Stormer’s Pass

by Benjamin Laskin

  The pedestrian—a large, beefy urbanite in a fluorescent ski jacket—rushed over to Max. In his hand was Max’s beret. “You idiot!” he hollered, “you almost killed me!”

  Bent over and trying to regain his knocked-out breath, Max croaked, “Sorry about that.” He snatched his cap from the man’s hand and put it back on his head.

  “Sorry? Is that all you can say?”

  Max winced and nodded. He waved the pedestrian off with one hand, his other on the meter to steady him.

  “Sorry’s not good enough,” the man bellowed.

  “It’ll have to do,” Max said. He straightened and peered up at the window. He saw a rifle-shouldering deputy fixing a bead on him.

  “I could’ve been killed, you moron!”

  “You still might be,” Max said.

  “You threatening me, punk?” The pedestrian threw back his shoulders and glared pugnaciously at the youth.

  The man looked familiar. Max had seen him before. “Donald?”

  Donald squinted at Max in recollection. “It’s you!” he exclaimed. “It’s all your fault! She was fine until you and your friend put those stupid ideas in her head!”

  “Huh?” Max said, back pedaling into the street.

  The urbanite followed. “I’ll Zen you. How about the sound of one fist punching, pal!”

  A car screeched to a halt, followed by a paroxysm of horns and shouts. The pedestrian, however, stayed between Max and the marksman at the window.

  “You picked the wrong guy to mess with today, dude,” Donald said, oblivious to everything around him.

  “Rough day, huh?” Max said, smiling, taunting him on as his interference.

  “Not as rough as yours is about to be!”

  Max spotted the sheriff and four of his men dash out the front entrance of the hospital.

  “Tell me about it, Donald,” Max said, stepping up onto the sidewalk.

  “I’ll do more than tell you. I’m gonna show you!”

  Max turned and ran, the pedestrian in hot pursuit, and behind him, the sheriff and his men. Normally swift as a deer, Max would have had no problem outrunning them all, but bruised by his fall, every stride was an agonizing jolt. Nevertheless, adrenaline pumping, Max maintained his lead and sprinted toward the center of town. He cut through alleys and darted across side streets until he came to the park.

  Loping across the snow-covered common, he heard the blast of a horn and the shout of his name. Driving parallel to him forty yards off he saw Steve’s pickup. Waving to him from the bed of the truck were Regina ‘Nemesis’ Brodie and Dawn ‘Aurora’ White. At the wheel sat Sinclair ‘Sinbad the Cheeks’ Goldberg, and beside him Randy ‘Apollo’ Dawson.

  Max waved in recognition and pointed to the opposite end of the park where he knew they’d have a better chance of making a clean getaway. Regina poked her head through the cab window, and with an understanding nod, Cheeks cranked the wheel and hopped up onto the sidewalk and into the park. He blazed a fish-tailing trail across the common. Max veered and headed to meet them.

  Having slowed down for the interchange lost Max precious yards. Donald the outraged urbanite was demonstrating an admirable single-mindedness of purpose in his pursuit, and the posse, who was equally possessed, was close behind them both.

  Ahead Max saw a group of youngsters playing football in the park. The center snapped the ball and a play ensued. One of the boys, freckled and gangly as a Slinky, went long, directly in the path of the onrushing Donald.

  “Hey!” yelled the young quarterback, Timmy Duncan, “It’s Max Stormer!”

  The end, who was wide open and waving his arms, yelled, “Here, Timmy! Here! Hit me!”

  He was. Donald plowed into the youngster and sent him sprawling through the snow. Without missing a stride, Donald charged on. He felt invincible, and nothing mattered to him now but getting his hands on the lemonade guy. A few days earlier he had lost his job, his fiancé, and his self-respect. But he refused to lose this fight. Behind him rushed the law, armed and dangerous, and with orders to shoot if necessary.

  Max saw the boy get smashed to the ground. He knew the youngster, as he knew them all, and they him, local hero that he was. Max slid to a halt. I hate bullies…

  “Timmy,” he called to the young quarterback, a handsome, floppy-haired boy. “Over here, quick!”

  Confused, but honored, the youngster tossed Max the football.

  Max narrated the play-by-play action… “Stormer gets the pitch from rookie star Timmy Duncan … He fades back, looks for his receiver … Spots him—a big, ugly bully with manure for brains—plants, and…fires!”

  Donald dropped to his knees like a poached elephant.

  “Wow!” Timmy Duncan exclaimed, very impressed. “Right in the nuts!”

  Max raced on. The law was closing fast. He hurdled a hedge of rose bushes and spotted the truck at the other end of the park. Max hollered and waved at them to keep going and meet him at the corner, but they weren’t going anywhere. They were stuck, as Max quickly deduced when he saw the girls leap from the bed and get behind the truck to push.

  A gunshot rang out. Max went rolling, bounced back to his feet, and dove for cover behind the trunk of a large pine tree.

  The truck spit mud and slush and the law was only twenty yards off. The sound of whooping and wild cries shattered the air.

  Max knew those voices. He recognized the maniacal hoots and hollers. He peered around the tree and saw the Pinecrest Panthers’ offensive line charge from the sidelines. They all wore berets with black bandannas over their faces, bandit style. In front was Steve ‘Hercules’ Hanson, who, with all the gracefulness a 270-pound poet was likely to exhibit, dove through the air and crushed the lead lawman to the ground.

  Poetry in commotion.

  Brandon ‘Zeus’ Harper, Sid ‘Perseus’ Kelpy, Mike ‘Mercury’ Sanchez, and Jake ‘Poseidon’ Dempster were right behind. They knocked two more lawmen from their feet and drove a third man smacking into a tree. Jake, who was magnetically attracted to the dangerous and insane, flew into the face of the kneeling marksman who had fired the shot. He tore the rifle from the lawman’s hands and turned it on him. “Nobody shoots at my friends!” he yelled.

  The lawman—stunned, scared, and knowing only that he was in the presence of a maniac—pleaded for his life. But Jake was not a lunatic; he was merely enthusiastic, and possessed of a fierce loyalty.

  “Leave him be, boy,” said Sheriff Briggs, last on the scene, out of breath and patience, and with a cocked pistol in his hand.

  Jake turned to the sheriff, an intractable inferno in his eyes.

  “Freeze, all of you!” the sheriff commanded. “You’re all under arrest.”

  “You drop it, Sheriff,” Jake said icily, pointing the rifle at him.

  “Calm down, boy. You’re in enough trouble as is.”

  The boys heard the sound of approaching police sirens.

  “Don’t be stupid, boy. Put the gun down.”

  From behind the sheriff came another cry. Alex ‘Ares’ Humphreys, threw a full-body clip into the back of the sheriff’s knees. The sheriff slammed to the ground, the gun flying from his hand.

  “All right, Alex!” Jake said. “I knew you had it in you.”

  Alex scrambled to his feet, and beamed. Jake whipped the rifle into a tree.

  Brandon shouted, “Come on!”

  During the showdown, Timmy Duncan and his gang had run over to the truck, and with everybody pushing together, freed it. Sinbad spun fish-tailing back onto the street and met the others. They vaulted into the bed of the truck as he passed. The Panthers hollered in victory and sped off towards the highway.

  Five miles up an old dirt-logging road the youths thought it safe to stop. They hopped from the truck and looked about. The woods were quiet and still, and the isolation brought out the graveness of their situation.

  “What I want to know,” Max said, leaning against the hood of the truck, “is how come I could never get you guys to hit th
at hard for me in a game?”

  “Hey,” Alex said, “if the coach had ever let me play, I would have!”

  “Alex,” Max grinned, “what you did was illegal. Clipping is a fifteen-yard penalty.”

  Everybody laughed, easing their minds of the dire consequences each was secretly contemplating.

  “Man, that was fun!” Jake said.

  “You could have been shot, Jake,” Dawn admonished.

  “The thought never crossed my brain,” he said, unconcerned.

  Cheeks said, “That’s because you don’t have one.”

  “Now what do we do?” Randy asked, worried.

  “No one knows it was us,” Jake said, “we had our masks on, remember?” He pulled the bandanna back up around his nose and wiggled his bushy blond eyebrows.

  Brandon spit a razz. “It’s not hard to figure out.”

  “You guys should have just let me fend for myself,” Max said. “I didn’t want any of you getting mixed up in this.”

  “Most of us already were,” Regina reminded him.

  “Yeah,” Brandon said. “Besides, you’re our friend.”

  “Camerado,” Steve said, putting his big, heavy paw on his pal’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Max said. “All for one and one for all, right? Your sentimentality has now gotten you into big trouble.” He smiled. “But, thanks.”

  “So what do we do now?” Randy asked again.

  “You guys ought to go home and carry on as usual,” Max said. “You’ll be picked up, questioned, threatened—but I doubt they’ll do anything to you. It’s me they’re after.”

  “And what about you, Max?” Dawn asked.

  “The important thing now is to get Ricki and Samantha. Somebody is sure to pick them up. I’m the only family they have, and there’s no way the state is going to let me keep them.”

  Sid said, “You think they’ll be orphaned off?”

  “Not while I’m still alive,” Max said. “Nobody is going to get my girls but me.”

  “But how?” Regina said. “The sheriff and his men are sure to be waiting for you.”

  Jake said, “We’ll help you, Max.”

  The others nodded and voiced their accord.

  Max thought a moment. “Okay, Olympians, huddle up. We need a distraction…”

  52

  Animal Attraction

  Side by side, their backs against a pine tree, legs outstretched, arms folded for warmth, Max and Steve gazed out over the slate-gray ice of Lake Gilgamesh. The ice was breaking up. A dirty, bubble-encrusted island floated unattached on the surface of the pond like a large contact lens.

  Winter had run its course. The earth swelled and spring was in the crouching position: anxious, fidgety, itchy in the groin—ever impatient, like youth—to proclaim its colors, virility, and optimism. Clumps of snow slid from the boughs of trees and plopped onto the ground. Evening’s shadows swallowed the pond. The boys listened to the flutter of birds in the treetops and the challenging cry of the whippoorwill—Whip or will? … Whip or will?

  Two squirrels scampered across the ground in front of the boys. Motionless but for the growing smiles on their faces, Max and Steve watched the squirrels tussle, and then dash towards them. The squirrels ran up their legs, over their chests, across their shoulders, and then raced up the tree in a spiraling frolic. Amazed, enchanted, and honored, the boys exchanged astonished looks and laughed. No comment was needed. They felt connected by a web-like awareness to everything around them, as if by just a glance or a directed thought, they could send out a silvery string of gossamer, and take the pulse of the world.

  Steve said, “Brandon should have been here by now.”

  “I know. Something went wrong.”

  “Maybe I should go back,” Steve said.

  “Maybe you should.”

  The boys stood and exchanged solemn nods. “These days are over,” Steve said. “The good times, I mean.”

  “There will be plenty of good times ahead,” Max said.

  “Yeah, but not like this past year. Best damn year of my life. The only real year of my life.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “You, Regina, Katie, Aidos—the gang. We made something special happen, didn’t we? None of us will ever forget this year. We’re all different now, and there’s no turning back.”

  Max nodded in confirmation.

  Without preface, Steve recited from a poem:

  “Forever alive, forever forward,

  Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,

  Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,

  They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,

  But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.”

  “Saint Walter,” Steve said, meaning Walt Whitman.

  Max smiled and said, “Remember those poems you gave me? They’re good. I mean it, Steve. I think it’s time you recite your own poetry, O’ Bard of Pinecrest. But since you won’t, I guess I’ll have to.” He collected his thoughts and recited one of Steve’s poems:

  “In my heart beats clamoring ages;

  Two abreast we march to see,

  If on the waters’ shimmering sadness,

  There’s not a saltier man in me.

  I signal ships I know are out there,

  Beyond the surf and rolling wave,

  Wandering vessels sailing freely,

  Over the deep and watery grave.

  I feel the tugs of tides in me,

  Undulating destiny,

  My rightful course upon the sea,

  Under cries of mutiny.

  Captain of a thousand years,

  I unroll my soul upon my lap,

  And on these sturdy knees I chart,

  The future coordinates of my map.”

  Max slapped his friend on the shoulder, which was like slapping the side of a tree. “Not bad, buddy. Not bad at all.”

  That Max had gone to the trouble of memorizing his poem touched Steve deeply. It had little to do with the poem but everything to do with Max. Steve chuckled. “You must have been pretty bored in that cave.”

  They heard the snapping of branches. Without a word Max and Steve scuttled across the hillside and took cover behind a boulder. They heard the crunch of snow under heavy boots, more snapping branches, and low, heavy breathing. They spotted a figure step from the shadows, and then disappear again. The man held a rifle in front of him. Was he alone? They weren’t sure.

  Whip or will? … Whip or will?

  The boys strained their ears to hear. More steps and crunching snow. The intruder withdrew back into the woods. He was circling. The boys caught another glimpse of the figure: a big man in a cowboy hat.

  On their bellies, under the protection of scrub juniper and a thick dusk, Max and Steve crawled like slinking wolves along the bank’s incline away from the armed stranger. They reached a narrow ravine that ran from the woods to the lake. Quickly, noiselessly, they raced crouched on all fours up the ravine to the woods. They waited. Night came quickly to the shadows.

  The steps grew closer. A significant pause. The cocking of a rifle. The boys’ hearts pounded in their ears. Hugging the side of the ravine, they saw the top of the man’s hat. He withdrew a couple of steps, halted, and returned. His back was to them now and they could see him from the waist up. Max began to edge his way up the ravine wall…

  “Hey, Hank!”

  The shout came from the opposite side of the ravine. The man wheeled. His heavy boot kicked a clump of brown, honeycombed snow into Max’s face. Max slipped back down into the trench and froze. Uncertain whether he was spotted, he hardly dared to breathe.

  “Over here,” answered the man in the cowboy hat. His voice was gruff and phlegmatic. He stood two feet from the edge of the ravine. The man hocked up a deep-rooted loogey that seemed to come all the way from his crusty, jam-filled toes. Cutting the mucous off in his throat with a ha
rsh, guttural—chh—he spat with bullet-like velocity into the ravine. The warm, gooey glob smeared across Steve’s ear. He shuddered in revulsion.

  “Hank?”

  “Here, Willie.”

  The boys heard footsteps tramping towards them. The stomping halted on the opposite side of the ravine.

  “See anything?” Willie asked.

  “No, but they’re here somewheres.”

  “He ain’t gittin’ away this time. I got uses for that bounty on his head.”

  “Me too,” Hank said, hocking up another slimy mouthful. He spat again, hitting Steve a second time. “Say, you think that Hanson kid is with ‘em?”

  “Could be. Didn’t find him with the others.”

  “I hope so,” Hank said. “Gonna kick his ass.”

  “He popped you good, huh?” Willie said.

  “Well, hell, if I’d ‘uv seen the son-a-bitch comin’, I’d ‘uv kicked him in a brand new asshole. Lousy punk.”

  Willie said, “Gotta hand it to that Stormer kid. Slippery little weasel.”

  “Don’t have his fairy friends to help him no more, though. We’ll see how tough he is now. Thinks he’s some kind of Zorro. Ain’t nothin’ but a zero!”

  The men laughed.

  “Where’d he learn these woods so good?” Willie asked. “Sissy kids today don’t know nothin’ ’bout wilderness. Why, I remember when I was these kids’ age I was trampin’ through these woods huntin’ bear, cat, timber wolf…”

  “Yeah, everythin’s changed,” said Hank. “No more big critters. No more big men. Right down the crapper.”

  “Still got some wild horses up in them hills, though.”

  “Big deal. It ain’t the same. Willie, guys like you and me, we’re like them bears and cats. The last of a dying breed.”

  “’Spose so, Hank… But if we’re such good mountain men, how come we ain’t caught this kid yet?”