The Spirit Survives

by Gary Williams Ramsey

  There were now four stones in the area I had cleared to keep count of the days. It was the morning of my fifth day, trapped.

  I recognized that my mind was playing tricks on me. I hoped my spirit could survive. I inspected my supplies. The only food that I had remaining was one can of Vienna sausages. The packet of cocaine was there with my two empty water bottles. My mouth was dry and my lips were cracked as I picked up a water bottle and crawled toward the puddle below the opening. My leg throbbed. I think the poison was localized, and it wasn’t spreading to the rest of my body. When I reached the puddle, it was almost empty. The water was pink from the residue of Cherokee’s blood from the wolf’s mouth when he drank. I filled my bottle with the pink liquid and crawled back to my place to get the second bottle. I filled that bottle with the remaining water left in the puddle. When I was back in my space, I drank some of the pink liquid. The blood made it taste sweet. I don’t know what the wolf and the snake and the rats will do with no water. My supply would last no more than two days, and then I would probably die. My mind was at the point of breaking down. In my weakened state of mind, I thought about the fact that during mental crises most people go to their base, something that is given to a child by loving parents. The base contained hope and love and togetherness. To a boy, this base is given by the father and nurtured by his mother.

  I felt sadness knowing that I had no base. I only had my spirit to see me through.

  I lay there thinking about my childhood in which I had no father and my mother was so filled with self pity that she didn’t even try to teach me about life. I learned for myself by trial and error. Maturity brings self-reliance, but the void stays in the heart forever.

  Chapter 21

  My father left us when I was two years old, and I don’t know much about the man other than what Mother told me. I never heard his side of the story, so I don’t know how much Mother exaggerated in her berating of him and telling me what a horrible person he was.

  He married my mother when she was seventeen, and he was twenty-two. He joined the army shortly thereafter and was sent overseas. I was born eight months after he left for the army. He didn’t list my mother as a dependent and didn’t send support money until she contacted the army. According to her, he was a liar and a cheat, withholding support for the two of us. For some reason, not known to us, he was discharged after two years of service. He told my mother it was for “medical reasons.”

  He returned home for a few months and then simply left without saying anything. She divorced him for abandonment a year later. I never saw or heard from him again. She had no idea where he was for many years. All the memories that a normal child has about experiences with his father are simply a void for me.

  We lived in a run-down rental house near a cotton mill in Monroe, NC. My mother worked the third shift in the cotton mill. An older, partially crippled lady lived in the house with us, so I would not be alone at night. Mother didn’t have the money to pay her anything, but she just needed a place to live. Her name was Maybelle. She had stringy grey hair pulled tightly into a bun. When she grinned, which was seldom, she exposed rotten teeth. I remember her breath smelled so bad that I avoided getting near her face. Maybelle used a walker because of her advanced arthritis, and she groaned every time she moved. She wasn’t unkind to me, but only did what was necessary for my existence.

  While my mother slept during the day, Maybelle would prepare boiled eggs and toast for breakfast every morning. Lunch was usually something on the order of a tomato sandwich with onion and mayo, or a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Occasionally, she would open a can of ravioli or soup. I considered that a treat. My mother would be up in time for supper. Maybelle usually prepared cornbread and pinto beans for supper. On other occasions, she would cook collard greens and biscuits. The only time we had meat was on Sunday. It was either chicken or rabbit. She kept what we called “rabbit boxes” in the yard. The contraption had a trap door with lettuce in the back of the box for bait. Occasionally, a rabbit would venture into the box. Maybelle would kill it by hitting it on the head with a hammer. She would skin it and put it in the refrigerator. Mother would fry or boil the meat with rice.

  My favorite dish, which she would prepare sometimes on Sunday, was called “chicken or rabbit bog”. She would fry fatback meat in a pot to get the grease. She chopped onions and dumped them into the hot grease. To that mixture, she would add a pot of half cooked rice and a boiled chicken or rabbit. She cooked the concoction until the meat fell off the bone. After the bones were carefully picked out, it was stirred together and served with cornbread.

  Occasionally in the summer, when people would give us tomatoes, we had sliced tomatoes with the chicken bog. I loved that dish, especially because I could sit at the table with my mother and eat it.

  My mother rarely smiled. She was consumed with self pity for her plight in life, with no husband and a dreadful job. She showed me little love, but I worshiped her.

  Finally, after three years of this existence and after my fifth birthday, she met a man who had just been discharged from the army and came to work in the cotton mill. He was an uneducated plain-looking man. His name was Heath and he was short with curly red hair and freckles around his pointed nose. He had a nice smile, and he thought that he had found a princess in my mother. After dating for about six months, they decided to marry. I don’t think she loved him. I think she married him to get out of her miserable life and to have someone to help pay the bills and deal with me. I went with them to a Justice of the Peace to get married. I slept in the car while the ceremony took place. He moved into the old house with us and Maybelle. Sadly, God took Maybelle out of her misery six months later.

  While going through her things, my new stepfather found enough money to bury her. The money was stored in a shoe box hidden in the closet under a rug. There were four people at her burial, the three of us and a strange looking grey-haired man we didn’t know.

  Heath didn’t know how to be a father. His own father was killed in a car wreck by a drunk driver when Heath was six years old and his mother put him in an orphanage. He was raised there and joined the army when he was seventeen. The only interaction Heath and I had, during the early years, was when he would beat me with a belt if I did anything that he didn’t like. I don’t hold that against him because he didn’t know any better.

  To his credit, Heath moved us out of that broken-down house and into a small new home in a better part of town. My half-brother, Keith, was born two years later. After Keith was born, my mother went back to work on the third shift at the mill. Heath worked during the day, and Mother worked all night and slept during the day. I was left to fend for myself and go to school when I wanted to, and stay out when I wanted to. Neither of them really cared, one way or the other.

  A turning point in my life came during my fifth year in school. For the first time, I received straight A’s on my report card. My friends called me a genius and I felt special. I never made another B during grade school and high school. With my new-found confidence, I became a leader in high school. I was President of the Honor Society, the Monogram Club, and during my senior year, I was President of the Student Body. I was voted Most Dependable, Friendliest and Most Likely to Succeed. My mother and my stepfather neither understood nor cared about my success in high school. I did it on my own, without notice or attention from them. They didn’t provide me with a base.

  There is one thing that I learned during my childhood of neglect. When things got bad for me emotionally, I would go into my “survival mode.” When I was in this mode, I blocked out the world and retreated inside myself. I kept my sanity by living in this mode until things got brighter. This world was my refuge, and I still use it when necessary.

  In the cave, alone, hungry and thirsty, after five days trapped, it was time to go into my best “survival mode.”

  Chapter 22

  It was a rainy day in Chicago. Steam rose from the hot streets. The beggars, who stood outside the tra
in stations and on the street corners, were sweating and cursing as pedestrians rushed by on their way to air-conditioned offices, stores, and apartments. The muggy air was still, with no sign of Chicago’s famous winds. Most people were in a bad mood but none as dark as Sergey Ivanova. Stone silent as he exited his Mercedes limo in the shadow of his private condo at Walton on the Park, he was dressed in black, the perfect reflection of that mood. He briskly brushed by the surprised doorman, who hurriedly recovered and said, “Welcome back, Mr. Ivanova,” expecting his usual generous tip. Sergey continued, saying nothing, offering nothing.

  He had purchased this condo just a year before for $1.6 million. It had increased in value by thirty percent since then. He used it as his downtown Chicago headquarters, the place where he conducted business meetings and met on occasion with his mistress, Melissa Browning. Sergey liked his girlfriends young and slender with full lips, and Melissa, a twenty-three-year-old model from Charleston, South Carolina, met the requirements. He had bought her a Cadillac Escalade for her birthday, and she frequented the Gold Coast area around the condo and the nearby Magnificent Mile boutiques with his credit card. Shopping came second to her primary purpose, which was to sexually service Sergey. She preformed this duty whenever he wanted it.

  Today, first he wanted information, then silence and solitude.

  As Sergey entered the building, he hastened to the elevator and punched the gold-lettered “seven.” The elevator purred to his floor and Sergey strode off and shoved his key into the lock of Suite 704. He entered and looked at the sweeping glass windows that held breathtaking views of high-end Chicago.

  A tall, lanky policeman was sitting stiffly on the black leather sofa, taking short, quick swigs of a Jack Daniels on the rocks. Sergey had called ahead, and given permission for the doorman at the condo to let him.

  The living area was decorated in black leather with glass and stainless steel end tables and coffee table. A glass and stainless-steel bar was stocked with all the finest bourbon and whiskey. The cabinet in the bar contained a small freezer and Sergey’s private stock of vodka. There was a large painting of Veronika on the wall beside the bar. An aquarium sat in the corner near the front windows. Inside, lurked an Irukandji jellyfish, a silent, mysterious, nearly invisible killer found in the seas off northern Australia. Sergey had imported it the year before.

  He walked to the bar without a word. Having retrieved a tumbler, he opened the small freezer below the bar and pulled out a bottle of Diva vodka, the only alcohol he drank.

  He poured the tumbler half full of the icy liquid and took a long pull. He walked back to the couch and stood over the assistant chief. “What do you have for me?”

  Sergey Ivanova had contacts in both the Houston, and the Chicago police departments. It cost him five thousand a month for each contact, plus bonuses, but he received valuable information and protection for his money. When told of Veronika’s death at Lookout Mountain in Wisconsin, he had called both contacts for information. He wanted them to check hotels, flights, and police records for anything that would lead to the killer. He made it clear to those contacts that he didn’t want the police to find the man. He was going to deal with killer on his terms.

  Both his contacts had the authority to secure detailed and confidential information for him.

  The man on the couch replied, in a tentative voice, “All I have so far is that a man named Ben Harris was reporting missing on Lookout Mountain the same day Veronika was killed. Harris, an ex-cop, was living with a girl named Leah Hamilton in Green Bay.” He gave Sergey the address of the Residence Inn where they had been staying.

  Sergey took the information and placed it in his shirt pocket. “I pay you a hell of a lot of money and all I get is this?” he said, outwardly very calm.

  The man stood up and replied in a shakier tone, “Sergey, that’s all the facts the police have now. I’ll continue to monitor the situation and call you immediately with any information we uncover. The police in Tomahawk, Wisconsin are in command of the investigation, and I’ll maintain daily contact with them and the Green Bay police department. I told both chiefs that our interest is so intense because Ben Harris was an ex-cop.”

  Sergey nodded and handed the man an envelope thick with cash. “You better get more information soon, asshole. Now get out of here.”

  The cop set his drinking glass on the table, hurried to the door, and left. He was aware of Sergey’s temper and willingness to kill at the drop of a hat. He didn’t want his hand stuck in the aquarium with that damned jellyfish. He had heard the rumor that Sergey had killed three men that way.

  When the door closed, Sergey grabbed his cell phone and dialed Petrov’s number.

  Chapter 23

  Bo knew he couldn’t keep Leah in the hotel room he had rented in Tomahawk. He had the address from the papers in Ben’s car of where she and Ben Harris were staying in Green Bay. He decided that the most productive place to set his trap for Ben Harris was from that location. The trip back to Green Bay would take a couple of hours, and he could not be sure that Leah would stay unconscious long enough for him to implement his plan. Bo had trouble sleeping most nights, especially after he killed someone. It was not a guilty conscience; it was more about the adrenaline rush he experienced from watching a person drawing their last breast before they entered whatever afterlife existed. He always kept a couple of bottles of sleeping pills with him to slow down the rush, so he could rest.

  Bo had about a third of a bottle of water in the cup holder. He pulled his vehicle into the last observation area about a mile from the Lookout Mountain entrance. He located his shaving kit in his suitcase and took out three of the sleeping pills. He put them in a plastic bag from the kit.

  He heard a noise coming from underneath the tarp covering Leah’s unconscious body. He put the plastic bag underneath his foot and crushed the pills, took the residue, put it in the bottled water, and shook it up. Bo looked both ways, down and up the road and saw no vehicles. He uncovered Leah’s head and saw that her eyes were open but dazed. Blood trickled down her cheek from the blow that had knocked her unconscious, and her forehead and the bridge of her nose were swelling from the injury. He had to act quickly, so he ripped the duct tape from her lips and immediately held open her mouth and poured some of the liquid down her throat. He held her mouth shut so she had no choice but to swallow. He repeated that action four times until the bottle was empty, while she struggled and coughed, almost choking.

  He replaced the tape on her mouth and pushed her down hard to the floor of the SUV, covered her with the tarp, and slammed the back hatch shut. He heard her struggle for a few minutes, and then she was silent for a moment. Bo started his vehicle and left Lookout Mountain for, he hoped, the last time. He heard muffled grunts from the back and turned on the radio to block them out. He always kept his radio tuned to the oldies station and now Elvis was belting out “Hunk of Burning Love.” Bo loved Elvis and sang along. After about an hour he turned down the volume and heard only silence from the back. The sleeping pills must have taken effect; Leah would be out cold for at least eight hours.

  He stopped by a convenience store, used the john, and bought a six-pack of beer. He popped a beer and turned up his radio again. Ben E. King was singing “Stand by Me.” Bo sucked on his beer. His trip back to Green Bay was turning out to be a pleasant one.

  When he arrived at the Residence Inn, he checked the papers he had taken from Ben’s car. Bo got out of the SUV, locked it, and walked around to Ben’s suite, number 107. The hotel was designed in an L shape. Bo decided that if he wanted a view of 107—and any visitors that might show up—Suites 98 or 101 would make the best stakeout positions.

  He walked back to the entrance and into the lobby.

  “May I help you sir?” The greeting came from a pretty girl in her twenties. She flashed a beautiful smile, which complemented her curly red hair, freckled nose, and large brown eyes. Her name tag read Gina, but Bo thought she looked more like Strawberry Shortcake.<
br />
  Bo asked her if Suites 98 or 101 were available. He wanted to be on the first floor facing the pool. Ms. Gina Strawberry checked the computer and replied in her cheery voice that 101 was available. It was a two-bedroom bi-level suite. Bo gave her his credit card and told her that his stay would be indefinite at this point. Gina signed him in, told him about the full breakfast every morning, and the special services available. She gave him the directions to the suite and thanked him for choosing The Residence Inn. Bo emphasized that he would not require any maid service, took his card key and left.

  It was dark when Bo moved his SUV to a parking place directly in front of the door for Suite 101. He walked to the door and shoved the card key in the lock and walked inside to see if the accommodations were appropriate for his needs. These facilities will work nicely, he thought.

  He returned to the SUV and retrieved his suitcase and a length of white plastic rope. He placed the suitcase on the luggage rack in the bedroom next to the closet and threw the rope on the bed. He walked back to the SUV and looked around. Seeing no one, he opened the hatch and threw the tarp containing Leah’s limp body over his shoulder. He quickly walked to the door and went inside. He placed the body on the couch and went back, closed the door and locked it. Bo removed Leah’s body from the tarp, threw it over his shoulder again, picked up the rope from the bed, and walked up the stairs. Leah was still out cold when he heaved her body on the bed. He cut the plastic restraints from her hands and feet, cut a piece of rope, tied her hands tightly, and tied the other end of the rope to the headboard. He bound her feet and tied the end of that rope to the bed frame. He left the duct tape over her mouth.