’t you see what I’m getting at here?” he asked.

  “I see exactly what you’re getting at. You’ve been under the stress of so much guilt for all these years that you finally decided you need to confess your sins before it drives you mad and you end up becoming a serial hose cutter and fishing net thief.”

  His mouth fell open. “Huh?… No! Tandy, I’m serious! Listen! The Sheriff asked us if we'd be able to come up with the name of somebody who could get those records from the old clinic at the factory.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well,” he answered. “I just figured it out. That somebody could be you and me. We could go over there and get them ourselves.”

  As she finally understood what he meant, she said, “Oh! You and me!”

  Ollie nodded. “Yes!”

  He waited as she thought about his suggestion. Finally she said, “I don’t know, Ollie. That’s illegal. What if we would get caught?”

  “And who would arrest us? The Sheriff? He’s the one that wants the information. Besides, it’s really for the benefit of the whole community. We’re not the criminals here. We’re trying to find out who’s been doing these terrible things to those kids.”

  “Well… when would we do it?”

  “Right now,” he answered. “Everybody in the whole town is down at the Marina at this very minute. We could walk right in there and find those files and be back here before the parade is even finished. I’ve got a walkie-talkie out in my truck and one in here over in that desk drawer. I could open one of the windows on the back of the building, and you could stand watch while I go in and get the files. Heck, it’d be as easy as cuttin’ an air hose.”

  Twenty minutes later, Tandy and Ollie were casually walking down the alley behind the Vander-Wear factory. The building was built on a slight hill, with the front being on the
low side of the rise. At the back of the building, there were numerous tall metal-framed windows. Because of the hill, the bottoms of the windows were only about knee high. Directly across the alley from the factory was a large garage, which housed all of the Vander-Wear delivery trucks. There were a few spindly trees growing between the base of the building and the asphalt paving of the alley, which offered further concealment.

  As they walked along the back of the building, Ollie would stop at each window to study the interior. “I’m not positive,” he said. “But, I think that the Records Room is in back, so if we can find the right window, we should be able to get directly into the room and look for those files.”

  Tandy was worried. “Don’t you think we should have stopped over at the Sheriff’s Office and told the Sheriff what we’re doing first?”

  “Remember, Tandy. Harold doesn’t want anybody else knowing about this investigation. I think that it would be better to get the files and take them back to the station. Then we could call Harold and tell him we’ve got the files and that we’re going to put them in my truck and take them out to Jefferson’s place.”

  Still uneasy, she replied, “Okay, Ollie. You just be careful when you get in there.”

  He patted her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful. Just be sure to give me a call on the walkie-talkie if anybody shows up.”

  As he peered in one window, he said, “Here! I think this is it.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Mabel and Harold were startled as Ollie burst through the Sheriff’s Office door, carrying a cardboard file box. Fear was written on his face as he stood in front of them unable to speak. Harold rose from his chair. “Ollie! What’s wrong?” he asked. “You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  Mabel walked over and put her hand on Ollie’s shoulder. “What’s the matter, Ollie?” She looked down at the box he was carrying. The label on one end of the box said, ‘Property of Vander-Wear Clinic’. “Are these the files we wanted?”