by James Renner
Cole smiled and looked out the window.
“Do you know something I don’t?” asked Jack.
“We’re not coming back.”
“You want to bet?”
“Sure.”
“Five bucks.”
“Make it twenty.”
Jack shook the kid’s hand.
5 Jack was anxious and sweaty by the time he parked in the visitors’ lot at St. Mary’s Assisted Living Home in Mantua. Since the attack, he’d done well to push the memory of that night out of his mind. The Captain had always been a tough man to love. Gruff. A man who told you he loved you by how hard he squeezed your shoulder. On some level Jack knew that he should not blame his father for trying to kill him. But he wasn’t sure he could forgive him, either.
“Your sister was here a few days ago,” the nurse said as Jack signed in. Of course Jean had been here. She was quick to forgive those who needed her.
“Are you his grandson?”
“No,” said Cole. “Just a friend.”
“Well, I’m sure he appreciates the company. It’d be really nice if Qi could visit, too. He’s always asking for her.”
“Doubtful,” said Jack, and left it at that.
They walked a long hall to a room among a dozen others. A red square was pinned to the back of the door below the name W. Felter—a code for nurses that the patient inside could be violent, a TacMar for the infirm. Jack shivered. Cole must have sensed something, because the boy actually put a friendly hand on his arm. He opened the door.
The Captain sat in a recliner facing the wall, where shadows from the window danced about in ever-changing patterns. He was perched forward, drool collecting in a dark circle on his corduroys. The room was stifling hot, but his father was dressed in a long-sleeved flannel shirt buttoned to the top. Gray stubble like steel wool around his blond mustache. His arms, once thick as anacondas, were dead milk snakes. Cole stepped in after Jack and closed the door.
At the sound of the latch catching, the Captain bobbed his head in their direction. The boy stepped forward and kneeled beside the old man. Cole stared with fascination and reached out, as if he were about to touch Walter’s mouth, but pulled his hand back at the last moment. The Captain did not move.
“Alzheimer’s?” asked Cole.
“No. But dementia of some kind.”
“Jack, I don’t know if whatever I have works like this. I can make a person remember things if the memories still exist, but I don’t know what dementia does to the mind. Doesn’t Alzheimer’s destroy the cells that store our memories?”
“Then there’s no way to prove what you told me. That I need you to safeguard my memories.”
“After what happened the other day, you’re going to doubt anything I said?”
“I think something is going on,” said Jack. “That your father knew something the rest of us don’t. But am I sure all of the pieces fit together the way you say? No. And I’m still just looking for Tony here, remember? I get the feeling you want me to do something more.”
“I want you to save the world.”
Jack rolled his eyes.
“The box…”
Jack turned at the sound of his father’s voice. The Captain was staring back, eyes suddenly lucid and afraid.
“Jack!” said the Captain. “Jesus, Jack. The box under my bed. You have to get it out of the house!”
Jack jumped as the cell phone in his pants pocket vibrated against his leg like a trapped bumblebee. It was Jean. He ignored it. “Do you know where you are?” he asked his father.
The Captain looked around. “I dunno. Is this St. Mary’s? Yes? Good. That’s fine. But you have to get the box, Jack. Right now.”
The cell phone went off again. Jean again. He flipped it open. “What?” he barked at her.
“Jack, where are you?” She was in tears.
“I’m with the Captain. What is it? Is it Paige?”
“No. Jack, get out of there.”
“Why?”
“The police are here. They went through Dad’s war stuff. There was a knife in a box under his bed. It matches the knife that killed Mark.”
“What?”
“That detective left about a minute ago. He thinks you did it. I think he’s coming to St. Mary’s for you right now.”
Jack didn’t say anything. He found he couldn’t form a single coherent thought.
Jean’s voice came back. “Did you have anything to do with it, Jack?”
“What? No. Of course I didn’t.”
“What about the Captain?”
Jack held the receiver to his chest and, in a harsh whisper, asked, “Dad, did you kill Mark Brooks?”
“Of course I did!” the Captain yelled.
“Jean, I have to go,” he said.
“Get out of there!”
He hung up. Cole, he saw, had pushed himself against the door, trying to become invisible in the midst of such turmoil.
Here he was again, faced with another impossible choice: let the detective arrest them or flee. His life, that life of teaching, that quiet, simple, sometimes wonderful life was over.
The boy really was special. That much he knew. The Captain was back. Cole had brought him back. He could see that now. Did it not stand to reason that Cole was right about everything else? Was it finally safe to believe?
“Fuck!” Jack shouted. “Fuck!”
“What do you want to do?” asked Cole.
“We run,” he said. “And we take him with us.”
TWO
ESCAPE CLAUSE
1 At exactly 9:00 a.m. Paige ran into the living room, where Jean was sorting through family photographs, and exclaimed, “Holy shit, holy shit!”
“Paige!” Jean yelled. “Jesus! Don’t fuckin’ swear!”
“There are a hundred police in our driveway.”
Jean ran to the picture window. The drive was full of cop cars. A dozen, at least, snaking onto SR 14 and back along the berm to the Moores’ place, lights flashing. She watched, a protective hand on her daughter’s head, as twenty men with guns scrambled out of their vehicles and rushed toward her front door.
“Mom,” whispered Paige. “What did you do?”
Jean forced herself to move. She walked to the door and opened it as the lead cop, a fat man with a rough crew cut, stepped onto her porch, a batch of folded blue papers in his hand. Jean remembered this one: Captain Marlon Hoover. He was the detective who’d come around asking questions after Tony disappeared.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked.
“We’re here to search the house, Jean. Step aside.”
“You got a warrant or something?”
He handed her the papers and nudged her to the side with his shoulder. She pulled Paige out of the way, stepping onto the porch as two more cops barreled in. A female officer Jean didn’t recognize stood beside her, hands on her belt. The rest of the cops scurried in, one by one, like a swarm of cockroaches.
“Mom? What’s happening,” asked Paige. She looked like she might cry.
“It’s okay,” said Jean, kneeling to her eye level. She wanted to cry, too. But she swallowed her frustration and fear and tried on a smile for her girl. “They just made a mistake. Don’t worry.”
“We’re not bad guys,” Paige said to the female cop standing beside her. The woman looked away.
Jean watched police officers tip over books and flip through the picture albums for contraband. Sheriff’s deputies opened cabinets and checked under rugs. After a few minutes, Marlon stepped outside.
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Jack, goddamn it. Don’t get smart with me.”
“Why do you want Jack?” Her eyes were starting to leak. Her fingers shook as she dug into her back pocket and fished out a Winston Light.
“Don’t smoke in my face,” he barked.
“This is my house, so fuck you.” She lit the cigarette and sucked the smoke into her waiting lungs. Paige squeezed her hand
in a protective way.
“Where is he?” Marlon asked again.
“Why do you care?”
“Cut the crap. He and your old man killed that little girl’s father. Don’t you give a shit?”
Jean choked, puffs of white smoke shooting out her nose like a choo-choo train. “You’re fucking crazy. Jack wouldn’t kill a fly.”
“Bullshit, Jean. I’ve got two witnesses saw him assault Mark while you were detoxing out at Haven. I’ve got video. If Jack didn’t kill him, who did?”
“Tony ran away, didn’t he?” she said. “You think he disappeared the same time Mark did and it’s just a big fucking coincidence?”
“So tell me this. Why was Jack at Pymatuning last week? A ranger spotted him lurking around the reservoir. Know what else we found up there? Mark’s car. It was abandoned at the reservoir three years ago. So if Jack didn’t have a hand in the murder, explain that one to me.”
Jean laughed in his face. “You’re crazy!”
He snatched her wrist in his thick right hand and squeezed. “Say it again. Call me crazy again, you dumb bitch!”
“Marlon,” the female cop said.
“We got something!” A young detective appeared in the doorway. “We got something.”
Marlon released Jean and dashed upstairs. She followed right behind, scooping up Paige as she went. The Captain’s room was at the end of the hall, untouched for at least six months, ever since he’d been confined to the hospital bed downstairs. It was dusty and the room still held his musk. Forty framed photographs of Jean’s mother rested on the top of a low wooden dresser. A detective kneeled beside the bed, hands on a black cardboard box he’d pulled from underneath.
“Give it,” said Marlon.
The detective handed it over. Marlon lifted the lid. Inside was the Captain’s old uniform, neatly folded, along with twenty piastres, a postcard from Nha Trang, and a marine’s Ka-Bar.
“Booya,” said Marlon. “Bag everything. Bag the box, too.” He moved for the door, and as he did Jean backed against the wall. “Your fault,” he told her, a fat finger in her face. “If you hadn’t shacked up with that meth head, nobody would be here today.”
2 “Where’re we going?” asked Cole, his hands gripping the dashboard tightly as Jack flew down country roads.
“I don’t know,” he said. “East.”
“Don’t speed, goddamn it,” the Captain yelled from the back. “You’ll get us pulled over. Jesus God, you drive like a woman. Actually, your mother was a better driver. You drive like a gook. You know what, pull over and I’ll drive. I can barely move my legs and I know I’d drive better than you.”
“Dad! Be quiet!”
Life alters course like this, Jack thought, not slowly but all at once, in herky-jerky jumps. His mother’s sudden death. Tony’s betrayal. Those things had changed him overnight. Giant detours of his personal timeline. Here was another one.
How would today change the course of his life? Who would he become? A fugitive? A conspiracy nut? One of those fanatics you heard about on the news sometimes, the ones who get shot to death driving through some roadblock in D.C.?
He was a kidnapper. He’d kidnapped a seventeen-year-old boy. He’d kidnapped his father from hospice. The staff didn’t know the Captain was missing yet. But they would. Soon enough, they would.
Finding Tony was the least of his worries now. Except, wherever Tony was hiding was logically the best place for them to lie low, too. If they could find it.
“We need to get someplace with lots of people,” said Jack. “Somewhere we can hide in plain sight but not be seen. I need time to think.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I’ll just tell them I did it!” the Captain shouted. “I’m already halfway to my final reward.”
“At least two people saw me deck Mark at the Walmart the day you killed him, Pop. How do I explain that? Bad timing? Shit. How did it happen?”
“He tied to kill me and Tony when we went out to the trailer to get him to leave town. It was him or us.”
“Without Tony to back you up, they’ll say you’re covering for me.”
“It’s not like your prints are on the knife.”
“They could be, though,” said Jack. “You think I didn’t go through all your old war stuff when I was a kid? I used to take the knife out into the woods and play Vietnam.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“Well, why the hell do you even have it? Why did you keep it all these years?”
“Qi,” he said simply.
“All this trouble for a hooker.”
“Watch your mouth. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Get on the interstate,” Cole interjected. “Make for Canada, then we can head west for Alaska.”
Jack laughed. “The police will be looking for this car. Forget Canada—we won’t make it to Pennsylvania.”
“Lee Harvey,” the Captain said.
“What?” For a minute, Jack thought his father was regressing, reliving the broadcast of Kennedy’s assassination or something.
“Oswald hid in a theater. He needed somewhere to hide in plain sight.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “That’s good, Dad. Alliance, then.” The dollar theater in Alliance was an inspired idea for many reasons. For one, it was just beyond the border of Portage County, outside the jurisdiction of Franklin Mills PD. For another, it was attached to a mall, which would be crawling with blue-collar families stocking up on smoke bombs and sparklers for Fourth of July barbecues. Sure enough, the parking lot was nearly full when they arrived twenty minutes later.
“Here,” the Captain said as they helped him out of the car. He slipped a dime into Jack’s hand.
“What’s this for?”
“Switch out your plates.”
Jack started to protest but quickly saw the logic in this move. He set about the task using the dime to loosen the screws on the plates of a Dodge Caravan parked nearby. In five minutes, it was done. They walked into the mall, acutely aware of the security cameras hanging from the concrete eaves. Jack bought tickets for Avengers: Age of Ultron and pushed his father along.
“Popcorn?” the Captain said.
“No. What are you thinking? We’re not here to have a good time.”
“I’m hungry, goddamn it. It feels like I haven’t eaten in a week.”
Jack handed Cole a twenty and told him to grab a soda, too.
“If they have Jordan almonds…,” the Captain called out, but then Jack wrapped his arm around his father’s shoulders and made for cinema 7.
They sat in the back. A couple dozen patrons—teenagers, mostly—came in before the previews. As the theater dimmed, Cole returned, carrying popcorn, soda, Jordan almonds, and Milk Duds, and took a seat in front of them. He might have been having the best day of his life.
Jack helped the Captain to some soda and checked a handful of popcorn for stray kernels that might get lodged in his food pipe, and then placed the remainder onto a large napkin in his old man’s lap.
“That little snot forgot the butter,” the Captain whispered.
Jack closed his eyes against the loud, unrelenting violence onscreen and tried to think. The most logical thing to do would be to turn himself in, let the courts ferret out the truth. Surely he couldn’t really be convicted of murder, right? Not when all he did was punch the guy in the face. If the choice was that simple, that’s just what he would have done. But what about Cole, the unexpected miracle sitting beside him? He’d restored the Captain’s mind. Cole was affecting the people around him like some kind of living Wi-Fi signal. In the face of such a thing, Jack’s own fate seemed a little less important.
Miracles, he knew from studying the Crusades, were dangerous things. Miracles inspired action. Miracles changed the world. Nothing could be taken for granted anymore. Nothing could be taken as fact. Not when a man’s mind could be healed simply by sitting next to a boy with a titanium plate in his skull.
There were no known parameters
for this new reality. There was no instruction manual to the Great Forgetting. How, exactly, did it work? Who controlled the mechanism? Did Cole have these answers? He didn’t think so. The kid knew a lot. But his father surely hadn’t told him everything.
Jack needed to understand the stakes. Tony could afford to disappear into Wonderland without asking questions. All Tony cared about was himself. Jack had responsibilities and he needed to know if this misadventure was worth setting those responsibilities aside. If it was worth being a fugutive.
There might be a way to learn more about the Great Forgetting, Jack realized. But that meant continuing east. They would need a new vehicle. Something inconspicuous. A used car would buy them a day or two, but eventually the FBI would snag the transfer from the DMV. He couldn’t take Sam’s car. Jean’s, either, for that matter. It took him a second more before he found the answer and a plan began to take shape. Risky, yes. It meant returning to Franklin Mills. But Franklin Mills was not a small village. It was full of empty roads. It might be possible to slip in and out if they were quick about it.
Slowly, Jack became aware of the sound of his father’s ragged, whispered gasps. His first thought was that the Captain was choking on his popcorn. But then he saw that his father was crying. Tears cascaded down the old man’s cheeks. He had never seen his father cry and it frightened him. He put a hand on the Captain’s back.
“Dad?”
“Ah, Johnny,” he said. “I remember now. I remember how I ended up in the home. I … I can’t even apologize for it, it’s so bad.”
“Wasn’t you.”
“Yes it was.”
“Wasn’t you, Dad.”
“But Jack, it was my hands.”
3 When Avengers ended, Cole helped Jack walk the Captain into a screening of Jurassic World. The Captain explained how this wasn’t even really stealing. “Back in my day, squirt, a quarter got you in the door and you could stay as long as you wanted. The admission is for the theater, not the movie. People forgot that.” Cole sat with them, since it seemed like they’d had time to talk through family stuff. After Jurassic World, they snuck into Tomorrowland, and when that was over, it was dark outside and they were hungry again.
