Sooner Fled

by David L Thornburg

  “You have your keys on you?” he asked.

  “To what?”

  “Your church.”

  “The trace led to my church?”

  “Oak Valley Community. That you?”

  “Yes. And yes, I have the keys on me. I’ll open the door when we get there.”

  “Not a chance. You’ll give me the keys and I’ll drop you off at the police station. The only reason you’re in the car now is I didn’t want to have this argument before I was in motion.”

  I fought the urge to say too much. “I might be more help than you think. I have some law enforcement experience.”

  He groaned. “Teaching the Ten Commandments in Sunday School does not count as law enf…” He looked at me. “You’re not the WPP guy from Detroit, are you?”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking at the prairie speeding by out the window. Someone else now knew the secret. I should take out an ad in the Oak Valley Sentinel and get it over with.

  “Someone needs to review the concept of laying low with you. You smoked out that famous writer, and dealt with mob loan sharks, and that’s just the stuff I know about.”

  “Yeah,” I said again, for lack of a better response.

  Agent Long seemed to be thinking. He dodged a turtle in the road, fishtailing his back tires but quickly regaining control. “Look, what you did in Detroit was righteous, but I can’t let you expose yourself more than you already have. If that gang from up north finds out where you are on my watch, it’ll be double the paperwork.”

  He screeched to a halt in front of the police station, not more than a store front on Jackson Boulevard since our only lawman was Sheriff Harris.

  “Give me the keys,” he said, “and stay safe. Trust me. I’ve got this.”

  I put the keys in his outstretched palm and got out. His tires squealed as he left me on the curb.

  I looked around and did not see where we had attracted undue attention. I stepped backwards for a few paces then slipped into the alley between the police station and the hardware store. It was a shortcut that would get me to the church far faster than Agent Long.

  I approached the back of the church and went to the rear door of the Sunday School wing. At a meeting with the Building Committee last week, Chairperson Sally Jeffers droned on and on about repairs needed to the facility, and this back door being unable to lock securely drifted through the somnambulistic fog. “Any hooligan from the neighborhood could get in,” she said. And here I thought we were trying to get kids into church.

  I slipped in quietly. With me and Stephanie on the set most of the week, it was doubtful anyone was there, but I sidled along the hallway listening intently. No one in any of the classrooms. About halfway down the hall, I heard muffled voices, and saw the basement door ajar.

  I put my ear close to the crack and heard Anna’s voice. “Daddy’s not looking so good. Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what you know about the treasure?”

  “I told you what I know,” said Stephanie. “We looked all night. It’s not there. It probably isn’t even real. You didn’t have to drug him!”

  “I didn’t need him playing the hero.”

  “You wouldn’t know a hero if you wrote him yourself.” I think I loved her.

  Where was Agent Long? I looked down the hall. Through the shimmer of the ancient four-pane windows I saw his car parked on the street. Surveillance? Waiting on backup?

  Anna said, “I know that Whitefeather, or Whitecloud, or whatever his name is told you where to look. If you don’t want to share, I’m sure you will understand how I need you out of the way. It looks like the valve on the gas furnace is about redlined.”

  I couldn’t wait for Long. Thanks to my close attention to Mrs. Jeffers’ riveting discourse, I knew that the furnace would not take as long to blow as Anna probably thought. I was about to charge down the steps and overpower Anna, but I heard her say, “Kevin, are you ready to get out of here?”

  Kevin. Crap. I heard the furnace valve start a high-pitched whistle.

  I opened the door loudly and started down the stairs with my hands up. Kevin was holding a gun. Stephanie was tied to a chair with Anna standing over her, and William’s head was tilted at a disturbing angle. Everyone but William looked surprised at my bull in a china shop entrance. “You might as well tell her, Steph.”

  Stephanie’s eyes narrowed. “Tell her what?”

  I looked at Anna. “We found it last night. Whitecloud said it was $300,000 in bullion, worth about five mil by now. We just have to go get it. It’s in a tree on the west end of the battlefield.”

  “You’ve let the cat out of the bag now,” Stephanie said, playing along. “Untie us and we’ll show you where it is.”

  “OK,” said Anna. “Preacher, go back up the stairs and Kevin will bring your girlfriend and her daddy.”

  “Let them go first.”

  She took Kevin’s gun. “No, we’ll do it my way.” Kevin didn’t look too happy. The furnace was whining louder now. I hoped he kept his end of the bargain. I started up the steps, Anna close behind me. When I got to the ground floor, I would turn and get the gun from Anna. My foot stepped into the hall and I prepared to pivot.

  The butt of the gun crashed into my skull, bringing with it the flood of oblivion.

  I came to in the back seat of a car driven by Figueroa.

  Anna was looking at the side view mirror. “That’s a lot of smoke.”

  “It was an old wooden building. It’ll burn hot and leave nothing but ash.”

  I heard fire engine sirens as I slipped under again.

  “Which one is it, Reverend?” Anna’s voice scraped past the murkiness in my brain. She was shaking me as I tried to sit up. It was going to be important to keep my stories straight.

  “Not the tallest tree. The one next to it,” I said through the throbbing. “That’s where the treasure is hidden.” I got out of the car and stood unsteadily. Behind me I heard the crack of gunfire and shouting. I looked back and saw the 1st Kansas giving the Confederates hell. Off to the side I saw Carlin, the Assistant Director, looking at a monitor and issuing instructions through her headset. I was seeing either bravery or naked careerism.

  Figueroa was digging in the trunk of the car, and emerged with a small plastic container about the size of a pint milk carton and some wires. He started for the stand of trees. “This ought to do it.” As Anna watched him set the gunpowder charge at the base of the tree, I shuffled back to the still open trunk. The fuses were all gone, but there were two other packages of gunpowder, the explosion graphic clearly marked on the orange labels. I slipped one of them into my pants pocket.

  The other I put under the car, below the gas tank.

  I reached through the open passenger side window and grabbed Figueroa’s disposable lighter. I glanced at them. He was backing away from the tree, toward the car, unspooling the fuse wires as he went. Anna was watching him carefully, probably to ensure he did it correctly.

  The distant battle sounds wafted on the wind, like they surely did 150 years ago.

  I took a pocket knife and notched a hole in the bottom corner of the container I pulled from my pocket. I started a powder trail under the car and walked toward Anna and Figueroa, leaving a thin line on the ground.

  Anna noticed me. “Hold up, Preacher. That’s close enough.” She pulled her gun out of her blazer pocket to emphasize her point. Over her shoulder, she said, “Kevin, are we ready?”

  “Yes. The charge is big enough that it will bring the tree down, small enough that it shouldn’t be heard. If the gold is where he says it is, we should be able to grab it and go. Too bad about the parson is here, though.”

  Anna looked at me. “Yes, it is. Preacher, I need you to go stand by the tree. Hopefully, they will assume you set the charge and won’t even know to look for us.”

  She waved her gun.

  “Why do you think I will just walk over there?” I asked.

  “So courageous,” she said, “but you know you don’t
have much to live for since your girlfriend’s tragic death.”

  She was wrong. I wanted to live at least long enough to see her and Kevin blown to bits for what they did to Stephanie. Ten years on the streets of Detroit, I knew how vengeance worked.

  They went to the other side of the car, the fuse in Figueroa’s hand.

  I walked slowly to toward the tree, then paused and knelt. I flicked the wheel of the lighter and touched the flame to the trail of gunpowder.

  I stood and turned to face them. Cool guys may not look at explosions in the movies, but I needed to see this one. Behind Anna, Agent Long appeared, grabbing her gun.

  “Long!” I yelled, waving my hands. “Get away from the car!”

  Long threw Anna to the ground and rolled with her away from the car. Figueroa’s eyes were wide, and he instinctively pressed the detonator. Then he disappeared in flames as first the gunpowder then the gas tank exploded.

  The concussion took the ground from beneath my feet. As the impact vibrated through my body like I was hugging a jackhammer, I felt rather than heard the crack from the base of the tree. Flat on my back, I saw fire erupt from the top of the trunk.

  Colors danced before my eyes - green, brown, and purple. As they hit my face, I realized they weren’t afterimages of the explosions, but physical objects.

  I pulled one off my face, and Jefferson Davis was looking back at me.

  I watched as the Confederate paper money fluttered in the breeze, drifting across the field to rain down on the Battle of Honey Springs.

  Agent Long’s mouth moved like a guppy’s at the edge of the fishbowl. It looked like he was saying, “Thanks for the heads up!” but since I couldn’t hear anything, I couldn’t be sure.

  The silence soon changed to a shrill ringing. We were making progress. Still, my field of vision kept liquefying, like that Dali painting of the melting clocks.

  Images floated past my eyes, as if seen through a cracked window. Anna being helped into a black and white patrol car. Two fire engines spraying what was left of the stand of trees. EMTs gathering chunks of what used to be Kevin Figueroa. Scores of actors gathering Confederate greenbacks off the ground. Agent Long giving orders. Two OSBI agents looking at me, talking out of the corner of their mouths. Did they know who I really was? How long before the gang in Detroit found me? Stephanie getting out of a pickup.

  Stephanie.

  She ran toward me, followed by John Gray, a deacon in my church and friend. Oddly, the closer she got, the clearer my world became.

  I was sitting in the back door of an ambulance. She sat down and threw her arms around me.

  “I thought I lost you,” I said.

  “I thought I had lost you,” she said. “That was a crazy, idiotic, brave thing to do. I had it under control.”

  “I’m sure you did. How did you get out?”

  “Agent Long. He said he saw you being pushed out of the church and came in to investigate. If he hadn’t showed up when he did…”

  I didn’t want to think about that, anymore. It was all I had thought of since I got in Anna’s car.

  “How’s your dad?”

  “Grumpy and pissed off, but he will be fine. They’re keeping him at the hospital overnight. When he realizes what you did for us, you might finally have some goodwill there.” She grinned, and it was beautiful.

  “So,” I said. “Back to my question.”

  Her eyebrows raised.

  “If I had to leave, would you go with me?”

  She was quiet for several moments. Finally, she said, “It’s about honesty. Not just that you lied to me, I guess I understand that. But you still can’t be totally truthful in your life. If I’m with you, do I have to lie too?”

  “Today I want to say a few words about the most human of all characteristics. Prevarication. Mendacity. Lying.”

  On a hot Sunday morning, the congregation of Oak Valley Community Church was sitting on folding chairs, underneath the awning that protected the new vehicle inventory of Grey Auto Sales from Oklahoma hailstorms every spring.

  Around the corner was the charred cinder that was all that remained of the church building. It seemed that every time I met the eyes of Building Committee chairperson Mrs. Jeffers, her glare was enough to reduce me to ashes.

  “We’ve been doing it since Adam and Eve. We don’t have to be taught to do it. The youngest child soon learns it is a way to escape unpleasant consequences.”

  I saw Stephanie, in a pale yellow dress with her hair pulled back, sitting next to her father. I hoped with everything in me that she could see past the falsehood and know me for my true self. Whatever that was.

  “But I believe that our best bet is to be transparent, to each other and even ourselves. To somehow step beyond the self-interest and the defense mechanisms that throw up barriers between us. I look in the mirror as I say these words, because I know the truth is never easy. If it was, we would all do it.”

  So I stood in front of them, most having no idea about my truth. I was in the present, but the past was swirling around me.

  And the future was in front of me, moving, picking up speed, sometimes getting closer, sometimes farther away.

  Chapter 4

  Blessed are the Sleepers

  You don’t always know when it’s the last time you’re going to do something. It can be because of changing circumstances, unforeseen events, or hidden agendas. The last time I had dinner with Stephanie’s family, it was because the old man was going to die.

  Stephanie’s mother’s people were the Blazeks, from Czechoslovakia, and representatives from three generations were sitting in the cozy yellow dining room of the smallish post war cottage. We had finished the cabbage soup, and the table seemed to groan under the main course, roast pork with dumplings. Papa Damek, Steph’s grandfather, was lecturing.

  “Gulas is different than goulash, which is just Hungarian soup. My mother used to make a pot of gulas stew in the old country and it would last for days. The only woman who could rival it was my daughter, Vanda.” He looked at Stephanie. “God rest your mother’s soul.”

  Steph’s grandmother, Teodora, made the sign of the cross. Her Catholicism remained intact, but in the interest of assimilation Damek had contributed heavily to the construction of Oak Valley Community Church in the late 1960s. That was the church where Stephanie was the secretary and I was the pastor for the past six months, since the Witness Protection Program had deposited me in rural Oklahoma.

  Martinek, Stephanie’s cousin, had been doing the sullen teenager routine, and gulas seemed to rattle his cage. “Grandma’s cooking is good, too! And it’s not days old, either.”

  Grandma Teodora looked hurt. “Dat’s not what he meant, Marty.”

  “It’s just that he’s always going on about the old country, and the old days. If it was so great, why did he come over here?” Marty stood to leave the table.

  His father, Lekso, stopped him. “Sit down, Martinek. Schoolboys don’t have the right to show such disrespect.” There was a physical threat implied in his tone. I wondered if Marty had felt the sting of Lekso’s anger before.

  He sat. “I’m eighteen,” he muttered.

  “18!” Damek barked. “When I was 18, I was already running the family farm, and I had married my gorgeous bride.” He stroked Teodora’s hair. “I was a real man.”

  Damek looked at me. “Don’t get me wrong, …” He couldn’t remember my name.

  “Peter,” said Stephanie, helpfully.

  “Of course it’s Peter. I knew that.” Back to me. “Don’t get me wrong, … Reverend. I love America. It has been very good to me and my family. When they said they were sending Teo and I to America, we were so pleased.”

  Lekso was startled, his fork paused halfway to his mouth. “Dad, be careful.”

  “We had a successful business, plenty of food and clothing, and two beautiful children.” He looked at Stephanie. “Vanda, you grew up with so much more than I could have given you in Czechoslovakia.”
/>
  Stephanie said, “I’m not Mom, Grandpa. I’m Stephanie.”

  “Aunt Vanda is dead,” said Marty.

  Teodora, standing at the sink, slammed dishes down on the counter. “Enough!” All eyes were on her. I don’t think she was used to that. She fidgeted uncomfortably. “Lekso, take your father to bed. Make sure he takes his medicine.”

  Lekso shifted from the disciplinarian to obedient son. “Yes, mother. Marty, give me some help.”

  As they moved to help him from his chair, Damek focused on me. “They never called us.”

  “Dad, they don’t want to hear,” said Lekso, lifting him by the arm.

  As they led him out of the dining room, he said, “We were never summoned. They never called us.”

  We shared the awkward silence that followed, Stephanie and I with cooling roast pork at the table, Teodora busying herself at the sink.

  “He’s getting worse, Grandma,” Stephanie finally said. “I know he can’t be left alone. How much longer can you care for him without help?”

  Teo sat down with us. She sighed wearily. “Don’t vorry, Stephanie, I can still handle it. I don’t need an outsider to take care of my husband.”

  Stephanie raised her hands in surrender. “OK. Please let me know what I can do.”

  “Me, too,” I offered.

  “Such a sweet boy. Stephanie has been too long without a husband, you know. Are you going to fix this?”

  Stephanie’s cheeks glowed red. “Grandma!”

  “We’ll make sure you’re invited to the wedding,” I said, grinning.

  “You’d better.”

  Stephanie sunk into her chair. “Grandma, we should be going.”

  The kidding over, Teodora said, “Perhaps it’s for ze best.”

  “Can we help with dishes?”

  “Absolutely not. Cleaning up afterwards is part of hospitality.”

  “All right, but I know you won’t get any help from Uncle Leks and Marty.”

  “You two run along.”

  As we reached the door, Stephanie said, “Tell Aunt Sorina hello.”