by Weston Ochse
This was the main reason he’d refused to reenlist. He’d become sick of the almost practiced incompetence of many of his superiors. The cover-up of the accidental bombing of the mosque by later claiming it was a ‘tactical disposal of an ammunition bunker’ had been the last straw. Not that Simon was perfect—he understood good and well that he made mistakes. The difference was that he accepted responsibility for his mistakes and learned from them. One couldn’t learn from mistakes they pretended didn’t exist. It just didn’t work that way. So instead of perpetuating a lie, Simon removed himself.
As it seemed he would do now, as well.
Everything considered there wasn’t too much difference between the military and the church. Leadership far removed from the employees who were to be led. Both combated evil, but used different tactics. The promotion of ignorance. Exponential incompetence as one achieved rank and station. Simon chuckled. It was the old Fuck Up, Move Up mentality prevalent throughout the military. Although he doubted Father Roy would use those particular words, he was sure the man had a suitably Catholisized vernacular replacement.
So if there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of difference, then why had he turned himself over to them? Why had he allowed himself to once again become subjugated? He knew the answer to the question even before he asked it.
Structure.
He craved it. He needed the structure to replace what he’d lacked growing up. He enjoyed knowing that not only would there be a breakfast every morning, but that it would be at the same time. He appreciated being clothed. The military and the ministry had been family to him.
And what he was about to do was like running away.
He rose and packed his bag. There were too many things to be done. Following orders was just a furtherance of the grand scheme of incompetence. Bag packed, he glanced around the room and noticed for the first time how little there was of him there. Other than a few books he’d picked up from the St. Vincent DePaul store, there was nothing to show that he’d even existed.
He’d been depending too much on others to create an identity for himself. It was time he took charge of his own life. Picking up his bag, he bid farewell to his home. No use waiting on St. Louis—he and God had made the decision together. The Order of the Alexians had just become one less.
He headed towards the parking lot. He needed to find Billy and he needed a car. It was time for a little Grand Theft Auto.
* * *
Sierra Vista, Arizona
Simon eased the Lincoln to a stop and held his breath. The elation he’d felt earlier at escaping the bonds he’d forced himself to endure all these years waned in the face of the police cruiser idling next to him. No more was it about honor and standing up for what you believed in. No longer was it about bravery, doing what others were too afraid to do and laughing in the face of danger.
Now, at the stoplight at Highways 90 and 92, all he could think about was whether or not he’d end up in jail and if it was as bad as people said. Trying not to turn his head, Simon peered at the policeman. He kept his head straight and strained his eye, wishing it would move out half an inch. Finally, he gave in and minutely shifted his head so he could see. Immediately, he twisted his head back forward. The policeman had been staring right at him.
The light turned green and he fought the urge to floor it. He looked over and the police cruiser was right beside him. Thankfully, the policeman was busy with his radio. A thought came to him. What if he’s listening to an All Points Bulletin about me? Simon’s traitorous mouth tried to open and release another giggle, but Simon bit it back. He needed to remain calm. He needed to find someplace where he’d be safe.
As the phrase Deadly Force Is Authorized ran back and forth through his brain, he turned the car onto a side street. The policeman continued straight down the Highway 92 bypass. Simon breathed a sigh of relief. Then, halfway down the block he saw the Cop Shop. He’d leapt with both feet squarely into the fire. In the parking lot was a smorgasbord of police cruisers, border patrol 4x4s, government Impalas, and FBI Suburbans. A group of deputies stood outside in the smoking area and seemed to stop, their heads turning in slow motion towards him as if each had a sense of what he’d done.
His hands shook. As the fear took hold he steered the car into the first parking lot he came to. He pulled to a stop, turned off the car and sat. He let his hands fall from the steering wheel onto his lap where they flopped like dying fish. It wasn’t until they stilled and died that he looked up and noticed that he’d pulled into the parking lot of the Sierra Vista Regional Library.
The brand new building sported a slanting modern design. The entire roof looked like the arrow of an immense sundial. The place was damned impressive to be part of such a smallish community, boasting original Fredrick Remingtons as well as pioneer photographs by H. Jackson, Lee Marmon and a singularly spectacular still life by Georgia O’Keefe that was the centerpiece of the collection.
Simon thought of one of the Remingtons, a charcoal study of a cowboy with six-shooter drawn, held low by the hip. There had been a confidence in the creases around the eyes, but it was the mouth that was the most memorable. Where the eyes identified the man as a knight of the plains, it was the curvature of the mouth that made him human. One could almost imagine the upper lip trembling, the mouth pursing to stop the tell-tale fear.
That was how Simon felt at this very moment.
He knew deep down that what he was doing must be done. He knew that there were greater forces at work. He could feel them in the air like an impending thunderstorm. He could relate to the chivalrous knight of the Old West, following the code of perpetual assistance. He could also relate to the fear.
He thanked God that he didn’t have a gun. Unlike most of the good people of Arizona, he didn’t own one. Not since Desert Storm had he even held one in his hands. That was a good thing—he believed the axiom that desperate times breed desperate men. Now he was desperate enough to realize that, with a gun, his chance of making a mistake was much greater. These were the kind of mistakes one didn’t walk away from.
It was a miracle that more people weren’t killed by guns in Arizona. Statistically, the state was on the lower end of the scale as far as gun-related-homicides went. Not that there weren’t problems. There was always the drunken reveler who insisted on proving his point, usually with the working end of a pistol. One of the friends he’d made in Sierra Vista was Donny Maines—a part time bouncer at the Sorry Gulch Saloon, preferred hangout of The Huns biker gang. Biker or soldier, Donny didn’t care. Monthly, he’d make a trip to Tucson to sell a boxfull of Nine Millimeters and Forty-fives that he’d confiscated from drunks with murder on their minds and tequila on their breaths.
Then there were the schools. The law said a weapon could not be within 100 feet of a school. But that hadn’t stopped the events of last May at the Bella Vista Elementary School from occurring. Everyone wondered what had made the man do it. What had made a day laborer suddenly grab a 44 Magnum and end up being shot as he finger-painted the walls of the little boy’s bathroom with his wife’s intestines?
Simon had seen the police photos. He’d even heard from one of the deputies how the man had acted during the last moments of his life. How the man had sounded…
“I thought it was a woman at first,” said the deputy. “It was so much like a woman’s voice, I mean anyone would have made that mistake. Then, when me and my partner opened the door and saw him sitting in the pool of blood, painting the wall, well, we just had to shoot.”
“And he turned towards us,” said the other deputy. “And he smiled this really creepy smile and in a woman’s voice, he sang this song.”
“What was the song?” asked Simon.
“I can’t…”
“Come on. It will help if you tell someone.”
“Okay,” the deputy lit another cigarette. After three long puffs, he continued. “I can’t get it out of my mind. Everytime my kids sing a nursery rhyme, or I see that purple dinosaur on television
, all I can hear are those eerie words.” The deputy removed the cigarette from his mouth and stared solemnly at the glowing red tip. In a fragile falsetto, he sang “Johnny, Johnny ran away to play with others this fine day. Johnny Johnny please come back, or I’ll eat your heart as a fucking snack!”
“Oh dear.”
“Yeah. Those fucking words. I didn’t mean to, but the next thing I knew I’d discharged my weapon. I mean, wouldn’t you have? The man was playing with his wife’s stomach…unraveling it in front of our eyes.”
Simon had spoken with the two at an outdoor table in front of Burger King. Neither had been able to make eye contact with Simon. The older of the two had ginger hair and chain smoked. Simon remembered wincing as he watched the cigarette sizzle the hairs on the knuckles of the hand that held it, the man transfixed by the memory.
“It was him or us, you know,” said one.
“You had to have been there,” said the other.
“You had to have seen what we saw.”
Simon did know. He understood. He’d seen things like these two men had seen. But it was the English used by the man that had intrigued him. A squat Hispanic, the deceased didn’t speak English. He’d never learned how.
Then there was the drawing the man had been making before he died. Pictures had been taken and it wasn’t until they’d been sent to the regional FBI office in Tucson that it came back to them that what the man had been drawing in his wife’s blood had been a Mandala. No one knew how an itinerant farm worker had learned how to draw a sacred Hindu ritualistic diagram. And no one cared. The case was closed.
Simon believed in his heart that the events at the Bella Vista Elementary School and the events in Neuvo Laredo were connected. What other reason could there be for it? How else could it have happened? The only problem was that no one would ever believe him about the possessions, an irony for the monastic order that’d inadvertently made exorcisms famous.
Simon’s anger settled him. No longer afraid, he shifted the car into drive and pulled back out onto the street. Instead of turning right and heading back towards the Highway 92 bypass, he turned left. This road would lead him to Fry Boulevard and the hospital. He passed by the police station, eyes straight ahead, pretending to be invisible.
Ten minutes later, he was walking up the wheelchair access ramp to the main doors of the Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center. Following the signs, he made it through the labyrinthine hallways to the rear of the hospital where the Emergency Room was. He recognized the admitting nurse and stopped her.
“Nurse Maclin? Do you remember me?”
The athletic black woman who’d been concentrating on her paperwork, looked up. Her face softened as a smile replaced the frown. “I sure do. How are you, Brother Simon?”
“Fine. I’m looking for the man I brought in here.”
“I’m afraid he checked himself out,” she told him.
“I heard,” said Simon. “Did he tell you where he was going?”
“No. I’m afraid he didn’t.”
“Did he say anything?”
The nurse paused and stared at Simon.“Yes he did. He said he wasn’t finished.”
Wasn’t finished? “Are you sure that was all he said? Were there any rhymes? Did he say anything weird like Evil’s Agent or Voice’s Rant On or A Rope Ends It?”
The nurse shook her head. “No. I’m afraid he didn’t. Nothing like that at all.”
“A Rope Ends It,” he muttered, co-opting one of Billy Bones’ anagrams. Desperation. What am I going to do now?
“Brother Simon? Are you feeling all right?”
He met her gaze, eyes pleading. Nurse Maclin was cupping the receiver in her hand. Her face was intent as she whispered, “Honestly, he didn’t say anything like that at all. He seemed perfectly normal to me.”
Simon smiled to himself. If she only knew. He failed to stifle a laugh and it echoed like a terrier’s yap in the empty Emergency Room. “Normal. Now that’s funny.”
The nurse shook her head and frowned.
He made his way back through the halls, past the pharmacy, X-ray and the registration desk. He was halfway across the lobby when the double doors opened and two Cochise County Sheriff’s Deputies appeared from the blinding brightness of the desert afternoon and stepped inside. One remained by the door, the universally worn police sunglasses in place beneath the rim of his baseball-style cap with the logo of the sheriff’s department emblazoned upon the front. His hand lay upon the door’s crash bar. The other deputy removed his sunglasses and hung them from his right breast pocket. His rusty brown eyes were focused solely upon Simon. He approached in a rolling gate, a smile upon his sunburned face.
“Are you Simon Drury, aka Brother Simon?”
He’d never thought of himself having an aka before. It would be funny if it wasn’t’ so sad. “Yes.”
“Come with us please.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“You don’t seem too surprised.”
“Then I am?”
“Let’s get outside and discuss it there. I think the people in this place have enough problems without us adding to ‘em. What do you think?”
Simon discovered that he’d become the center of attention. An old man with glasses, one side covered with opaque white tape. A young boy, his right leg in a bright blue cast, sat on a bench, tears streaking the dirt on his face as he cupped his left arm. A grandmother, furiously gripped a crutch with both hands, her right leg swollen twice the size of her left, veins protruding a vivid blue.
He sighed. “Outside would be fine, deputy.”
The deputy waited for Simon to pass. Simon didn’t fail to notice the deputy’s hand resting on the weapon holstered at his hip. The other deputy smiled and gestured for Simon to follow him outside.
* * *
Cochise County Jail
Who loves ya baby—the famous saying of the Greek cop played by Telly Savalas. Bald before bald was hip, with a hooked nose and prominent mole, the man had been able to bring a special pinache to a caricature simply by introducing a lollipop and a cool one-liner. Simon watched as Kojak paced the interrogation room, shook his head and once again mouthed the famous one-liner with that wry Greek smile that promised, What I’m really about to do is fuck you and you won’t even get a reach around when I get done so you might as well confess before things get messy. Kojak stepped back, winked, replaced the lollipop and resumed his pacing.
The phantom was replaced by a swaggering Barretta, the perfect cop of the revolution, anathema to the Dragnet mentality. On his shoulder was a white bird that kept mumbling curiosity killed the cat over and over again. Instead of a smile from this Television Cop Visitation, Simon got a growl-–low, guttural and feral, promising that failure to cooperate could result in a loss of one or both testicles.
The street cop was replaced by the shuffle of a rain-jacketed Columbo who, scratching his head, was inventing alternating levels of self-styled stupidity that skewed and misshaped truth until he reinvented it, much to the consternation of the would-be Arch Criminal Mastermind, in this case, Simon.
So you say you took the car because you always take the car. When my Missus takes our car, she always tells me first just to make sure I didn’t need it for anything. Did you tell the Father you were going to take it out? Columbo stopped, snapped his fingers and spun towards Simon. That’s right. Didn’t the Father tell you that you were restricted? You wouldn’t have told him then, would you? And another thing, what’s the square root of thirty-nine? Simon stared agog into the wandering eye of the small Italian, feeling just like the criminals he used to laugh at.
Who the hell are you staring at, boy? asked a gravelly voice, a whispered promise of murder from Dirty Harry. If you think you’re gonna take me out on a nice date with some wine and flowers and soft music and a rare juicy steak, you got another thing coming. The closest you’re gonna come to getting some is when Pedro begins to call you honey, which will be about ten minutes after you get in prison
and five minutes after you start calling him your husband. Dirty Harry pulled his pistol from his holster and placed the barrel squarely in the center of Simon’s forehead and asked, Well? Do you understand me creep?
Dirty Harry dissolved leaving Simon alone in the room. He closed his eyes and wondered which phantom would haunt him next. Starsky and Hutch on two wheels chasing a suspect based on a tip-off from Huggybear? The heart-rattling, nerve-tingling, hula-skirted drum intro from Hawaii Five-O followed by the phrase, Book-em, Dano? What about the bad shows? Charlie’s Angels? Why couldn’t he have Farrah Fawcett or Jacqueline Smith interrogating him as good cops, while Kate Jackson played bad cop? Or Ponch and Jon from CHIPs? Maybe William Shatner playing Captain Kirk playing T.J. Hooker. Adam-12. Cagney and Lacy. Car 54 Where Are You? McCloud? All Simon could think of as he sat facing the mirrored window in the ten-foot by ten-foot room was how he’d loved those shows as a child. He’d sat hand on chin, enthralled by the deeds of the police, cheering each arrest. He’d lived for the car chases and the shoot-outs. He’d loved that special moment when the criminal acknowledged defeat. It didn’t always happen in the alleys or the subway terminals after a shoot out. A defeat could just as easily happen in the interrogation room—one just like the one he was in now.
It was ironic that Simon was now the target of his childhood derision. If this drama had been played out on a television twenty years earlier, a younger Simon would have watched, judged and convicted himself. No extenuating circumstances. No wondering whether it was for a good deed or personal gain. Nothing mattered other than the person placed in the role of bad guy was always guilty. Period. End of Episode. Finis. Fade to soap commercial.
A horrific thought came into mind. Was that what he was doing to John? Was Simon prejudging and convicting without regard for the man’s rights or truth? Simon thought fast and hard. No, not really. He might have already judged the man, but his judgment meant nothing to the courts. All he was doing was gathering evidence, circumstantial evidence, but evidence nonetheless. He was okay there. His heart was pure.
