New River Breeze

by Ed Robinson

  “But?” I asked.

  “He was just an odd kid,” he said. “Maybe he’s a bit autistic, I don’t know, but he was weird.”

  “Behavioral problems?” Brody asked. “Anger issues?”

  “Not at first,” he said. “But he was a real loner. No concept of team or camaraderie. Zero social skills. All he wanted to do was run.”

  “It’s not unusual for teenagers to be awkward,” Brody said.

  “Let me tell you a little story,” he said. “We held a training camp in the off-season one year. I took all the kids to the New River State Park for twice a day drills. At night we’d sit around the fire and talk. I asked each of the boys how they became inspired to be runners. Most of them had a good reason; watching a marathon or the Iron Man. The Olympics was a common theme. All the stuff you’d expect, but when it was Pennington’s turn, all he said was ‘Forrest Gump’.”

  “That’s it?” I asked. “Forrest Gump?”

  “It got some giggles from the other boys,” he said. “We all waited for him to expand on that thought, but it never came. He was done talking.”

  “What about his family?” Brody asked.

  “Single mom,” he said. “Just like Forrest. You know part of that movie was filmed on Grandfather Mountain?”

  “Yes, we’ve been up there a few times,” I said. “You said not at first. Did something happen later?”

  “After he won the conference championship the first time, he was certain he would win States,” he said. “Some kid from a private school beat him by eight seconds; not close. He lost his mind that day. Threw a tantrum like you wouldn’t believe. His face was red, and his veins were bulging like he was about to turn into the Hulk. You would have had to see it to believe it.”

  “What happened after that?” Brody asked. “Was he disciplined?”

  “His mother got control of him,” he said. “We were done for the year, so I saw no sense in taking any official action. To be honest, he made the team contenders. We needed him for the next season.”

  “How did the next year go?” I asked.

  “I’ve never seen any individual so driven,” he said. “He won every race we had that year. Then he’d go out and run another ten miles. He was untouchable both running and personally. Never said two words all year.”

  “He won the conference again,” I said.

  “But didn’t win States,” he said. “Lost by a hair. Real photo finish. It was exciting to watch the two of them sprint to the finish. I was pulling for our boy even though he was a dick.”

  “How did he take this loss?” I asked.

  “No, tantrum,” he said. “Just defeat. It was his last chance, and he came close, but no cigar. He gave up life that day. He no longer had a purpose.”

  “No college prospects?” Brody asked.

  “He was a poor student,” Coach said. “Without my input, they would have flunked him out.”

  “What happened to him after graduation?” I asked.

  “Stayed home with his mother,” he said. “Failed at a few different menial jobs. That’s about it. I certainly haven’t heard from him.”

  “He’s hiding out in the New River State Park,” I said. “If that means anything to you.”

  “Hiding out?”

  “Harassing campers,” I said. “Stealing food.”

  “How do you know it’s him?”

  “I got a good look at him,” I said. “Chased him twice, which didn’t work out so well.”

  “I suspect not,” Coach said.

  “Hey, I’m young at heart, Coach,” I said. “I didn’t realize what I was up against.”

  “No offense,” he said. “There’s nobody around here that can outrun him.”

  “His mother still around?” Brody asked.

  “As far as I know,” he said. “She used to work at that bank right across the highway.”

  “Last name still Pennington?” I asked.

  “Mary,” he said. “Mary Pennington.”

  “Thanks for your time,” I said.

  “We appreciate it,” Brody said. “You’ve been a big help.”

  “Try not to hurt the kid,” Coach said. “I know he’s an asshole, but I’ve got a spot in my heart for him.”

  “I’ve still got a lump on my head from our last encounter,” I said. “But we don’t want to hurt him.”

  I waited in the car while Brody entered the Lifestore Bank. She handed Mary Pennington one of our business cards.

  “It’s about your son.”

  “I’ll call you later,” Mary said.

  We drove home and waited for the call. I popped a cold one at five o’clock and took Red out back for some Frisbee toss. Thirty minutes passed with no phone call. Red and I sat on the porch while Brody paced the cabin floor. I heard the ringing at six and went inside to listen to Brody’s side of the conversation. She put Mrs. Pennington on speaker.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Brody said. “We’re trying to bring him in.”

  “What’s he done wrong?”

  “He steals from campers,” Brody said. “Mostly food, but folks are afraid of him.”

  “But you’ve seen him?” she asked. “He’s okay?”

  “He’s fine,” Brody said. “But he can’t keep doing this. How can we get him to stop?”

  “I never could get that boy to do anything,” she said. “I doubt he’s going to start listening to me now.”

  “You were close, though, right?”

  “He was my life,” she said. “He was a good boy too until that last day running.”

  “What happened Mrs. Pennington?”

  “He was no good after that,” she said. “Not good for anything. Lost all reason to live.”

  “He’s still alive,” Brody said. “But something is going to happen if he doesn’t stop what he’s doing.”

  “I want to believe that he’s still got a soul,” she said. “But he hasn’t made it easy for me.”

  “Everyone has a soul, Mrs. Pennington.”

  “You don’t know my boy,” she said. “There’s no light in his eyes. Hasn’t been for five years.”

  “He loved you, didn’t he?”

  “Of course he did,” she said. “I was all he ever had in this world. We were each other’s only friend until he turned eighteen. That was right after that last race. He seemed to know that life was over for him right then and there. He didn’t even try after that.”

  “Was he ever diagnosed with autism or anything similar?”

  “I never asked,” she said. “We’re all God’s creation.”

  “But he was different than the other kids.”

  “He didn’t like people much,” she said. “He hated school. Never had any friends other than me.”

  “Did you see joy in him when he was younger?”

  “All the time,” she said. “Here in our own protected world. But when he started running, I couldn’t participate. That’s when he started drifting away.”

  “It was something that he could do on his own,” Brody said. “Something that gave him personal satisfaction.”

  “Except he became obsessed,” she said. “I couldn’t feed him enough to keep him healthy looking.”

  “Did you encourage his running?”

  “I did,” she said. “He was a thing to see in full stride. Like a gazelle, he was.”

  “Did he ever talk to you about losing that last race?”

  “In his own way,” she said. “It was like this; he felt special because he was the best at something. He didn’t get his satisfaction just by running. He got it from winning. There was something in this world that he excelled at. He thought it was his birthright to win every race. Which he mostly did. In the end, he discovered that he could be beaten. It didn’t mesh with what he envisioned for himself. He couldn’t handle it. It made him question his very identity. What was he if he wasn’t the best runner in North Carolina or even the whole damn country? In his mind, he was the greatest runner since Forrest Gump. When he
found out different, it broke him down. There was nothing left to his fantasy. Life itself was over.”

  “Has he ever appeared, suicidal?”

  “Not once,” she said. “I’m not sure he thinks that’s an option.”

  “What would make him come home?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe if I was dying. I’d like to think he’d come to see me.”

  “What about when winter hits?” Brody asked. “Will he come here? Will you let him stay?”

  “I just can’t say,” she said. “He’s always welcome here, but then the cops would find him wouldn’t they?”

  “He doesn’t need to go to jail, Mrs. Pennington,” Brody said. “He needs to be properly diagnosed and get the necessary treatment.”

  “Do you think you can help him?”

  “We’re willing to try, but he has to be willing too,” Brody answered.

  “It’s not too late for him?”

  “If he comes here, or if you hear from him, call us immediately,” Brody said. “If we can sit down and talk to him before the cops take him in, maybe we can help.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I’ll be honest,” Brody said. “We were hired to bring him in. Now that we’ve talked to you and his coach, we want to do right by him. No one is ever a lost cause.”

  “God bless you.”

  Thirteen

  Neither one of us had a clue how we could ever bring Ed Pennington in, but Brody was interested in his described symptoms. She was much more empathetic than I was. I’d shown concern for those close to me over the years, and gone out of my way to help them, but I had little interest in the plight of strangers. My world had been much smaller than Brody’s at the time. Now we shared an even smaller one it seemed. I had no choice but to go along with her wishes.

  “Asperger Syndrome,” she said one day.

  “Ass, who?”

  “Asperger,” she said. “It’s a type of autism. Trouble with social skills, tends to have an obsessive focus on one topic or performs the same behaviors over and over again. I think he channeled his energy into running. That was his obsession. From what we heard, he clearly lacked social skills. No sense of team. No friends. We were given all the clues.”

  “How does that help us catch him?”

  “It helps us understand him,” she said. “He was never diagnosed or treated in any way. Now he’s an adult and doesn’t know how to cope.”

  “What is the treatment?”

  “Cognitive behavior therapy, social skills training, stuff like that,” she said. “But it’s usually done during early childhood.”

  “So no magic pill to reverse the condition?”

  “Nope,” she said. “It’s a brain disorder. Not as serious as full-blown autism. Most become normal functioning members of society.”

  “What about violence?”

  “Misplaced anger,” she said. “Children throwing fits out of proportion to the perceived wrong, but no clinical connection between the disorder and violent behavior among adults.”

  “Makes me wonder how he reacts when the perceived wrong is real and serious,” I said. “Like when we tried to trap him.”

  “He ran away,” Brody said.

  “I think he would have taken his anger out on me if Palmer hadn’t shown up so fast,” I said. “He didn’t run for a few seconds. He was standing his ground after I tackled him.”

  “I’m guessing he can’t make crucial decisions as fast as he can run,” she said. “He was confused.”

  “That was it exactly,” I said. “I didn’t recognize the look. It’s always fight or flight. I can detect when someone is ready to bring the fight. It’s part of my defense mechanism. He was trying to figure out what to do next when Palmer arrived. That helped him make up his mind.”

  “So what do we do now?” she asked. “None of this brings us any closer to nabbing him.”

  “Go on about our business,” I said. “No one is paying us to catch him now.”

  “No need to be heartless.”

  “It’s called being pragmatic,” I said. “A sensible and realistic reaction.”

  “I’m going to give it some more thought,” she said.

  “Me too,” I said. “Thinking is free. I’ll think on it all you want.”

  I think better with a beer in my hand, so that afternoon I sat on the porch drinking and thinking. Red was there with me keeping a close eye on the songbirds. Brody was working on getting the word out as to our availability to perform spousal surveillance. Sitting in the car with binoculars and long-range cameras seemed easier work than chasing a weirdo through the wilderness.

  I told myself to sympathize with Ed Pennington. He was still just a kid. Big enough to hurt someone maybe, but not fully developed mentally. Capable and maybe even smart, just a tick off the normal scale. He possessed a superior talent. That’s what he would always fall back on. That’s what he was best at. He understood it fully and was comforted by it. I could never hope to beat him in a race, not even when I was young. So how could I deal with this problem? I decided some whiskey might improve the thinking process. I brought a bottle and a shot glass out on the porch. Red followed me to the kitchen then back outside. He’d been stuck to me like glue since we’d picked him up from the doggie spa.

  “You could catch him, couldn’t you, boy?”

  That was my first coherent thought on the subject. The whiskey worked, but I would need an article of clothing that had Pennington’s scent on it. It would be best if it were something fairly fresh. I doubted his mother kept his clothes without washing them. I’d have Brody look into it. A little while later, another option popped into my head. I could track the son of a bitch down in broad daylight. Hunt him on his turf, likely while he was asleep. I could try to sneak up on him instead of chasing after him. If I missed him but found his camp, I could get something to present to Red.

  I rolled that around in my brain for a few more minutes, picking holes in the idea. Red would pursue the man to the ends of the Earth, but they’d get far away from Brody and me. What would Pennington do when Red caught up to him? Would he try to hurt my dog? I wondered how people with Asperger’s dealt with animals. I added that to Brody’s list of things to do. I would sit there on the porch solving the world’s problems while she dealt with the little details. The slight buzz I’d worked up gave me a smile. I was in a place in time that I’d never thought I’d find. I had my beer, whiskey, and a good dog. I had a fine home and an even finer woman. The creek was running cool and clear, feeding the flora that was now in full bloom. I gave up caring about what might happen to Ed Pennington for the time being.

  Brody joined me and announced that we were now in the domestic spying business. We had a website and everything. All the local law enforcement agencies had been contacted. Cards and reminders would soon go out in the mail. Newspaper ads were purchased. All we had to do was sit back and wait for the jobs to come rolling in.

  The phone rang almost immediately, but it wasn’t a worried spouse. It was the head ranger at New River State Park. He sounded like he was in a bad mood.

  “Our boy has run amok in the tent camping area,” he said. “We’ve had to close it down.”

  “What happened?”

  “He came running through last night with a machete,” he said. “Sliced up every tent in the place.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “No injuries were reported,” he said. “But they all got the shit scared out of them. Said he was screaming bloody murder and hacking away at everything around him. It all happened in a few minutes. He ran through and trashed the place and kept right on running.”

  “You closed the campground?”

  “It’s not safe,” he said. “We’re not taking any more RV reservations either. I’m going to have to post a guard in that area to protect what’s already there.”

  “Damn, I’m sorry man.”

  “Nobody is blaming you,” he said. “But I thought you should know
. Thanks for trying.”

  “What are you going to do long term?”

  “If there is nothing here for him, he’ll have to move on,” he said. “We’ll reopen the camps eventually.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ve been thinking this situation through. If I think I can help, I’ll let you know.”

  “We’re not interested in hiring you again on any kind of official basis,” he said. “We tried it once.”

  “I understand.”

  Pennington had acted out in response to our efforts to catch him. He was angry, but he didn’t hurt anyone. It was clear that he hadn’t considered that without the campers, there would be no food for him to steal. He had not fully considered the consequences of his actions. He was about to go hungry unless he found an alternative food supply or moved on to a different area. I didn’t know if there were more campgrounds in the vicinity or unattended cabins that he might break into. That would have to be looked into. My list was getting longer despite my booze fueled efforts to solve the problem.

  When Brody joined me, I hit her with a laundry list of questions in need of answers.

  “Does Mrs. Pennington have something with her son’s scent on it. How was he with animals and what other campgrounds are near the New River State Park?”

  “What have you been doing out here?” she asked.

  “Thinking.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “He trashed all the tents in the campground last night,” I told her. “Sliced them up with a machete and terrorized everyone involved. They’ve shut it all down.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “Now he can’t get any food.”

  “You worried about him?”

  “I’m trying to be more like you,” I said. “I don’t think his situation is entirely his fault. Thanks to you educating me.”

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  “Still working on that,” I said. “I don’t want Red getting hurt, so ask his mom if he liked animals or if he was afraid of them. Sneak in the question about his scent somehow. Maybe I can track him, with or without the dog.”

  “What was the other thing?”