What follows on this and some subsequent posts, is the prologue and first few chapters of a story I was working on..scratch that. This is one of those on which I claim to be still working. Granted, I've not touched it in about two years or more, but I'm still working! please let me know what you think. The title, "Departure," is not intended as the real title of the thing. I can't very well title it if I don't know what it will end up being about. It is simply there to differentiate this story from any others I post here in the future.
Please ignore the problems with the spacing
Please ignore the problems with the spacing
Prologue
Let us peek, for a moment, into the warm, lighted windows of small town America, where seldom is heard a disparaging word, and no one’s perverted or gay.
Or so they tell us...
And for the most part, they say true. Here, for example, is a tiny lot at the corner of Third Avenue and Morgan Street, where sits a small but tidy two bedroom rental house with a rusty green swing set in the front yard. Painted light blue with white trim, the house is a spot of summer sky on a dull autumn evening. A chill breeze lifts a few dead leaves in the fading light, and scatters them across the flagstone sidewalk. Overhead, the naked branches of towering maple trees lining the street rattle lightly. Yellow light spilling from the kitchen window reveals a few plastic Fisher-Price toys scattered on the leaf-strewn grass and a rake propped against one of the trees, abandoned at the call of supper. This is a house in the kind of town where you can lean a rake against a tree in your front yard of an evening and expect to find it waiting for you the next afternoon when you come home from work. This is a house in the kind of town where people still rake their own leaves in the fall, and burn them in mounds on their front lawns.
Up to the kitchen window we creep, and within we see the subject of many a painting and poem. Here is a modest kitchen, with a modest table, and upon it a meal, modest, yet adequate. For no articulate reason, we get the impression that the five people gathered around the table are basically happy—the type of family that millions of others would like to be. We get the impression that, while they don’t always get what they want, the children around the table have enough of what they need.
This is the small town America we see on the front old copies of the Saturday Evening Post. The man at the head of the table, his head bowed in prayer even as we watch, still wears his work shirt, a dark blue button-down with a Harville Borough Police patch on the left shoulder and a shiny silver badge on the left breast. It is completely unbuttoned to reveal a brown undershirt and a slight paunch in his middle-aged middle—quite understandable to us as we bask in the aroma of his wife’s cooking. Before him sits a frosty mug and a single bottle of Budweiser, his once-weekly indulgence in the stuff to celebrate the five o’clock whistle on Friday. On Sunday morning, Ted Spence will round out his weekend as the head usher at Harville United Methodist Church.
We get the feeling that nothing, not even the growing pile of bills on the kitchen countertop, could trouble this man at such a perfect moment. But will aught weigh on his heart while he listens to the Reverend Johnson’s sermon two mornings hence? Will he be paying a fine to a higher moral authority when he tosses an extra five in the offering plate? Does Officer Theodore Spence have any naughty little secrets? Occasional extended lunch breaks at the home of Dylan “Twinkerbelle” Meadows, the liquor store clerk...or perhaps he has a liking for meat a little less aged. If his wife checked his cell phone, might she find her sister’s number coming up a little too frequently? Maybe. A cynic would say more than likely. We like to think not, for we have seen a more than a few of the great evils that lurk in the hearts of men, and we like to think of Ted Spence as one of the good guys, a symbol of what small town life should be, a beacon of warm light on a cold dark sea. It just feels right.
Let us leave these good people to their meal and travel onward, secure in our belief that Norman Rockwell’s vision still draws breath. That which we come to see lies not with the Spences anyway.
Down Third we go, toward Main, where we bear witness to the comings and goings of people not yet home for the evening meal. Those on foot are bundled in medium jackets against the November chill. Farmers & Merchants Bank is just closing up for the evening, but a few of the gift shops catering to the fall tourist crowd are still open, hoping to make a few last sales before day is done. Far down to our left we see the Victorian mansion of The Pioneers’ Inn all aglow with warm yellow radiance, and across the street is old Mrs. Fitch walking her prized schnauzer along the edge of Miller Park.
It is in this direction we must go, but we don’t stop to visit at the Inn, inviting as it is. Passing by the Harville Diner, though, we cannot help but linger for a moment while Mrs. Guthrie, a large woman sporting a cane, a prunish scowl, and a quilted flannel shirt with a few patched holes, waits for her husband to finish parking their old brown Buick. These good folks have come into town from their farm every Friday evening for the last fifty three years to have dinner, except a few times when there was too much snow, and once the week their son Daniel was born.
“It’s cold old out here. Hurry up,” she says as he walks around the corner.
“I’ll be along, Mom,” he replies. “These old knees ain’t what they used to be, you know.”
“Oh, Melvin, quit your bellyaching,” she shoots back.
As he opens the door for her like he always has, she gives him a coy little smile that no one else can see, the smile she keeps just for him. Here is a couple still very much in love after all those years together, and if you don’t catch the little smiles she darts at him, just look at the way she wears his fuzzy flannel shirt as proudly as she wears his name—it is a badge of honor, complete with his farmer smell and the plaid tartan pattern of his Scottish forbears. The life they have shared is one shared utterly, and faced together in all of its ups and downs—the good, the bad, and the ugly. They are true soul mates, these two, and each would be lost without the other.
We are tempted to slip inside and sit with them awhile, but alas, we must be traveling on, for there is someone we must find.
We must put the light of downtown Harville behind us as we cross the Lacawaxen river and the railroad tracks. We take a left and follow South Street along the river, where a large building of corrugated metal, painted white, with a peaked roof and a tall, pointed spire on top, marks the edge of the town’s low-rent district. About ten years ago, the Assembly of God church bought this lot at the corner of South and Main, and there erected a large tent that some of the locals referred to as “The Church Under the Big Top—Come One, Come All!” The steepled warehouse building we see here now is surely a sign of progress.
We do not stop here, but continue along South Street. About a quarter mile on, we find a house that strikes our interest. Light shines out at us from a bare upstairs window. We’ve a few minutes to spare, so out of curiosity and nothing more, we have a look.
What we see inside is touching, in a way, if not exactly warming like what we saw downtown. It is a room painted a shade of light yellow that was surely meant to be cheery, but now seems gaudy and false. A border of Raggedy Ann and Andy rims the top edge of the wall. The room is small, but it is big enough for a twin bed, an antique bureau with a mirror on top, and a matching desk. Next to the closet door there are a few old toys and a dollhouse, now covered with a light coat of the dust of disuse.
In the bed is a child of no more than fourteen years with matted, unwashed orange hair. She rests quietly beneath a bulbous mountain of threadbare quilt, a thermometer protruding from her lips. We would think her asleep if not for her pale hand idly stroking the bulging pile of blankets on her middle as if it were a...
As if it were a womb.
Stunned for a moment, we barely notice the door as it squeaks open and a large man with a pinched face and close-cropped, thinning gray hair enters the room. He is wearing faded, baggy overalls and a stained white t-shirt, and in his hands he bears a steaming bowl of broth. A single brass key on a ring dangles from one of his fingers. He sets the bowl on the nightstand and drops the key into his pocket, then heaves such a ponderous sigh as he sits down on the edge of the bed that we can smell the Beefeater rolling off him in waves, even through the dirty glass of the window. He pulls the thermometer from her mouth, frowns, and squints at it as the girl opens her eyes and glances at him.
“Thank you, Daddy,” she says, studying the pattern of he quilt instead of meeting his eyes.
He picks up the bowl and spoon. “That’s a good girl,” he says as he spoons the thin soup into her mouth.
We begin to turn away from this tender moment, for it will soon be time to meet our real quarry, when something pulls us back to the window.
The father stands to leave and bends down to place a tiny kiss on his daughter’s forehead. With his knuckle he caresses her cheek as he puts a peck on the tip of her button nose, then one on her lips, where—and this must surely be our imagination—he seems to linger for just a second. He pulls away, and then once more he leans his steely stubbled face in toward hers. We see his lips touch hers and then—Oh gods, no!—we see them part wide as she squeezes silent tears from her closed eyes.
Too much. We want to flee in disgust, but cannot pull away as we watch him caress his lecherous old hands over her bulging middle. His fingers move to pull the old quilt away from her chin and reveal her white flannel pajamas. She stifles a sob as he, now with a vacant look in his eyes and a bulge in his crotch, undoes a button and reaches a rough hand inside to squeeze her swollen young breast. He stands and reaches for the straps of his overalls, and—
—and with a tremendous last effort we are finally able to wrench ourselves away from this ugly scene.
How can such a thing be? The agony tears at our heart. Oh, that we could erase our memory, and forget the hateful sight that has so seared our eyes! The image of a childhood stolen, a flower defiled by a swarthy piece of human shit has branded itself into the backs of our eyelids. The overwhelming sense of abject wrongness assails us, for surely there must be some law of Nature, some divine Justice that prevents men such as this from existing in a place like Harville. Surely, somewhere along the way we must have strayed across some imaginary line and gone from happy Harville into some sick demented dimension where evil governs night and day.
We sit for a while in the street, unable to stop thinking of what we have witnessed. Minutes tick by in silence. We are drawn back to awareness by the cacophony of four different church clocks chiming the nine o’clock hour. Where has the time gone? A flash of dim green light and a sound that is not a sound draw our attention up the street. Remembering our errand, we whisk away in that direction, hoping we have not idled too long and missed what we have come to see this night.
We sit for a while in the street, unable to stop thinking of what we have witnessed. Minutes tick by in silence. We are drawn back to awareness by the cacophony of four different church clocks chiming the nine o’clock hour. Where has the time gone? A flash of dim green light and a sound that is not a sound draw our attention up the street. Remembering our errand, we whisk away in that direction, hoping we have not idled too long and missed what we have come to see this night.
Through a small but dense stand of trees we fly, toward the backyard of a dirty white house with a rickety wooden outdoor staircase leading up the side from a narrow alley to the second floor. By the dim light of a crescent moon, we see bits of trash and broken toys and small piles of dog shit in various stages of decay littering the sparse lawn, which is little more than hard-packed dirt. A rusty clothesline carousel squeaks in the chill breeze.
All at once the air stands still, and we hear the sharp crunch of pebbles under heavy boots. The steps are uneven, as if from a limping gait.
In the dim light we can see only shadows as a tall figure eases around the corner, furtive, but not in any great hurry. It appears to be a tall man, broad at the shoulders, wearing all black. From our angle, his face is obscured by a large cloak-wrapped bundle slung over his shoulder. We hear his scuffling feet and the grunt of a straining male voice as he bends low and sets his burden on the rough ground under the staircase.
He sits down in the shadow of a plastic trash can with his back to the wall. The bundle, we can see now, is the body of a young man of about twenty, unconscious, with his head cradled in the dark man’s lap. The black cloak has been arranged like a blanket and pulled up to the young man’s chin.
Silent, the man sits in the darkness for some minutes and seems to fade backward into the shadows. He is so motionless he seems to become a shadow himself, but for the occasional cloudy puff of breath that rises from where he sits.
Another set of footsteps echoes from the other end of the alleyway alongside the house, and another figure appears. This one is also clothed in black—a heavy sweatshirt and black denim—but without a cloak, and shorter than the other.
“Here, my friend,” rumbles the dark man in a quiet bass tone. He is very gentle as he sets his charge’s head on the ground and rises to his feet.
“How is he?” asks the newcomer in the voice of a young man. We can hear the genuine concern in his voice. Then, “fuck, it’s cold out here.”
“Oh, he’ll be fine, no problem there,” replies the larger man. “My back, on the other hand...” He rolls his shoulders forward in a stretch. “I’m getting too old for this sort of thing.”
“Yeah, your limp seems a little worse,” says the other. “You never did tell me how you got that.”
“That’s right, I didn’t,” replies the man. “Anyway, it’s just the cold and the old getting to me. An injury from my younger days.”
“So how old are you, anyway?” asks the one in jeans. “Or is that something else I shouldn’t bother asking?”
“Too old and too tired for wasting time,” replies the deeper voice with an air of finality that rings as clear as day through the dark of the night. The man sounds tired for certain, but not old. “Anyway, you can ask anything you want. Just don’t expect to get all the answers.”
“Yeah, sure,” replies the younger man, dancing his feet in place and balling his fists into his armpits for warmth. “Look, I appreciate your people saving my ass and giving me this job, I really do. I mean, I didn’t have much of a life to look forward to before, so disappearing off the map wasn’t a big stretch for me. But my friend is lying here unconscious in a shithole alley in a shithole town and nobody’ll tell me why. Hell, I don’t even know who it is I’m working for. I’m starting to get a little tired of doing shit and not being told why. I mean, am I into some kind of spy shit or something?”
“First of all, your job is not hard, believe me. You watch, you report, you help when you have to. That’s it. Second of all, you work for me, and as long as the paychecks keep coming, what do you care?”
“Because this is my friend!” growls the shorter man.
“Peace, D.J.,” placates the older. “His life means more to me than you can possibly understand. Look, in two years, have you been steered wrong?”
“No,” admits D.J. with a grumble.
“Then please, just trust me. You’ll get more answers in time, but most of them you’re just not ready to hear. And no, this is not some kind of spy shit.” Changing the subject, he hands the younger man a small baggie. “He had this in his pocket.”
“Damn, this looks like coke. I thought he gave this shit up,” says D.J.
“Apparently not.”
“Yeah, I see. So what am I supposed to do?” he asks as he opens the baggie and upends it. The contents sprinkle out and stick to a tuft of frosty grass, making it seem to glow in the dim moonlight.
“Well, that’s a good start,” says the man with a not of approval. “Besides that, do just as you have been. Stay behind the scenes. Look out for him. Help him out when you can.”
“But don’t let him know.”
“Right. You're dead, remember. For now. Soon, though, you’ll be able to tell him what you know. Only a couple more days, in fact. You’ll know when the ball starts rolling. Then begin his adventures—and yours.”
“Gee, I can’t wait,” says D.J.
“I’m counting on you, my young friend,” says the man, laying a gentle hand on D.J.’s shoulder. “And so is Sleeping Beauty here, though he doesn’t know it. I will tell you that there are forces that wish to stop him from fulfilling his destiny, and that cannot be allowed. That will undo everything, quite literally.”
“His destiny?” asks D.J. with a raised eyebrow.
Ignoring the question, the man reaches into a pouch attached to his belt, and pulls out a folded packet of paper. “Here are your instructions. You won't need much in the way of money from here on in, at least not around these parts. This is the last time I’ll see you like this. Luck to the Worthy, my friend.”
“Yeah. Sure. Fortune to the Bored.”
“The Bold.”
"Yeah, whatever. What about your cloak?” says D.J., bending down for it as the man turns away.
“Hold onto it. One of you will need before I will.”
With that, the man disappears around the corner. A few seconds later we see a flash of dim green light that is punctuated by a dull thump in the air. It is not quite a sound to be heard, but more a shockwave that is felt in the ears and registered in the brain.
“I wish I knew what the hell he does when he does that,” mumbles D.J. to himself, crinkling his nose against the faint tang of ozone.
He bends down to the figure on the ground. “Okay, buddy. Let’s get you inside where it’s warm.” He drags the figure into a sitting position and then heaves him over his shoulder into a fireman’s carry.
“Boy, you sure haven’t lost any weight, have you?”
No answer.
Gripping the peeling railing with one hand and steadying his load at the knees with his other, D.J. begins to climb the stairs.
“Dass okay, I gotcha. Naw, he ain’t heavy. He m’brotha. Unh.”
This is greeted with a gurgling groan and a flooding warmth as the man he is carrying spews the contents of his stomach down D.J.’s back.
“Yeah, I love you too, man.” grumbles D.J. as he pushes open the door to the upstairs apartment.
“Dude, when was the last time you cleaned this—”
The rest is lost to us as D.J. carries his friend inside and kicks closed the dingy white door.
* * *
“Was that him?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
Silence.
“I only ask because—”
“It is him.” The man had a strange, clipped accent and a voice like rusty scissors on aluminum foil. “The last time an agent missed his mark, Julius used him to...instruct the rest of us on why we should not fail him.”
“Right.” said his companion. “Well, I don’t know who this Julius guy is, but what I was going to say is that I’ve seen your mark around town. He don’t seem dangerous to me. I was just wondering if maybe—”
Mr. Accent snatched the other man’s collar and jabbed a finger into the muscle on the side of his neck. “The only danger you need to worry about is me! It is not your place to wonder, nor to question, nor to offer your advice,” he snapped. His finger was hard and smooth, like polished silver, and the cold of it stung the man’s skin. “You are here as a courtesy. You are a local guide and nothing more. You will give information when needed, and help when ordered. When I’m done, you will be paid your wage. Do you understand?” He drove each point home by driving the point of his finger deeper into the man’s flesh.
“Yeah. Sure. Fine.” sniveled the man. His breath turned to quick bursts of steam, bright against the dark of night. Despite the cold, a thin sheen of sweat gleamed on his face in the scant moonlight.
“Good. Now let us get out of here. I have plans to make.”
“We’re not going to go get him?”
“We will wait until he is alone,” replied Accent.
“But it’s only—”
Accent cut him off with a sharp look.
“Hey, you’re the boss,” said the man with hands raised. After a few moments, he ventured, “I, uh...I think I know a guy who can get us close.”
After a pause, the accented man said, “Fine. You will take me to this man.”
Without another word, the man rose to his feet and moved off down the street. The flapping of his long coat tails was the only sound of his passage through the night. He did not need to look behind him to know the other would follow.
