Soldier Boy

by Glen Carter

  Bolt remembered the shit popping up all the time inside his head. Faces, places, and spaces. In and out, like the fire of a magician’s flash paper.

  “There was a psychiatrist. He said you were too smart and too sensitive, which you’d grow out of. These days, there’d be a whole lot of labels, and no doubt medications.”

  Bolt didn’t doubt it.

  “The other children weren’t kind. But that’s the way of children,” Father Oscar said. “You were bullied, and we did the best we could to protect you. But you were so extraordinary, you made an easy target.” Father Oscar fingered through the file until he found what he was looking for. He held up a sheaf of papers. “Your intelligence quotient test.” He offered it.

  Bolt waved it away.

  The priest went on. “You were schooled like the rest. But it was a waste of your time. You were beyond textbooks.”

  Bolt recalled the excruciating boredom. He’d found ways to cope. Reading, usually. Father Oscar still had many of the books on his shelves. Great tomes of theology and science. The philosophers. Heady stuff for a kid.

  Father Oscar followed Bolt’s eyes. “I think you’ve read more of these books than I have. You had an insatiable hunger.”

  “Which you fed.”

  “Yes, I did. Do you remember our little talks?”

  “More like debates.”

  “That’s correct. I humoured you at first. Then I found it hard just to keep up. You knew exactly what questions to ask. Which answers to challenge.”

  “The body and the soul.”

  “You do remember.”

  Bolt smiled. “I think I won that one.”

  Father Oscar held up a hand. “I concede. But I know some priests who still don’t completely understand the difference between the two.”

  “Souls are who we are,” Bolt said. “Bodies are what we have.”

  “One eternal, the other perishable.”

  “A rock star,” Bolt added. “The human spirit its booking agent.”

  “Now, isn’t that interesting.”

  Bolt sipped. “No wonder the others thought I was a freak.”

  Father Oscar looked at him with undisguised pity. “I tried more than once to draw you out, Samuel.”

  “Like that time at the carnival.”

  These many years later, the priest was still mortified. A travelling carnival was in town, and a bunch of the orphanage kids had been invited for a night of free rides. Bolt wasn’t interested. Father Oscar had taken him aside. “Come with us, Samuel. If you don’t, you’ll be in for it. They’ll crucify you, like always.” Bolt was definitely not in the mood for that, so off he went. The carnival was a whirling and whizzing landscape. The orphanage kids ran immediately to the rides, and to be just like them, he ran, too. They jumped aboard something that looked like a giant alien spider. It had long arms that held pods for the kids. After strapping in tight, the contraption began to spin, and they squealed and screeched. But not Bolt. The burning started at his feet, like his shoes were on fire. Up his legs and into his stomach. A pulsing heat, searing his flesh. It got worse as the giant spider picked up speed and seemed like it might fly away. Bolt screamed for the ride to stop, but everyone was having too good a time. He was obviously having great fun, too, with his mouth stretched wide and his eyes rolled up in the back of his head. The next thing he remembered, he was on the ground, being poked and laughed at. Father Oscar ran over and pulled him up. “Are you okay, Samuel?”

  “I wanna go home,” he muttered, barely conscious.

  “You fell out of a ride, for Christ’s sake,” Oscar said from behind his desk. “I was scared to death.”

  He hadn’t fallen out of the ride. He’d jumped.

  Father Oscar closed the file. Shifted his considerable frame. “You know some things, Samuel, but not everything.”

  “I know my mother didn’t survive my birth.”

  “Yes, that’s true, tragically. But there’s more to the story of your arrival.”

  Bolt was ready.

  Father Oscar blessed himself. “It was a savage night. Rain in buckets and thunder that shook the orphanage. A lightning strike splintered a huge pine tree just outside that window.” The priest pointed a stubby finger and then reached for the silver flask, which he held out to Bolt.

  Bolt shook his head.

  The priest poured. “I was afraid we were on fire. I ran outside, which was not wise in the middle of an electric storm.” Father Oscar swallowed from his cup. “Then I heard screaming.” He paused. “Wet as a whale, I was frantic. Slipping and falling in the mud. Then I saw something moving at the old pine. I ran to it. I found your mother at the base of that burning tree. She was terrified, out of her mind, and in the middle of delivering.” The priest suddenly went silent, squeezing the bridge of his nose, as if to pinch off the memory. “I was the only one there, Samuel. I did what I could, but I was completely alone. With the storm raging, no one could hear me shouting for help. It was hopeless.” Father Oscar looked at Bolt. “Your mother came to us because at that moment she had nowhere else to turn. How she got here is a mystery, but it was probably the Cross that beckoned her.” The priest drew a heavy breath. “She died in my arms.”

  Neither man spoke. Bolt understood Father Oscar’s guilt, the need for forgiveness for a crime never committed. “I’m glad you were there,” he said. “I wouldn’t be alive if you weren’t.”

  Father Oscar simply nodded, then continued. “You were wailing like a banshee. But there wasn’t a mark on you.”

  Not a mark. Not on the outside. “Was my mother struck by the lightning? Was that why she hemorrhaged?”

  “That was our worry. That you were injured in utero,” the priest replied. “So, the doctors ran their tests, and they all came back normal. Brain scans, too.” Father Oscar’s hands came together in mock prayer. “Divine intervention, Samuel. The miracle of God’s Hand. That’s what we believed at the time. I still do.”

  It didn’t feel like the work of God. His mother had died a horrible, desperate death. What God would have allowed that? “Father, did my mother say anything that night?” It didn’t make sense that she wouldn’t have.

  Father Oscar studied him for a long time, as if to decide whether to reveal a secret. “It was blowing a gale with a lashing rain. It was hard to hear anything. But she did say something, yes.”

  “Can I ask you what it was?”

  “It made no sense. I put it down to delirium.”

  Bolt waited.

  Father Oscar looked him straight in the eyes and told him. “Such a strange thing to say. She spoke it on her dying breath.”

  * * * * *

  Bolt took a moment to absorb what he’d just been told. He would never know the woman who had carried him. He had been physically attached to her body, of course, but emotionally, Bolt was untethered. As a child orphan, he had fantasized that his parents were CIA spies, permanently on the run. As a teenager, he discarded it. Then he had left the orphanage for some pilgrimage to self-discovery. In San Francisco, he had talked his way aboard a container ship as a galley boy. He washed dishes, kept to himself, and spent long periods at the ship’s rail gazing at warm sunsets. Eventually, he tired of the fuzzy horizons and having nothing solid in his life. Vegas was as solid as it got. He had friends and the stupid-easy cash that gave him a purpose.

  Bolt thought about his mother’s last words. She was near death at that moment. Anything could have come out of her mouth, even something so strange. Did she really believe the child she bore was not the fetus she carried? Bolt kept that to himself, because even as a learned man of God, Father Oscar was humanly limited. So, where did that leave him? Souls we are. Bodies we have.

  “My name?” Bolt asked, simply.

  Father Oscar smiled. Tapped the worn Bible in front of him. “Ou
t of the brightness of His presence, bolts of lightning blazed forth. Samuel 22:13. I prayed you’d appreciate the sentiment.”

  Bolt did, but there was still one whopper of a question. “I need to know something. But I feel stupid even asking.”

  “That’s why you’re here.”

  “It’s ridiculous.”

  “There are no ridiculous questions, my son. Especially for a priest.”

  Bolt thought about the asshole candidate. The politician’s wife. What was it about her? About the two of them? It taunted him to no end.

  Half a dozen cookies had vanished from the plate. Father Oscar lifted another to his lips. “Sister Jillian is constantly worried about my blood sugars, so she tries to starve me.” The treat disappeared inside his mouth. “Thankfully I have confederates in the kitchen.” He smacked his lips. “Ask away.”

  Bolt spit it out.

  The priest nearly choked. “You mean that blasted Republican.”

  “The guy running for president. Has he ever had anything to do with the orphanage?”

  The priest slapped both hands on the desk. “The spawn of Satan,” he cried. “The coming of the lawless one . . . with all power and false signs and wonders. Why ask such a thing?”

  “We’ve met,” Bolt said. “There was something I can’t explain, and I’m really bothered by it.”

  Father Oscar picked up a newspaper with Rutter’s picture on the front page. “God doesn’t like Republicans. They offend His liberal heart.”

  Bolt was obliged to tell him more, which he did. “Any connection?”

  “Christ, no, and don’t vote for the bastard.”

  Ten minutes later, Father Oscar walked him to the front door. A hand on his shoulder as they travelled the corridors of his childhood. Bolt glimpsed into passing dorms, with their neatly made beds and pop-star posters. He stopped. “Do you believe in second chances, Father?”

  The priest studied him. “That could mean a lot of things, Samuel. Second chances at love, health. Redemption. Which do you mean?”

  Bolt thrust his hands in his pockets. “I’m not sure.”

  “The soul is everlasting, Samuel. That’s God’s second chance.”

  Bolt smirked. “I think that would depend on where the soul ends up.”

  “Touché,” said the priest. “Heaven, hopefully. But you have no worries about fire and brimstone, my boy.”

  “What about the lawless? The false signs and wonder?”

  The priest gave a wink. “Leave that to us.”

  They rounded a corner and ran into a couple of kids who had no business being there. Father Oscar corralled them and ordered them back to their preschool. “Children have no fear of God or hell, Samuel,” he said. “They come to the world as carefree innocents, full of wonder and sensitive to everything around them. You were never like that. You were always burdened by things we didn’t understand.” Father Oscar checked to see the truants taking their seats. “Life will decide what those children will become, as an accumulation of their joys and sorrows. It was as though the transformations brought on by life’s experiences had already occurred inside you, even as a child.”

  “It sounds like I was robbed.”

  “You could say that. Robbed of a childhood.” The priest gave him a long look. “I’ve many questions, but I know it’s not right to probe. You’re a private man, as you were a private boy.”

  The priest was fishing, as always.

  “You could have been anything you wanted, Samuel. The miracle of your birth was only the beginning. I wish I knew more about you. It bothers me that I don’t.”

  “I have a good life,” Bolt obliged. “I’m happy.”

  “Then that’s all that matters. Stay true to your beliefs. Live with a good heart, and stand fast against evil. Everything else will take care of itself.”

  It was one of those large doses of wisdom that Father Oscar was famous for. Bolt appreciated the sentiment.

  A moment later, the old man stopped at a small door. He opened it and disappeared inside. He emerged cradling something in his arms, smiling broadly. He handed it to Bolt. It was a small sailboat carved from blackened wood. There were two chopsticks for masts and a matchbox for a cabin. It was obviously the work of a child.

  “Your little project,” said Father Oscar. “Popped out of nowhere. It’s been here in storage ever since. I don’t think it’s ever seen water.”

  Bolt was impressed by the workmanship but had no memory of the tiny boat. “Seen some fire, by the looks of it.”

  “You could say that,” said the priest. “You carved it from the stump of that burned-out pine tree.”

  16

  Bolt had another hour before the bus to Vegas, so he grabbed a late lunch from the cafeteria at the Greyhound station. He took a bite from a greasy hamburger and washed it down with a Coke. He was thinking about Father Oscar, a man who had devoted his life to the care of children. Thank goodness for men like him. He thought about their conversation. Oscar had revealed details of the night of his birth and the death of his mother. He had asked about the senator and came up empty, which he knew was a stretch to begin with. Still, it hadn’t been a waste of time. It was good seeing the old priest again, and he made a promise to himself to visit again soon.

  He took another couple of bites and then drained his bottle of soda. Then he grabbed his knapsack and found a seat in the waiting area. A few minutes later, heading to the restroom, he pulled back. A guy was sitting at his table, in front of his half-eaten hamburger and two-dollar tip, which was strange because there were plenty of clean empty tables available. He watched as the guy picked up his Coke bottle and dropped it into a brown paper bag and zipped away. Bolt stood there, mystified, until his bladder told him to get moving.

  Forty minutes later, the bus left right on schedule. He took a place at the back and settled in for the ride. He wouldn’t nap—there was too much on his mind, including the guy pinching his empty bottle. The man had handled it like a piece of evidence. Was he being followed, and if so, by whom? He’d been extremely careful, but casinos hunted gamers like him. There were crack security experts and surveillance suites that bristled with technology. They took measures, sometimes not by the book. Card counters were your garden-variety cheats. They usually got red-flagged and blacklisted, sometimes with a beating thrown in for good measure. Bolt’s talent was impossible to spot. He could hit jackpots till the cows came home and they’d never figure it out, but it didn’t mean they’d just stand there while the bells kept ringing and Bolt siphoned off their profits. Casinos shared intelligence and video. Was it possible some eye-in-the-sky geek had caught on to him? If that were the case, it was a game changer. At the very least, he’d have to stay low for a while.

  He reached into his knapsack and pulled out a bottle of water. He swallowed half, replaced the cap, and went to stuff it back inside. Something got in the way. It was the little wooden boat, returned to him by Father Oscar. He tugged it free and held it up for a closer look. The lines were true, the rudder was movable with a tiny helm, and except for the occasional patches of blackened wood, it appeared to be quite seaworthy. He flipped it back and forth but couldn’t recall anything that would have inspired him to build it. He swung the stern around. Being dry-docked for so long, it was covered by a layer of dirt. Bolt was too curious. He grabbed his water, soaked a piece of his shirt, and began to rub. A few minutes into it, black letters came clear, one after another, until the little transom was clean. Bolt stared at the name in utter disbelief.

  Mystic Blue.

  17

  “And?” David Stoffer placed his hands upon a large desk and waited.

  “There’s no way to explain it,” his visitor said.

  “What about continuity of evidence? That’s a big deal to you guys.”

  “It didn’t leave my sight.�
� The man tossed a file across the desk.

  Stoffer opened and closed it, passed it back. He said, “Give me the Reader’s Digest version.”

  Joe Ryan was a private investigator. He didn’t come cheap, but he was discreet, and he had resources that were impressive. Stoffer had taken measures to keep him at arm’s length from the campaign, but he was still worried about having the man in his office.

  Ryan started. “Subject boarded Greyhound bus at midnight in Vegas and didn’t get off until Albuquerque. Subject was trailed to an orphanage on the outskirts of town. He spent a couple of hours and then took a cab back to the bus station, where he took lunch.”

  “Prints weren’t a problem?”

  “Prints were not a problem.”

  Ryan opened the file. “Samuel Bolt of no fixed address. No police record, no credit cards, no bank account. Volunteers at that homeless shelter. That we know.”

  “What about the orphanage?” Stoffer said.

  “County records have him as a ward of the place, back when he was a kid. Only his name on the birth certificate.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “Mother died during childbirth. Jane Doe. Father unknown.”

  Stoffer stared through the window at the looming dome of the capital. He checked his watch. The man wouldn’t get all his morning, but Stoffer needed more.

  “Tell me more about the prints,” Stoffer said.

  Ryan removed a sheet of paper from the file, shaking his head. “At first I thought it had to be a mistake, so I had the scan repeated. Twice more using different databases. I can explain the entire process, if you like.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “It’s like I said,” he went on. “The man has no history to speak about. Financials are zip, likewise for any rap sheet. He’s basically nobody, invisible in terms of institutional or agency data. And that includes the FBI, LVMPD, and the rest of them.”