Callisto

by Torsten Krol

  Gene kept on driving east a couple hours or so and here come sunup all pink and beautiful across the entire sky ahead of us.

  “Now that’s a picture,” says Gene. “I don’t ever get tired of that, same with sundown, both ends of the day are just the prettiest things.”

  I watched the new day come up in front of me like watching a giant movie screen, not sitting in the cab of a truck with Thursday coming at me from the eastern horizon like this, and it made me wonder what kind of scenery I’ll be looking at this time Friday.

  It turned out Gene wasn’t going as far as St Louis, he’s dropping his load in Kansas City, so that’s where he set me down. I told him Thank you and he told me Good luck and I strolled away wondering what to do next. It was around noon by then so I’m hungry again. I ate lunch at Denny’s then found a Wal-Mart and got some socks and underwear which I changed into these in a gas station toilet and come out again feeling more comfortable but still no plan. Even if I got another ride and made it as far as St Louis, then what? What am I doing except enjoying a little freedom before they nab me again, which I know they will even if I sent them on a wild goose chase to Denver. When they figure that out they’ll put my picture on the news and tell everyone to watch out for the six foot three terrorist that organized the Callisto bomb, a big lie but they won’t care so long as it gets me captured again, and this time they won’t bother with tricksy stuff like fake getaways, they’ll just hammer me until I tell them what they want to hear, namely where is Dean Lowry, which is just one question of which I don’t know the answer.

  I found a little park and sat down to think about things next to this little pond with ducks, but instead of thinking I found myself just watching those ducks, even getting a kick out of the way they waggle their tail ends when they get out of the water, which they all did hoping I’ll feed them, but I didn’t have anything so they wandered off again quacking at each other, maybe saying what a cheap human I am. A movie hero would be thinking hard and teaming up with a good-looking woman who’ll fall for him in around three seconds and agree to help him get past the cops or whoever, and then there’ll be exciting moments with car chases and so forth while the hero works out who framed him or whatever and goes after him with the cops hot on his trail, but he gets to the bad guy and tricks a confession out of him that the cops will get to hear on an open phone line or it gets tape-recorded or whatever and now the hero isn’t a Wanted Man anymore, plus he’s got this gorgeous woman hanging around his neck as the credits roll. Me, I get to watch ducks walk away from me. I just did not know what to do. I didn’t have a plan anymore. My brain had kind of shut down. I couldn’t plan a damn thing beyond lunchtime. It was nice and shady by that duck pond and I didn’t want to move.

  The speed and caffeine Vine had given me was all wore off by then and I wanted to sleep real bad now, so I dragged myself off of that park bench and walked a few blocks till I come to a Motel 6 and got myself a room. I’m thinking if I can just sleep awhile maybe my brain will shake the cobwebs off and I can think of something smart that’ll help me get away some more. I took my key with the room number tag along to door 8 and let myself in. The curtains were pulled shut against the sun and I sat on the bed asking myself if there was anything I should do before going to sleep. Well, I couldn’t think of a single thing, so I stripped off and got between those nice fresh sheets naked and fell asleep, how about that.

  It’s night when I woke up. I took a shower but before I got in I took the bandage from around my hand. The wound there is scabbed over around the stitches and the bandage wasn’t so clean anymore so it went in the trash bin. I used the little bar of soap that’s always in these places and the little plastic bag of shampoo and dried myself off feeling good and rested and clean, plus I’m hungry again, so the next part of the plan is to eat supper and maybe do some more thinking about all this. I wondered what Wendell Richard Aymes did after he got to Denver and found out the Lakewood address is bogus. Most likely he parked the Honda someplace and walked away, which the FBI tracker team will wonder why the bug quit moving and investigate, maybe watching whatever house the car got dumped in front of. That made me laugh to think about them wasting their time like that.

  I went out and ate a big meal, then on my way back to the motel I stopped at a liquor store and got myself a big old bottle of Captain Morgan and a sixpack of Bud to chase it down with and a couple bags of Doritos for a snack and settled myself down in front of the TV. They still did not know I fooled them because my face is not on the news yet, so I have got time still to come up with an escape plan. I watched two Cop shows and a Lawyer show then a Doctor show. All those people spoke very fast and never once stared at the wall or the sky trying to think what to say or what to do, all of them clever and handsome and knowing which way to turn to keep the story rolling along. Then I switched over to the inhouse movie and I had to laugh – it’s Donnie Darko. I watched it from the beginning to the end, this story about a weird kid and jet plane engines falling out of the sky and this guy in a creepy rabbit suit and could not make head nor tail out of it, but maybe that’s the Captain and Bud confusing me. The actor playing Donnie Darko looked nothing like Donnie D so I don’t know why he calls himself that.

  It was late by the time the movie ended and I’m ready for bed again. But then while I’m undressing a sad thing happened. I’m taking off my shirt that Detective Sergeant Vine gave me and I felt these little buttons on the inside of the shirt down near the bottom at the front. You have seen these, they’re spare buttons for when you lose one, but generally there are just two of these, and this shirt had three, only the third one was not like the other two, a little bigger and sewed on a different way.

  I studied that third button a long time, feeling this sad feeling about it. I had told myself they put a bug in the Honda and I sent that away west thinking I’m so smart, but this button here in my shirt they gave me for the getaway, it does not belong there. I told myself what it truly was but didn’t want to believe it, so then I told myself again and this time I accepted that they are smarter than me after all except for the fact that they believe I’m leading them in the direction of a terrorist cell with Dean as the chief terrorist, which is wrong of them to believe that. I wasn’t leading them anywhere, and did not know which way to go next, so this has got to stop right now.

  I ripped the button off my shirt and hammered it with the sole of my sneaker but that was just rubber so no good. I could have taken it outside and found a rock or brick or something and smashed it, but that seemed like a waste of energy, so in the end I flushed it down the john. Then I sat and waited.

  They talked about it for six or seven minutes, then knocked on the door. I was expecting them to blow it off the hinges and come storming in, a SWAT team in black with machine guns and goggles and so forth, but it was just Kraus and Deedle with a few uniformed cops standing behind them, no guns drawn or anything

  “Hello, Odell,” says Kraus.

  “Hi.”

  “I guess you found it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you smash it?”

  “Flushed it.”

  “Why did you do that? Those things cost about five hundred bucks.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry won’t cut it anymore,” says Deedle.

  SIXTEEN

  I had to sit between them in the back seat of a big SUV that took us away from Motel 6. They didn’t talk much. I felt like I had let them down. Maybe I should have thrown the shirt on the back of a moving truck and run the other way, but with less than $400 where could I go? I couldn’t be bothered anymore playing the fugitive game. They all think I’m some big-deal terrorist but I didn’t do anything, so I will sit down and explain all this to them as many times as they want until they understand. This has all been a big misunderstanding and I want it to stop, and I told that to Kraus.

  “It’s out of our hands now, Odell,” he tells me.

  “We’re handing you over,” says Deedle, kind
of smirking. Kraus just looked tired.

  “Over to who?”

  “Some other people in a different line of work.”

  “They don’t do terrorism stuff?”

  “They do terrorism stuff, they just do it different.”

  “Different how?” I wanted to know.

  “You’ll find out,” says Deedle, still with the smirk. He really did not like me.

  I was expecting a long drive back across Kansas, but they took me to some airport instead and I got put inside this small type of jet that Donald Trump flies around in with a special fitting on the chair arms for handcuffs. I forgot to say I have got handcuffs on now but not too tight, not hurting or anything, just there, and these got fastened to the arms of this chair they sat me in. It was a comfortable chair apart from not being able to move my hands. The engines got switched on, this high-pitched whine.

  “See you around, Odell,” Kraus told me, but I could tell he doesn’t think that will really happen, he’s just being polite. I kind of liked Kraus but not Deedle, who did not say Goodbye or anything else, just give me this look that says I don’t matter anymore. Then they both left and another guy with a crewcut comes along and closed the door, which cut down a lot on the engine whine outside.

  “All set?” he asked me.

  “Sure. I was never on a plane before.”

  “Is that right. Well, this’ll be a whole new experience for you, what we’ve got in store. If you get airsick let me know and I’ll hold a puke bag under your face.”

  “Okay, thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  He took a seat facing me but without the special handcuff fasteners and right away we started rolling. I could see other planes and buildings out the window but nothing big, no jumbo jets so this is just a small airport.

  “How long will it take to get back to Callisto?” I asked him. “Not long, I bet.”

  “Callisto? Forget it.”

  “Are we going somewhere else?”

  “Yeah, somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “That’s a big surprise, son. If I tell you ahead of time it’ll spoil your enjoyment.”

  “Okay.”

  “You just relax and think nice thoughts, then hang onto those thoughts.”

  “Okay.”

  He looked at me as we rolled along slow past all those other small planes out there, but his face said nothing at all. He wasn’t wearing a suit like the FBI, just a casual polo shirt and slacks and comfy-looking shoes. He’s almost as big across the shoulders as me but not so tall, and he has got these little pits in his face make him look tough and hard, also his eyes never blinked no matter how long I looked at him, so after awhile I quit that and looked out the window, a little round window like a ship porthole. Now there aren’t any buildings, just grass with little lamps along the edge of the asphalt.

  Then the plane swung around sharp and stopped. I said to the guy, “Have you flown in a plane lots of times?” He nodded once but didn’t say anything. He never took his eyes off me, like I’m real interesting to look at or something. The engines all of a sudden started screaming and we got rolling again only a lot faster, so fast the little lights outside went by flickflickflick and the vibration went all through me although nothing like a vibration bed I tried one time, this is different. Then the vibration stopped and my guts sunk inside me as we lifted off. It was the most exciting thing ever happened to me except for sex, which I have had three times now but not recently.

  “Wow!” I said to the guy. He just smiled this very small smile.

  The ground fell away and tipped sideways. It was like being on a slow roller-coaster and worth getting captured to experience this particular thrill of flying, which I would like to do again. The plane leveled off and all the lights of Kansas City were spread out below, but before long it’s just clouds down there as we flew higher, and stars above, very nice but after awhile I got a sore neck from looking sideways out the window all the time, so I decided to make conversation with the guy instead.

  “I expect it’s Washington,” I said. “Where we’re going.”

  “You do.”

  “And then to the FBI headquarters.”

  “Son,” he said, “you’re big, so I have to assume you’ve got a brain somewhere inside that body. You left the FBI behind when our wheels left the ground.”

  “I did?”

  “Now you’re with us.”

  “Who’s ‘us’?”

  “We are.”

  “Huh?”

  “Stop talking,” he said. “Just sit.”

  “Okay.”

  It was hard to read the look on his face, somewhere between feeling sorry for me and wanting to scrape me off his boot. That was when I got this feeling that everything had gotten much worse for me than before, just that look on his face and him not wanting me to talk. So I looked at the clouds instead, and fell asleep that way. I had a lot of booze in me after all.

  When the plane slowed down for landing it was still dark but dawn was coming up along the horizon. It was strange to think that just twenty-four hours ago I was in Gene’s truck watching the sun come up and now I’m somewhere else entirely. I could see water below, then land with some palm trees, then an airstrip with a long chain-link fence, but that’s all I could make out before the pilot set us down. I was busting for a piss by then but the guy said I had to wait till we quit rolling, which happened pretty soon and he opened the door. When that happened I felt all this heat and humidity come blasting through into the plane, so we are somewhere tropical, but not Florida, it wouldn’t have taken so long to get there.

  He unfastened me from the chair but kept the handcuffs on. I went down these little pop-out steps onto the ground and there’s two soldiers in a Humvee waiting next to a small tin building. The guy in the polo shirt handed them a clipboard and one of them signed it. The guy got back in the plane but didn’t close the door, so I guess they’ll be refueling before taking off again. There was more light in the sky now but everything around the airstrip was dark, so this is not a town or city they have brung me to.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “I have to pee.”

  “So pee,” said one of the soldiers.

  I looked around but the tin building didn’t look like a toilet block or anything, plus the only window in it was dark.

  “Where?”

  “Two places. On the ground or in your pants.”

  Well, that was an easy one. My wrists were handcuffed in front of me so I could open my zipper okay. I pissed on the ground while they watched me with hands resting on their pistol belts. When I was done they told me to get in the Humvee. My handcuffs got handcuffed to a metal bar in there so I can’t get out again until they let me out. One of them sat beside me while the other one drove with the headlights on, it’s still that dark.

  “Where’s this place?” I asked.

  “Guess.”

  “Hawaii?”

  They both laughed, then the one next to me says, “This is a special holiday camp.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, Camp Winalottawakkin.”

  The one behind the wheel laughed his head off. These are two happy soldiers, not like the polo shirt guy. Along the road I could see more palm trees in the headlight beams. I asked them, “Have you got canoes?” That was even funnier, I guess, because they just laughed and laughed. The one next to me smelled of pot, so I asked him, “Have you been smoking wackyweed?” I only asked to be friendly, but should not have done that because they both got upset, even stopped the Humvee but kept the engine running.

  The one in front leans back and says to me, “You say that to anyone and your days are numbered, and the number is less than two, get me?”

  The other one punched me in the side of the head, which was a big surprise because I did not do anything to him. It didn’t hurt much, was just surprising.

  “Answer the man!” he screams at me.

  “Uh, okay,” I said. That was all I cou
ld think to say. These guys were not so funny anymore.

  “It fuckin’ better be okay, shitwipe!” he yells.

  It was clear to me they were not so playful as I thought, and I decided not to say anything else unless they asked me. They were big guys but not so big as I am. If they didn’t have me handcuffed like I am I could’ve swung their heads together to settle this but I have got this disadvantage handicap situation so the best thing is to shut up and just sit, which was good advice from the plane guy so I did that.

  We were driving along a chain-link fence, then the Humvee comes to this one-story building made from cinder blocks and stops and I got brung out of it.

  The first soldier says, “This is your new home, asshole.”

  “It’s special for enemies of the United States,” says the second one.

  “I’m not that,” I told him. Big mistake. He slapped me hard across the face. Well, that was too much for me to take. My leg come up like when the doctor taps your knee with his little rubber hammer and my foot went between that soldier’s knees and up into his crotch hard as I can kick it. He screamed out loud and fell over and the other one pulls his pistol and aims it at my head yelling at the top of his voice, “Freeze! Freeze! Move a motherfuckin’ muscle and your brains are on the ground!”

  The ruckus brought more soldiers out of the building and they pulled their pistols too, standing around me in a circle aiming at me. The soldier on the ground was curled in a ball, moaning a little. Then an officer come out and wants to know what’s happening here, which the Humvee driver says to him, “Sir, the prisoner attempted to escape!” which is a big lie. The officer looked at me and then at the guy on the ground.

  “Mulholland,” he says to him, “get up and bring this dickwad inside without getting hurt again, think you can do that?”