by J. G. Cuff
Surely that's where he is; frightened but safe, and waiting for me to return.... I will get out of here, one way, or another.
Atticus could feel his lips quivering and the tears would soon come. He threw the wooden bowl at the door and it banged loudly off of the solid timbers, as Horace's voice made its way through the door, startling him.
“Prisoner 47, step over to the far wall. Put your hands on the black stone.” Atticus obeyed and moved to the wall opposite the door. Only one guard ever entered the cell, and a second man was always waiting outside on the landing.
Atticus listened to the door opening behind him. He heard the sound of water splashing in the fresh bucket, as the guard set it onto the floor.
“It looks like you've got a friend in Amicitia,” said Horace, seemingly surprised or perhaps even perplexed, “There's a delivery for you, stamped royal and all.”
Atticus' heart was racing instantly.
What does this mean? Did someone witness the captain and his men kill that girl and come forward?
He tried to calm himself. It seemed a miracle that he now had some connection outside. Someone who knew he was here. Atticus began to turn around, but the guard quickly shouted, “Turn your back prisoner! You don't move when we're in here! I can beat that rule into your skull if you need it.”
“No Sir,” Atticus said hastily, keeping his eyes and hands to the black stone.
Horace left the cell and closed the door. As soon as Atticus heard the locking bolt slip into its hole, he turned around to look. Resting on his bed, was a beautiful, rectangular, little wooden box.
Fear and excitement gripped him all at once. Sitting down quickly, he picked up the thin case and examined it carefully. It was wrapped around both sides in a waxed string, and sealed at the front with a large, red wax blot; stamped with the royal griffon and serpent shield.
Atticus looked up to the stone ceiling with a sudden elation and whispered,
“Thank you.”
The box was masterfully carved from dark walnut, elegant in its features, with long, curling swirls of vines, sprouting tiny flowers along the sides. Two little hummingbirds, with their wings opened, were carved into the top. There were no hinges on the back, no lock at the front, nor any latches to set one onto. This was a message box for internal use among the council and her stewards abroad. Atticus wondered how many miles the box had traveled over the years in the hands of swift riders, to battlefields and offices, delivering the news to weary generals and noblemen alike. He wondered how many precious secrets it had hidden.
Atticus took a deep breath and pulled up on the lid, breaking the wax seal across the rim. It lifted silently, and as he looked down at the shallow, red velvet lining, he saw a small, neatly rolled piece of paper with a thin, blue ribbon tied around it. When he reached inside to pick-up the tiny scroll, he saw a small, brown leather pouch resting underneath. It was no bigger than his palm. Atticus set the box down beside him on the bed, and he decided to untie and read the note first. He drew in several deep breaths before he read aloud in a whisper,
“I carved his face off with your knife. When I could no longer bear his screams, I opened his neck and pulled his lungs out.”
Atticus gritted his teeth hard, as the curled note shook in his hand.
“No....”
It wasn't true. It couldn't be. Looking down at the leather pouch inside the box beside him, Atticus lifted it out and opened it. His eyes ran with tears and his heart instantly withered when he saw the little body part resting inside. He turned the pouch upside down and a small left ear fell to his bed, facing upward.
It's not his.... Marcus had been born with a small, dark, circular birthmark on the back of his left ear.
Atticus prayed that it was just the captain's twisted cruelty, meant to torture him. Perhaps the ear belonged to another child, who was already dead. Atticus closed his eyes and turned the cold ear over on the bed.
When he collected the strength to look, he opened his eyes.
Atticus exploded and ran to the door; pounding at the heavy wooden beams with his fists; screaming at the top of his lungs,
“GUARD! GET BACK HERE!
GUARD! GUARD!”
He beat his agony into the ancient oak, until his hands were broken and bleeding under the nails, and he cried out until his chords frayed and left him voiceless.
The guards did not come.
With the last of his heart, broken beyond repair, Atticus fell down to his side, a faithless man, and he curled up into himself on the cold stone floor.
“Goddamn you Father....”
AWAKEN
21
ORNING had broken with a cold mist on its breath, drifting up from the fields in the early sunlight. The rusted pitch fork had punctured John's stomach. This one was a fighter. John's wounds were already beginning to heal, as he closed his hands around the farmer's neck and held him up against the barn wall beside the bodies of his wife and young daughter, who he had butchered the night before. They were both pregnant with his children. The farmer squirmed and kicked at John's knees, and then the voice came.
“John? Can you hear me? John.” John's eyes darted left then right, searching for the source.
The familiar voice of a young man sounded distant, as though it came from somewhere outside. And then the lights went out and John was suddenly blind; floating in the darkness. The voice grew louder.
“John? Come back. I saw his eyes open. I think he's awake!”
John was lying on his back with his eyes closed, twitching his hands, and muttering aloud,
“...the Father's work.”
“John. C'mon, wake up!”
He could feel a firm hand on his shoulder, gently shaking him. His eyes fluttered open, but the light was so bright, he shut them tight again. It was happening all over.
Where am I?
People were talking around him; their voices came and went with the ringing in his ears.
“Get the light out of his face!” he heard the young man's voice say, “Nurse! Go get the doctor! Tell him Big John's come to.”
John Bruin opened his eyes and squinted in the light. He was lying on a hospital gurney, dressed in a white cotton gown, with his arms and legs in leather restraints, held tightly against the high steel bedsides. A young, Black male, wearing a flat white hat, bright white pants, and a white, short-sleeve shirt, was gazing at him excitedly with a wide and genuine smile.
“Welcome back big fella. You're gonna be alright. Let me get you some water.”
The attendant turned around to a waist-high cart with a silver pitcher and some folded white towels on top of it.
There was no other furniture in the room, other than the bed he lay on—nothing for him to use as a weapon. Above his head, a dull white fan with wide blades sat still on the yellowing ceiling, and a beam of sunlight shone through a barred window behind his head, warming his chest and his right hand. The one and only door to the room was open, and he could see a white brick wall across from the threshold.
Then the quiet sound of piano music drifted into his ears. Beethoven's Symphony Number Seven in A Major was playing faintly from somewhere outside the door and down the hall.
“Here,” the attendant said, as he turned and poured water into a small paper cup.
“You've been drinking from an I-V. You haven't eaten any solid food in two weeks.” The attendant gently eased the back of the patient's head up and then held the cool paper cup to his lips. John drank quickly and finished.
“More,” he groaned.
The young man turned around to the cart. As John listened to the sound of water trickling into the cup, he suddenly remembered everything.
My name is John. I'm a US soldier.
He knew the friendly man beside him, and he recognized his unfortunate surroundings at the San Antonio State Hospital in Texas—a place for the criminally insane.
Charlie. His name is Charlie. The attendant handed him the full water cup and John drank
it down just as quickly as the last.
“Thank you Charlie. How long was I asleep?”
“Asleep? No,” Charlie said calmly and cautiously, “You been in a coma John. Thirteen days now.”
“A coma?”
Charlie filled the cup again and John emptied it into his throat and motioned for more. He had no memory of the Queen's Realm. It was gone to him now, like a receding dream upon awakening. The harder he searched for it, the faster and farther it left his mind.
Charlie smiled at him. They had known each other for nearly four years. Charlie had been caring for him at the hospital since John was admitted in 1954. San Antonio State Hospital was nestled among 600 quiet acres of orchards and pecan trees. The facility first opened in 1892, named The Southwest Lunatic Asylum. It was more than 33 years before the title was changed to be more considerate and politically correct. In the spring of 1925, the lunatic asylum was officially re-named as a state hospital.
John looked down, confused at the dark leather restraints binding his wide forearms and his thick ankles.
“Why the straps Charlie?”
Charlie frowned.
“Doctor's orders John. Since your last...incident. It's only for your own good.”
Thirteen days earlier, John had nearly killed himself. He was quietly eating his dinner in the open mess hall with 56 other inmates, when two male security personnel, escorting a nurse with her med-cart, passed by him. He jumped up and shoved the two guards to the floor and quickly grabbed two full bottles of phenobarbital sodium off of the cart. He guzzled them both down, and in a matter of 5 seconds, it was all over. John was standing, glass-eyed, waiting for something to happen; for the lights to go out.
The nurse panicked and ran for the doctor. The wall alarms wailed and other personnel came running with their billies and beat John to the floor.
By the time the attendants had restrained him and gotten him back to his room, his vital signs were nearly gone. They pumped his stomach in a last effort to keep him alive. They succeeded, but he slipped into a coma minutes later.
Up until that day, John had been having night-terrors; a bi-product of several traumas. He had served his country in German-occupied France, where he watched many friends and enemies die. Not long after his tour ended, he lost his wife and young son in Texas. He had come home from the war, a decorated veteran in 1945. He could still here the general's voice,
“You're a goddamned war hero Johnny.”
The doctors had tried to help John. They had been experimenting with him; giving him a healthy daily dose of insulin shock therapy. It stopped the dreams, but he became anxious, nervous, and then paranoia and depression soon followed.
While in the service, his grandfather David passed away, leaving him a small dairy farm on the outskirts of a tiny little town called Abott. After returning to Texas, John married his high school sweetheart, Sarah Fahl, and they became humble dairy farmers. Sarah and John enjoyed a quiet life, away from the noise of the city. It was what they both needed. In that year, Sarah gave birth to a boy and it nearly killed her. She pulled through and they named him David, after John's grandfather. John Bruin was finally home, and for the first time in many years, he was truly happy.
On David's fifth birthday, John had bought him a brand new white ash Louisville Slugger baseball bat. It was much too big for the small boy, but that's what David wanted most and he would grow into it soon enough. The two of them planned to spend the long evenings of that summer, playing in the field behind their house. John was a proud and loving father and he couldn't wait to teach his son everything he knew about the greatest game in the world.
That night, Sarah made a chocolate cake. A small group of friends and family came to celebrate David's birthday. It meant the world to him. John nearly broke down in tears himself to see all of that love under his roof. After what he had done and witnessed overseas, it was as close to a heaven as he could imagine. The next morning, he decided to surprise Sarah and David, taking them into Dallas to see a matinee and then for ice-cream sodas. David especially was delighted to go. The three of them climbed into John's grandfather's 1937 Terraplane Coupe. It had come with the farm. His grandfather had loved that old truck and he had kept it top shape. It always started and ran like new.
They arrived in the early afternoon at the Inwood Theatre, just in time to watch Eddie Quillan and Joan Warbury in Here Comes Kelly. John was proud to have his wife on one side of him and his adoring son the other. When the movie ended, the three of them exited the theater among a small group of others, and they got back into the coupe with David sitting in the middle; a smile from ear to ear, as he knew that they were headed for the soda shop. John pulled the truck out into the street, and immediately, he heard gunshots; a sound that he knew all too well. Instinctively, he ducked his head quickly below the dash line. He had counted four shots and heard shattering glass all around him, and the sound of David screaming. He looked over to his family and saw dark blood pumping out from a hole in David's neck. Sarah was slumped over against her door with blood in her lap.
She died instantly from a bullet to the left side of her head. David held on for a few minutes longer, looking up at John in terror while he tried to stop the bleeding. But it was too late. His son died in his arms.
Sarah had bent down to help David tie the laces on his shoes. He was watching her hands when two stray bullets blasted through the bottom of the windshield. For all his height and size, the bullets had missed John altogether.
A dispute between two petty criminals had erupted in the street that day, and a passing liquor truck opened fire on a car driving in the opposite direction. The Terraplane Coupe was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The man accused of shooting the gun never went to trial. Both witnesses retracted their original statements and refused to testify. The street was busy, yet no one else came forward. They all feared it would cost them their own lives. The gun that fired the shots was never found. The liquor truck had pulled away and the shooter had plenty of time to toss the pistol before an arrest was made. Without any witnesses and no evidence, the gunman walked. And he walked with a crooked smile; proud to have gotten away with it.
After John buried his wife and son, he had only one thing on his mind. Nathan Briggs. Briggs was red-headed thug in his 30's with a long list of petty crimes. He had been accused of rape and suspected of child exploitation; running a brothel But the man was well insulated and proved hard to find. No one liked to talk.
John spent his nights moving from seedy bars to shady clubs, until he found a low-life runner and muscleman for one of Briggs' associates. A young man from Dallas named Marshal West. In the early morning, John dragged West from a parked car, and into a side street alley where he put a choke-hold on him. The man was big, but John was much bigger. Marshal's eyeballs bulged out from their sockets, as John stood with his back against a brick wall, constricted his prey's neck with a massive right arm.
“Where is Briggs?”
“He'll...kill me,” Marshall labored.
“I'll kill you right now,” John whispered coldly, “Do you believe me?”
The muscleman gasped, tapping rapidly on John's forearm and the soldier let up, just enough for the man to talk.
Marshal squealed about the butcher's shop at the east end of the city where a few gangsters met regularly on Sundays. The shop was owned by Briggs' uncle.
John left him wheezing in the alley and drove away in the coupe. He had a Colt 45 and two .30-06 Springfields inside a chest at home at the foot of his bed, but this was personal. This was for David and Sarah, and it had to be hands-on.
When Sunday morning came, John said his prayers in the field behind his house, and then he drove into Dallas and parked his truck around the corner from the butcher's shop. He calmly got out of the Terraplane and then pulled David's Louisville Slugger from behind the seats.
Out front of the large shop window, two men sat at a two-top table on the sidewalk, playing card
s in the morning sunlight. Nathan Briggs was one of them. John did not recognize the other man. It didn't matter now. They were both about to die.
He approached them from the side, seemingly out of nowhere. The cards scattered into the air and their chairs flipped over backwards, as they looked up at the swiftly approaching giant with a wooden bat over his right shoulder, and tried to stand. John was on them so fast that they didn't have time to pull pistols. Before Nathan could reach his feet, the Louisville Slugger cracked against his forehead and split his skull wide open. He collapsed instantly. The other man had fallen to the ground and was reaching for his boot gun, when the bat slammed down against his right hand, smashing it into the pavement and breaking the bones.
The man was writhing on the sidewalk, cringing in pain. But John had only just begun. He stood over them and swung down with all of his might; beating his anger and his broken heart into their bodies, until he had shattered their limbs and crushed their faces into soft, wet mounds. For two whole minutes, John tenderized their flesh with the Louisville Slugger. They were not moving. Their warm blood had coated the bat and spattered all over John's, arms and over his face. On the sidewalk, it mixed and pooled around the two limp bodies; running over the curb, where it trickled down into a storm drain. John stopped and turned to the large, front shop window beside him. He stood there with the bat in his right hand, and he watched a man come running out from the back of the store. The butcher looked through the window and when he saw the bodies, he panicked and ran behind the service counter, reaching for a sawed-off 12-gauge, just as the sound of police sirens rang-out in the street. John looked around and for the first time, he saw that there were people gathered inside the stores on the other side of the road. Parents and young children had watched in horror through the windows. In that moment, his only thought was a deep regret that several small children had witnessed his reckoning.
