A Final Broadside

by Buddy Worrell

  Ken nodded in agreement, and Dr. Benson continued. “I want you to concentrate on my special watch as it swings back and forth, to and fro. Can you do that?”

  Ken nodded again.

  “Now, Ken, I want you to think back to the day you had your vision. You were on your porch, the weather was perfect, and you were so relaxed. Do you feel it?”

  Ken nodded.

  “Ken, now I want you to close your eyes and remember that day and how you felt. Can you do that?”

  Ken nodded.

  “Ken, I am going to attach a blood pressure cuff to your arm and some electrical leads to your scalp that will give us an EEG. Is that okay?”

  Ken nodded slowly.

  “Do you remember the bees buzzing and the squirrels in the ash tree?”

  “Yes,” said Ken.

  “Ken, are you as relaxed as you were when you experienced your epiphany?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ken, what do you see now?” Benson asked, his voice encouraging.

  “I see my porch and the rocking chairs. It’s nice out today. I see the blue jays chasing squirrels in the ash tree at the end of our driveway.”

  Benson was furiously scribbling notes on a pad as Ken described the sights and sounds around his front yard.

  “Hold on,” Ken said. His face, totally relaxed a moment ago, now displayed a serious frown. “My house and driveway are gone. I don’t know this place,” Ken whispered. “I see a couple, Asian, maybe Korean. They are cold, wet, and afraid. The woman is Cambodian, and the man is North Korean, some sort of ambassador … maybe a spy? They seem afraid and look like they are trying to escape from somewhere. They are holding hands with each other and …”

  “And what, Ken?” Dr. Benson inquired.

  “They have a child, five years old maybe. It’s a boy. He is not scared. He is not afraid of anything. He is looking at me. I don’t like it! I don’t like him! I don’t know why. I want to leave!”

  “Ken, you will start returning to us. You will be refreshed and feel good, but you will remember what you saw and be ready to discuss. When I snap my fingers, you will be awake and alert. Are you ready to awaken?”

  Ken nodded, and Benson snapped his fingers. Ken’s eyes fluttered, and his head rolled back and forth. “So did I quack like a duck?” Ken asked with a laugh.

  “No, not at all, Ken,” Benson replied. “You did a fine job! It will take me several hours to score the tests and correlate the hypnosis with your EEG and other vitals that we were measuring. I should have all the results by this afternoon. One last thing before I let you go: do you remember the Asian family in your vision?”

  Ken frowned and looked away. “Yeah, I’m not sure where that came from,” he said quietly. “I know I have never seen any of those people before. That kid was weird, though.”

  “What was weird about him?” Benson asked carefully, remembering the strong reaction Ken had had toward the boy in his vision.

  “I like kids. I deal with kids all day at Tweetsie. But there was something wrong about this one. I sensed his lack of fear even though the man and woman seemed terrified. But the weirdest thing was I sensed a lack of a soul. I got the feeling we will meet in the future, and it will not be pleasant!” Ken turned to his mother and asked, “Mom, can I use the phone in your office? I want to call Donna. She needs to know what’s going on.”

  Sara nodded but warned him not to make any long-distance calls from the college phone. Ken waved her off and headed to Sara’s office. “Think I’ll call Dr. Ninomya in Japan?” he giggled.

  CHAPTER 18

  Ken raced down the corridor and up the stairs, then down another corridor to his mother’s office. It was small and cramped, just like the office of every assistant professor at Appalachian State. It contained a small, two-drawer wooden desk; two metal bookcases crammed full with books, journals, and periodicals; a squeaky wood chair that swiveled and rocked; a four-drawer metal file cabinet; a coat rack; and an overflowing wastebasket. On her desk was an old-fashioned blotter holding a large monthly calendar with notations covering almost every white space. A metal nameplate, a telephone, one picture of Ken Sr., one picture of Ken Jr., and an empty coffee cup served as her office decor.

  Ken dropped down into the wooden swivel chair, grabbed the phone, and dialed Donna’s home. She picked up on the second ring. “Hello? … Hello!” The second time was more insistent, as usual.

  “Oh, hi, Donna. It’s Ken,” he said.

  “Ken Hager, why do you do that to me every time you call? When I answer the phone, I expect to hear someone on the other end of the line, not just silence or breathing like it’s some pervert!”

  Ken couldn’t tell if she was mildly annoyed, really pissed off, or playing with him. “How could you blame any pervert for wanting to hear you say hello?” Ken cooed in his best imitation of the French actor Maurice Chevalier.

  Donna giggled at the very bad impression of a French accent and asked Ken why he had called. “Did you call just to irritate me or to tell me you can’t live without me?” Donna asked in mock disgust.

  “Neither,” Ken answered, “although I am having fun irritating you.” After a moderately long pause, Ken added, “And I really hate the idea of living without you.”

  Donna hung on Ken’s words for a moment and then asked playfully, “So what do you want to do?”

  “I want to take you to lunch. Mom’s got the car, so I will have to thumb over to your place, and we can walk over to the barbecue joint.”

  Donna piped in that she had a better idea. She could get her mom’s car and meet him at the university for lunch at one of the off-campus diners.

  “That sounds great,” Ken said. “Pick me up at the psychology building in ten minutes.”

  Soon Donna pulled up in her mother’s ’57 Chevy Bel Aire. Ken absolutely loved that car. It was a black two-door coupe with a small-block 283-cubic-inch V-8 engine, a four-barrel carburetor, and a three-speed manual transmission. Ken had offered to buy it from Donna’s mother many times, but she always refused, saying, “One day this will be a classic!”

  He knew she was right in her assessment, but whenever he saw her, he still asked, “When are you going to sell me that car?”

  Donna stopped at the curb in front of the psychology building, and Ken squeezed into the passenger side. “Can you put the seat back a little?” Ken begged.

  “You know I can’t reach the pedals if I do!” Donna exclaimed. “Wanna sit in the back?” she teased.

  “No, I wanna drive if you really must know what I wanna!” Ken retorted. They quickly traded places, and Ken was mercifully allowed to put the seat back until his frame was comfortably situated.

  Donna complained playfully that when he put the seat back so far, her legs stuck straight out and never touched the floorboards. They both laughed as Ken pulled the Chevy into first gear, gave it some gas, and eased off the clutch.

  “Man, that engine sounds good,” he said as the Detroit V-8 rumbled to life.

  After a quick five-minute ride, punctuated by multiple engine brakes—allowing the engine to slow the car and producing the most awesome Armageddon-like roar—Ken pulled up to an off-campus diner named the Mountaineer Restaurant.

  Ken parked the “classic,” and they entered the restaurant, where they asked to be seated in a back booth so they could talk.

  The waitress arrived with their menus, but Ken waved her off, indicating they were ready to order. “She will have the BLT club sandwich, easy on the mayo, on toasted whole wheat with a cherry-lemon 7 Up.”

  Donna smiled at the waitress and nodded her approval to Ken.

  “I will have the Mountaineer Burger all the way, a side of onion rings, and a chocolate shake.”

  Donna looked at Ken with mock disgust and said, “How can you eat that much? Who will I get to carry you out of here when we are fini
shed?”

  The Mountaineer Burger was the restaurant’s signature burger, consisting of three-quarters of a pound of ground chuck topped with two slices of American cheese, three slices of applewood-smoked bacon, a slice of onion, tomato, dill pickle chips, and shredded lettuce. The bun was the size of a small dinner plate and was garnished with mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup, and the entire sandwich was topped off with an over-easy fried egg.

  “How would you like that burger cooked, darlin’?” the waitress probed.

  “Medium-rare would be great!” Ken answered.

  The waitress turned to Donna and asked, “You want any fries or rings with that BLT club, sweetie?”

  Donna shook her head, and the waitress turned and walked toward the kitchen, calling back, “It will be about ten minutes, y’all.”

  The time passed quickly, filled with small talk, and suddenly, the waitress reappeared with a tray containing the orders. Both were hungry, and the BLT club and Mountaineer Burger were soon dispatched along with most of the onion rings and drinks.

  Ken looked up at Donna, who was waiting expectantly to hear what was so important. Ken had thought about how he was going to tell her the news about enlisting and had concluded that a frontal assault was the best tactic. No easing into the subject or dancing around the facts would be useful in this conversation. He reached across the table, grasped both of Donna’s hands gently, looked directly into her jet-black eyes, and told her the unvarnished truth.

  He was not going to State, he had enlisted in the navy, and he would be leaving for basic training at the Great Lakes Training Center outside of Chicago shortly after she left for Chapel Hill. His enlistment was for four years, but he hoped to make the navy a career.

  Donna’s eyes widened, glistened, and then closed as large tears rolled down her cheeks. She squeezed down on Ken’s hands, and without opening her eyes, she asked, “Are you breaking up with me?”

  Ken pulled his right hand loose from Donna’s grip and lifted her face toward him. “I don’t want to, but this obviously changes our relationship. This is a journey that I have to take. I am convinced of it! But I have no right to ask you to take it with me. Mom hates the idea, but she knows I have to do this for myself. Still, I don’t want the two most important women in my life to hate me. I can’t ask you to wait for me, and it is horribly unfair to tie you down while you are at Chapel Hill.” Tears were beginning to well up in Ken’s eyes, and he struggled not to openly weep.

  “What does this mean for us?” Donna pleaded as she cried softly.

  “I have an idea,” Ken offered. “Let’s take the next four months, you at Chapel Hill and me at Great Lakes, and pretend that I am at State. I will call you and write to you. You can call me and write to me too! You need to experience all that Carolina has to offer. I need to see if I am out of my mind, joining the navy. I already looked, and your first-semester classes are over on December 12. I graduate from Great Lakes on the fourteenth. I will send you a plane ticket to my graduation if you want to come. I want you to come! We can fly home together and spend all of the Christmas holidays together and plan what we do next … if you want to have a ‘next.’ What do you think?” Ken asked, feeling like he was begging.

  “I think I am in love with you, you big ox! I don’t want to be without you in my life.”

  Ken felt himself shaking in response to her powerful words of connection and commitment. He held her hands again and looked into her eyes and said, “I think I am in love with you too, you tiny elf! I don’t want to be without you in my life either.”

  The emotion was intense and almost overwhelming for them both. Donna was squeezing Ken’s hands so tightly that he was beginning to lose feeling in them. They looked into each other’s eyes once more with an obvious look of love, only to be interrupted by the waitress.

  “Y’all want some banana puddin’ for dessert?”

  CHAPTER 19

  By two thirty in the afternoon, Edward Benson had finished scoring the various tests and psychological instruments Ken had completed. He had combined the log of the hypnosis session with Ken’s vitals, the EKG, and the EEG, thereby giving him a window into Ken’s mind and psyche. The results were extraordinary, and Benson checked them again before calling Sara to join him in the laboratory. He reached Sara in her office just as Ken joined her there, having returned from lunch. Sara wanted answers, but Benson said he wanted to present his findings in person, with both Sara and Ken present. Sara said they would come to the lab immediately and hung up.

  “Your eyes are red, honey. Are you all right?” Sara asked.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” Ken said. “Donna and I had lunch today, and I told her about my decision to enlist.”

  Sara held her son’s arm and asked, “So I take it the discussion did not go well?”

  “Actually, it was good, and I think we will be all right. I sure want it to be all right!” Ken whispered. “I’ll tell you about it later. I want to know what the headshrinker found out about me.”

  Dr. Benson was waiting for them at the lab door and smiled broadly as Sara and Ken approached. “How was lunch, Ken?’ Benson asked.

  “We went to the Mountaineer, and I had my usual,” Ken answered.

  “Have you ever tried that enormous hamburger with the bacon, cheese, and fried egg? That monster could feed three people!” he exclaimed.

  “Add an order of onion rings and a chocolate shake, and that would be my usual,” Ken admitted.

  Benson stood in amazement and finally uttered, “I am impressed!”

  Sara rolled her eyes and told Dr. Benson that her grocery bill looked more like she was running a six-room bed-and-breakfast than just feeding two people. “He is still growing even at eighteen years old! Look at those khakis. They look like high-water pants!” she exclaimed.

  “Just a growing boy,” Ken joked.

  Benson motioned for them to sit down at a conference table, where he had all of the tests, instruments, and physical readings laid out. After they were seated, Benson began. “What I would like to do is dwell less on the tests and more on the conclusions. Agreed?”

  Ken and Sara nodded.

  “The tests and instruments tell me that you are a well-adjusted young man with an admirable IQ of 135. That means that you are extremely intelligent and capable of high levels of learning and achievement. Your math and spatial relations aptitudes are at the top of the charts. Your communication and interpersonal relationships aptitudes are in the seventy-fifth percentile of your age group.”

  “What does that mean?” Ken interrupted.

  “It means you are really adept in math and engineering and not too shabby in English, communication, and interpersonal proclivity!”

  “So Ken is very intelligent and has great aptitude in math. What are we missing?” Sara pressed.

  “The tests also show that Ken is extraordinarily sensitive to verbal and nonverbal cues presented by other people. Even more extraordinary is that he is apparently highly sensitive to both visible and invisible cues from his environment,” Dr. Benson concluded.

  Sara and Ken looked at each other without speaking.

  “Take a look at these charts from the EEG and EKG while Ken was under hypnosis. See how his heart rate slows to less than forty beats per minute? And look at how his blood pressure dips to dangerous levels, yet Ken was never in cardiac distress. On the EEG tracings, see how the beta brain waves give way to an abundance of alpha waves? Look at the alpha wave frequency. I have never personally witnessed this, although I have read about it.”

  “Okay, so what does that mean?” Ken asked firmly. He was beginning to feel like Dr. Benson was talking about him like he was not in the room.

  “Ken, it means that at times, like when you are in a deep, relaxed state such as hypnosis, or when you are in a particularly stressful situation such as on the Arizona, you have the ability to essentially l
eave your body and perceive and even communicate with things or entities outside of our plane of existence. You are so attuned to the other spectrums of existence, you can exist in that plane for a short period of time and interact within that plane. Certain yogis in India and Buddhist monks in Nepal have achieved this control over their bodies and minds after a lifetime of practice and meditation. You seemed to have inherited it!”

  “You’re telling me that I am abnormal?” Ken asked.

  “Absolutely not! ‘Abnormal’ is an unfortunate word that has come to mean ‘less than’ normal. In your case, I would refer to you as paranormal,” Benson responded.

  Sara looked at her son and then at Dr. Benson and asked, “What does this mean in regard to Ken having a normal life?”

  Benson mulled the question and responded, “Ken should expect to have a normal and healthy life punctuated by paranormal perceptions and preternatural capacities. He will see things we don’t see, hear things we don’t hear, and communicate with others on multiple planes of existence. In conclusion, his life will be rich, full, and never dull!”

  As Sara and Ken rode home, Ken asked his mother what was for supper. Sara could not help but wince. “After all that happened today, the first question you have for me is what is for supper?”

  Ken smiled and answered, “That is the only question to which I might get a straight answer.”

  Sara looked over at her son and said, “I know Dr. Benson can be a little obtuse, but I think I understand you better now than I did before. What he was trying to say is that you have both a gift and a curse, and it is you who will decide which one it is and how you are going to use it … Now tell me about lunch with Donna.”

  Ken squirmed a bit.

  “I don’t need to know all the details!” Sara said.

  Ken relaxed and told his mother about his and Donna’s discussion. He explained that they wanted to stay a couple, but they would only try it while he was in basic and she was in her first semester, to see how it worked.