All For One

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  “No,” Bryce answered with force.

  “Then don’t worry,” Jeff suggested.

  “Did anyone’s parents give them trouble?” Joey asked the group. A round of head shakes was a welcome response.

  “My dad said it was no great loss,” Michael offered.

  “That’s what one of the cops said to me,” PJ said. “Then he said why not just tell him what really happened.”

  “He was trying to trick you,” Bryce said.

  “Duh!” PJ shot back.

  “What’s with you?” Joey asked her.

  PJ gave Bryce a sharp look, then shook her head. It hadn’t been a good day. Damn you, Walter Curtis. “Nothing.”

  “My mom got ticked off at the cops,” Joey said. “She said that if they didn’t let me go she would call my dad and have him come up from Miami to defend me. They released me right then.”

  “What did they do to you, Mike?” Bryce inquired.

  “Nothing. Just asked a lot of questions. The same ones over and over. You’ve just got to remember to give the same answers.”

  Joey nodded. “If you mess up they can use that against you later. It’s called prior inconsistent statements.”

  “Did your dad teach you that?” Bryce asked. Everyone knew that Joey’s dad was a big lawyer down in Florida, with a new wife and a boat he raced on weekends.

  “Nah. OJ.”

  Jeff did a one-handed drum roll on the table. “See, it’s all okay. We did it. Today was good. Didn’t you think so?”

  “It was...yeah, okay,” Michael agreed.

  Joey nodded cautiously. “So we’re okay. Miss Austin is okay. Everyone in class is okay.”

  “Right,” PJ said, understanding Joey’s unspoken concern. “Except we don’t know about Elena.”

  “If she’d talked we’d be in jail right now,” Jeff said.

  Bryce looked to PJ. “You said she wouldn’t talk.”

  “I don’t think she will,” PJ said. Her confidence had been tempered by Elena’s absence.

  “So what do we do?” Bryce asked Joey.

  “We do this. We do what we’d normally do. Just like we said. Act normal and don’t talk about it. Don’t even think about it.”

  Bryce nodded. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, keeping it all inside, but Joey did make sense. He hadn’t been wrong so far. “And Elena?”

  Joey held up one hand. His fingers were crossed.

  Six

  Four o’clock, the sun low and yellow over her left shoulder, Mary Austin strolled across the ball field to the teachers’ parking lot and to her Jeep Cherokee. She heaved her shoulder bag onto the passenger seat, climbed in, and locked the door before collapsing forward against the steering wheel, arms hugging and forehead touching the cool, leathery circle.

  “Thank you,” she sighed, releasing the half breath she’d anxiously horded since rising that morning. It was done. The first day back. She breathed deep and long, again and again. Done. Done. Done.

  And it had been all right. They were all okay.

  Almost all, she corrected herself, thinking, Elena. Not that her absence was beyond understanding, but Mary had hoped so dearly that they all would be able to get back to normal. In a month, a week, a day; it didn’t matter how long. Just that they all would move on. Let what happened the previous Wednesday exist as another reality that would be dealt with as needed. This reality, the reality for her and for the children she knew so dearly, was the prime reality. It was stability, it was predictability, it was consistency, it was safety. She’d worked so hard to create this place for them, and she’d seen them thrive. Excel. Change. Mature. She’d seen that first hand.

  She had also seen one child almost destroy it in life. She’d be damned if she was going to let him complete the damage from the grave.

  They would all be fine, Mary told herself. They were survivors. Elena, too. She would b—

  “BITCH!!!”

  Mary’s head jerked up at the cry, and at the crunch of metal on metal, and the tinkly breaking of glass. Through the windshield she saw Chuck Edmond, standing at the left front of her car, a silvery baseball bat held in one hand and an open switchblade in the other. He glared at her and eased to the driver’s side of the car, the bat coming high and swirling round and round like the weapon of some karate master until it came suddenly down upon the windshield right in front of her, carving a million spiny webs in the gentle curve of the safety glass.

  “HELP!” Mary screamed, recoiling board straight in her seat. She heard a pop and a hiss, and her car dipped to the left front.

  “You let them do it!” Chuck shouted as he stalked back to the front of the Jeep and smashed the right headlight, then laid two solid hits upon the polished blue hood.

  Mary pressed the horn with both hands and screamed, “HELP! HELP! SOMEBODY!”

  Chuck squeezed the handle of the switchblade and jabbed it with force into the right front tire and sawed back and forth until the nose of the Jeep had settled all the way to the rims. Moving past the passenger window he pounded the top of the car again and again, the fury of a madman unleashed.

  “HELP! Somebody!” Mary thumped her fist on the horn and swiveled in her seat to watch her attacker. “Please!”

  The right rear tire went down, and then the rear window exploded inward in a thousand crystalline shards. Chuck stuck his head through the opening and wailed, a high shriek that collapsed into a guttural growl. Mary put her hands over her ears, but she heard him say plainly, “You’re gonna die, bitch!”

  She looked away and reached for her bag, just as the last tire began to collapse. The keys. The keys. No. I had them in my hands. I opened the door. Where are they?! Her hands moved the bag, felt the cool leather beneath it, back in the crevice where seat and back met. Not there!? Damn! Where are they?! Flat tires or not, she could drive. Ruin the rims. Who gave a damn? Just get away from him. From this lunatic. Please. Where are my keys?

  Two almost casual taps on her window drew Mary’s attention from her search. Her eyes flared, and she could feel the blood draining cold from her head. Chuck Edmond stood just outside the window, his nostrils expanding with each massive draw of air, his hair askew, tears staining his cheeks.

  “Please,” Mary pleaded, and began to lean away.

  Chuck Edmond screamed at the sky and shattered the driver’s window with a single blow of the aluminum bat.

  “NO!” Mary cried out as she scampered across the center console to the passenger seat, back against the door, feet thrashing toward her attacker.

  “He was just a kid!” Guy Edmond’s oldest brother said, and threw the bat aside, taking the switchblade in his strong hand. He reached in for the lock and said, “You fucking bitch!”

  “NOOOO!”

  “FREEZE!”

  Chuck Edmond’s head swung left. A gun pointed at his face from a few yards away.

  “Drop the knife!” Dooley ordered. “Now! Drop it, Chuck!”

  The seventeen year-old’s eyes narrowed.

  “Now!”

  The blade fell to the asphalt. Dooley stepped close and grabbed the teenager by his collar, dragging him to the front of the car and forcing him onto the unnaturally low hood.

  “She’s gonna die,” Chuck said, twisting his head to see into the front of the Jeep. “YOU’RE GONNA DIE!”

  Dooley holstered his weapon and pulled cuffs from a holder at the back of his belt. Others were now approaching from the main building. “You almost died, Chuckie.”

  “Fuck you! Who the fuck are you?!”

  Dooley snapped the cuffs over Chuck’s wrists, extra tight. Someone could loosen them later. He took a fistful of hair and made the junior man of action look sideways, away from his intended victim.

  “You’re Miss Austin,” Dooley said loudly, and thought he saw a nod somewhere through the adrenalin inspired shivers and the spiderwebbed windshield. “Are you all right?”

  A more defined nod this time, then the hands came up and covered the fac
e, the interlude of composure gone as if never there.

  “Oh dear God,” Veta Nelson said upon drawing close enough to see the debris and the young man in handcuffs, and through the shattered window the devastated form of Mary Austin. “Mary!”

  “Would you check on her?” Dooley asked, and the fiftyish woman hustled to the car. Several more people followed and helped Mary out, taking her to a nearby Suburban to be away from her assailant.

  “She’s dead!” Chuck repeated.

  “Sooner or later we all are, Chuckie,” Dooley said, then asked a man in work blues running up fast, “Did someone call the cops?”

  Mr. Carter eyed the man with the gun curiously. “What are you?”

  “Did someone call a cop with a COP CAR? With lights and sirens and a cage for this.” Chuck stirred and Dooley mashed his cheek hard against the dented hood. “Stay the fuck down!”

  * * *

  Jeff and Joey both turned toward the police cars racing past them down Maple, strobes spinning blue and red, sirens howling. The trio of muddy-sided cruisers turned on Peyton Way and disappeared.

  “I wonder what happened,” Joey said.

  “An accident, I’ll bet,” Jeff guessed.

  “You’re probably right,” Joey agreed halfheartedly. One week ago he probably would have chased after the wailing procession, at least to where they’d turned on Peyton to see where they might be headed, just like any eleven year old boy would. Well, any eleven year old boy with a natural curiosity to those things morbid and, possibly, bloody. A wreck could easily end up a red mess, as Joey remembered his dad describing one bad head-on he’d seen right in front of the Quik Stop market a few years back. Sure, one week ago the thought of seeing something like that would have pulled him along after the cruisers as if hooked to them with a stout tow cable. But one week ago was one week ago. He’d now seen a red mess, finally, and had had his fill. His fill for a lifetime.

  “Probably up on Roman Boulevard,” Jeff theorized. “Cops will go code three if someone’s trapped or hurt bad. Code three means—”

  “I watch Cops. I know what code three is.”

  They walked quietly up Maple as the sirens faded, passing clean and quiet houses, some with white picket fences and smoke rising from the chimneys. The kind of houses that grew like weeds on this side of town. The other side just had weeds.

  When they came to the intersection with Wasatch Avenue, the point at which Jeff had expected the ‘See ya tomorrow’ split to occur, Joey kept on walking, eyes narrow and forward as if considering something of great importance in the distance, feet moving him like some slow speed guided missileboy.

  “Hey. Uh, Joey. You live, uh, that way.”

  “How far up is Elena’s street?” Joey asked.

  “A couple blocks,” Jeff answered. He looked up that way, just like Joey was, and he understood.

  * * *

  The garage area at Jet Motors sat back from Roman Boulevard, a half acre of eighties vintage pickups and sedans between it and the busiest four lanes in Bartlett. Michael Prentiss jogged between the cars like a football player running drills and headed toward the sound of air wrenches whirring.

  “Hi, pop.”

  Jack Prentiss stood beneath a ‘72 Volvo, his hands reaching up into its guts. “Hey, Mikey.”

  Michael dropped his bag just inside the three bay garage and joined his father under the car. He stared up past the hanging shop light into the greasy darkness. “Mrs. Beeman’s?”

  “Yeah,” Mr. Prentiss sighed. “The old woman hears noises when it’s sitting in her garage.”

  “What is it this time?”

  Jack Prentiss tapped the oil pan with a wrench. “It’s this.” And the drive shaft. “Or this.” And the muffler. “Or this.”

  “She’s old,” Michael said in Mrs. Beeman’s defense. She still gave out the best stuff on Halloween. And she paid pretty good to have her yard raked, or her gutters cleaned, or any other little thing that caught her eye and ‘needed attention.’ That’s how she’d say it, too, whenever she called his mom or dad and put in a request for Michael’s help. ‘The leaves in my driveway need attention’, or ‘The paint on my garage door is peeling and needs attention.’ And it was never that much work. A half hour, tops.

  Besides, it wasn’t the work she was paying for. Michael had figured that out the first time she talked his ear off while the rake leaned useless against his shoulder.

  “Good for her she’s got lots of money,” Mr. Prentiss said. “She brings this thing in every other week. Oh, which reminds me; when she dropped it off she said that something in her driveway—”

  “Needs attention,” Michael said, nodding. “I know.”

  “Friday after school, she said.”

  Michael grimaced. The one day he did mind helping the old lady out. “On Fridays she has all those old crones are over there. She makes this stinky tea and feeds them these gross little cucumber sandwiches. She tried to get me to eat one once and I almost ralphed on her kitchen floor.”

  Jack Prentiss grinned at his son’s protest. “Friday. Mikey.”

  “All right, but I’m not eating any of those sandwiches if they’re there.”

  Jack Prentiss tested the muffler mounts with his sturdy hands and then looked back to his son. “How was school?”

  “It was okay.”

  Michael’s father nodded, his jaw squaring, chin jutting. “Anybody give you a hard time?”

  “Nothing I can’t hack.”

  “Good for you.” The greasy hands moved from the muffler to the starter. “I thought you were going to the park after school to toss some balls.”

  Michael’s nose scrunched up. “I decided not to.”

  How ‘okay’ was okay? Jack Prentiss wondered as he heard his son tell him he had chosen not to do something involving a small white ball. “Well, you want help your pop change this Volvo’s oil?”

  “Is that all it needs?”

  Jack Prentiss chuckled. “Hell if I know. It can’t hurt.”

  * * *

  Cooper crossed Maple three blocks past Wasatch. Joey looked at Jeff as they turned and said, “It’s a two story house, right?”

  “A big one,” Jeff confirmed. He remembered Elena talking about her room ‘upstairs’. Not in a bragging sort of way, but, hey, if you had a second floor Jeff figured it was okay to mention it. He would if he had one. “Her dad’s loaded. Her mom doesn’t even have to work.”

  “What does her dad do?”

  Jeff shrugged and pointed. “Something so he can afford that.”

  Across the street, behind a low hedge sculpted precisely square, a house that could have been plucked from the earliest part of the century sat gracious between gently swaying pines. A deep veranda crossed its front and reached down each side toward the back. The windows set into the front doors were leaded and glinted in the waning light.

  Joey and Jeff stopped next to a tree directly across the street and admired the sight.

  “Wow,” Joey commented softly.

  “It’s a nice house,” Jeff said. Hell, it was a really nice house, he thought. He might have even called it pretty if saying so wouldn’t have sounded sissy or something. And if the outside looked this good, the inside must look... (searching for a non sissy word now)...unbelievable. But there was no way to know how true that might be, Jeff saw. “How come all the shades are down?”

  “I don’t know,” Joey answered, then stepped behind the tree and pulled Jeff with him as the front door to the house opened.

  Jeff peeked around the trunk, one palm prickling against the rough bark. “Who’s she?”

  A lady had exited and was coming down the walk. She looked old enough to be a mother, but no more. Her hair flopped loose in a pony tail and a folder of some kind was clamped under one arm.

  “She doesn’t look like Elena,” Joey said. People told him his mom and he had the same nose and eyes, and that he had his dad’s smile. “Have you ever seen her mother?”

  “If I
did I don’t remember.”

  The mystery woman got into a clean gray four door parked at the curb and put her seatbelt on before driving back toward Maple.

  “The car was awful plain looking,” Jeff said.

  Joey didn’t notice. He was studying the upstairs windows. In the one farthest to the right he thought he saw the curtains sway. And maybe a shadow.

  “What if that was a cop?” Jeff wondered. “Undercover cops drive cars like that.”

  “I don’t know,” Joey said, and watched the window for a long time as Jeff chattered on about unmarked police cars and how they kept sawed-off shotguns under the dash. The curtain moved once more then hung still as a death shroud.

  * * *

  His thoughts spilled onto the screen, left to right, in letters that connected to become words, and sentences, and paragraphs. Soon it would be pages. A story.

  Bryce pecked at the keyboard, eyes flitting every few words to the handwritten draft of The Sun Beam by Bryce H. Hool. He’d used his middle initial because he thought it made him sound more writer-like. Like Arthur C. Clarke or that F. Scott Fitzsomebody that his mom liked to read, though he would not have gone with the initial up front. B. Homer Hool just sounded way too lame.

  As he copied The Sun Beam from the lined white paper on which he’d written it to the computer, he wondered if Arthur C. or F. Scott got as excited as he did when writing. Sure, this was technically just copying, but things were changing from somewhere between his eyeball, as his inky thoughts were read, and the computer screen, where they were appearing...changed. Somewhere about his fingertips the metamorphosis was taking place, his brain taking what he’d already put on paper and...doing things with it. This was writing, an intense process that was driving Commander Zaxar to do things Bryce H. Hool had never intended him to do. The brave Commander had already fired off half his laser bursts (in longhand he’d wisely kept plenty in reserve) at the Death Knight, and he still had to, somehow, get to the power generator before earth was driven out of its orbit by the tractor beam and sent on a collision course with the sun.

  But there were other obstacles besides dwindling ammunition for Commander Zaxar’s blaster, Bryce knew. He could hear those plainly behind.