He’d known before he even asked that the trip would be approved by his employer, and for that, he felt something his staff colleagues were likely unfamiliar with in regards to chasing a story; guilt.
Besides the fact that the professed incident was perfect fodder for his well-read column in the Constellation, the added “G.I.” factor made it an irresistible lead to his editor. In this day and age, you couldn’t go wrong with the military element, as long as it was a favorable angle. Any negative depiction of members of the armed forces was bad juju, even for a tabloid. Byron was well aware of this when he pitched the story, but failed to express his personal interest in the trip while speaking to his boss.
Fishing out his MP3 upon the announcement that use of such lethal devices would not result in sure death, Byron fitted the buds into his ears, powered up the tiny contraption and considered the situation.
He’d appeased his conscience regarding using company resources to fulfill personal desires with the knowledge if this were truly the object of his private search, he would immediately request personal time off and continue the “dig” at his own expense. If it was another wild goose chase into the preposterous world of wishful minds or greedy imagination, however, he’d spin the yarn into print, for which he’d earn his pay; his editor and readers would never be the wiser.
Once he’d accepted his “complimentary beverage and snack,” which he estimated to be about 3 ounces of Diet Coke with, perhaps, 5 ounces of ice and a bag with three honey roasted peanuts, Byron pressed the play button on his little magic music machine. Boz Scaggs serenaded him personally within the perfect acoustics of his head and he settled further into his seat. And against the advice of his realist bride, he allowed himself to hope.
Camper cover intact over the back of her tried and true pick-up truck, Johnnie heaved the tailgate closed, then reached up for the awning-like portion to flip it down, securing all she had in the world that wasn’t in storage. Since she didn’t have a clue where she’d end up, she requested her belongings be placed in “non-temporary storage,” which would be paid for up to a year, compliments of Uncle Sam. At the recent rate of weirdness, she hoped a year would be sufficient to get to the bottom of her mysterious condition, obsession, possession, psychosis, or whatever. And maybe she would have a clue, by then, what she wanted to do when she grew up.
Stepping back from the vehicle, she wiped her hands on her jeans, and looking over her shoulder, said a silent farewell to the apartment complex that had been home for two years. Home, actually, her only home, had been the United States Air Force…and now, for all practical purposes, she was homeless. And that, she reckoned, should be the least of her concerns on this bright, hot day.
On her way out of town, she stopped at the scene of her star-crossed meeting with Jeff. Although it was early afternoon, she knew the pub was open and hoped against hope that her big buddy was working the bar that afternoon.
Walking into the dark room from the brilliant daylight, she heard him before she could see him, or anything else, for that matter.
“Girl, you are a sight for sore eyes,” she heard his baritone voice, seasoned with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she could see his hulky shape clear the end of the bar, moving heavily toward her. She’d not noticed before how much he favored his right leg. She suddenly wished she’d noticed a lot more about him before this day.
Scanning the now-gray room, she was relieved that she was the only customer – which also explained Sandy’s demeanor. This man would never lose cool points by showing a sunny disposition, particularly in front of clientele he may have to toss out into the parking lot later.
“Where in the hell have you been? Didn’t have a good feeling when you left last time and if I knew how to find you, I would have checked by now.”
Johnnie sized him up and was oddly happy to know her secret affection and trust in this man was well placed. They had never interacted outside the walls of this establishment, but this place, and he, had been trusted sanctuaries for her over the months. She now realized she would miss him sorely. It was the first such feeling she had leading up to her departure.
He’d stopped short of hugging her, apparently coming to his senses that perhaps she viewed him as a bartender, not more. She, however, gave in to the overwhelming urge to bury herself in the arms of the bear of a man who embodied safety to her.
“Sandy, I’m out of here today.” Suppressing an odd feeling for her, something like loss, she shrugged, then opened her arms with a hopeful smile. “May I?”
He didn’t instantly accept, tipping his head with a serious query, “Deploying again? “
Feeling a little foolish, she dropped her arms.
“Nope. This is the big move.” She dangled her keys and gestured to her civilian clothes. A look of disbelief passed his face and he simultaneously processed her previous request. He swept up the slight woman and nearly crushed her bones in a hug. His world was small and solitary; important people occupied large spaces.
As her feet found the floor, she felt like Fay Wray being gently released by King Kong. In a flash, her mind assessed that her only resemblance to the glamorous movie star was, perhaps, her fuzzy hair…but Sandy? In size, at least, he could take a serious run at King Kong.
After putting Johnnie down, Sandy pulled her over to the bar, saying, “You are one lucky woman, little sister…those hugs are a hot commodity. But you are special and what in the hell is going on? I know you leaving can’t have anything to do with the last time you were here, but, like I said, it felt wrong and you didn’t come back.”
For the first time ever, he perched next to her on the customer side of the bar on a stool that disappeared beneath his massive frame. All propriety aside, he placed his big paw on her thin arm, and it was the most welcome thing she’d felt in a while. She was taken by the unexplained kinship.
“What gives?” he asked.
She looked at him, and had no idea what to say. It hardly seemed fair to say goodbye with no explanation, even more so since he’d apparently been worried about her. She knew she needed to keep this short if she wanted to get out of the area today. And she had one more stop to make.
“I hate the way this sounds, Sandy, but….well, it’s complicated.”
He looked at her, pursing his full dark lips, and tipped his head. He seemed intensely interested, but was respectful enough not to pry.
“Thank you for caring… and I really appreciate your concern. And I just drank too much last time…I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye. The truth is, I don’t remember leaving.” She added the last part sheepishly, and gave no indication that anything else factored into his obviously accurate intuition regarding the fateful night.
“I didn’t see you leave either… and even though that son of a bitch left before you, I had a bad feeling about him and was going to take you out to your cab. You left while I was serving that crowd against the wall.”
He didn’t finish the statement like he was telling her something; it sounded more like a lead, like he was asking her something. He looked hard at her face, using his years of people-reading to detect if something had, indeed, happened with the man who’d bought her shots of tequila. If so, he’d find that boy and snap him in half. He said none of this, but Johnnie felt it all. She summoned as much composure as she could muster and flipped her arm underneath his, squeezing his huge wrist.
“Down, Fido. If I ever need a personal body guard, I know who to call.” She detected a look of hurt on his big face, and added, “Or a big brother. Thank you. It was fine.”
Justifying the words in her mind, she considered that in the larger sense, it had been fine; she had come to no harm, miraculously. The mere fact that any form of the word “miracle” had been produced by her brain rattled her back into the conversation.
“I’m getting out, actually, I am out of the service now, and headed east. You’ve been a friend. I wanted to say goodbye.” The look Sandy’s face told he
r these were words he would accept. He also knew when it was time to quit asking questions. He was strangely envious of her circumstances.
“It’s mutual, little sister. The friend part…and I’m from the East, you know. D.C.”
She gazed at him, hesitant to stand.
“No, Sandy, I didn’t know that.” In a very uncharacteristic moment of wistful regret, she surprised herself and said, “I don’t think I know enough about you.”
They held a long, wordless look. Then he put up his hand, silently keeping her in place, as he stood and reached across the bar. He retrieved a napkin and a pen, scribbling on the soft paper with exactly the right amount of pressure to keep it from ripping. She was impressed; must be a skill of the trade, she thought with a sad smile.
He handed her the napkin.
“Any time, any hour. You need anything, and I mean anything, you call me. I don’t care where you’re calling from or what you need. Even if you just want to talk. Oh…Sandy’s my nickname from my time in the Army.”
His deep voice resounded with absolute sincerity. She took the wispy note from him. She wondered ridiculously if napkins were the new grout between the pieces of her life. It took an effort not to get choked up. But the irony didn’t stop with the napkin. She balked when she saw his last name.
“James R. Sanders, ‘Sandy’” the bold writing said. She looked quickly at him. Nope, no way he was related to Colonel Sanders, the person who still represented an open wound in her troubled heart. The fact that he shared a name with her only sibling seemed secondary the ghostly connection with someone she’d known to a far lesser degree than her own flesh and blood.
Wrong color, wrong age. For a son anyway. But, then, who was she, of all people, to question the soundness of any possibility?
“You know…my only brother’s name is James too. But your last name, Sanders? I met someone recently...any relatives around here?” She forced a casual tone and felt a little more than crazy for even asking.
“No, no family at all any more, actually. No roots here.” He offered the comments with an unexplained and distant look before he returned his attention to Johnnie.
“Except, you now, I guess. And you’re leaving!” He feigned hurt, but followed the pout with a big smile. The chimes at the door announced a group of customers coming in. She took that as a queue to stand.
Waving the napkin in front of her, she looked at the big man.
“Thank you.”
He gave her one more hug, with no regard for the customers settling into a table nearby. In her ear, he said quietly, “I mean it. You call me if you need me. Shoot; call me anyway.”
Sitting in her truck moments later, she stared at the napkin. More open, now, to clues as to what was going on in her life, she strained to find a meaning in the vague, but conspicuous irony of the use of the napkin and Sandy’s middle initial and last name. Even as the boundaries of reason blurred, she didn’t believe she would ever have cause to call this man to rescue her from across the miles. But deep down, she inexplicably felt the sensation that everything, somehow, was connected and this was a subtle reminder for her to keep that notion in mind.
“For God’s sake, Johnnie!” She chastised herself suddenly and stuffed the soft paper into her purse. “Before you know it, you’ll be getting palm readings and calling the psychic hotline. Get a grip.”
She fired up her truck and peeled out of the pub parking lot in the direction of her last local stop. She soon left the city limits and headed toward Chut.
______________________________________________________________________
Not having been to Green Acres of her own volition, it took Johnnie a little reverse navigating to find the remote trailer park. She knew well enough how to find Chut, but from there, she had to survey the few dirt roads leading into the desert. Just as she was about to ask one of the two hundred and thirteen residents of this one-gas-station-metropolis, she spied a landmark she recalled from the night of her rescue from Lisa’s.
On the west edge of “town” was a sprawling shack with a tar roof. It looked as though it had started out even smaller than its current size and had been haphazardly built up, or rather, out, over time. She thought it a modern miracle that the desert wind hadn’t blown the whole structure into the distant hills.
But it wasn’t the shed-like home that had gotten her attention…it was the odd collection of glass bottles and jars which consumed the yard; some had seemed suspended in air. And every single one of them was green. Weeks ago, in the pitch black, when the captain’s car lights shone on the unexpected sea of colored glass, she recalled thinking of the Wizard of Oz’ Emerald City. On that night, it almost seemed perfectly natural, all things considered.
Today, however, it looked unlike anything she’d ever seen. Wine bottles, oddly shaped old medicine bottles and all manner of jars were inverted and secured on fence posts, sticks and shafts, creating a bizarre man-made garden. Although few trees graced the local terrain, ancient twisted branches topped with glass, stuck straight out of the dirt in this yard, giving it a very Tim-Burtonesque appearance. More bottles graced man-made metal arms welded to crude poles which had been planted well into the baked dirt. The final effect was oddly stunning as the sun hit the dirty glass vessels from a hundred angles, creating a thousand shades of green in this largely brown landscape.
Driving by slowly, Johnnie spied a very old person--a man, she guessed, in a rocking chair in front of a makeshift door. She raised a hand, and he returned the salute as if he had throngs of drive-bys every day.
“Americana at its best,” she said to herself, respectfully surveying the spectacle.
Out of town, it wasn’t long before she spotted the cluster of metal homes in the midst of the wasteland and as she closed in, she saw the sign proudly announcing she’d arrived at her destination. She wasn’t sure if the fence held up the sign, or the sign held the fence together, but both sported peeled, splintered paint. The stenciled board marked the spot as Gre n Ac es; some letters had completely disintegrated in the elements.
She slowly eased her truck over the rutted lane separating the ramshackle trailer houses. She truly had no idea how she was going to find Lisa’s place until she saw a beastly beacon, hobbling and wagging as if she’d been waiting days for her old roommate’s return. Betsy, the mobile-tripod- turned-welcoming-party, could hardly contain herself when her old friend stopped the truck and hopped out.
Johnnie was surprised by her own enthusiasm when she greeted the drooling dog. She hadn’t always felt this warmly toward those with whom she’d shared a bed, although many of them had been no less kind and affectionate after the fact than this mutant creature. Betsy, however, had qualities they did not; the dog was incapable of latching on or becoming involved and best of all, she was not human and could not, even if she wanted to, utter the “L” word.
As if rewarding her for not being a man, Johnnie gave the eager canine an extra two-handed rub all the way down her wiggling, slightly off-kilter spine.
“YOU are a good girl, aren’t you? I’m happy to see you too. I promise you, I haven’t stepped out on you.”
Together, they walked to the trailer door, which came ajar when Johnnie knocked. No one answered, so she pulled it open and called Lisa’s name. Still nothing. No crying baby, no radio, no sound except the rattling hum of a swamp cooler.
As Johnnie hesitantly stepped through the doorway, she could see how she could have entered undetected her first time here, per Lisa’s story. Although the door latch was marginally functional, the lock was completely inoperative. She figured Lisa should consider herself lucky that the unexpected visitor was nothing worse than a bloody ‘soldier’ dropping in to shack up with her dog.
“Lisa?” She called out into the dim, dead space. Flipping on the light, she was surprised at how clean and tidy the place appeared compared to the last visit. It was still shabby and dark, but care had obviously been taken to spruce the joint up; she could even smell the faint
scent of Glade air freshener.
Feeling like an intruder, but intent on fulfilling her mission, Johnnie surveyed the living room and kitchen space before she propped the door open and began hauling stuff in from the back of her truck. She’d asked the movers to leave a few select items from the storage unit and separately box up most all of the food. Not wanting to store these things, it hadn’t taken her long to think of someone who could use a leg up.
She placed the boxes of canned and packaged goods in the kitchen on the limited counter space and floor. Not knowing where to put the television and VCR, she settled on the rickety coffee table, figuring Lisa and Ollie should decide where to use them anyway. The oldie but goodie VHS tapes, still packed in the moving containers from her last relocation, almost filled the floor between the table and couch. Johnnie hoped the space issue was less cumbersome to Lisa than hours of boredom she must have endured within these walls with no TV or cable.
Finally, she opened the cab of her truck, pushed the stubborn seat forward so she could wedge out plastic bags from the extra-cab; perishable groceries for the refrigerator. She’d brought various condiments from her own fridge, some cheese and butter and pickles. An attack of benevolence had also caused a quick trip to the grocery store on her way out of town to purchase milk, bread and a few indulgences she guessed Lisa couldn’t afford.
Once finished, she quickly surveyed her work, frankly grateful the young woman wasn’t home. Although she left these items based on strong conviction of helping someone less fortunate, she genuinely did not want to revisit the “saving of Emily” scenario and didn’t think she could stomach the hero-worship which most certainly would have ensued.
Satisfied her mission was accomplished, she backed out of the trailer, leaving no note or message.
The Unlikely Savior (The Unlikely Savior Trilogy) Page 10
