Wounded Prey

by Sean Lynch

  Screams reminded him of home.

  Vernon watched with his eyes closed as welcome scenes unfolded before him. He saw scenes of carnage from when he was a warrior. He saw the lush, humid green of the Chu Lai peninsula. He could feel the M-60 bucking in his hands as it spewed its deadly stream of death into the foliage.

  He liked the war. He belonged in it. He believed the pains and horrors of war were there to lend him a sense of the familiar. His dreams of the war always melted into an endless blur of ambushes, and firefights, and twilight patrols. He sought the crescendo of contact with the enemy; meetings which produced sexual satisfaction

  Other parts of the war Vernon couldn’t remember so well. These parts were like Daddy’s room; dark, and out of focus. Things that couldn’t be remembered no matter how hard he tried. Vernon believed the blank memories were the things taken from him by the doctors at the VA hospital.

  The hospital.

  Visions of the veterans’ hospital, like home, were hazy and indistinct. He remembered drugs. The constant flow of pills, and shots, and liquids. He suspected the drugs at the VA hospital were the reason he couldn’t penetrate the blocked memories of home and the war.

  The time after he left the VA hospital was blurred beyond recollection. Vernon recalled odd jobs, and drifting aimlessly through the Midwest, sometimes living in cheap hotels, sometimes living on the street.

  Then one day he was in a park in Sioux City, Iowa. He saw a man walking a child. The child was holding an orange balloon. And Vernon suddenly remembered his father, and pieces of his childhood. Why the man and his child triggered his brain to dredge up the long-dead memories, he didn’t know. But he didn’t question.

  It was not a Marine’s place to question.

  And so Lance Corporal Vernon Emil Slocum was returned to duty. He’d trimmed his shaggy hair and beard to boot camp specifications. He went to an army and navy surplus store and obtained some used fatigues, and a genuine USMC Ka-Bar knife. He burglarized the home of a retired army major and acquired a 1911 Colt .45 government model semi-automatic pistol. He was again ready for action.

  Ready to complete his mission.

  “Mission,” Vernon mumbled, over and over again. The other passengers sneaked nervous glances at the strange-looking man. They watched him toss and turn, and tried not to imagine what demons he fought in his sleep.

  Fortunately for them they couldn’t know.

  CHAPTER 37

  Cole Ballantine, formerly Cole Rodney Slocum, sat in his kitchen and enjoyed a few moments alone with his coffee. The view of San Francisco was good today; there was only a light fog over the Bay to spoil it.

  The kitchen was in disarray. Piles of dishes and laundry lay scattered on the normally spotless counter tops. Cole had difficulty getting the coffee maker to work correctly, and wished for the two hundredth time his wife was home.

  The Ballantine family owned a spacious waterfront home on Bay Farm Island, in Alameda. From Cole’s front door he had an unobstructed view of the San Francisco’s magnificent skyline, as well as the Bay Bridge.

  He checked the time; 8.07am. He was supposed to have his daughter at school by 8.20.

  “Kirsten,” he yelled up the stairs. “We’re late. Let’s get moving, OK?”

  “OK, Daddy. I’m coming.”

  Cole shook his head and returned to the kitchen. If her mother were home, seven year-old Kirsten would have been downstairs, breakfasted, and ready to go to school. He shrugged. At age seven, his daughter was already mastering the art of managing men. At sixteen, she’d be lethal.

  Christmas was less than a week away, and the house was filled with the scent of pine from the Christmas tree in the living room. It was also the hectic season, with far too many things to do at work and at home. Which was why Cole objected so strongly when Marcia, his wife of more than ten years, decided to spend a few days in Sacramento with her mother.

  Marcia was pregnant and due in March. For this reason he wanted her at home. But her father passed away only the year before, and she wanted to be near her mother for a portion of her first Christmas as a widow. Cole had no choice but to relent.

  He tried all the excuses: it was the holidays; he couldn’t cook; Kirsten would be traumatized because she missed her mother. Of course Kirsten foiled that excuse by announcing she was an adult and capable of taking care of herself. This included getting ready for school, which was why they were running late today. He returned to the base of the stairs.

  “Kirsten, it’s time to go! Come on!”

  Cole Ballantine was a big man, like his father and brothers. He stood well over six feet in height, but was soft around the middle, a product of his sedentary job as a financial analyst. His hair was longish and unkempt, and this morning he was clad in one of his tailored business suits. He was a far cry from the scared boy who ran away from his Iowa home at sixteen.

  Cole grew up in squalor on the family farm in rural Iowa. Unlike his younger sister Elizabeth, he had vivid memories of his mother, though he was only a few years old when she died. He remembered her kindness and warmth, and a soft, gentle voice. Hers was the only soft voice in the household.

  Cole’s father was a brutal, alcoholic tyrant. He guessed he hadn’t always been that way, or Mother wouldn’t have married him. At least that’s what he imagined.

  When his mother died, all hell broke loose. It was as if the woman was the only restraining element in the deranged man’s life. With her gone, old man Slocum tortured the children savagely, beating them by day and sexually abusing them by night. Cole could still hear screams in his sleep sometimes, and would wake up in a sweat to find Marcia soothing him and telling him things were alright.

  He watched his father enlist his older brother Wade in the Marines on his seventeenth birthday. He remembered Wade as a haunted soul, tortured by his role as the oldest and his inability to protect his younger siblings. Wade left wordlessly, his enlistment papers in hand, reluctant to leave his little brothers and sister, but relieved to be finally gone. Cole never saw him again. He was certain the horrors Wade faced before his death in Vietnam were daydreams compared to the nightmare he lived in Iowa.

  Less than a year later, Cole’s second-oldest brother, Vernon, was signed into the Marine Corps, also on his seventeenth birthday. Vernon’s face beamed with pride, happy to be pleasing his father. Vernon always listened with eagerness as their father told his tales of fighting the Japs in the Big War.

  By the dim light of the only kitchen bulb, their father recounted gory details of what he did to the Japanese during the Pacific campaign. He called the Japanese “slant-eyed-fucks,” and laughed at his self-proclaimed atrocities. These tales terrified Cole, but Vernon loved the stories. Cole remembered his father calling Vernon “daddy’s little soldier,” for the stoic way he endured his beatings, and what came after them, in Daddy’s bedroom.

  With his two brothers gone, the beatings became more frequent and the nightly trips to the bedroom more prolonged. Cole and his sister Elizabeth, a sickly child, now bore the brunt of their father’s savagery alone. When news of Wade’s death came, Daddy beat Cole so badly he couldn’t go to the bathroom for two days. When he was finally able to urinate it came out bright red.

  The only reprieve was the days when Daddy received a letter from Vernon. The letters would be on pretty blue stationery with the USMC logo on the top. Daddy would ask Cole or Elizabeth to read the letters, which were crudely written. The letters often contained money orders, and were filled with details of military life. Daddy drank less on the days Vernon’s letters came, and his moods were calmer.

  But soon Vernon sent a letter announcing he was being shipped to Vietnam. Shortly after, the letters stopped altogether. Daddy’s moods got darker, and he beat Cole and Elizabeth with even greater relish than before. Cole remembered that time as the worst. Elizabeth, though nearing twelve years old, had the appearance of an eight year-old. She twitched chronically, as if always about to dodge a blow. Yet when the blows came
she didn’t flinch at all.

  Cole had only one refuge. He lingered in the library after school each day, even though it would result in a more potent beating from Daddy. There he read voraciously and dreamed of a world without fear and neglect.

  He particularly liked geography books. He loved the pictures of the ocean, and tropical places where it was never cold. He dreamed of California, and read and reread books about the sunny state until his vision blurred. The school librarian would often have to evict him from the library to ensure he caught the bus home.

  Cole was truant a lot, but it was no cause for concern. In rural Iowa, in those days, children were needed on the farms. Poor attendance by able-bodied farm boys was something school administrators dealt with lightly, particularly at planting and harvest time. Neither Wade nor Vernon graduated high school before joining the service. None of his teachers expected Cole to graduate either.

  One day Cole Slocum could take it no more. Autumn was turning again into Iowa’s fierce winter, and Elizabeth was coughing again, a sure sign the snows were coming soon. The winter promised to be a little more tolerable, since Cole and Elizabeth now had their older brother’s hand-me-downs to wear. Nonetheless, it was a winter he didn’t want to face.

  Without saying a word to either his father or little sister, Cole left. He knew Interstate 80 was a straight route west to California, and was only two or three days walk south on Highway 169. He packed his few ragged clothes and was gone.

  Cole, like his brothers, was tall and big-boned. Though barely sixteen, he easily passed for eighteen. He carried a map he’d torn from one of his beloved geography books, and told the truckers who stopped for his outstretched thumb he was heading to California to enlist in the Marines. He scrounged for meals at the truck stops along the way, and begged money from strangers. He’d never been out of Iowa before, and marveled at the world before him.

  He gaped in awe at the splendor of the mountain ranges, forests, and deserts while en route to California. He ended up in Berkeley.

  Berkeley was good to Cole Slocum. He lived on the street, and subsisted through the many soup kitchens and bread lines that were common in Berkeley during the hippie era. To anyone who asked, his name was Cole Ballantine, a name taken from the author of his favorite geography book. He feared arrest by the juvenile authorities and return to his father in Iowa.

  Cole was befriended by a group of hippies living on Telegraph Avenue. Under their guidance he learned to scam people out of money, scrounge for food, and thrive on the streets. He devoured college textbooks, absorbing as much knowledge as his starved mind could take. It was a time of few cares and much promise for Cole Ballantine. Cole Slocum faded into his nightmares.

  The war was raging, and so were student protests. With the help of friends versed in forgery, he registered for a social security card, and got a driver’s license under his new name, thereby closing forever the door to his past. With forged high school transcripts, he enrolled at Laney Community College, in Oakland.

  Soon he applied and was accepted at the University of California, in Berkeley. The academic record he established at Laney allowed him to pass the more rigid registration process at the university. By then, thanks to his streetwise friends, he was an expert at manipulating the system.

  Cole took part time jobs at the university. He worked by day in the library, and by night as a janitor. With his college deferment he avoided military service and the fate of his brothers in Vietnam.

  In time, the horrors of his childhood and the memories of his past in Iowa were replaced by the daily routine of his new, busy, and wonderful life. When he did think of home, his thoughts were of his little sister Elizabeth. He sometimes fantasized about rescuing her; going back and exposing his father as a monster and stealing her away. But the thought of returning to that horrible place, for any reason, was a frightening one, and the shame Cole felt at leaving his sister behind gradually waned. Occasional nightmares remained, but these were the only reminder of his former life.

  He graduated college. Graduate studies followed. A master’s degree in business administration resulted in a lucrative job offer in the budding Silicon Valley city of San Jose. Cole moved there and prospered.

  Years passed, and he embraced the trappings of his new world. He bought a new car, explored California, and met Marcia.

  Marcia was in graduate school at San Jose State, studying psychology. Cole met her one evening at the library in the geography section. She was researching a term paper, and took the initiative by introducing herself. Marcia had a gregarious, outgoing nature; so different from the quiet way he carried himself. He was enchanted immediately. They began to date, and soon they shared his apartment. Cole Ballantine was happier than he ever dreamed he could be. A year later he and Marcia were married.

  Several years after the marriage, Cole was offered a promotion. He was to be managing director of a financial research team at the Harbor Bay Business Park, in Alameda. By then Marcia’s career was also on solid ground. She’d established herself as a clinical psychologist with a practice in Oakland. Both were satisfied with their careers and resided comfortably in the quiet island city.

  Shortly after the move to Alameda something occurred which both shocked and elated Cole. He and Marcia were lounging in bed and she was reading one of the trade publications of her profession. In the magazine was an article explaining innovative new counseling techniques for treating sexually abused children. The article was written by a child-counseling specialist from Omaha, Nebraska, named Elizabeth Slocum.

  Cole was glancing over his wife’s shoulder, and the name sent an electric charge through his body. He grabbed the magazine roughly from his wife’s grasp. At the conclusion of the article was a picture of the author, which showed a big-boned woman with a short haircut.

  It was Elizabeth. Though hardly the same thin, sickly child he’d last seen over twenty years ago, it was unquestionably Elizabeth. Before he knew it tears were streaming down his face and he was sobbing her name.

  He’d always been tight-lipped about his childhood. His wife knew her trade, and her husband, and to leave well enough alone. She knew only that Cole came to California from the Midwest as a runaway from an abusive home. He never spoke of his past, or his family, and Marcia respected his privacy.

  Cole cried. He clutched the picture from the magazine to his chest. She held him, and during the course of the night he told her everything.

  She listened first in revulsion, then in pride. Her husband had come from a terrible place; the kind of place most children never escape from. And he’d escaped intact. He was a survivor. He’d become a stable, loving, and functional human being.

  Cole wanted to contact his sister immediately, and it was Marcia who insisted he seek counseling first. She knew from her work that such a meeting could trigger problems unless he prepared for it. Marcia hadn’t forgotten the nightmares her husband experienced. Now she knew their origin.

  At Marcia’s suggestion, Cole spent the next several months undergoing therapy. In the meantime, Marcia became pregnant. They decided Cole should fly out and visit his sister, who he’d traced by writing to the magazine.

  The meeting was a joyful one. Cole and Elizabeth hugged and cried and forgave each other. She was overjoyed at seeing him, and understood the need to change his name. She was proud he had survived, and absolved him of his guilt at leaving her behind.

  Cole stayed for three days, and Elizabeth gave him a tour of her life’s work. He was overjoyed at what she had become. He saw her strength and goodness in the faces of the children. He came to believe the hardships of their childhood had a purpose.

  They discussed Vernon, and Elizabeth recounted for Cole the incident at the veterans’ hospital when she’d gone to visit him. He shuddered when he heard the story. He thought inwardly that Vernon was certainly his father’s child.

  Cole left after his reunion with Elizabeth filled with gratitude. He was happy to know that like him, she’d escaped
and survived.

  Cole wrote to her over the next several years, and she wrote diligently back. But somehow she was never able to break away from the demands of her many children and return his visit. Cole understood. She’d crafted for herself a world in which she was truly happy. He always planned to return to Omaha, but the trip was postponed indefinitely once Kirsten was born. Between their careers, marriage, and a new baby he and Marcia could never find the time.

  There was never enough time. It seemed like only yesterday he was bathing Kirsten in a pan. And now she was a mature and independent woman of seven, insisting on dressing for school by herself.

  “Kirsten, let’s go!”

  On cue, Kirsten came slowly down the stairs. This amazed Cole, who was accustomed to seeing the auburn-haired terror bound down the stairs three at a time. Today she walked regally, wearing a red dress. She also wore black tights and shiny-black patent-leather shoes. Her hair was neatly brushed to her shoulders and she wore a bright red bow.

  “Your Highness,” Cole said, bowing down. “I didn’t know the royal ball was tonight. You look lovely. Shall I prepare the carriage?”

  “Oh Daddy, you’re such a dweeb! Today is the Christmas pageant.”

  “What’s a dweeb?”

  “Everybody knows what a dweeb is.”

  “I don’t. What’s a dweeb?”

  “That’s why you’re such a dweeb, Dad,” Kirsten said, speaking the way an adult does when explaining something simple to a small child. “A dweeb is a nerd who thinks he’s a stud. But he’s really just a nerd who’s trying to be cool, and everyone can tell. That’s a dweeb.”

  “I see. Dweebs, nerds, and studs; where do you learn this stuff?”

  “MTV.”

  “I should have guessed.”

  Cole glanced at his watch again. “C’mon, honey, we’ve got to go. I’m late already.”

  “I’m ready. Are you coming to the Christmas pageant?”