The Death Panel

by Cheryl Mullenax (Ed)

  “C’mon, Mike. Pick up the pace, I’m running at half speed.”

  I panted in apology.

  “This isn’t you. What’s up?”

  I tried to answer, but I couldn’t. My response stalled in my chest, trapped in the syrupy air jellifying in my lungs. It was a particularly bad run for me. Current events were weighing me down more than most and my speed showed it. I shook my head, flicking sweat in all directions as my breath whistled in my throat.

  Preston glowed. The lucky SOB.

  “C’mon, spit it out.”

  He slowed his pace to allow me to catch my breath. I still seemed to be running full tilt, while Preston was doing the running equivalent of treading water.

  “Kids, marriage, job, life, everything. Tell me, what isn’t hitting the fan these days?”

  “Me.” He grinned. “Everything is cool in the house of Preston Barnes.”

  Preston couldn’t have been more right. He was living the American dream. There wasn’t a thing in his life out of place. If he fell, it would be into his wife’s loving arms. If I fell, I’d crack the sidewalk and be sued for the privilege.

  But it hadn’t always been like that. About two years ago, Preston had trudged through the same quagmire the rest of the suburban world had and then some. His life was a blight no one in the neighborhood envied.

  “I know,” I wheezed. “You don’t have to rub it in.” Starbursts speckled my vision. “Well, we can’t all be as lucky as you, Press.”

  Preston barked a short, sharp laugh. “Luck had nothing to do with it. I was losing the battle with life, so I took control. Now that I’m calling the shots, life couldn’t be better.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Once you make that first step towards resolving your problems, you’ll be amazed at the results. Tell me what’s up and I’ll tell you what to do about it.”

  To be honest, I’d been hoping Preston would reveal his secret. He’d never offered before, even when others and I had asked. A feeling trickled over me that he was only telling me now because I was at rock bottom and I couldn’t fall any lower. But I didn’t care what he thought about my life. If he wanted to throw me a bone, I wasn’t so proud that I wouldn’t gobble it up with glee. Now, I would learn the Preston way and become a devout disciple.

  “Jenny’s been upset for days and dragging everyone down over her cat,” I said. “It went missing last Thursday. The damn thing was probably hit by a car.”

  “Tragic, but that doesn’t sound too disruptive.”

  True, it wasn’t. My daughter’s problems weren’t the reason for my despair. They were just one in a never-ending laundry list of minor irritations that was draining my spirit. No, Jenny wasn’t the problem—my son was.

  “It’s Kevin. He’s going through the teenage thing. You know the drill. He goes out, but doesn’t tell us where, then follows it up with the silent treatment. Lately, he’s stepped up the pace. He’s coming in after midnight on school nights and he’s skipping classes. We’ve already met with the school principal, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. It’s gone too far, but I don’t know what to do about it. It scares me, Press. It really does. I have visions of where this is all going to end. Well, you know …”

  “I know,” he replied.

  And Preston would know. He would understand my fears and problems. His son, Nathan, used to be every suburban neighborhood’s nightmare, a black kid caught up in a street gang. No one dared give Nathan a sideways look when his gangbanger friends came visiting. Paranoia was a flag flown from every home’s porch. Those were rough times for Preston and his wife. They felt the tension the neighborhood was feeling, but they turned that boy around. The kid was now a poster boy for everyone’s child. At the moment, the nearest my Kevin would come to a poster boy would be on a milk carton.

  “How far has he gone?” Preston asked.

  “He was suspended last week for smacking a kid with his helmet during football practice and next week, he’s got to answer to a petty shoplifting case. I’m hoping that I can get the store manager to drop the charges.”

  Preston nodded, assessing the information. “So it hasn’t gone too far.”

  “Too far for me. Tracy’s ready to wash her hands of the boy.”

  “You’re a long way from bottom, my friend.”

  “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  “Trust me, you are.”

  “So how did you sort things out with Nathan?”

  “Parental guidance, pure and simple.”

  I snorted. “It’s a bit too late for timeouts and spankings.”

  Preston laughed. “Ain’t that the truth? Kids grow up so fast I wonder who the parent really is sometimes. No, you can’t use the techniques our parents used on us. It’s a new millennium and that calls for new millennium solutions.”

  We came to a major intersection. Jogging in place, Preston hit the pedestrian crossing button. I slumped forward, resting my weak arms on trembling knees. The specks of light in my vision were gone, replaced by a wave of nausea.

  “It comes down to respect,” Preston continued. I looked up at my friend. “We give them unconditional love. They give us unconditional respect. But as they start growing up and their little brains develop, we, as parents, are in trouble. It’s inevitable that they’re going to see chinks in our armor. They come to realize we aren’t gods. We aren’t perfect. You just have to reinforce their first impressions. They were right—we are gods.”

  The “Don’t Walk” sign changed to “Walk” and Preston set the pace again with me trailing a stride and a half behind.

  “So what did you do to teach Nathan that you and Amber are gods?”

  “As soon as we saw the company he was keeping and respect they were getting from him … we took his CDs away.”

  That was it? I was disappointed, to say the least. I’d been hoping for more, a lot more. Up until then, Preston had impressed me. His approach sounded bang on, but the execution was weak.

  “Did it work?”

  “No. It pushed him further away from us and closer to his friends.”

  “So what did you do instead?”

  “You have to understand, we were desperate and I did things that I wouldn’t normally do, but we had to get through to Nathan. We had to leave a mark that he wouldn’t forget. So I sat him down with his CDs and I told him that Amber and I loved him, but he had to be taught a lesson for his actions. Obviously, he went to smart-mouth me, but before he could, I smashed his CDs to pieces with a hammer.”

  Again, I wasn’t impressed. I know what Kevin would have done if I’d done that to his music collection. Hell, I know how I would have reacted if Preston smashed up my music. I understood Preston’s motivation. He was trying to strike at the kid’s heart, to make him realize the effect he was having on his family, but it wouldn’t have turned me around.

  “Not surprisingly,” Preston said, “that didn’t work either. I was pushing Nath further away … any further and I’d lose him forever. I had to think, really think, about my next move.”

  Preston was reliving these moments, these trials, these decisions. His voice took on a reverential tone. He’d gone to the mountaintop to find his faith and had been rewarded. I stepped up my pace to catch sight of a side of my friend that I’d never seen.

  “I knew I was losing Nathan. I could feel my son slipping through my fingers. Well, you know what they say about drastic times requiring drastic measures? I did what I had to do and it worked. I killed his dog in front of him.”

  Preston’s last comment was a hammer blow, so much so that I stumbled and stutter-stepped a couple of times before I found my running rhythm again. He’d let his admission slip out so casually that I wasn’t expecting it. My mind didn’t have time to comprehend the viciousness of the act.

  “How?” I asked. This wasn’t what I’d meant to say, but Preston had knocked my brain out of gear and my mouth was freewheeling. I’d meant to say, “You killed your
son’s dog? Get away from me, you freak.”

  “Well, Nathan isn’t so big that I couldn’t pin him down and tie him to a chair in the kitchen. Then, we called in Hunter for his dinner as usual. Amber made the dog’s dinner and I mixed in the rat poison.”

  “I thought you said the dog had died from a tumor,” was all I could say. I pictured it all. Preston and Amber’s immaculate custom kitchen with the beautiful tiled floor that I’d helped Press lay, and Nathan duct taped to an Ethan Allen chair as Preston, my friend, lowered the poison laced bowl to the retriever. I closed my eyes to blot out my vision, but only gave it greater clarity. I tasted bile.

  “He thought we were bluffing, of course. He thought I was trying to scare him and all I was mixing into Hunter’s food was crushed oatmeal. I told him, as parents, we were deadly serious about poisoning. This was a wake up call to the fact that there were consequences for his actions. And this was an indication of how serious we were. Thinking about it now, I saw a flicker in his eyes. He was taking me seriously. I could have stopped there, but I could see Nathan’s resolve wasn’t rock solid. A threat wasn’t going to do it this time. So, I gagged Nathan, gave the dog the food, locked him in the kitchen with the dog and took Amber out for dinner. Do you know, it took that mutt over twenty-four hours to hemorrhage its last?”

  “My God, I can’t believe you did that!”

  My horrified condemnation was misinterpreted. I could barely put into words my disgust for what Preston understood to be good parenting, but he took my remarks as a compliment. The son of a bitch actually smiled.

  “Yeah, well, we had to do it. We were losing our son to a life of crime and eventual corruption. It had to be done. Obviously, we made our point to Nathan. Having been tied to a chair for twenty-four hours, he’d messed his pants, but we didn’t let him clean himself up until he’d cleaned up the dog and its mess. You wouldn’t believe the amount of blood and puke a poisoned dog will produce.”

  That was it. I couldn’t run anymore. I was lightheaded to the point of unconsciousness. An ocean a time zone away sloshed in my ears and my vision dissolved to block shapes and primary colors. My response to Preston’s parental guidance was to vomit. I yakked up a light breakfast into the gutter, much to the disgust of the coffeehouse’s outdoor customers across the street. Splashing vomit speckled my ankles, but I didn’t care. It took all my strength to prevent my feeble legs from collapsing.

  Preston patted me on the back. “Steady on there, buddy. Drink too much water this morning? That stuff’ll bite you in the ass. C’mon, let’s run it off. It’s the best cure.”

  I couldn’t believe Preston. The man didn’t have a clue what kind of monster he’d become. I wanted to rip him a new one, let him have it, but my stomach hadn’t finished unloading its remaining contents. Mercifully, I stopped and I breathed like a bull ready to charge, with thick gobs of sputum trailing from my lips. I wiped a hand across my mouth before straightening. Preston called out. He was a hundred yards ahead. Although he’d taken a baseball bat to my emotions, I followed. I had to learn more.

  “We pretty much cracked it,” Preston said, when I’d caught up with him. “We did have a couple of setbacks but I took care of them.”

  I didn’t know what Preston meant by “setbacks” and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Not yet anyway.

  “Yep, in a couple of weeks, Nathan was our son again. The respect was back. The bad influences were gone. You must have noticed the change?”

  “And everyone lived happily ever after,” I said.

  Preston’s smile slipped. A serious demeanor took over his features. Obviously, not all was perfect in Never-Never land.

  “My tactics only work for so long before there is a call for further reinforcement.”

  I couldn’t imagine Nathan slipping back after the trauma of Hunter. If it had been me, I’d never have put a foot out of line with Preston again. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the kid. His fear of screwing up must have been intense.

  “Nathan’s been slipping back. I’ve discovered that he’s hooked up with some of his old associates. But I’m going to handle it.”

  Preston’s words struck a chill in me. Never had I heard that simple promise sound so malicious.

  He went to say something, but caught himself and a smile spread across his lips. “This might be good practice for you, Mike … to see how I handle matters. You never know, you may be able to use my tactics on Kevin. You up for it?”

  I said yes. Yes, out of fear for what Preston would think if I said no. Yes, out of fear for Nathan. And yes, because let’s face it, I was curious.

  “Good. I’m pleased,” Preston said. “I’ll be ’round for you at nine.”

  * * * *

  The knock came right on the button. Preston was dressed casually in dark clothes, as was I, as instructed. We got into Preston’s car, but not his Infiniti and not Amber’s SUV. Preston had pulled up in an ancient Crown Victoria with a broken taillight. I had no idea where the car had come from. It was like nothing I’d seen him use before.

  “Where are we going?” I asked once we were on the expressway. Funny really, I didn’t want to know what we were up to while we were in our neighborhood. Subconsciously, I didn’t want my home tarnished by what Preston had planned. Although Preston hadn’t made any disclosure, I knew, just knew, it wasn’t going to be good.

  “We’re heading over to the warehouse district. A couple of Nathan’s friends deal out there.”

  Deal what? I thought. I didn’t think it was cards.

  “How did you find out?” I asked.

  “I followed Nath. He’d been late home from football practice a few times and from a study session once. We have ground rules in our house. He’s allowed to stay out to a prearranged time. When he stopped obeying that rule, it was time to investigate. Parenting isn’t like having a Chia Pet. You can’t just feed it once and leave it to do its thing. Parenting requires constant diligence. Tonight will be a good example.” Press turned to smile at me. “Trust me, follow my lead and Kevin will be snapping to attention before the month is out. And once that happens, you’ll see your world following suit.”

  I didn’t smile back. I couldn’t. Fear coursed through my veins like a virus. The best I could do was nod in agreement and wait for the heat of Preston’s gaze to leave me.

  We entered the decaying warehouse district. The properties became seedier the further we were from the expressway. Ripe for redevelopment, it was ignored by the city and left to descend into a haven for every kind of criminal activity available on the books. At least crime was contained in a confined space making it easy for the cops to mop up after the event.

  Driving through the decaying streets, my heart raced. Although he had the air going, I was sweating. He was determined—the focus apparent on his face. He didn’t plan on taking prisoners tonight. I knew this and I could have avoided the event, but I still came along for the ride. I had to see.

  Preston parked a car length from a four-way stop with weather-beaten striping. The street was deserted, except for a couple of junkers skulking on the cross street. Interrupted streetlight peppered the neighborhood thanks to burned or shot out bulbs. I didn’t feel safe, even with the Crown Victoria’s engine still running.

  “This is it,” Preston said, gazing at a three-story, graffiti-scarred warehouse with most of its windows missing. “This is where I followed Nath to. Let’s hustle.”

  Preston switched off the engine, but left the Ford unlocked. He strode across the four-way without heed to any possible oncoming traffic. Not so bold, I followed in his footsteps, keeping an eye out for traffic or anybody else.

  Preston stopped by a side door, which looked secure until he put his shoulder to it and it caved in with little resistance. From the silent street, the sound of the fracturing lock was deafening. I expected that we’d disturbed every dealer and chop shop in the district, but my fears were unfounded. Preston’s never-ending stream of good luck knew no bounds.

&nbs
p; We stepped inside. Shattered glass crunched under foot. Sinuous electrical wires hung from the ceiling like exposed veins. A muffled baseline throbbed in the distance.

  “They hang out on the floor above,” Preston said.

  He led the way to an emergency access stairwell and a flight of steel stairs. Our footfalls clanged on the metallic surface, but the music masked our intrusion. I eased back the second floor door. A jerry-rigged light feebly lit an area. Three figures shifted in the shadows at the center of the warehouse floor. I went to ask Preston our tactics but he brushed by me.

  He walked towards the group of three. His cool was astonishing. There was no haste or excitement to his pace. Fear was not an emotion that existed inside him. Being spotted was not an issue. As observer to this demonstration of parental guidance, I followed.

  “I know we don’t have a sign posted, but no trespassers,” a shadow said before we were halfway across the floor. Laughter followed the quip.

  “I’m here for Nathan,” Preston commanded.

  “Dad?” Nathan managed.

  “Dad?” the comedic shadow echoed. “Is it your curfew, Dog?”

  More laughter followed. Nathan mumbled a curse.

  When we reached them, the light exposed Nathan’s bad influences as being not much older than Nathan, just a couple of punk kids. One wore a Raider Nation sweatshirt and the other was a walking advertisement for FUBU. What elevated them from punk kids were the bags of dope, pills and weed sitting on top of a wooden, upturned packing case. None of the three made any move to hide their stash. The dealers flopped into a couple of worse for wear loungers. Nathan remained standing, rigid in his fear.

  “Nathan, I thought we had an agreement,” Preston said.

  FUBU cranked the volume on the boom box. He swapped a mischievous glance with Raider Nation. Preston wasn’t to be trifled with and kicked the boom box clear across the room. The CD player skittered across the floor, pieces breaking off as it disappeared into the gloom. With the boom box dead, an oppressive silence squeezed the standoff.