“I will shoot you, Nicole,” Tony said.
I crawled over to Jasia. A bloody patch of shirt covered her lower back.
Lindsay leaned over her mother, sobbing.
I took her hand and pressed it against Jasia’s wound. “Hold that. Keep pressure on it.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nicole looking at the revolver. “Maybe just shoot her, Tony. Make it easier to keep her in line.”
“You pig,” she said.
“No.” I stared at her for a short second. Then I turned back to Jasia. “That was my father. And we’ve both changed.”
I was sure Jasia was dead. I needed to vomit.
“Don’t hurt my baby,” Jasia said weakly. “I give up.”
Her mind must have told her she was still fighting Nicole. Lindsay’s sobs became huffs of relief.
Nicole sat next to a cupboard, shaking violently. Tony was leaned on his left side, his gun trained on her with two hands. A blood stain soaked the place where he clamped his left arm against his body.
I tried to get up and find the phone when I heard sirens. The growing whine prompted me to collapse next to Jasia and Lindsay. Torment swelled from my shoulder, back and arm. It encompassed my being. I held on for a few seconds until the door came open, and I heard Chief Frieze cursing. Then I went to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Reprecussion
For the second time in a week, Chief Nolan Frieze spent the first minute of our time bent over his Palm Pilot, forcing characters into it with a stylus. The blunt point must have left tracks from our last visit. The veins of his forearm swelled. His jaw pulsed.
I expected it was out of anger with me. This wasn’t somewhere I wanted to be after our last conversation. The stiff grey chair hadn’t grown more comfortable. And my anticipation held a decidedly fatalistic tone this time around. My freshly offended wounds screamed wordless curses over the abuse they’d taken the night before. Insistence at swift justice had landed Tony in the hospital. Nansi’s tears over the state of our marriage had kept me awake half the night. I was doomed.
“We were planning on giving you a medal, Mr. Pierce.” Chief Frieze spoke without putting the device aside. The long, wide scar under his left eye turned a shade lighter.
My posture relaxed a degree. This might not go as badly as I expected. An image of a parade, Tony and me atop a period stage coach and surrounded by a dusty blue calvary cued up on my internal movie screen.
Frieze lifted his head, his grey eyes shining like steel. “Me and Crandall thought we’d call it the Shit-for-Brains Half-Cocked Medal of Stupidity.” That small muscular tick above his left eyebrow pulsed at a hundred beats a minute.
I slumped on my dunce stool.
“I ought to throw you in jail, Pierce.”
I searched the front of his desk for a crack to hide in.
“Correction,” he said. “I want to throw you in jail.”
My head came up and my jaw hung open. My breathing was so shallow I started to see dark at the edges. Frieze’s thin, black haircut looked less like Spock’s and more Hitlerian for a split second.
“But I’ve got a problem.”
I stared at the scar, trying to read his level of anger in its color. It looked pretty damned scarlet to me.
Frieze considered me like he was settling in for a three-hundred yard shot at the pronghorn antelope that hung behind him. “I like Deputy Ruiz,” he said, pressing his back into the black nylon of his desk chair.
“That doesn’t sound like a problem.” The statement was a lot bolder than I felt.
His squint told me his patience had all dribbled out. “If I put you in your place, I’ll have to punish Tony.” He picked up the stylus and examined it. “Does that sound fair to you, Connor?”
“No, sir.” Spoken like I was back in basic training.
Frieze rocked forward and back in the chair, turning the shiny metal in his fingers. His facial tick slowed. The scar cooled. “This used to be the Wild West out here. Montana had a reputation for vigilante justice. It sparked the spirit of romance in a lot of nostalgic types.” His head came up and the right corner of his mouth raised a smile. “Folks with good taste in music.”
I gulped a breath. My gaze wandered over the procedurals, his academy photo, the picture of his wife and daughter. “What’s the verdict, Chief?”
“Those olden days are gone. Despite the Free Men,” he stretched it out, “and their doctrine of individual sovereignty nonsense that’s caused such a legal ruckus. Which, by the by, your little investigation took time, energy and focus away from.” He paused. “Give me a reason to lock you up, and I’ll take it.”
I stared into his steel grey eyes. Maybe I saw agreement. Or it might have been compassion. I didn’t plan to bet on either.
“Any reason,” he said.
“I hear you, Chief.” Deep sadness rustled in my chest. “I really didn’t mean to make trouble.” I had to squeeze my face muscles to prevent a tear from coming loose.
Frieze must have noticed. His voice softened. “I could have handled things better. I’ll give you that.”
I chose not to revel in the admission.
“But it’s still my screw up to make, Pierce. No one else’s.”
I nodded.
“Plus there’s the whole sex thing with a seventeen-year-old. Drunk or not, Dixon put himself in a bad situation. Some would say....” He decided not to say.
“Yeah. I get that.”
“She confessed to giving him drugs, covering him in oil with DDT mixed in.”
“I don’t need details, thanks anyway, Chief.”
“Sorry.” And he actually looked apologetic. “I understand your family’s coming in today.”
Another nod.
“Well, get the hell out of here and go meet them.”
I gave a nod to the antelope’s head and got the hell out of there.
Waiting in the Frank Wiley Field terminal was one of the most difficult times of my visit. Every crew chief muscle wanted to sprint to the plane and walk my family down the steps to the tarmac.
Chatter behind me indicated others were less anxious than I was. A couple of young children raced around the few blue plastic chairs their parents occupied.
The overhead announced in a slow, enunciated rhythm: “Please keep clear of the departure gate. Give the disembarking passengers room to enter and retrieve their luggage.”
I shot an annoyed look at the funny guy behind the desk. And then I continued to pace back and forth in front of the departure gate while the aircrew taxied to a stop. Their heads bobbed to one another in the cockpit.
Why didn’t they hurry up! People were waiting down here!
A primal scream built inside, filling my chest until my wounded arm nearly exploded. The pain calmed me.
A line of about ten people came down the ramp before my family. The first two, my cabin mates from a week ago, Walt and.... Was it Jane? No Karina, the green-eyed Manx, O’Doyle. Married name: Morrison.
“Connor Pierce!” Walt greeted me with a jovial hand clasp. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Apparently, he’d guessed my name after all.
Karina gave me a look that said she remembered my lustful stares from the first trip, with a caveat that I keep them in check.
Shame warmed my face. “Good to see you two again. No Ransom?”
Walt laughed and slapped my back on the good side. People pushed around us. “Good one. You’re very funny, Connor. No Ransom.” He pointed his chin at Karina. “The wife and I had business out to Billings.”
An impatient flyer bumped my arm trying to pass our little reunion.
My face contorted and I pulled my side out of the traffic lane.
“Hell, boy. You hurt?” Walt bent forward to peer into my eyes.
“I was sort of shot this past week.”
“You were shot?” Karina said very loudly.
The forward movement slowed as people expressed their combined curiosity and concern.
>
“Who was shot?” a child’s voice cried over the murmurs from the tarmac. A familiar child’s voice.
My eyes lit up and the pain drained away. I turned a pleading expression at Walt. “My family.”
He straightened. “Sure, sure, son. Get to it.” And then he did a beautiful thing. He stepped in front of me and cleared a path. “Come on folks. This wounded soldier needs to see his family.”
We mixed our howdies up. I squatted and wrapped my broken wing around my children, not caring about the pain. When I stood to embrace Nansi she stopped me for a second and searched my face for guilt. Wrapping her arms around me, she pressed her thumb into my wounded shoulder.
I clenched my teeth hard against a howl. A tear rolled down my cheek.
She whispered, “I’ll consider this bullet hole a downpayment on requital for your sins.” Then she let go and scooped me in with the two children, smiling at my new friends.
Walt told them how nice it was to meet them and introduced his wonderful new bride. It was a beautiful moment of chaos and confusion, like families should have.
My eyes filled with tears, partly over the warmth of being together again, partly over the missing warmth of my childhood. An ache for more kept me from saying much beyond, “I love you.”
It seemed the entire crowd, passengers and their greeters, all gathered in this crazy little airport just to meet my family. Somebody said, “Hey! Your that guy from the newspaper!” and all hell broke loose. But a loving kind of hell, where everyone embraces the moment and the people in it.
Could it get any better?
There’s this scene in the Bible, at least the one with Charlton Heston, where the waters part and the people get to walk through the Red Sea. As I was standing there reveling in the goodness of small town folks, the crowd parted like that. Only, a bigger surprise waited on the other side of my tiny multicolored sea. I glanced up to see what amazing person could cause that kind of commotion, and their was my mother riding in on her wheelchair. Renée pushed from behind, with Granger walking shotgun.
My heart sank.
“Connor,” Mother said in her usual matter-of-fact tone. “Why don’t you introduce me to my grandchildren.”
“Who’s the crippled lady, Dad?” Quentin asked.
I thought I felt shame earlier. My face got burning hot over that one.
“Hush now, Quentin,” Nansi said. “This woman is your Grandma Pierce.”
“Oh,” he said, and ran to jump into her lap.
Mother gave an oomph.
I laughed out loud.
Mother didn’t miss a beat. “Well, sir. You are about as rambunctious as your daddy.”
“My dad got shot,” Quentin told her. “That’s pretty ra-bunk-chus.”
And my mother smiled.
Renée and I sat with Tony in recovery after his emergency surgery. Mother and Nansi had taken the kids to the Range Riders Museum to see the sheepskin chaps and custom “saddles for girl cowboys?” as Quentin put it.
Tony awoke for a few minutes. Juanita held his hand and refused to speak to me. Jimmy talked to me the entire ten minutes wanting to know about his daddy’s heroic deeds. Regina just held onto my sister who appeared very comfortable in a maternal role.
“You should think about that,” I said to her during a short break in Jimmy’s interrogation.
She tried frowning at me, but Regina hugged harder, squeezing the frown into a grin. Renée ignored me and stroked the frightened child’s dark hair.
“I talked to Nansi last night,” I said into the non-interested room. “I’m going to try and get my tour shortened. Come back and help with the business.”
Renée’s head came up. “You’d come home?”
“I’m tired of it always being about me. You need help. I should help.”
Her smile grew.
“Why come you didn’t get shot too, Mr. Connor?” Jimmy asked.
Juanita flung a pinched lipped disapproval at me.
“I did get shot,” I told Jimmy. “Just on a different day. Everybody can’t get shot on the same day. They got to take turns.”
“Yeah. Like Batman and Robin,” Jimmy said.
“Listen.” I lifted the boy up with my good arm and stood him in front of me, taking hold of the rosary his mother had made him carry. “You keep praying for your dad.” I whispered the rest for him alone. “Your mamma doesn’t like to talk about shooting, all right Big Jim? When your dad wakes up from his rest, you and him can go camping and he’ll tell you all about being careful around guns. And he’ll tell you how to be strong for your mamma too.” I mussed his hair. “Now, I got to get back to my family. You go take your mamma’s hand and help her not to cry.”
He nodded resolutely, took his rosary, and went to Juanita waiting on her husband’s health. She’d made it clear to me when they’d hauled the lot of us into ER last night that I held responsibility for her man’s harm. The toughest woman I’d ever met. She’d been through many fire fights. But her husband was sacred ground and I’d put him in danger.
I walked around to the opposite side of the bed.
“Tony,” I said quietly, ignoring Juanita’s glare.
He opened one eye and grinned on one side of his mouth. The doctor said light would bother his left eye for a few days due to the trauma he’d experienced when he fell against the chair back in Jasia’s kitchen. His bullet wound had done minor damage, and he should be out by Monday morning.
“Frieze decided not to give me an award,” I said. “They’re saving it for their best deputy.”
Tony chuckled. “You messed up his best liaison officer.”
We both laughed.
“I have to help Nansi pack. Catch our ride. Plane leaves in a couple of hours.”
He nodded. “Come back soon. We’ll go fishing up at your Uncle’s place.”
“Better have an alternate. Mother told me they’re getting married in June. He might sell the place, move into town, and finish like a city-slicker.”
Tony lifted his hand and gripped mine with a gorilla strength. “Glad I got to be there for you, Pardner.”
My eyes began to water. I knew I’d better leave quickly. “I’ll see you soon.”
I turned and walked out, barely laying my hand on Renée as I went by. “Make sure his family gets what they need,” I said. I knew she would. Taking care of folks came natural to her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Past and Future Love
I followed Renée’s lead when Nansi, the kids and I first arrived back on the island. Akira’s letter in my pocket, I drove to Yona City.
Trying to find the number had me turning circles around Okinawa’s tomb-towns and neighborhoods of the living for over an hour. I decided to leave my rusty Corolla and walk.
My hike up the hill from the banks of the East China Sea earned several hostile stares. Many Okinawan people harbor ill feelings toward the U.S. Military. They know why we stayed after World War II, and it wasn’t to protect them from their northern Japanese neighbors. In the haste of the arrogant American, I’d worn my uniform to advertise the fact that I lived on the island with them. A short-sighted effort to gain some friendly help for the gaijin.
“You’re a social moron,” I mumbled to myself after one couple hollered unintelligible, but clearly derogatory epithets at me.
I fingered the letter in my pocket while waiting for a shopkeeper’s attention.
I have a reason for being here, and it’s a noble reason. If this guy kicks me out, I’ll survive the humiliation of being an idiot American.
When he turned to me, his face lit into a smile. “Ohayō, amerikahito no yūjin,” he said.
Yūjin. I was pretty sure that was the word for friend. “You speak English?”
“Sukoshi.” His head did a rapid bow.
“I am looking for a woman.”
His eyebrows shot up, and then he scowled.
“Oh, no.” I put on a big grin that I hoped said “misunderstanding.” I pul
led out the envelope and handed it over.
“Ā. Wakarimasu.” He nodded at the lettering. He grabbed a pencil and scratched out a small map. “You, here.” He pointed at the drawing.
I bowed deep and long. “Domo arigatōgozaimashita, sensei.”
He bowed slightly. “Dōitashimashite.”
In ten minutes, I was at the home of Kumi Watanabe.
An old woman opened the door.
At first glance, I guessed much older than Akira. But something in her dark brown eyes suggested that life had carved her youth away much too early.
I smiled as tenderly as I knew how.
Her face twisted into a scowl.
“Uh, hello, ohayō,” I stammered, searching my memory for Japanese words that could convey my message of peace and friendliness.
“What you want, Soldier,” she said in crumbled English.
My brow lifted, surely brightening my face. “I come from America.”
The woman scowled more intensely. “No shit.”
Brightness faded into confusion.
Before I could speak, she spat on the ground beside me. “You. What?”
I handed over the letter.
She stared at the lettering for a long minute. Her hand began to tremble. Like an unexploded bomb lost in the thick, Okinawa woods, waiting for someone to stumble over it, she detonated with a shout in Japanese, “Umi wa kanojo no jinsei o totta!” She pointed toward the sea.
My dumfounded stare revealed more than words could. I stepped back, slipping on the worn concrete riser and stumbling.
Her small frame had somehow filled the doorway. She threw the letter at me, shouting, “Haka, haka, haka. Haka ni motte iku!”
I clutched the crumpled letter and backed away.
“Get, get, get! Go away GI man!”
I turned quickly and let the slope of the street carry me down to the car with increasing speed. My armpits were soaking. Anger and rejection fought for the space in my chest. The warmth of the day no longer offered comfort, only sticky madness. I was nearly running as I passed the tomb yard.
Okinawan people bury their dead in tombs. The words bubbled from memory. Each year they open the home of their ancestors’ bones to clean them. To show respect. An article I had read in the base newspaper, The Kadena Shogun, about local culture.
Murder of the Prodigal Father Page 26
