by Terry Yates
“Yep, I’m going to leave,” he hissed through his teeth from both pain and anger.
Kyler straightened himself up to full height and took a short step forward placing himself within a foot from Maurice’s face. The larger man stood, arms folded, with a look on his face that told Kyler that he would love nothing more than to have the skinny little beanpole in front of him to take just one more small step forward. This was not lost on Kyler, who decided that it was probably wiser to go home and formulate a plan. He wasn’t going to leave Lauren to her fate, but there was nothing that he could do at that particular moment. Something from the house caught Kyler’s eye. A window curtain had moved. He moved his eyes away from Maurice and toward the window. He saw a shock of auburn hair and a pair of green eyes peeking through it. It was Lauren. She watched him almost nonplussed. It was the same expression he’d seen on the face of Locklear and Ariella O’Hearley just weeks before. It was blank stare that gave nothing away, but Kyler knew that there was a whole gambit of emotions under that stoic mask. He didn’t know how or why, but he’d made a connection with that little girl since they’d first met on the island. She had stuck by his side when Potts had almost pummeled him into oblivion for not selling out Nicholas Klefka as the werewolf. She’d also stayed by his side when the rest of the island refugees ostracized him for the same thing. She didn’t try to mouth anything through the window, but just stood there expressionless and unblinking. The only thing he could read from her face was that she had given up hope. If the young doctor couldn’t save her, no one could. She was destined to her fate and there was nothing she could do about.
Kyler felt like he was coming apart. He couldn’t do anything. He was going to have to walk away and it was killing him. He knew that if he were armed, he’d have no trouble shooting Maurice, his brothers, or even their Ma, to save this little girl, but he didn’t have a gun or even a sharp stick for that matter. “Hang on, Lauren,” he wanted to say. “I’ll be back,” but he couldn’t make his face convey that to her. He just stood there with a look of helplessness on his face. A look that told the little girl that he was going to walk away instead of staying there and fighting the whole inbred clan, and rescuing her like a white knight of the round table.
Kyler dropped his eyes to the ground, turned, and began to slowly walk back toward the jeep. He heard a few giggles and snorts from the porch as he climbed into the vehicle where Pvt. Carson sat looking sheepish.
“Thanks for your help, Private,” Kyler said, glowering at the man.
“I’m not allowed to get into civilian scraps,” he answered back softly as he started the jeep.
“You’re in the army,” Kyler hissed. “You’re supposed to be taking care of the whole country!”
“I had no orders to…”
Kyler grunted and waved the man off. He took one last look toward the window as Pvt. Carson put the jeep in gear. Lauren was gone. Her last hope had chickened out on her and was driving away.
“Hang on, I’ll be back,” he whispered. “I promise.”
____________________
“Pick that trash up off the floor!” Maurice screamed at the little boy, who looked up at him defiantly.
“I didn’t put it there!” the boy screamed back.
Ben Rollins stood rigid as he looked up at Maurice. He was only eight years old with yellow hair and angry blue eyes that glared back at the huge man. “Your mother did it, so have her pick it up!”
He didn’t see the back of Maurice’s hand as it smacked him hard across the face, sending the child reeling sideways into a card table covered with moldy plates. Ben’s body bent one of the table legs, spilling most of its contents down on top of the boy. Moldy milk dripped from Ben’s hair and he had he had three day old cream corn running down the front of his dirty white Incredible Hulk tee-shirt. Tears streamed down his face as he put his hand to his cheek. But they weren’t tears of pain, they were tears of anger.
“Don’t eyeball me, you little shit,” Maurice hissed. “I’ll knock your damn head off! Now pick up this mess or I’ll really give you something to cry about!”
The little boy did not move, but continued to sit on the floor, holding his cheek and glaring up angrily at Maurice.
“I said, pick up this mess!” Maurice screamed even louder.
Seeing that the boy was just going to stare at him, he moved swiftly toward the table.
“I’ll show you who’s…”
A knock at the door interrupted him in mid-stride.
“You stay right there,” he said, pointing his finger and sneering at the boy.
Maurice moved to the door, every few seconds looking back at Ben. He opened the door and found himself startled to find a man at the doorstep. It wasn’t the fact that there was a man at the door that startled him, but it was the appearance of the man. He was at least eight inches shorter than Maurice and dressed in army khaki from head to foot with short, spiky, white hair. What had startled Maurice, was the fact that half of the man’s face was gone…not gone exactly…but he had no right cheekbone, which made the right side of his face look flat and caved in. There must have been three hundred stitches crisscrossing his face from the jaw-line to the forehead, each stitch covering hideous purple and red…not welts, but god damned tears. Puss seemed to ooze out of many of the wounds. There were bits of gauze stuck to many of the tears as if he’d been wearing a bandage and had just removed it. An eye patch covered a hole where his right eye would’ve been. The man’s one eye was a piercing blue…almost sky blue. With the sun shining brightly overhead, the pupil of the eye was almost constricted to the size of a pinhead, which made the blue eye even more piercing. It reminded Maurice of one of those lasery things that big shot assholes pointed to their boards with…laser pointers, that’s what his eye looked like, only his was blue instead of red. Anyway you looked at it, this man was one butt ugly customer.
“Hi,” the man said, looking up at him, his mouth breaking into a wide grin. “You must be Maurice.”
Kyler sat in the jeep outside the house. He’d had one last hope of getting Lauren out of there, so he’d gone to Potts and told him of the girl’s plight. Without uttering a word, Potts began to walk to the jeep. Kyler didn’t know whether to follow him or not. Potts had given him no sign, verbal or non, that he wanted him to tag along, but as Potts reached the jeep, he turned around.
“You comin’, Doctor?” he asked sarcastically. He held out the word ‘doctor’ the way you’d speak to one of those mental patients you saw in old RKO movies where the patient thinks they’re the doctor. The orderlies always say “come along, Doooctooor,” before leading them away to God knew what. The way Potts had trained his one eye on him, made Kyler feel like the King of the Permanently Baffled…the top crazy…the Big Kahuna of nutjobs.
“You want me to come with you?” Kyler had asked quizzically.
“No, I want you stand there like a complete dipshit.”
After the insult, Kyler had joined Potts at the jeep just in time to see Pvt. Carson start to climb in, only to be met by Potts’ hand in his chest.
“You don’t want me to drive you, Colonel?” the private asked.
“No, I’d rather have somebody with a set of balls driving, thank you, Private,” he answered pushing Carson away from the jeep. “The doctor there is gonna drive. Get in, Kyler.”
“Me? You want me to drive?” Kyler had asked.
“Yes. You know where the place is, and I haven’t gotten used to my one-dimensional vision yet, so for now, I need you to drive. Understood?”
Kyler couldn’t believe his ears. Had Potts…in his own odd way…complimented him? Had he implied that he, Richard Kyler, The Cowardly Doctor of No Name Island, had a set of balls?
He’d driven Potts to the house. He’d gotten lost a few times, but he’d eventually found the decrepit old sty, now complete with more junk in the front yard than there had been just hours before. When they pulled up to the curb, Kyler had set the emergency brake before th
e jeep had stopped moving, almost sending Potts into the dashboard.
“Goddamit, Kyler!” he grunted. Who the shit taught you how to drive?”
“Sorry,” was all that Kyler could utter under the circumstances.
Without a pause, Potts began to unwrap the bandage from his head.
“Eh…what are you doing, Colonel?” Kyler asked, still watching him.
“I’m sick of this bullshit bandage!” Potts snorted back, continuing to unwrap the gauze from around his head.
“Colonel, I don’t think you should be doing that,” Kyler said, his eyes almost heavy from watching the bandage go round and round.
“I don’t recall asking for your opinion, Doctor.” He’d done it again. Potts had held out the word ‘doctor’.
“I still don’t…”
“Shut your ass, Kyler!”
After he’d unwrapped the bandage, he began to pull at the smaller gauze bandages.
“Colonel…please…”
“I said shut up!”
Kyler could only see Potts’ left profile. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see the rest. He watched as Potts opened his breast pocket and tried to peer down with his one eye. He placed his hand inside the pocket and felt around for a moment before smiling, and then removing an eye-patch. He untangled the string, still having trouble focusing. When he’d unwound the string, he put the patch over his head, and then turned to Kyler.
“What do you think?” he asked, a semblance of a smirk etched upon his face. Now Kyler could see the true extent of Potts’ injuries after surgery. His eye and half his face was gone. Half of his face WAS REALLY GONE.
As much as he tried, Kyler couldn’t mask the shocked expression on his face.
“A picture’s worth a thousand words,” Potts said as he jumped out of the jeep, landing with a bounce. He turned to Kyler and adjusted his eye-patch.
“Stay here,” he said before turning back around and walking to the house.
“I should come with you,” Kyler answered, lifting his left leg out of the jeep. “You might need me.”
Potts laughed and turned around, the grin on his face making him look absolutely evil.
“I think I’ll be better off on my own,” he chuckled, then turned around again and continued to the front porch.
Kyler watched the house. Even as bad-ass as Potts was, he wasn’t sure that the colonel could handle all three of the brothers. He was shorter and lighter than they were…he had to be pushing fifty, which was at least twenty years older than the oldest of the clan brothers…and he only had one eye now. He didn’t feel right letting Potts go in there alone, but the expression on Potts’ face told him to stay in the jeep, which he had. Kyler wished he’d hurry up. Just get Lauren and get out there.
Potts’ had been in the house for about three minutes when Kyler thought he heard a loud noise…not a noise, but a crash, followed by a heavy thud. He looked at the house and cocked his ear, wondering if he’d really heard the sound at all. He watched and listened for a moment. There it was again! Another crash. This time Kyler could hear loud voices. He couldn’t tell what they were saying, but as muffled as it was, Kyler knew that there was an argument going on. This was followed by more crashes and thuds. Screw it. He was going in. As frightened as he was at the prospect of getting his ass kicked by some extremely big and nasty men, he knew that he’d feel worse if he didn’t do anything to help Potts.
As he drew a deep breath, Kyler began to count backwards from ten. As he reached “zero”, his legs were already out of the jeep, but before he could jump out, he heard the door open. When he looked at the house, he saw Potts holding the door open. His heart soared when he saw a smiling Lauren walk out of the house…followed by seven other children. Kyler sat flummoxed as Potts held the door for each one of them. There were four boys and three girls ranging from six to maybe fifteen or sixteen. One of the boys and one of the girls seemed to be the oldest. If they weren’t the oldest, they were the biggest. The boy’s face looked young, but he was almost six-feet tall. The older girl was five or six inches shorter than the boy. Her hair was fiery red and she wore an extremely dirty and tattered yellow dress. He saw a boy and a girl walking together who must’ve been about twelve. They looked alike except the boy was a few inches taller. They had to be twins. Their expressions, their walk, the way they moved their arms…there was no mistaking it. There was also a small boy of about eight who looked dirty and filthy. One side of his face was red as if something or someone had hit him hard. Coming out of the house were a boy and an extremely small black girl who couldn’t have been more than six years old. He couldn’t tell the boy’s age because he had Down’s Syndrome. He was about the size of the twin boy, but appeared to be older. The little girl and the Down’s Syndrome boy were holding hands as they walked.
As they neared the jeep, Kyler could see that they were dirty and unkempt. Jesus, what had these kids been through? He’d had to put that thought on hold, because Lauren was sprinting straight for the jeep, her mouth in a broad grin. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile like that. She was usually somber-faced, but here she was running with a big toothy smile. When she reached the jeep, Lauren jumped in from the passenger side and leapt into Kyler’s outstretched arms.
“I knew you’d come back!” she squealed, hugging his neck tightly.
“Sorry, I had to leave you back there, but I thought that we’d need some help,” Kyler told her, nodding toward Potts who was approaching the jeep with the children.
“Come on. Hop in,” Potts told them, pushing the passenger seat forward.
The children began to pile into the back seat. The jeep was only meant to hold four passengers…two in the front and two in the back so the children were trying to situate themselves according to mass. The smaller boy…Ben Rollins…hesitated before getting in.
“Are you a monster?” he asked, looking up at Potts.
Kyler was embarrassed for the man. To a child, he probably did look like a monster.
“No, he isn’t!” Lauren exclaimed. “He’s just the biggest, bestest hero of all time!”
Potts just grunted as the little boy continued staring up at him.
“Yeah, I guess I am a monster, Kid,” Potts told the boy. “I’m just not eating kids today, how ‘bout that.”
Ben Rollins continued to look up at him for a moment longer before hopping into the back seat with the other children. As Potts climbed in, Lauren jumped into the back seat where she sat in the oldest boys lap, which she shared with the smallest girl. As Kyler put the vehicle into gear, she reached up and put her arms around Potts’ neck.
“Thank you,” she whispered loudly, planting a kiss on his good cheek.
“Ugh! Get away from me, Kid,” Potts cried disgustedly as he removed her arms from around his neck.
As they began to drive away, she slid over and placed her hands lightly on Kyler’s shoulders.
“You should’ve seen him,” she whispered again, this time into Kyler’s ear. “He whipped all three of the brothers.
“Oh yeah?” Kyler whispered back, smiling.
“Yeah, and when Mrs. Wartler came at him with a butcher knife, he karate kicked her through the wall. THROUGH the WALL!”
Kyler and Lauren began to giggle. Every few seconds, they would look over at Potts and giggle, who looked back at them as if they were rabbit droppings that he’d discovered on his lunch plate. As the duo continued to laugh and giggle, Kyler noticed something odd. There was little or no noise coming from the back seat. There were eight children crammed in and not a one was making a peep.
“Are you guys okay back there?” he asked, wondering if he sounded like one of those dorky fathers who tries to be cool when his children’s friends are around.
The back of the jeep remained silent.
“Are they always this quiet?” Kyler asked Lauren.
“They’re not accustomed to their freedom yet,” Lauren answered softly into his ear. Those people did some very bad things.�
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Kyler gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying to hold back the anger tears. He wasn’t going to ask what some of those things were…well, not now anyway. He found himself looking over at Potts who was rubbing his skinned and swollen knuckles. He stared straight ahead, his one eye squinting against the sunlight. He’d known when he told Potts about Lauren’s situation, that he would do something about it. He had to admit though, he’d expected him to walk out of the house with only Lauren at his side, but instead he rescued the whole lot of them. He began to chuckle to himself. He wasn’t sure why at first. There was no reason to be chuckling. There was absolutely nothing at all amusing about this situation. A few seconds ago, he was fighting back tears, but here he was now, giggling like the village idiot. He tried to hold back the laughter, but every time he put his hand to his mouth to stifle it, he ended up letting out a loud snort, followed by a choked-off guffaw.
“What’s so God damn funny?” Potts asked, scowling as he looked at the giggling Kyler and the smiling Lauren, her arms still on his shoulders.
“You put…” Kyler tried to stop, but broke into another giggle. “You put…”
“What? Godammit! What!”
“You put…that woman…(snicker)…through the wall?”
“Yeah…” Potts answered him. “I didn’t realize she was a broad at the time. I just saw the knife and reflex kicked in.
Kyler and Lauren laughed hardily, Kyler trying to picture the Colonel going Bruce Lee on the three big, bad-ass brothers…and their momma. He would’ve loved to have been there for that.
“He was like a ballet dancer doing Swan Lake,” Lauren mused, her face in somber thought now. Kyler figured that she was probably imagining Potts as the Nutcracker…either that or she was doing some sort of calculus in her head. He could never really tell with Lauren. Since he’d met her on the island, he had found her to be eccentric…wonderfully eccentric…but eccentric all the same. He loved Lauren O’Hearley. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She never retaliated when bullied at school, and in their conversations together, it sounded like she got bullied a lot. Now she had no family left, and had just spent time with a family of God-Knew-What’s doing God-Knows What. He reached back and patted her hand, which was still hanging off of his shoulder.
