Candy from a Stranger

by Buckner, Daryl;

*

  Not fair! Not right! the Good One thought. Twelve years! He’d been with this place twelve years and in this country, a country that has been backsliding on its God-given principles for decades, maintaining any position for that long was some kind of gosh-darn miracle! And now they deny him his raise. His well-earned raise. His putting-up-with-grumbling-customers, roasting-out-in-the-hot-sun, and never-taking-a-sick-day-once, deserved raise! Even that Darla, who never seems to do more than polish her nails and answer the phone, got a raise. And any fool can see she’s just a harlot – a harlot who parades her boobies around in front of everyone and doesn’t care what color her hair is. It’s not fair. The Book says “the meek shall inherit the earth” and “those that cherish power will inherit dust,” but for some who work around here – it can’t happen soon enough. Stevens stalks around here like the devil himself, self righteous in his authority but Ezekiel says “and shall he live? No, because he that do an abomination and take a profit, he will surely die; his blood will.” Stevens has been here only five years, installed by his father-in-law during one of his drunken moments, no doubt. Five years? The Good One has been here twelve!

  Someone should pay. Someone’s blood should die.

  *

  The next day was equally disappointing. There were actually three in Austin and the more populous and spread-out city took all day to canvas. Fortunately, two that lived in the same neighborhood turned out to be living too far away from a viable convenience store so by eliminating them and then hurriedly returning to Brushy Creek Elementary I was able to barely catch Mrs. Wheeler stewarding little Joseph out of the parking lot in their late-model Chevy. The Wheelers lived on the outer edge of the school district which must be why she chose to drive Joseph instead of rising a half-hour earlier in the day and throwing Joe on the bus. There was no store in the Wheeler’s subdivision, not even a Starbucks, which to me at that time of the day seemed more like a sin than a zoning mishap.

  Feeling utterly defeated, I steered towards Bluebell Lane at dusk, stopping only once at the Texaco station around the corner to my house. The Texaco station where I have filled up religiously once-a-week on my way to work. The Texaco station where I purchased a six-pack of beer, a corndog, some sunflower seeds for Rocky and; tucked far in the back of the rack – the last bag they had of Keeley’s Red Hots.

  The 1 and 7/8th ounce size.

  Standing at the door of my car, the oily heat radiating off of the engine, I felt like a fool. Keeley’s Red Hots. Tears overwhelmed my eyes as I stared down the quarter mile road as the lawn sprinklers came on at Jackson Elementary. Surreally, I looked back at the door to the Texaco and there was an 8X10 poster of a young Hispanic girl, all smiles and eyes full of promise, and under the picture was the caption: Have you seen our daughter?

  After dropping the beer and corndog back at the house, I walked the two blocks and sat with Rocky, staring at the Keeley’s and sharing the seeds and my half-full bottle of bourbon. The only smart thing I did all day was to turn my cell off and tuck it as deeply as I could in my pants pocket as I made slow, pointless arcs in the iron swing.

  *

  On the long “corridor” that calls itself Highway 29, Horst is the farthest of the towns that I had selected. Why I chose that length of distance I don’t know but I think I subconsciously was recalling the words I had said to Lieutenant Perez many months ago: You’re looking for someone who travels. A fisherman or camper, a salesman, a priest, maybe a bus driver…

  People who do that kind of work or activity don’t stray more than a few hundred miles from home. I had taken a felt marker and a map and with the exception of Durant, Oklahoma; you can trace right through Plum, Breakline, Horst, Smithville and Austin and it is a straight, unbroken line. That line is called Highway 29. The corridor.

  Larry Stemhagen and Jeff Carlyle both attend Robert O. Rayburn Elementary and it was my hope that I would get lucky and find both boys living in the same neighborhood just as I had found two doing so in Austin. Sitting, sweating in the Rayburn Elementary parking lot I looked at both boys’ photos and they looked so similar that I could imagine their parents becoming confused at the local Youth League game or the Horst YMCA and having a good chuckle amongst themselves when they discovered they had tried to pick-up the wrong boy. Jeff Carlyle’s blond locks I could understand but the Stemhagen boy had to come from Germanic stock and I didn’t associate blond with German. Maybe I’ve just seen too many old Nazi movies. One thing about Texas though: All kinds of Europeans had settled here over the years and the movies’ stereotype of the drawling, tobacco-chewing cowboy couldn’t be more wrong. It was more likely you’d find a cowpoke saying “Ya sure” or “I tink so” than he would “Howdy Ma’am” back in the pioneer days.

  Both boys came out of the brick building, clutching “peechee” folders and maneuvering around giggling girls and harried teachers. They loaded onto bus number 5 and I was just about to put my car into drive when I heard a persistent knock on my Volvo’s roof. My heart froze. I turned, expecting to see Perez’s smug face peering back at me but it was a nebbish elderly man, in bowtie and horn-rimmed glasses, bending down and motioning for me to roll down my window. The sweat was wetting my forehead and a bead stung my eye but I did as he asked and awkwardly looked out at him.

  “You gotta have a sticker.”

  “What?” I said.

  “A sticker. You need to have a student sticker to pick up your kid in the bus lane. Otherwise, y’all need to park in the street. Safety reasons, you see.” He pointed to a line of cars out on the curb.

  Ah, Christ. I was behind a row of four buses and one other car in the circular bus lane and it didn’t even occur to me that I stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the regulars there. I was an alien, a foreigner, just asking for a quick trip to the cop shop for a one-on-one with the Po-Po.

  I waved a hand. “Thanks. I left the wife’s car at home and forgot that mine doesn’t have a sticker.” I pulled out of the queue but the bus line had already started moving so I just followed them, hoping that Wally Cox didn’t follow my progress and tumble to the fact that I wasn’t headed for the curb.

  Bus 5 split right out of the parking lot and I followed it past three intersections and a jog onto a rural route that took us at least a mile to the north. The bus paused at an intersection that featured a Golden Chicken, a Ross Dress-For-Less, and a tile and paint center. No gas station/convenience store in sight. I pulled into the Golden Chicken parking lot, lit one of the few cigarettes I would have that day, and watched the bus disgorge a dark-headed boy, one girl and the two blond boys I was following. I was right – they were friends and I saw the boy I was sure was Larry Stemhagen pat the other on the back and then playfully punch his shoulder, the two sharing some joke that I couldn’t hear. The two blond boys headed east into a small residential section that I knew would contain Rosefell Street and Prete Lane. I moved the Volvo forward, slowly to keep some distance between myself and the two.

  I don’t know if I looked back at the businesses with dismay or relief but there was no vantage point that had any connection with the hard candies and the two boy’s homes. I followed the Stemhagen boy until he entered his home anyway. I knew Prete Lane was one block over so I resolved to use it to double-back to the main thoroughfare that would lead me to the freeway. I had just turned the corner onto Prete when my heart leapt out of my chest and the cigarette stub fell from my fingers onto the car’s carpet.

  Sitting in front of a house, the one I knew must be 1043 Prete, was a black van.

  Jesus! The van, parked at the curb had an open door and even in this hot weather I could see it was running. Thin gray smoke issued from its tailpipe. The lawn in front of 1043 was slanted and brown and in the center of it was a tall, broad man with his hand extended to Jeff Carlyle like he had something in it. All of a sudden the man grabbed the boy’s arm and started dragging him towards the waiting van, the boy clearly resisting.

  Time slowed down. I saw the van. I saw the
boy. There wasn’t anyone on the street except for me.

  I don’t recall stopping my car but the next moment I was pumping my legs as fast as I could, sucking in the hot air as I zero-ed in on the struggling duo.

  I heard the man cry out: “It’s my day! It’s my day!”

  My vision turned red. Madness. Unhinged! This lunatic was trying to take Jeff Carlyle and I was going to drive his ugly face into the dirt until he was dead.

  “It’s my…” I hit him at waist level and we rolled on the brown grass, my hand around his throat, the boy staggering toward the porch of his house. I didn’t want any police. I managed to get out “get inside!” to the boy before the man and I struggled to our knees, throwing punches and swearing at each other. I heard my shirt tear and I gripped his throat again as I felt a searing pain spread over the back of my head.

  Blackness.

  I woke up to several faces peering down at me; two older faces, a black man... and a cop.

  I struggled up onto one elbow and saw the attacker standing ten feet away with a woman... who had her arms around Jeff Carlyle.

  Shit.

  My head started pounding as the cop, a white man with a military cut and dressed in blue, handcuffed me and threw me into the rear seat of his white cop car. No lights were flashing but this was not an unmarked cruiser; the Horst Police emblem and “To serve and Protect” printed prominently on the side. It was stifling hot in the seat and smelled vaguely of sweat, beer, and vomit.

  Through the stained window I saw the cop directing people back to their homes and I got a kick in my gut as the attacker, after a few words with the cop, took the woman and the blond boy inside 1043 Prete.

  I am royally screwed.

  The patrolman, whose name tag declared him R.T. Higgins, entered the car and punched a few buttons on his onboard computer. He said, “I took your license out of your wallet while you were out-of-it. I just want to make sure…” He swiveled the device so I could see it clearly, “…is this you?”

  The read-out showed my driver’s license picture, current address, phone number, and at the bottom of the screen it said: Aslt/no weapon 2012 Mar 4 Dismissed

  I said, “Yes. That assault was dismissed.” The handcuffs bit into my wrists.

  “That your Volvo?” He pointed at my car, the front door still open.

  “Yes.”

  “Hold on.” The officer slid out of the vehicle and went to my car, opening the trunk and searching the full interior for a few minutes. When he returned he said, “You got a funny smell upfront – ever been involved with dope?”

  Shit. “That must be my cigarette – I guess I dropped it when I ran to aid the boy.”

  “Aid the boy?” the cop said.

  “Now look, I…” The cop looked back at me through the screened divider and held up his hand.

  “Relax, relax... this looks like your year for getting dismissals. I talked to the husband and…”

  “Husband?”

  The cop sighed. “Like I said, relax. He’s the ex-husband and he’s not going to press charges. He understands that you didn’t know what was going on. He has visitation rights and this is one of his days and the boy didn’t want to go – wanted to stay and play with his buddies. It happens. Anyhow, I’m going to let you go, just as long as you go back home and keep your nose clean. Just between you and me, you’re lucky the mother didn’t take your head off with that golf club.”

  This is my day! This is my day!

  Stupidly, I said, “Golf club?” I felt the tender spot on back of my head.

  “Nine iron. Pulled her punch a bit or she would have knocked you back to 1997. Mr. Cain, I’m legally required to ask you if you want to go to the hospital. Do you?”

  Shit-boy-howdy... no.

  I said, “I’ll be fine. All I want to do is get out of here.”

  The cop Higgins cast a wary eye at me. “Just why were you here, anyway?”

  My scrambled mind clicked into gear. “I was in town trying to meet with the Rayburn principal. I’m a teacher. Looking for a job for next year. I got a little lost, turned the corner and wham… I see some guy pulling on a little kid! What was I supposed to do?”

  I sounded pretty sincere to my ears, especially since I was wincing and flinching from every new shot of pain in my head but the cop was looking at me queerly.

  He said, “Rayburn’s easily a mile away.”

  “Oh, really?” Smart, Cain. Real smart.

  Higgins seemed to make up his mind and he dragged me out of the cop car, removed the handcuffs, and helped me to my car. Lowering me into the driver’s seat, he said, “Looks like that carpet is a goner. A sign from above: quit smoking, you’ll live longer.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” If Perez or Fulton finds out about this, carpet will be the least of my worries. Thank God I didn’t bring the gun!

  Turning over the ignition, I winced from a pain in my hand. I must have connected with Mr. Carlyle at least once. Higgins said, “You okay to drive?”

  I nodded “ok”, turned out onto Prete Lane and reversed the way I had come in. I wasn’t about to tell Higgins this, but I had spotted a liquor store about half-way between Prete and the elementary school and was planning on violating a few more laws on my way back to Austin.

  I don’t know who said it but I’ve heard the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If that’s true, I am insane. I sat in my spot, the rut that my shoes had dug in the dirt under the swing growing larger, and nursed both a drink and my aching head. Rocky was having a spat with another squirrel, ignoring the bits of last night’s corn dog, and in my fuzzy mind they sounded like quarreling spouses. I kept rolling my disaster with the Carlyle family over and over in my head, waiting for a visit from Perez or the FBI. I had to admit to myself that if I hadn’t been bogeyed by Mrs. Carlyle’s nine iron, I may have killed an innocent man. An almost-sobering thought. I watched a few rare clouds pass across the face of a waxing crescent moon and heard my cell go off.

  Jeanie.

  I was wrong. I stopped swinging and looked at the number. A Texas area code.

  “Mister... Cain?”

  “Yes?” Slight accent; a slurring voice not unlike my own.

  “This is Jim... Jim Herndon. Look, you said I should call…” I heard noises in the background and I imagined Rolly or maybe the bartender at Dewey’s turning tonight’s game up on the TV over the bar.

  “Yeah... yeah. You heard any word from the cops on your boy?” Why was I asking? I already knew the answer…

  Herndon’s voice dropped an octave. “No... I’ve pretty much been ignored by them. Them and my whole family.”

  Join the club, buddy.

  “Sorry to hear that. What... what can I do for you?”

  The clinking of glasses. “I don’t know if this means anything but there’s been a couple of guys asking around about you... official-looking guys, I mean.”

  Shit. FBI.

  “Did they identify themselves to you?”

  “Nah... they didn’t have to. Nobody around here looks like that: shiny suit, wingtips, hair cut so short you can see the lumps on their head.”

  “What did they want?”

  “Look man, I’m sorry. They wanted to know if I had seen you before, if maybe you’d been hanging around for a long time. What was I supposed to tell them? I told them you’d been here after Josh went missing but I didn’t know you... I mean, we hadn’t met or anything.”

  At first they think it’s you, you know.

  “You did the right thing. Don’t worry about it. At least they’re doing something. They’ll probably hassle you for a few days and then move on.” I took a big drink and shook my aching head, “If you don’t mind me asking: have you had any communication with your wife?” Jesus, I’m worrying about his wife and can’t even bridge the gap with my own.

  “Well, that’s the other thing – yeah, I have. They’ve been questioning her too and she called me up and we met to
talk it over. It’s spooked her real bad.”

  I wanted to console this guy. I said, “It’s bound to. I’m glad you’re talking, though.”

  “Yeah, well... it’s not really talking but the thing I wanted to tell you is we met in the park.”

  “The park?”

  “The park – Fowler Park. Where they found Josh’s shoe.” Herndon’s voice broke and I could hear him drinking something.

  Before I could speak he said, “She wanted to see where we lost him and I said yes so we met at the park on her lunch break. She’s on part-time at Turner Auto Parts.”

  Not knowing what else to say I said, “That must have been tough on you both.”

  There were tears now. “It was, but the weird thing is we weren’t alone.”

  What? “I don’t understand. What do you mean ‘you weren’t alone’?”

  “We were just sitting there, talking, when this big van comes up and parks in the lot.”

  Jesus! “What kind of van? What color?”

  “White. One of those step-vans... you know?”

  White?

  “I didn’t think too much about it till the guy driving it came out and sat at a picnic table and started eating a snack lunch.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “Well, he kept staring at us. My wife and I were over by the drinking fountain, on a bench... you know? He was all the way over by the parking lot and he just kept staring at us. It was eerie. It made us both feel creepy. I was starting to get pissed off and I was going to go talk to him but he got up real quick-like and left.”

  Rocky the squirrel, hearing the tone of my voice, started studying me. “Jesus, man... you think it was the cops? Maybe a reporter?

  Herndon was really sounding sloppy now. In between sniffles he said, “Oh, no. I knew who he was. I mean, I don’t know him but he’s a beer guy... there was Bud and Miller’s signs all over the sides of his van.”

  Freddie.

  I said, “Red hair... freckles? Kind of skinny?”

  “Yeah, that’s him. You think it’s anything to worry about? Suzy... she’s pretty shaky right now and I’m not any better. Mr. Cain…”