A Troubling Turn of Events

by Darrell Maloney

  The SAPD police academy no longer existed. All of the training Tony Martinez and Rhett Butler received was what the department called “OJT” or on-the-job training.

  It was a fancy way of saying “learn as you go” and most of the training was provided by none other than John Castro.

  In the process Tony and John became the best of friends.

  Tony, like Rhett, loved John Castro like a brother, and both hated to see him go.

  At the same time, though, they knew he deserved a chance to move to a more relaxed place. A safer place, perhaps, than the mean streets of the Alamo City.

  His family deserved it too.

  For they’d given a lot to San Antonio as well.

  There was another reason taking two cars made sense.

  While John always traveled light, and took all his worldly possessions in one Marine Corps duffle bag, no one expected Hannah and the girls to do the same.

  Crown Victorias have massive trunks.

  The typical police car’s trunk, though, is usually chock full of field examination kits, first aid kits, stop sticks, road flares and all kinds of other stuff.

  All of that was taken out and left behind on Baker Street.

  It was replaced with luggage.

  Lots and lots of luggage.

  So much luggage it also filled the second car’s back seat, floorboard to ceiling.

  Nineteen bags of assorted sizes.

  But they somehow made it fit.

  They were on the road by nine a.m.

  As they drove past Boerne and the oddly-named town of Welfare the number of abandoned vehicles littering the highway began to break up a bit.

  They were able to speed up to thirty five miles an hour.

  As they passed by another oddly-named town, Comfort, they were able to top off at forty.

  They passed by a speed limit sign which said “85” and Rhett said, “Yeah. I wish.”

  It seemed to take forever to drive the 110 miles to Junction.

  But they made it.

  When the cars pulled into the front yard of the compound Linda was in the upstairs window on lookout.

  “They’re here,” she said into her radio.

  Becky opened the gate, told the children to stand clear, and both vehicles rolled into the compound.

  “Have you found her yet?” Hannah asked as she hugged Linda.

  “No. Not yet. All the men are out looking. So far they haven’t found a single clue.”

  John was chomping at the bits to contribute.

  “I’m sorry, John, but we don’t have a spare vehicle for you. Tom wants to know if you wouldn’t mind riding one of the horses up and down some of the utility roads close to here.”

  “No problem.”

  “What can we do?” Rhett asked.

  His question caught everyone off guard. Everyone was expecting he and Tony to drop everyone off and do a “turn and burn,” heading back to San Antonio right away.

  But Rhett was a good man, and was already displaying the leadership skills he’d be using as deputy chief of police.

  “It’s not even noon yet,” he said. “We’ve got the rest of the day to help.

  “Granted, we’re not very familiar with the county. But we’ve got two squad cars and we can patrol just as well as anyone else.

  “Just give us a search area and let us loose.”

  Linda called Tom on the radio while they were unloading the luggage.

  “Tom said, “Put them on Big Creek Road. Highway 1178 between Junction and Kerrville. Tell them it intersects with the I-10.

  “Send one north and one south. They’re looking for several things: Sara, her pickup truck, or anything else that could be tied to either one.”

  “Ten four.”

  “And tell them thanks. Tell them I owe them a big one.”

  -50-

  This was the day Tillie had looked forward to for months.

  Since the day she decided to set out on foot from a suburb of Atlanta on her twelve-hundred mile journey to Texas.

  This was the day she’d finally see her brother and sister-in-law again.

  This was the day she’d hug Millicent and tell her all about the trip.

  This was the day she’d amaze everyone by introducing her new dog.

  She’d been through hell. She’d almost died. She’d cried a hundred times.

  Honestly, she’d come close to going insane a couple of times.

  But she’d grown stronger, in body and mind.

  She wasn’t completely over her phobia of dogs. She still feared all of them except for Hero.

  But her falling in love and accepting Hero convinced her she’d made a lot of progress and might eventually shed herself of the burden completely.

  Most of all, the journey and its tribulations had given her a new self-confidence. A feeling she could conquer anything. She could achieve any goal she set her mind on doing.

  Small in stature, but big in heart.

  She was a pint-sized Wonder Woman.

  Yes, the journey was worth everything she’d gone through.

  And she was less than an hour away from receiving her big payoff.

  Her ankle was much better today.

  A good night’s sleep tends to make all things better.

  As she and Hero crawled out of the truck’s sleeper cab she noticed there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was a beautiful morning and there was a slight breeze which would cool them as the sun rose high above them.

  To her left she could see the Hemisfair Tower just a few blocks off the highway.

  She’d visited San Antonio a couple of times and the tower was her favorite landmark.

  Telling a native Texan that… that she found the tower more fascinating than the Alamo… would have been considered blasphemy. But the tower commanded an absolutely stunning view from 750 feet above the city streets.

  She smiled and decided to challenge her brother to visit the tower with her.

  He’d tell her, “Are you nuts? You want to climb the steps to the top of the tower?”

  And Tillie would tell him, “Hey, I just walked halfway across America to see you. Walking up the steps will be a piece of cake.”

  All her life he could do anything athletically. He’d always amazed her with his athletic prowess.

  This might just be the first time in their lives when he struggled to do something she could do easily.

  She was looking forward to it.

  It would be a family affair, for surely Rachel and Millicent would insist on coming too. Tillie and David would probably have to stop and wait several times for them to rest and catch their breaths.

  But they wouldn’t let anyone stop them from coming along.

  As she walked down the exit ramp for Stonewall Avenue, just a couple of blocks from David’s house, her mind brought back vivid memories of her long cross-country walk.

  It was harrowing in many ways.

  But it was a walk she didn’t regret taking, and she’d do it again if circumstances required it.

  As far as she knew, David and Rachel would have no desire to leave Texas and move back east.

  But one could never tell. Georgia was their home, the place where they were born and raised.

  And she knew David had always considered himself a good ol’ boy from Georgia.

  Rachel was a transplant who moved to Georgia when her father, a Delta pilot, was transferred to Atlanta.

  She was born in a little town in “God-forsaken Oklahoma,” a place she swore she never wanted to go back to.

  She and David met in high school and were high school sweethearts. Prom king and queen. He was the varsity quarterback, she the head cheerleader.

  They were everything Tillie wasn’t.

  Tillie was a mediocre student and far from the over-achiever her brother was.

  When Tillie graduated David attended and one of his friends told him, “Oh. I didn’t know you had a sister.”

  The boy sat behind Tillie in hist
ory her entire senior year and never made the connection.

  That summed up Tillie in high school. She was easily overlooked and tended to blend in with the woodwork. She never went out for sports, never went to the prom, and only went to the football games to watch her brother throw touchdowns.

  Tillie was different now. She oozed self-confidence.

  She was strong and capable and proud of what she’d accomplished.

  Not many people would or could walk as far as she did with a single-minded goal: to reunite with her brother and his family.

  Oh, some would have tried.

  And at the first sign of hardship they likely would have turned around and gone back.

  Others would have made it farther.

  But the harshness of the journey would have broken them down and made them stop along the way.

  Tillie honestly wanted to give up many times.

  But she not only had an overwhelming desire to see her family again she wouldn’t allow herself to.

  She knew that if she gave up she would give credence to all the people she’d met in her life who thought her incapable of doing something grand.

  No one would ever underestimate her again.

  And she’d brooch the subject to David: if he and Rachel missed the Georgia mountains enough to make the journey back, she’d lead the way.

  She was strong enough and capable enough now to make the journey a second time.

  He’d be so proud of her.

  -51-

  Tillie walked up Stonewall Avenue and smiled.

  From half a block away she saw David’s 1977 El Camino pickup.

  He always said it was his second baby, after Millicent. That Millicent would always come first and the truck second.

  When Rachel would object and say, “What about me?” he’d smile and say, “You’re tied with the truck.”

  He bought it in high school when it was a beat-up piece of junk. And over the course of three years he lovingly restored it to showroom condition.

  Except for the crack in the windshield, put there when he picked up a rock from a passing dump truck.

  He left the crack there because he felt it gave the old pickup character.

  “After all,” he’d say, “Anything as old as that truck needs a wrinkle or a liver spot, or something to show that’s been around the block a time or two.

  The crack stayed there until the blackout stilled the old truck’s roar forever.

  As she drew closer to it, though, Tillie smiled.

  It seemed the pickup had been given a second life.

  It was still a pretty truck, painted in royal blue, with a clear coat which made it sparkle in the sun.

  But the tires had been flattened and its profile was much lower than before.

  Tillie imagined David had done that for Millicent, who loved to climb into the bed of the truck and read whenever it was parked in the driveway.

  But that wasn’t all.

  The bed of the truck now held about ten inches of peat moss, of all things.

  And growing from the peat moss was a healthy crop of sunflowers.

  It was just like David to do such a thing.

  Apparently once he decided the truck would never move again, he let Millicent talk him into turning it into a flower pot for her.

  A very large flower pot.

  The sunflowers, as pretty as they were, needed to be tended to.

  For the bed of the truck was heavily overgrown with weeds as well.

  That much surprised Tillie, for Rachel had always been a meticulous gardener.

  She looked around.

  All was quiet.

  No one had spotted her approaching the house. She knew that for a fact because if she’d been spotted Millicent would have come running from the house and tackled her by now. They’d be rolling around on the grass now, crying tears of joy and Millicent asking a million and one questions.

  She walked up the steps and knocked on the door, giddy with anticipation.

  As she waited, she noticed how dusty the porch was.

  Also unusual, for Rachel was as meticulous a housekeeper as she was a gardener.

  She hoped they hadn’t moved. Oh, my… how on earth would she ever find them?

  But no.

  This was one of the few areas in San Antonio where mail was still delivered door to door.

  The mailbox next to the door was hand painted with the words:

  The Burgess Family: Rachel, David and Millicent

  Tillie recognized the style as Rachel’s, who’d always been very artistic.

  She also recognized Millicent’s childish scrawl.

  Rachel had let her daughter pick up a paintbrush and add her own words to the bottom of the mailbox:

  That’s Millicent, NOT Millie !!!!!

  Tillie laughed out loud.

  Then her smile disappeared, replaced with a look of concern.

  She knocked again, and then a third time.

  Then she called out.

  “David?”

  “Rachel?”

  “Millicent?”

  There was no answer.

  Something told her to check the back yard. Perhaps they were out back cooking their dinner or watching Millicent play.

  There was no way she could peek over the privacy fence.

  She was just too short.

  But they wouldn’t mind her walking into the back yard, if the gate was open.

  And it was.

  Tillie walked into the yard and immediately fell to her knees.

  She let out a blood-curdling scream.

  “Nooooo! Oh, my God, noooo!”

  In the center of the yard were two grave mounds.

  They’d been there for awhile.

  Long enough to be covered with weeds, some two feet high.

  Amidst the weeds were two simple crosses, made of wood and painted white.

  One stood as straight and tall as the day it was shoved into the soft earth.

  It said, in faded letters from a magic marker:

  RACHEL BURGESS

  The second cross was leaning slightly to one side, as though it grew tired over time.

  It said:

  DAVID BURGESS

  Tillie fell over in hysteria, still screaming, clawing at the dirt with her hands.

  Her whole world had just imploded.

  So it was understandable she didn’t see the man as he walked into the gate behind her.

  -52-

  The old man, unsure what to do, merely watched.

  He was of a generation where men did not run to strange women to comfort them, even when it was obvious they desperately needed it.

  At the same time, he hated seeing a woman cry.

  His heart went out to this strange woman. Although he hadn’t a clue who she was, he wanted to fix things.

  For he was a fixer. Another trait of men of his generation.

  Where he came from, men fixed things that bothered women. They made them better.

  That was how they helped stop the tears.

  “They were good people,” he finally offered.

  Tillie looked at him, but didn’t get up. Didn’t even stop crying.

  Her wailing stopped, though. And for him that was a step in the right direction.

  He suddenly seemed to realize he had his hat on, and seemed to realize as well that maybe it should come off.

  For he was in the presence of a woman who was obviously in deep mourning.

  As Tillie turned her head; turned her attention back toward the graves of her brother and sister-in-law, he quickly snatched off his hat and held it solemnly in front of him.

  He stood there for another couple of minutes, awkwardly waiting for the crying to stop.

  It didn’t.

  Tillie writhed about on the ground in obvious agony.

  It occurred to the man he was watching as pathetic a scene as he’d ever seen in his very long life.

  But there was nothing he could do.

  As
much as he’d like to, he couldn’t fix this.

  The best he could do was patiently wait.

  Then it dawned on him maybe there was something he could do.

  He walked past the grieving woman and knelt down before the graves.

  He straightened David’s cross and shoved it a bit farther into the soil in the hopes it would stand upright for longer this time.

  And he began to pull up the weeds from the grave mounds and to toss them aside.

  He wasn’t the only one who felt helpless.

  Hero was confused.

  Dogs are sometimes sad but do not cry.

  Crying is a human emotion dogs don’t quite understand.

  The best dogs, though, are like the old man. They’re fixers. They try to comfort crying humans by staying at their side. Protecting them. Licking them if they’re allowed. Comforting them the only way they know how.

  Dogs are also excellent judges of character.

  Typically better judges than humans.

  Hero saw the tall man standing just inside the gate long before Tillie did and deemed him no threat.

  He didn’t charge the old man. Didn’t bark at him, or even growl.

  He merely lay in the dirt next to Tillie watching him, and hoping he’d find a way to take away his human’s pain.

  Gradually the tears subsided.

  Tillie moved to the grave mounds and went back to both knees, opposite the old man, and followed his lead by pulling up the weeds which covered the mounds.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “In the months after they passed we did a pretty good job of tending to the graves. But lately I’ve been so consumed with my own problems I’ve just let them go.

  “I’m sorry,” he said a second time.

  Tillie said nothing, but still softly sobbed.

  The two were silent for what seemed like forever, but was actually only a couple of minutes.

  This time it was Tillie who spoke.

  “David was my brother.”

  “Tillie?”

  She finally stopped sobbing and started at him, amazed he knew her name.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “David talked about you all the time. He was worried about you, and was making plans to go to Georgia to get you and bring you back here.”