Storm Gathering

by Rene Gutteridge

  “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of.”

  “You, Mick? You seem like such an outstanding citizen.”

  “Don’t I? Hanging out at the bars at all hours of the night?”

  “I’m serious. I see compassion in your eyes. A certain warm light.”

  “Sounds poetic.”

  “I should look hard into people’s eyes more often. The window to the soul, right?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “We all have our pasts, you know. They’re not easy to shake.”

  “Sounds like you’re talking from experience.”

  “We all try to reinvent ourselves, don’t we? In some way. But that person we know ourselves to be continues to follow us. It spies on us, doesn’t it? And reports everything it sees.”

  “I don’t think too much about it.”

  “You live in the moment.”

  “I try to.”

  “So the woman you loved so much, you’ve forgotten her?”

  “There are some things that will always stay in your heart.”

  “If only money could buy new hearts.”

  “Money can’t buy a whole lot.”

  “I think it can. I think it can buy newness. And newness will go a long way.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s not permanent. The real person always comes back.

  But for a while, it is a certain kind of shelter from the world.”

  “Haaa haaaaa!” A wide grin stretched across Mick’s face as he lay on top of the roof, basking in the midmorning sun. Lying spread eagle, he felt warmth on his skin, through his bones, and into his blood for the first time in hours. The humid air meant thunderstorms would probably arrive later.

  But right now, it never felt better to be warm. His nose tickled with the first indication of a cold, his eyes stung with fatigue, and the backs of his legs still gnawed with pain, but he wasn’t wet and he wasn’t chilled.

  He didn’t think it was possible, but two hours later, he felt hot. Drowsy but hungry, he was motivated to do more than sit there.

  He donned another white T-shirt—the one from the bag—and the wind pants. The new T-shirt had a large cross on the front, and Aaron’s church’s logo and “Running for Jesus” printed across the back. Couldn’t it have at least been another color? The appearance of his clothing had hardly changed, except now he looked like a priest. He’d put his shoes on without socks. While the creek was pretty muddy, it had actually washed him of the caked-on dirt, and it was probably the closest thing to a shower he was going to get.

  Climbing down the ladder, he walked toward the sounds of traffic, wondering how far out of Irving he really was. If that was Loop 12, he was going to have to hitch a ride if he wanted to get anywhere fast.

  He followed the road for about an hour but knew he was a long way from Irving. He wasn’t really a man of prayer, but he was becoming one, and he didn’t even care that it was because of desperation. He just knew he was out of options.

  Mick entered the first parking lot he’d seen. It was attached to a large building with a computer-sounding name on the front. But apparently, whatever the business, it had been overly ambitious in its perceived need of parking space. Only about a fourth of the lot was full.

  It was slightly elevated, and when Mick reached the top, he could see the swarming madness of Irving in the distance—perhaps ten or twelve miles away. Nothing to it in a car, but on foot, it would be a day’s journey.

  He heard laughter and turned. About thirty yards away, some junior-high-aged boys were doing acrobatics with their skateboards, bicycles, and scooters down a small entry ramp. He watched them for a few moments, and then a tall kid with spiky hair spotted him and yelled an obscenity at him. The other boys laughed.

  Mick walked at a brisk pace toward them. A few other boys piped in their thoughts, though with a little less confidence than Spiky. As Mick approached, three or four of the eight boys looked nervous. The others folded their arms in front of their chests.

  Standing about ten yards away, Mick looked at Spiky. “What’d you say to me?”

  “What do you think I said?” Spiky laughed, and the other boys joined in.

  “What in the world would make you say that?” Mick asked.

  Spiky looked ready to fight as long as he had his gang behind him. “What are you doing out here?” Spiky asked, left hand on his hip, right arm embracing his skull skateboard.

  Mick noticed his black T-shirt said “I’d Rather Be Dead.”

  “Aren’t you all supposed to be in school?” Mick scanned each of them as guilt betrayed their faces. Mick thought this would be a good time to pull out Aaron’s badge.

  Spiky was just about to come up with some unclever way to use another profanity when a small boy with large brown freckles across his face gasped. Everyone turned to him, but he was staring at Mick.

  “What is it, Bobby?” Spiky asked. Bobby’s mouth was hanging open. “Bobby!”

  Bobby glanced at Spiky, then back at Mick. “I-I know who you are,” Bobby stammered.

  The others turned their curious stares toward Mick.

  “Is he famous?” another kid asked.

  Bobby shook his head; then his eyes fell to Mick’s duffel bag.

  Mick wasn’t sure what the boy’s intentions were, but he knew one thing: He’d fight to the death to save the three bucks he had. He drew the bag toward himself, unzipping it slightly and sliding his hand in, hoping he could feel where the money was.

  Bobby yelled, “He’s got a gun!”

  The other boys yelled too and started to run.

  Mick shouted, “Stop! Don’t any of you move!”

  Bobby looked like he was about to hyperventilate. Stuttering, he said, “T-that’s the guy!”

  “What guy?” Spiky asked.

  “The guy the police are after! He kidnapped a woman or something! He’s a murderer!”

  Mick swallowed as the boys’ eyes grew large and round. A short, large kid in the back was trembling uncontrollably. Spiky’s confidence had disappeared as his complexion grew pale.

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” Mick said with what he’d intended to be a casual gesture. But his hand was still in the duffel bag, and when he moved it, all the kids hollered. “Settle down; settle down!” Mick yelled over the chaos.

  Whimpering ensued.

  Mick tried to think quickly. He’d been recognized, so that was going to be a problem. But he’d survived a raging fire. Surely he could survive a few bratty kids.

  He turned his attention to a skinny kid in the back who was clutching his bicycle as if it were a limb. “You,” Mick said, pointing to him, “come here. Bring the bike.”

  On shaking legs, the kid stepped forward, stopping about eight feet from Mick.

  “Give me the bike,” Mick said.

  The kid complied, rolling it toward him. Mick noticed his name and phone number written on the side of the bike, and the kid noticed him notice.

  Then Mick looked at a tall kid who was holding a Taco Bell sack. “What’s in there?” he asked him.

  “A b-b-bean b-burrito.”

  “Onions?”

  “No.”

  “Hand it over.”

  The kid threw it to Mick, who caught it with one hand. “Anybody else got any snacks they want to tell me about?”

  The big kid in the back mentioned he had gum.

  Mick figured he’d better wrap this thing up before the kids figured out the weapon he was clutching in his bag was a soggy dollar bill. He looked at Spiky. “Give me your shirt.”

  Spiky’s hands crawled up his chest as if Mick had just asked him for a vital organ. “My shirt?”

  “You heard me.”

  Spiky glanced around at the other kids. A few still stared in dazed silence, but a couple had amused looks on their faces. Spiky slowly peeled off his shirt, revealing a bony, white torso. A few kids snickered in the back. Spiky shot them a look, then threw the shirt to Mick.
/>   Mick took off his shirt, and to everyone’s great surprise, threw it to Spiky, who couldn’t have looked more stunned.

  “Put it on,” Mick said, suppressing a smile.

  Spiky eyed the duffel bag, looked around at his cohorts, and then slowly put the shirt on.

  “Running for Jesus!” one kid howled, reading the back of the shirt.

  “Shut up!” Spiky yelled.

  “All of you, listen up,” Mick said, after putting on Spiky’s shirt. Maybe they wouldn’t be looking for a fugitive with the words I’d Rather Be Dead on his black shirt. Then again, if the kids talked, they could describe exactly what he was wearing. “Here’s the deal. If any of you say a word about seeing me, I’m going to call each and every one of your mothers and tell them that you ditched school today.” He looked each of them in the eye. A few looked like they’d rather be shot dead right then and there. “And you know what I’d do if I were you?”

  They all shook their heads.

  No, Mick imagined they had no idea. “I’d go back home and find a local church, and I’d go in and get down on my knees and pray for forgiveness for using such awful cusswords.”

  Spiky, in particular, looked perplexed.

  “And you, my friend, do not take that shirt off until you get home.” Mick swung his leg over the bike and said, “Now, if I were you, I’d run and run fast. Go!”

  The boys shouted and turned, clutching whatever they could carry and racing down the entrance ramp into a nearby, grassy stretch of land that led to a viaduct.

  Mick ripped open the Taco Bell sack.

  After that episode, Mick realized he was probably more delirious than he wanted to acknowledge. Fatigue and pain were making him bolder than he really should be, and the fact that he was peddling along a service road in the middle of the day wearing a T-shirt saying he’d rather be dead was proof enough.

  He headed toward Irving with burning legs, sporting old-man sunglasses, a young man’s smelly T-shirt, and an attitude that was something akin to suicidal.

  But what did he have to lose?

  Shep Crawford scrawled with permanent marker as fast as he could. The words came faster than he could write. But he tried. After ten minutes, he backed away from the large wall on which he’d scribbled and stared at it. The wall stretched twenty feet wide and was about eight feet tall. It once held a mural in the old firehouse. Now it held Crawford’s sanity.

  Like unraveling yarn, a black mess of scribbles captured years of journal-like thoughts onto drywall, hiding the incoherent thoughts of a madman.

  Crawford clicked the lid back onto the red marker and placed it in the drawer that held the rest of his various- colored Sharpies. In all the years he’d lived in this firehouse, he’d used red only four times. Amidst the dark colors, the red lines bled through, catching the eye quite majestically, he thought.

  Moving to the open second-story window, Crawford gazed out at the sky, drawing in fresh air through his nostrils. As much as he tried not to think about the runt, Crawford could not shake Fiscall out of his mind. He simply could not understand, for any reason, a man who would lose his soul for political gain.

  Rubbing his eyes and stretching his arms upward in a relieving yawn, Crawford made his way downstairs, where his teapot was screaming. Taking it off the stove, he poured himself a cup of hot water and steeped a green-tea bag, bobbing it up and down for several minutes, unaware that the liquid in his cup was nearly black now.

  His thoughts continued to consume him.

  But what comforted Crawford was the fact that he was totally in control. Despite the chaos that had erupted because of those who were incompetent, Crawford knew that things would be as they should. He smiled at that thought, lifted the tea bag out of the mug, and placed it in his mouth, sucking out the flavor. Then he spit it in the trash.

  Sipping his tea as he leaned against the wooden island in the middle of the large kitchen, Crawford stared at the American flag that covered the wall near the stairs.

  He hummed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” watching the flag as if it were on a pole, flapping its glory in the wind. The hum turned into a recital of the third verse. Hardly anyone knew it, but it was seared onto his heart.

  “ ‘And where is that band who so vauntingly swore that the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion, a home and a country should leave us no more?’ ” Crawford gestured upward, as if he had an entire choir singing behind him. “ ‘Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.’ ” He walked to his front door, carefully watching the street as he said, “ ‘And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.’ ”

  With each mile, Mick’s resolve built. He peddled rhythmically, never looking around, never worried he would be seen. He simply pressed forward.

  A cooling breeze tore through his stubbly hair, but the wind would not erase the unbelievable stench coming from the shirt he’d traded. Part of him wanted to jump in a river to try to wash away all the grime. But he couldn’t afford the time to dry out again. So he pedaled on, trying to forget what now cloaked him. Why would anybody in their right mind trade a nearly clean white shirt for this rag?

  Above him, the highway roared, and Mick wound his way through an old commercial district. Generations-old businesses, like tire stores and donut shops, lined the streets. Elderly people sat in chairs and talked or played dominoes. Large oak trees on the corners told of how long this area had been around. How many times had he seen new developments, with skinny, sickly trees everywhere, their roots as feeble as white string? Yes, this place had roots. Deep roots.

  Mick sighed as he sped through a four-way stop. Roots. He’d managed to cut his off. His parents still loved him and of course talked to him, but Mick had wanted separation from their old-time ideals. The final blow of the ax had been Aaron’s decision to take Jenny, but he knew deep in his heart that he’d been separated from his brother long before that.

  Mick had never really understood Aaron’s religious fervor. His parents, though always religious, were much quieter about their faith. They’d raised Mick in church, but once he was on his own, they let him make his own choices. Aaron, on the other hand, could never let things rest.

  Yet there was something oddly endearing about his dogmatic tendencies. Mick hated to admit it, but the way Aaron chased him, like one of the hounds from heaven, was strangely comforting. It was as if Mick knew he couldn’t run too far away. But now he had. He’d outrun the hounds. He’d fled to the dark side of the mountain.

  Mick wiped the sweat from his brow and continued toward downtown Irving. He looked to be only three miles away.

  He turned onto Las Colinas Boulevard and rode his bike onto the sidewalk, where he hopped off and walked it toward the Irving Convention and Visitors Bureau. Pressing his lips together in hopeful determination, he looked for a large bus across the street in the parking lot. Five years ago, Mick had met a woman at a club who was from out of town. She had said she’d love to get to know Dallas better, so Mick found out that Irving offered visitors a tour from Irving to the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

  Mick parked his bike on the rack bolted into the sidewalk next to the Visitors Bureau. Inside, an elderly woman greeted him from behind a plastic ticket-booth window.

  “Do you still offer the visitors’ tour?”

  The woman looked at the schedule on the wall. “Yes, we do.”

  “What time does it run?”

  “Only on the weekends.”

  Mick sighed.

  The woman studied him. “You really want to go?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked around and said, “Well, in an hour there’s a special seniors’ trip going.”

  “Really?” Mick’s eyes widened with hope.

  She nodded. “I’ll have to get special permission, but we’d hate to turn down somebody who wants to see our great citi
es!”

  “I would be so grateful.” Mick smiled. A fleeting flash of fear told him that at any moment this woman could recognize him, but he kept his smile steady and his eyes locked to hers.

  “Hold on. Let me see what I can do.”

  Mick waited, and after a few minutes the woman returned with a guest pass in her hand. “It leaves from across the parking lot in an hour.” She gave a playful wink. Apparently she couldn’t smell him from the other side of the window.

  “Thanks,” Mick said, taking the pass.

  “That’ll be five dollars.”

  Mick grimaced. “I don’t have five dollars.”

  She looked at him curiously. “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it, okay? Go on, enjoy yourself. You look like you could use some relaxation.” She was reading his T-shirt.

  Mick laughed. “That’s the truth.” He met her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome, young man,” she said. “Every once in a while, we all need a little grace.”

  Aaron hung up the phone and sat down at his kitchen table. The flowers that Taylor had received before she disappeared struck him as odd, and now he knew why. After an hour’s worth of investigation, Aaron found out that the bouquet had cost over a hundred dollars. At first he didn’t think much about it. He was actually calling to see if anybody at the flower shop remembered the voice of the person who had ordered them or anything at all about the phone call. Nobody did. As an afterthought, Aaron had asked about the cost.

  A hundred dollars seemed like an awful lot of money for a man who, according to Liz Lane, was as cheap as they come. Aaron tried to connect the dots, but right now the picture being drawn was only a jagged, uninterpretable line.

  He’d also found out a little more information about Taylor Franks, though it didn’t seem immediately helpful. She’d worked for a while at the front ticket counter before moving to the gate. So she sold people airline tickets. Right now that did nothing to explain her disappearance.