This Changes Everything

by Darrell Maloney

  She’d expose herself as a coward, and show everyone she wasn’t the only one in the family with morals. She’d show the whole world she was just as dishonest as everyone else who bore the family name.

  “Honey, I’m not afraid of these guys. I can handle myself. I’m telling you that because I don’t want you to use my possible death as an excuse to do something you’re not comfortable doing.

  “Having said that, the decision is totally yours. Just let me know which way you want to go.”

  That was a week before, just a couple of days after they discovered the snow pack had shrunk a bit.

  Frank knew she was struggling.

  He wanted to reach out and hold her. To make it better.

  Heck, what he wanted to do was to make the decision for her. But he was a man of his word. She would be the one most affected by the consequences, whatever they were.

  It just wouldn’t be fair for him to make the decision for her.

  Today Eddie was taking his afternoon nap.

  It was one of the few times each day when the pair could sneak off into the dark recesses of the building without wondering whether Eddie was stalking them.

  And eavesdropping.

  Frank was sitting in a recliner, dangerously close to nodding off himself.

  Josie came and took his hand and tugged.

  Frank did what good husbands always do when their wives try to lead them away from something they really want to do.

  He went.

  She led him into the darkened warehouse and up the main aisle.

  They found a quiet place to talk.

  She said, “I don’t want to tell them, Frank. It’s just too risky.

  “I know you think you’re tougher than all of them put together and you might well be. But some of them aren’t in their right minds, and Stacy still has designs on getting you back.”

  “She never had me.”

  “Oh, I know. But in her mind you belong to her. If I told her you were leaving, and I was going with you, she might shoot both of us out of spite.

  “Frank, it’s just not worth the risk. We’ll keep a close eye on the snow, and when it’s safe to leave we’ll sneak out the back door late at night. I’ll leave a note on my pillow that explains everything.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? That’s it? Okay? I expected you to argue, or… something. And all you can say is okay?”

  “I told you, this was your decision to make. And that I would abide by it no matter what you decided.”

  “I know you said that. But I didn’t think you actually meant it.”

  “I actually meant it.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned, Frank.”

  “About what?”

  “I think I’ve finally met a man who says what he means and means what he says.”

  “Oh, don’t fool yourself, baby. There are a lot of us out there. Just not very many named Dykes.”

  -30-

  It was done. The decision was made.

  It was time to start putting their escape plan into motion.

  Of course, it would be months before they could actually make their move.

  But that didn’t mean they couldn’t start their preparations.

  Frank was convinced that gathering provisions would be the riskiest part of their plan.

  On “go night,” merely walking out of the building would be as easy as opening one of the doors on the far side of the building and slipping through it.

  That would be the easiest part of their plan.

  The problem was they’d have several other critical tasks to perform before that night, to make sure their getaway was a success.

  “Critical” because failure to perform such tasks, and to perform them well, might turn their escape into a double suicide.

  The tasks would have to be performed under the noses of Josie’s relatives.

  One slip-up would expose their plan and incur the wrath of the family.

  It might not bode well for Frank.

  For while they’d never dream of harming Josie, most of the Dykes family regarded Frank as expendable.

  Discovering their escape plan would enable them to claim to Josie they were right from the beginning.

  “We told you he was just using you,” they’d tell her. “He pretended to fall in love with you just so he could convince you to help him escape. It was all a ruse, right from the start. He wanted you to help him set up his escape and go with him. Just so he could leave you on the side of the road dead somewhere.”

  In all probability their words would fall on deaf ears.

  In all likelihood Josie wouldn’t believe them. And Frank wouldn’t be allowed to argue in his own defense, for surely they’d knock him cold or hold a gun to his head and tell him to shut up when he tried.

  They likely wouldn’t convince anyone with their arguments that Frank had ill intents since day one.

  But that wouldn’t matter.

  The failed escape attempt would make it easier to shoot Frank dead in front of Josie. They might even do it while they were next to one another so he fell dead at her feet.

  Once he was dead her argument to save him would be moot. And their argument would be stronger, for it would no longer face any opposition.

  “We’re sorry we had to do that,” they’d tell a furious and heartbroken Josie. “But you weren’t thinking straight because you were in love.

  “In time you’ll heal and will understand we killed Frank to save your life.”

  They’d discussed this scenario many times and knew it to be a very real possibility.

  Frank and Josie had discussed it, that is.

  The Dykes hadn’t discussed it because they had no clue their Josie had any plans to escape.

  It was imperative that Josie and Frank keep them in the dark.

  They tended to disappear into the bowels of the darkened warehouse each afternoon when Crazy Eddie took his daily nap.

  Josie passed it off to her brothers as hers and Frank’s only chance to have some privacy and time to themselves.

  And they accepted that, for everyone knew how much Eddie liked to follow people around and make a pest of himself.

  So Josie’s claims of a need for alone time with Frank were valid and indeed not a lie.

  Only Josie and Frank knew the other part of it though: that disappearing into the darkened and sprawling facility gave them a chance to work on their escape plans a little bit each day.

  Without having to watch over their shoulders for a nosy Eddie watching their every move and then reporting their behavior to everyone else.

  Eddie wasn’t a bad man, but he was damaged. His mind was gone. They’d tried trusting him once when they told him they’d fallen in love.

  They’d sworn him to secrecy; told him how important it was that he not tell anyone else.

  They’d secured his promise to keep it to himself.

  And within an hour everyone else in the building knew about it.

  So no, Eddie wasn’t a bad man. He was flawed, like every other human being, but worse so because of the damage his brain had suffered.

  His heart was in the right place, yet he couldn’t be trusted with a secret.

  That’s why Josie and Frank had to work so hard to avoid him while they were doing their thing.

  On this particular day they were making their way to the northeast side of the building.

  That was where Frank had left his Hummer the day he arrived with John and Jason.

  He remembered tossing the keys at his feet just before he was forced from the vehicle at gunpoint.

  They’d still be there, he knew, because the top of the Hummer was one he and Josie had seen peeking out of the top of the snow cover a few days before.

  If the Hummer was still there it meant nobody had found it, for surely they’d have driven off in it.

  Frank explained his plan for the day in a whisper as they stole down the main aisle.

  “One of the best things about a Humm
er is its ability to start easily. Even in cold weather.

  “That’s because it has an extra battery under the hood.

  “It’s because of that extra battery I think it’ll start, even after sitting under all that snow for several months.”

  “Frank, we can’t leave. The snow’s way too high and we’re not ready yet.”

  “I know, honey. But it’s important we run it occasionally before the batteries do go dead, and they eventually will.

  “If we run it occasionally we can keep them charged. And on ‘go day’ we won’t have to worry about it not starting.”

  -31-

  They made their way to a door midway on the east side of the building.

  The overhead door had a very large “31” painted on it in black block numbers.

  If it wasn’t eternally in the dark, the number would have been visible a hundred yards away.

  The walk-though or personnel door next to it was designated door number 32.

  The number on this door was much smaller, much less visible.

  Like all the other personnel doors in the building, this was easily opened by pressing on its emergency exit bar. Or, as it was more commonly known in the industry, a “panic bar.”

  Frank and Josie were quite good at making their way through the darkened warehouse now. They’d gone into the interior of the building at least twice a day for weeks. They no longer needed lights which would give away their location.

  Only Eddie could navigate the darkness as well as they could.

  And Eddie was taking his afternoon nap.

  Door 32 appeared to be welded closed. It had seven very ugly spot welds in various locations around the door’s metal surface.

  But that was a deception which only Frank and Josie knew about. No one else knew that when Frank placed the spot welds he’d propped the door open and allowed just a hint of daylight between the phony weld and the door frame.

  There was just barely enough space to allow the door to open and close, but to the layman looked like every other door on that side of the building.

  Which really were permanently welded shut.

  Once they were in place they listened for a couple of minutes.

  They knew that while Eddie was able to navigate the darkness of the facility, he was incredibly noisy as he did so.

  He dragged his feet and he occasionally stumbled, for Eddie was a rather clumsy fellow.

  The big “tell,” though, was the humming.

  Eddie had a habit of softly humming under his breath. It was a nervous habit he generally had no control over, and most of the time he wasn’t even aware he was doing it.

  But Frank and Josie could hear it fifty yards away.

  It was how they knew whenever Eddie was following them, trying to spy on them. Or trying to sneak up on them so he could jump out at them and yell “Boo! Got ya!”

  That was one of his favorite children’s games.

  Satisfied he was still in his recliner in the common area, Frank slipped quietly through Door 32.

  Just outside the door a steel staircase led down to the ground, and to the concrete pad which surrounded the building.

  The staircase was painted bright yellow, called “safety yellow” in the industry, and was once used by truckers to carry their paperwork into the building after they’d backed their rigs up to the loading dock.

  The staircase, like everything else, was covered with over three feet of snow.

  But not for long.

  Frank plowed hard into the snow bank, shoving it to the side as he barreled his way through.

  Had the doors not been welded shut he’d have been taking a terrible risk, for all anyone had to do was open a door on that side of the building, anytime between now and the thaw. They’d be able to plainly see that someone had exited the building and fought their way down the staircase to gain access to the vehicle hidden beneath the snow.

  Thanks to Frank’s door-sealing project, though, that was no longer possible.

  He made his way around the vehicle and to the dual exhaust pipes, and then used his arms to shove the fluffy stuff away from them.

  He couldn’t clear all the snow away. There was just too much of it, and no place to put the excess.

  But he provided a good eighteen inches from all sides of the exhaust pipes and knew the heated air emanating from them would eventually melt the rest away.

  Once the exhausts were clear he crawled into the driver’s seat and reached down between his feet for the keys.

  Frank had a bad dream several days before, in which he went out to the Hummer to find that the keys were missing. He’d awakened in a sweat, because he knew he had no backup plan for getting away.

  He knew the dream was illogical, but he’d worried since then about the keys.

  He could stop worrying.

  The keys were there, right where he left them. They were icy cold, but then again he expected them to be.

  He inserted the key into the ignition and held his breath.

  He turned the key and the big engine roared to life after just a couple of seconds.

  His luck was holding.

  He checked his watch.

  Josie’s instructions were simple.

  She was to be quiet as a mouse, and keep her eyes and ears open.

  She was watching and listening for Eddie, should he wake up from his nap and go looking for them.

  And she was to check her own watch frequently.

  Exactly fifteen minutes after Frank slipped through the door she’d make a critical assessment.

  Either Eddie would be out there somewhere in the dark, trying to find the pair.

  Or, hopefully, he wouldn’t be.

  If Josie was confident they weren’t being stalked, she’d open the door at the fifteen minute mark. Frank, waiting outside the door, would slip in, knock the snow from his body, and they’d make their way back to the common area.

  If, at the fifteen minute mark, the door didn’t open for him, Frank would know Josie deemed it unsafe. He’d return to the warmth of the now-heated Hummer and would try again every fifteen minutes until the door opened for him.

  The plan went off without a hitch and Josie let him back in after fifteen minutes. The pair hid the Hummer’s keys in the darkened warehouse, behind a pallet of kitty litter, and went about their business.

  That was merely the first time they’d perform this task. For the rest of their time in the building they’d start the big Hummer and let it run for fifteen minutes every three weeks. Doing so would keep the batteries charged and the windows free of ice, so that when “go time” came they’d be ready.

  -32-

  Frank was very quickly gaining a reputation as a man who couldn’t sit still.

  He was always working on this or that.

  Part of it was that he was indeed a man who liked to stay busy.

  He professed it was because his father and grandfather were both farmers. He grew up on a farm, watching his dad work from the dark of early morning until the dark of late evening.

  Except for Sunday morning.

  A farmer always took Sunday mornings off, for he understood God had a hand in whether his crops thrived or failed from one year to the next. How much rain fell or didn’t fall. How long draughts lasted, or whether they came at all. Whether the farmer’s crops were infested with insects or destroyed by hail.

  A farmer needs to have God on his side.

  He couldn’t afford to miss Sunday services, even as busy as he was.

  Frank grew up watching his grandfather and father working hard each and every day. Their knuckles were always beaten and bloody.

  The American farmer, you see, isn’t just tasked with coaxing crops from an often uncooperative ground.

  He also has to be a jack-of-all-trades, for that same farmer has to coax another hundred hours out of a tired old tractor that’s overdue for retirement.

  Another ten starts from a seven year old battery with a four year warranty.

>   One more harvest out of a rusty set of combine blades.

  An American farmer is always removing and replacing something. Rewiring something. Welding or rewelding something. Trying their best to coax a little more life out of his limited resources.

  The two of them together… Frank’s father and grandfather… taught Frank at an early age the value of a hard day’s work.

  Anyone who spends so many hours each day working with his hands incurs an impressive number of scars.

  Frank’s grandfather was the one who taught young Frank one of his favorite sayings:

  “If you don’t cut yourself once a day you ain’t working hard enough.”

  He, the grandfather, used the saying every time someone commented about the condition of his hands. And how he always seemed to have a fresh cut, a fresh bruise or a skinned knuckle.

  Frank heard his grandfather use the saying a hundred times before he passed, then heard his father use it a thousand more times.

  And to be sure, both men had gnarly hands, covered with burn marks, scrape marks and dozens of tiny scars.

  When his father died Frank spent a considerable amount of time at the open casket, talking to his dad.

  And examining the old man’s hands.

  He marveled at the number of scars there were, collected over a lifetime of hard word, and tried in vain to remember when they were fresh and still healing.

  It astonished him that he could remember only a few, and that those were the ones he’d helped bandage.

  And he realized that beyond a shadow of a doubt his dad was the hardest working man he’d ever known.

  Later he realized his dad was typical of the American farmer and was not unique in that regard.

  Frank took a different path in life, but it wasn’t because he was afraid of hard work.

  When he was a mere lad of seven a band of thieves broke into the farm next door.

  That term… “the farm next door,” is a bit misleading, for it conjures up a vision of a house very nearby.

  But these were farms, and in west Texas farmhouses can be separated by two miles or more of mostly flat farm land.

  The farmhouses had so much land between them that no one in Frank’s family heard the gunshots.