Storm Gathering

by Rene Gutteridge

  The waitress arrived at his booth carrying French fries glowing with grease. A thick ribbon of steam climbed the air in front of his face, and Mick thought twice before touching them. “Right out of the fryer. That all you want?”

  Mick pointed to the pad in her hand. “Can I borrow that? And your pencil too?”

  “I don’t know. Do you tip 10 or 15 percent?” She offered a smoker’s grin.

  “Twenty.”

  “Keep ’em,” she said and walked off.

  Mick flipped open the small notepad and let his fries cool. Outside, the streetlights blinked on, and daylight dimmed.

  The men were engaged in their conversation, oblivious to staring eyes. With every fry, Mick found a bit more inspiration, a slightly greater urge, and an increasing resoluteness that created a strange boldness inside.

  Soon, greasy, salted wax paper was all that was left of his dinner. Mick wiped his fingers on his napkin and observed the men individually. He wondered if Earle would be coming in. Should he go talk to these men or wait for Earle to show up?

  Mick fingered the notepad and tapped the pencil, wondering how to engage in a useful conversation with them. There was no time like the present.

  He paid for his dinner, leaving a nice tip for the waitress, then approached the men, none of whom had noticed him amongst the increasing dinner crowd.

  A short, stubby man spotted him first, stopping his conversation and making the others look in Mick’s direction.

  Mick smiled. “Hi there.”

  The men nodded, curiosity sweeping their faces.

  “I’m Trent,” Mick said.

  The stubby man said, “Hi, Trent. What can we do for you?” There was a bit of a sarcastic edge to his voice, a simulated congeniality.

  “I’m with Time magazine, and I read in the paper that you all meet here every Monday night.”

  “What? You doin’ a story on a bunch of middle-aged men teetering on the edge of divorce and financial bankruptcy?”

  The crowd laughed nervously at the self-deprecating, tall, bald man with the short list of personal problems.

  “Actually,” Mick said, portraying himself as self-important, “I’m writing an article on Sammy Earle, the attorney.”

  The laughter died down a little, and the men glanced around the table at each other.

  “I’m doing a piece on the Kellan Johannsen trial, and my editors wanted more insight into the attorney who made the magic happen. You soldiers up for answering a few questions?”

  A few shrugged.

  Mick sat down, already forgetting what he’d called himself. Brent? Trent? He was not a man used to disguises. Not of this nature, anyway.

  When he pulled out the notepad, a large man with curly, bushy hair said, “Don’t you all have those fancy computers you use these days?”

  “Or a tape recorder?” Pudgy asked.

  Mick smiled. “I come from a long line of journalists who believe shorthand is the way to go. Now why don’t you six introduce yourselves?”

  They went around the table, giving their name, rank, serial number, and their current occupation. There seemed to be some excitement building as they realized they were going to be quoted. If they only knew.

  “So,” Mick said after the introductions, “does Earle come meet you here anymore?”

  They shook their heads. Horton, the financial adviser, said, “Hasn’t been here in several years. Maybe four or so.”

  “Why’d he stop coming?”

  “Who knows. We’ve had as many as twenty-five and as few as four. We just keep meeting. Whoever wants to come can come, as long as they served in Vietnam and live in the great city of Irving.”

  “There’s not an organized local chapter?”

  “Yeah, but we like to just chew the fat,” said Arnie, the oldest-looking member. “We like gettin’ together and talkin’. And not about the war. Though we’ve done that too.”

  “What kind of man is Sammy Earle?”

  The group hesitated, and Mick watched their eyes carefully avoid his. Mick cleared his throat. “Look, this is off the record, okay?”

  Worried glances subsided. The pudgy man, Lenny, said, “Sammy was a soldier just like the rest of us.”

  “What kind of soldier?”

  “The kind that goes and risks his life fighting a war none of us should’ve been in,” Lenny said. His eyes told an unvoiced story.

  Mick scribbled down notes. “He’s a high-profile attorney now. What kind of man was he to be around?”

  Again, the apprehension. Mick tried to look at each of them, unscrambling the code of honor they surely upheld for one another. But nobody had to tell Mick that there was something else going on.

  “You know,” Mick began, after nobody answered, “there’s a lot of rumors that float around, and many times these rumors are reported as fact and believed as fact. If there’s something you can do to set the record straight about Mr. Earle, I’m sure he would appreciate it.”

  Arnie spoke up. “Are you talking about what happened to him over in—?”

  Mick kept a steady eye on the notes he wasn’t really writing. “Is there something more I need to know?” he asked when Arnie didn’t finish.

  “Shut up, Arnie,” Horton said. “It’s nobody’s business.”

  Mick glanced up. “It’ll be reported, regardless of what is said here. You’d be able to make a difference in how it is reported.”

  Horton didn’t look like he was buying it, but the man sitting next to Lenny, who had introduced himself as George, a helicopter pilot, said, “Why are we protecting him?” He looked around the bunch. “You all know as well as I do that Sammy Earle would sell us out in a heartbeat if it meant he might get some extra television exposure.”

  A few agreed.

  Horton stayed his ground. “What happened over there doesn’t have anything to do with what happens here.”

  Lenny said, “You all are acting like it’s something he should hide. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s something he wanted to forget, that’s all.” He cast his eyes down.

  After a few moments of silence, Mick said, “I’m sensing some of you aren’t fond of Earle.”

  “He’s a loudmouth know-it-all,” said Arnie. “But that’s just me. Maybe some of the other fellas were impressed with his expensive suits and elaborate language.”

  “He never fit in,” Horton explained mildly, eyeing the others in an attempt to take control of the conversation. As he continued, he looked at Mick. “He tried, I guess. But he always had that better-than-you attitude. Just rubbed some of us the wrong way. But we didn’t think too much about it. He wasn’t a regular, came every once in a while, and we haven’t seen him in years except on the television.”

  “Big case he won,” Mick said.

  Horton sighed, fingering his coffee cup. “Sure. Big case. But that’s the kind of guy Earle is. He’s going to go for the big guns, and morals aren’t necessarily his main objective.”

  “You believe this is because of what happened over there in Vietnam?”

  The others waited for Horton to respond. He took his time thinking over his answer. “I don’t know. He talked about it in very vague terms.”

  “How vague?”

  “You know, sort of treated it as no big deal. He’d talk about the court case a little, mostly from the point of view of a haughty lawyer.”

  “What’d he say about it?”

  Horton hesitated. “He said he believes in the court system. Even the military court system.”

  “I always thought it was strange,” said Lenny. “I had some buddies die over there. And I can hardly talk about them without choking up. I hardly talk about it anyway. But Earle, he’d tell the story like he was recounting a scene from a movie.”

  “In what way?”

  “You know, something like, ‘I was under the bushes, saw Matty get shot. Tried to revive him.’ ”

  Mick tried to be patient with his questions, but he couldn’t understand what a t
rial had to do with all of this.

  Arnie soon answered his question. “Well, I’d say it could mess you up going through all that. I mean, a fellow soldier shooting your best friend. That’s crazy.”

  “How’d it happen?” Mick asked, forgetting he was supposed to know the story.

  “According to Sammy, he was under some brush, hiding out from ‘the enemy.’ That’s what he called them. Always. Never used another name. Anyway, he heard somebody behind him, rolled around, heard a shot, and his buddy, Matty Lasatter, I think was his name, was shot dead.”

  Mick was writing real notes now. The men forgot their apprehension, relishing a good war story. “By another American soldier.”

  They all nodded, as if they were hardly able to fathom the scene. “The other soldier . . . what was his name again?” asked George.

  “Delano, wasn’t it?” Lenny asked. The others nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. Patrick Delano.”

  “Staff sergeant. Shot another soldier,” Horton said in nearly a whisper.

  “It was an accident, I’m assuming?” Mick asked.

  Horton shook his head. “This was no accident. Delano shot Lasatter on purpose, claiming he was about to shoot Earle.”

  Mick looked up from his notes. “I’m sorry. I’m not following.”

  “According to Earle, Delano said that it looked as if Matty Lassater had mistaken Earle for the enemy in the bushes. Lassater was getting ready to shoot Earle when Delano took him out.”

  “Saving one soldier’s life by killing another,” Mick said.

  Horton nodded. “At trial, Delano claimed he made a split-second decision and had not intended to kill Lassater. But when he raised his gun to shoot, his arm hit the tree next to him, and it bumped his aim up, hitting Lassater in the chest.”

  “And Delano probably would’ve gotten off if it hadn’t been for his mouth,” added George.

  “Oh?”

  Arnie said, “Earle says that Delano pontificated himself to death on the stand, claiming Lassater was a useless soldier anyway. Earle said it was horrifying to hear. Basically Delano claimed he saved the better soldier, which meant he made a more deliberate choice than he originally admitted. And then he kept going, telling Earle that he wasn’t being appreciative of Delano’s sacrifice for him.”

  “Earle tells it like the guy turned on a gigantic messiah complex,” said Lenny. “I guess nobody had ever seen anything like that. Earle said it was like the guy went insane right on the stand. Shouting. Screaming at Earle, asking him why he wasn’t standing up for the man who saved his life.”

  “Said it was like everything from the war culminated right there in the courtroom.”

  George snickered. “It’s really something else to hear Sammy tell it, though. He sort of ruffles up his hair and makes his eyes all wide and crazy, pretending to be this Delano fellow.”

  “Sammy can do some pontificating himself,” Horton mused.

  “So what happened?” Mick asked.

  “Delano got court-martialed,” Horton said quietly, and the men settled down their laughter. Horton, in practiced dramatic fashion, added, “And then he disappeared.”

  Mick laughed out of shock. “Delano disappeared?”

  Horton nodded. “According to Earle, he escaped custody and nobody has heard from him since.”

  “No idea what happened to the guy?”

  “Earle always jokes that he’s out there somewhere preaching the gospel of justice,” Horton said. “Of course Earle would be doing the exact opposite.”

  “The guy has seriously never been found?”

  “Most likely dead,” said Lenny. “Or a street bum somewhere.”

  “War can make you go crazy,” said a guy named Mike, who’d yet to speak up. He looked around the room, then back down at his hands. “But you can get past it if you try hard enough.”

  “Anyway,” said Horton, turning his attention back to Mick, “who knows why Earle is the way he is. I mean, the guy’s successful, living the American dream, right? He was probably just a snob since he was born.”

  The men laughed.

  Mick smiled, finishing off his notes. He wasn’t sure how this information was going to be useful, but he thought it certainly showed some character background for the guy.

  “Well,” Mick said, sensing the men may have begun regretting all they’d said, “I doubt I’ll use too much of this in my article. The focus is really on the Johannsen trial.”

  The men looked relieved. Horton said, “Are you going to interview Earle?”

  “Don’t know yet. I have a lot of quotes from him already through the media. You’re right. He does like to spout off. But sometimes it’s what is not said that is most interesting.”

  “Yeah, well, catch Earle when he’s drunk and you may get more than you bargained for,” said Horton, as if speaking from experience.

  “Is that so?”

  Horton grinned. “Yeah. The guy can get liquored up. He’s sort of famous for it, but he keeps it out of the courtroom, I guess.”

  Mick closed his notebook and stuck the pencil through the spirals. “Well, gentlemen, thanks for letting me take up some of your time this evening. I appreciate the information you gave me. And now I’ll let you get back to whatever it is you talk about every Monday night.”

  They all smiled. “Mostly just what’s in the news,” said Arnie.

  “Oh,” Mick said, a spider of apprehension crawling up his back. He grinned. “Murder and mayhem in Irving, and all that, huh?”

  Horton shook his head. “Nah. Once you’ve seen one murderer, you’ve seen them all.”

  Mick couldn’t help but look down at nothing in particular as his face turned hot.

  “We actually like talking about the weather.” Lenny laughed. “As crazy as that sounds.”

  Mick wished he was not a fugitive on the run. How nice it would be to sit and talk about the weather with a group of fine American soldiers. His body longed for that kind of normalcy. “Sounds nice,” Mick said gently.

  Suddenly the waitress who had helped him was carrying a platter full of food to their table. Mick tried to swing his bag around and make an exit, but she was already addressing him. She looked at his notepad. “That working out for ya?”

  Mick nodded, hoping nobody was catching on. “Take good care of these gentlemen. They’re a fine group of men.”

  “Always do,” she said.

  Arnie stood and shook Mick’s hand. “Thanks for making our evening interesting, Trent.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Arnie looked at his duffel bag. “They don’t pay you enough at Time to afford a briefcase?”

  Mick smiled. “Always thought they looked pretentious.”

  Arnie and the rest of the men laughed. “Amen, brother.”

  The ten-o’clock news droned on as Aaron lay on his couch, yet to change out of the tank top and sweatpants he’d been in earlier when he exercised. A flulike ache added to his fatigue.

  He’d spent an hour on the phone with his parents in Kansas City, trying to assure them it was going to be okay. They wanted to drive down, but Aaron insisted they wait. It had been only a day. Mick would surely turn up. Somewhere.

  Jenny walked through the front door, carrying Chinese food. Aaron’s appetite had waned all day, but he knew he needed to eat. She went to the kitchen and slid the food onto a plate, bringing it to him with a warm smile. “Here you go.”

  He toyed with the fork and listened to the anchor report that the manhunt was still on for the suspected kidnapper Mick Kline. He set the food on the coffee table and rubbed his eyes.

  Jenny slipped her arm around his neck.

  Aaron said, “I keep thinking of the time Mick disappeared. I think he was about six or seven. It was a Saturday night, and we were all in the house doing our own thing. It was Mom, I think, who realized that Mick was gone. We started looking for him, but we couldn’t find him.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was horrible. He was
gone for about eight hours. Turns out he’d wandered off while chasing a dog he’d found outside in the backyard. We didn’t have a fence or anything, so Mick just followed him into the trees and then couldn’t find his way home because it was dark.”

  “How terrifying!”

  “I remember the whole neighborhood was looking for him. The police. The firemen. I had my flashlight, and I was bound and determined to find him. If it was the last thing I did, I was going to find him. I was walking through the woods, crying my eyes out, shouting his name. Anyway, they finally found him, four miles away near the creek bed and the highway.”

  Jenny fingered through his hair.

  “I kind of feel like that right now. He probably is wandering around in some trees somewhere. But his soul has been wandering around for so long too, you know? Just looking for something to attach to, something meaningful . . .” Aaron muffled his words into his hands.

  Jenny wrapped her arms around his waist. “It’s okay.”

  “There’s a dozen or more law enforcers out there with guns, ready to shoot a man they think has done this horrible crime.”

  “We trust God to protect him.”

  Aaron scratched his cheek and shook his head. “You believe so easily.”

  “No. Not easily. I just believe.”

  “And trust. I’ve never met a more trusting person than you. It doesn’t come that easy for me. I’ve built a career on not trusting people. Not trusting people to drive safely, to treat their spouses kindly, to earn a living the honest way.”

  She laughed. “Well, I’ll remember that while I plan this wedding of ours.”

  “No,” he said, “that’s all yours. I totally trust you.”

  “I thought so.” She winked. “See, you are trusting! Now trust me, and get some food down you, okay?” She picked up his plate and handed it to him.

  “Where’s he sleeping? What’s he eating?”

  “Your brother is very savvy. He’s probably found a way to stay at the Hilton!”

  Aaron laughed. “Yeah. Right.”