That was when she stopped and listened to the voice.
~*~
It told her what to do, and she knew that it was right, that this was the only way.
She drove the mile and a half to her school, got out, opened the trunk, and took from it a wide tube four feet long with metal caps at each end. She carried this under one arm, and her bag with the other. As she entered the building, her principal, Mr. Newman, smiled and nodded.
"Morning, Kevin," she said with a big grin.
You fuckin' white pig.
"Hi, Sharla. What's that, a poster?"
"Mmm-hmm. Huge Brian Wildsmith—all kinds of animals. Come on down later and see it."
So I can drop your lily white ass.
She walked to her room, unlocked it, and set the tube in a corner near her desk. Then she put up the banner, a series of scenes from fairy tales illustrated by Tomie de Paola. But instead of putting it over the blackboard, she taped it up over the translucent glass panes next to the door. When the children came in, she smiled at them, settled them gently in their seats, and, when the time came, closed the door, taping the final 2x2 panel over the little inset window.
"Good morning, children," she said. "I have a big surprise for you today. I think you'll find this very interesting."
The children whispered excitedly as Sharla walked to the corner, picked up the tube, opened one end, and put it on her desk. She reached inside, and slid out the automatic rifle with the clip in place, just like the voice had said it would be. It hadn't told her what kind of weapon it was, but it looked like the kind the people on the TV news wanted to ban. The voice had told her that as long as she held the trigger down, the gun would keep firing. And when it stopped, there were six other clips. The voice had told her how to remove the empty one and load a full one. It looked very easy, she thought.
"Now, children, I want you to stay in your seats and not get up and not make any noise. If you do, I'll have to punish you. You know I don't do that very often, but today I will, if you don't obey me."
"Is that a real gun?" one boy near the back asked.
"Yes, it is, Brian. Now. Francis, Chris, Jenny—I want you to take your desks and put them in front of the pretty pictures I put up by the door . . . that's right, just slide them over there. William, Sam, Richard, you pull all the blinds down, please . . . No, Elizabeth, I didn't ask you to help, did I? You stay in your seat. It's very important that you do everything I say. . . That's fine, boys, thank you. Now sit down."
When everyone was seated, Sharla picked up the phone connecting her to the office. "Sarah," she said into the mouthpiece, "put Kevin on . . . I don't care if he's in a conference, Sarah. Put him on now . . . What's it about? It's about inequality and injustice, Sarah. It's about political prisoners who must be freed. It's about the nation's jails filled with my brothers. Now put Kevin on right away, or you're going to hear something, and you won't need the phone to hear it. You're going to hear some gunfire, you white bitch.
"You're going to hear the voice of black revolution."
Chapter 30
Woody was tired. He had been working in his home studio, trying to write, but it had been hard. He was too worried about Tracy. Ever since their conversation two weeks earlier about Keith, she had been depressed. She smiled at and joked with the children, but when she was with Woody, or when she thought she was alone, she was another person, holding the weight of the world on her shoulders.
And maybe, Woody thought, that wasn't so far from the truth. He felt the burden too, though he tried to dismiss it, and tried to ease it from Tracy, suggesting things to do as a family, or places she could go during the day when the kids were at school. But still, the sorrow hung blackly over their white and airy house.
He had broken his self-imposed code of silence on the matter only once, when he had called Frank McDonald to share his discoveries and concerns. But Frank had not wanted to be a partner in Woody's paranoia and guilt, and Woody couldn't blame him. So he and Tracy bore the burden of proof alone.
Now, exhausted from trying to force joy from his reeds, Woody sat down in front of the television in the family room adjoining the kitchen, where Tracy and Louisa were preparing dinner. He found a moment of solace amid the domestic clatter of pans and mixing bowls, then picked up the remote and pushed the button so that Dan Rather's grave face appeared.
". . . in a suburb of Cleveland today. The woman, identified as Sharla Jackson of Warrensville Heights, and a teacher at Parkway Elementary School where the incident took place, apparently hid an automatic rifle in a poster tube, and held her second grade class hostage for six hours while she made Black Nationalist demands over the school's telephone system. At three o'clock eastern time a S.W.A.T. team attempted to enter the room, and gunfire was exchanged, leaving Jackson and one student dead. Three other children were wounded in the melee . . ."
Rather went on to a story about flooding in a Mississippi town, but Woody did not hear it. He sat, scarcely believing what he had heard, then punched the channel buttons to ABC.
"Tracy . . ." he said, but there was no reply. "Tracy! Come here!"
She appeared in the rectangle of the open serving bar, a wooden spoon in her hand. "What?"
He could only point to the television, which displayed the face of Peter Jennings and a window behind him that read, Terror in Cleveland, with a silhouette of a rifle. Jennings's story was similar to Rather's, and Tracy gasped when he gave Sharla Jackson's name and her picture filled the window. Jennings added that there was a possibility "that no shots were actually fired by Sharla Jackson. We've received no official word on this, but preliminary reports indicate that this may indeed be the case. Ted Koppel will cover the incident on Nightline tonight, and hopefully ABC will receive either a confirmation or a denial by that time. In other news . . ."
"Sharla?" Tracy whispered. "Sharla, Woody? My God, how could she? She'd never do something like that."
Woody swallowed. He felt as though tar were stuck in his throat. "No," he said, turning off the TV. "She wouldn't. Maybe she didn't."
"What?"
"What's up, you guys?" said Louisa, appearing over her mother's shoulder. "Mom, how long do I have to keep stirring that stuff?"
“Just a minute!" Tracy said, then shook her head. "I'm sorry, hon. I've got to talk to Daddy. Just . . . keep stirring it, okay?"
She came into the den and sat next to Woody. "They said she didn't fire any shots," Woody said.
"They don't know."
"No." He shook his head again. "It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. She wouldn't have done this on her own."
"Oh Christ, Woody, you think it was . . ." She broke off, as if she were unwilling to say the name.
"Yeah. Keith."
"I don't know," she said, looking so vulnerable that Woody's grief became even deeper. "Sharla was always angry when she was young. Maybe she just wasn't able to bury it. Maybe it just grew inside her until it came out . . . But like that . . . and Sharla dead . . ." Her voice was tight with tears. "Woody? Where are you going?"
"I've got to call Frank," he said, leaving the room and going down the hall toward their bedroom. "He's got to know about this," he shouted to Tracy as he ran.
Frank answered on the first ring. His hello sounded impatient, excited.
"Frank, Woody. Did you hear about Sharla? On the news?" He had not, and Woody told him that their friend was dead, and how it had happened.
"I'm sorry," Frank said when Woody was finished. His voice sounded uncaring.
"Sorry? Frank, did you hear me? Sharla is dead."
"Woody . . . God damn it . . .” Woody heard Frank start to cry, heard words come up out of the bubbling. “Judy . . . went crazy . . . wrecked the gallery, nearly killed a guy . . ."
"Frank, Frank, easy . . . easy. Now what happened? Take your time and tell me." He looked up and saw Tracy in the doorway, and mouthed Extension to her. She nodded and vanished, and a moment later he heard the soft click of a pick-up. "Tracy's o
n too, Frank. Just relax and tell me what happened."
Frank did, disjointedly, but clearly enough for Woody to understand that Judy had also suffered some sort of breakdown. Woody told Frank to let him know if he could do anything, and they said goodbye. He met Tracy in the hall.
"You heard?"
She nodded. "It's not a coincidence, Woody."
"Isn't it?"
"Violent sixties idealistic-politico-flashback? Two people we know in as many days? I can't believe that. What I believe in is Keith. Or whatever it is he's become. He did something to them." She went into his arms, and gripped his shoulders as if to draw strength from them. "That bastard. What's he doing to our friends?"
"I've got to call the others. Got to warn them, tell them to be careful."
"Will they believe you?"
"I don't know. But I have to tell them."
Woody called Curly first. He prefaced his remarks with the warning that what he was about to say would sound crazy, but he believed it to be true, at least true enough to warrant caution for the next few days. Curly, surprisingly enough, seemed to believe him. The double tragedies of Judy and Sharla dulled his usual satiric edge, and he promised to keep an eye out for strangers.
"You know, Woody," he added, "if this is really true—about Keith and this Pan guy, and I think it could damn well be—maybe we ought to do something. Like a letter or call to the FBI? Anonymous, you know?"
"I've thought about it, but I don't think it would do much good. He's changed his identity so many times over the years, how would they ever find him? He's probably changed his appearance too. And they might be able to trace the call or the letter back to us, and then we'd be the ones in deep shit, not him."
Curly reluctantly agreed, and Woody made his next call.
Dale Collini answered the phone at the apartment he shared with Eddie Phelps, who was at a wedding rehearsal, and had not yet heard about Sharla. Dale had, on the news, and seemed numb with grief. He was speechless for a long time when Woody told him about Judy McDonald's violent breakdown, but then typically asked if Woody thought there was anything he, Dale, could do to help.
There was one thing, Woody said, and that was to watch out for himself. Then he told Dale about Keith, and how he thought their old friend had come into this second life, and how he might have somehow done something to Sharla and Judy.
Dale was quiet again, then admitted that it could be possible. He promised to be careful, and added, "It wouldn't surprise me at all, Woody. Maybe it wasn't meant to be like this. Maybe . . . mistakes were made that night."
He said little more after that, except to give his love to Tracy and the children, and promise that he and Eddie would keep their eyes open.
Alan Franklin, however, was neither as accepting nor believing. He had arrived home late to find Diane at a Friends of the Library meeting, so had not heard about Sharla. But when the initial shock had passed, along with his surprise on finding out about the incident in Judy's gallery, the cynic returned.
"Woody, listen, I'm really sorry about Sharla. I mean, I grieve, and I feel awful about what Judy did. But let's face it, these were not stable women, pal."
"Alan, I know it seems hard to believe, but—"
"Hear me out. Judy was a workaholic just begging for a breakdown. Hell, she was even in school. It was incredible that we ever got her to come to a party—all the time painting in the fucking studio. And Sharla? Angry lady, pal. She never got her shit together, never got married, lived alone and probably kept brooding about this racial shit . . ."
"Sharla wasn't like that, not at all."
"Look, we want to believe our friend wasn't a nut, but normal people don't do the kind of thing she did."
"It wasn't her, Alan. And it wasn't Judy either."
"Oh, you're saying that Keith came back like a ghost or something and possessed them, made them do it? Maybe we oughta get an exorcist, Woody."
"Keith's alive, I swear to God, and he had something to do with what the girls did—maybe some sort of weird revenge, who knows how his mind works? He's proved he's crazy."
"Wrongo. Pan's crazy. Yeah, yeah, I know he wasn't in that first . . . life or track or plane of existence or whatever the fuck you call it, but that doesn't mean he's Keith Aarons. Maybe it's just plain inexplicable, how things happened, pal. Hey, metaphysics aren't my game. Look, Dan Russell's offering a tobacco subsidy amendment on the floor tomorrow, and I'm writing his speech for him, so I don't have any more time for paranoid fantasies, okay?
"Now—you heard anything about Sharla's funeral? I mean, do we send flowers or contributions or what?"
Chapter 31
Keith Aarons looked down at the lights of Washington, D.C., smiled, and wrote, as the plane landed.
~*~
September 16, 1993:
This is all working out so well. Bob Hastings didn't exaggerate the potency of the drug at all. An injection, a pause of ten minutes, then words whispered into the ear, instructions given, a trigger action planted, and bingo, no more will.
Or rather a will given over to older, buried thoughts and intents. So that someone who remembers those things, remembers youthful dreams and ideals and rages, can resurrect them, bring them forth like some shrouded revenant from a quarter century before, can guide them and drive them to violent ends. It isn't perfect. Sharla harmed no one before she was shot, but she never had it in her to kill. Nor had Judy. I'm sure that wounding the man was unintentional. The drug operates the way that pseudo-science, hypnosis, supposedly does. You can't get someone to do what they wouldn't do under any circumstances.
So I wasn't able to get Sharla and Judy to kill. They were too nice for that, too moral.
But niceness and morality were never Alan Franklin's strong suits.
~*~
"Are there any further amendments to H.R. 236, The Agriculture Advancement and Agrarian Reform Act of 1993?"
The Chairman of the Agricultural Committee, serving as the Floor Manager, turned to the Speaker. "Mr. Speaker," he said, "all amendments that I'm aware of have been disposed of, except for that of the gentleman from South Carolina . . ." He looked at a staffer behind him, and began to ask if he had seen Dan Russell that morning, when a voice came from the gallery.
"The gentleman from South Carolina has been disposed of too!"
At the first word, the doorkeepers and Capitol Hill police were on their way toward the man who had spoken, but they could not reach him before he tossed an object over the balcony. Congressmen ran from among the seats where it landed, but there was no explosion, and in another moment the man was restrained.
The Capitol Hill policeman who ran to the spot on the House floor found a yellowed human hand, crudely severed and glistening at the wrist.
~*~
September 17, 1993:
I feel no grief for Alan. His radicalism in college was more a vent for his rage than anything else. He was one of the most angry people I have ever known, yet was always the first to accuse other people of unreasoning anger.
I feel sorry for Judy, however. Her bewilderment must be overwhelming. I'm sure she must feel that she has gone insane. I liked her, yet I did this to her, and that knowledge is nothing I cannot endure.
Then there is—was—Sharla. What I did to her was cruel, unforgivable. Yet I feel little remorse. It's really very easy to bear. Sometimes I think I may be beyond remorse. I suppose I'll have to be. I loved her, yet I caused her a painful and violent death, made her last hours a nightmare she couldn't begin to understand.
I'm not sorry. It was something I had to do to protect myself and my plan.
What irony. In attempting to save humanity, I've lost my own humanity, which in turn enables me to destroy humanity.
But one more now. All I have time for, but it will be enough. Woody. The brightest of them, the one who found me out. This may be the hardest of all, but I have no doubt in my ability to do it. The only thing I doubt is Woody's ability. But from time to time, every man gets ma
d at his wife. Every father gets angry with his children.
Chapter 32
It was after midnight, and Woody Robinson was leagues and eons away from sleep. Both he and Tracy had heard the news about Alan, first from the TV and then from Curly, though what Curly said added nothing to their knowledge.
The facts were that Alan Franklin had gone into Congressman Daniel Russell's office for his 9:15 appointment, and had come out fifteen minutes later. When the secretary buzzed Russell to remind him that he was due on the House floor, there was no reply. She glanced into the office, saw no one, and assumed that Russell must have left through his private entrance. It was not until after the incident in the House Chamber that Russell's body was found behind his desk. His throat had been cut, and his right hand hacked off with a small Swiss Army Knife that lay open next to the body. Alan Franklin's fingerprints were all over the handle.
After killing the congressman, Alan had apparently hidden the hand inside his shirt. Naturally, it did not register on the metal detectors, and the guards, used to seeing Alan in the gallery, did not notice the extra inch of girth around his already substantial middle. Alan was being held in a federal maximum security facility north of the city, and, according to the news, had disavowed any knowledge of what he had done.
Tracy had become physically ill after hearing the story, and spent much of the evening lying down and getting up only to vomit. She finally took two sleeping pills, and was now asleep in their room. The children were sleeping too, but Woody was still awake, thinking. He had gotten a small .22 caliber revolver down from the back of a closet where it had sat for fifteen years, and had loaded it with bullets whose brass casings were still surprisingly shiny. His father had bought him the weapon when he moved to California, and had told him that he probably couldn't kill anybody with it, but it would make a lot of noise and could do a little damage.
Second Chance Page 25