The Last American Martyr

by Tom Winton; Rolffimages

  He and I were lounging in Adirondack chairs on the deck behind his cabin. The huge Florida sun had dropped beyond the tree line, leaving a pale pink smear on the fading sky above it. Franklin and I, nursing cold ones, watched a great blue heron wrestle a small flapping fish he’d just plucked from the pond. Franklin dropped his massive arm over the side of his chair and gently massaged Solace’s ear, as she lay sprawled between us on the cypress planking. The crickets had begun their usual chorus and Franklin said, “You know, Jay, I’m a lot like that there heron.”

  Hating the fact that after all he’d done for me, and all the time I’d spent at his place, I still couldn’t tell him my real name, I said, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, just like that bird, there are times I have to travel around to hunt down my next meal.”

  “Hunt down?”

  “Yeah, in a way, I’m just like that bird. I’ve been gone the last four days haven’t I?”

  “Yeahhh?”

  “I sure as hell didn’t want to go nowhere. But sometimes, when the money’s low and the opportunity comes a knockin’, I gotta go for it.”

  “What did you do, remove a few gators for somebody?”

  He tipped his Remington cap farther back, scratched his forehead then said, “Naw, I’ve been out to Pensacola. Did a job for somebody I know. A little tracking, like that heron did to run down that shiner. Only I hunted down a man.”

  Jesus Christ, I’m thinking now, no, no, don’t let this be true. It can’t be! No way could I have been wrong about this guy all along. I refuse to believe he’s involved in some kind of clandestine shit? Wait, could I have been wrong? Could he be some kind of murder-for-hire head-case? Is that why he stays out here, all alone in the woods? Damn, the last night we’re here and this has to happen.

  “Look, Franklin, I said, unable to hide my concern, “I don’t know what you’re involved in, but maybe it’s best I don’t. I don’t want to…”

  He then interrupted me with a howling laugh. “Hell’s fire, Jay, what do you think I am, some kinda mass murderer?”

  He let go of Solace’s ear and gave me a little jab on the shoulder. “I just do a little work for an ex-sheriff I know. His name’s George Tyson. When he retired he opened up a little business in Pensacola. From time to time, I just help him out a little is all. Hot damn, you’re a pisser!”

  Lucky for me it was getting dark. The hot blood rushing to my face surely turned it scarlet. I felt like an A-1, top-of-the-line, gold-plated idiot. And a traitor as well.

  How, I asked myself, could I ever have thought he might be capable of such malevolence?

  You can only imagine how relieved I was. Think about it, one minute you believe you may be sitting alone, in the woods, with a possible axe murderer; the next you find out your imagined death-sentence was just a ridiculous misunderstanding. It‘s like going from doomsday to Christmas day in a flash.

  Unfortunately, the huge flood of relief I’d felt dried up as quickly as it had arrived. What Franklin told me next made all my previous imaginings seem like petty, inconsequential concerns.

  Still wearing an embarrassed smile, I said, “Alright, alright, Franklin! I’m sorry. I guess my mind was off in the twilight zone for a minute there.” Then, hoping to quickly switch subjects, I said, “How do you help your buddy out? What do you do for him?”

  “Between me, you, and the wall, Jay, I sometimes do a little bounty hunting. That’s what I was doing for ole George the past few days.”

  Oh my good God! A bounty hunter! Shhhit! He still called me Jay, but is he just toying with me? Maybe his buddy found out about Soleswatch.com. Maybe Franklin himself threw me under the bus. Maybe in Pensacola they were contacting bloggers on that fucking site; making deals. Maybe Franklin IS a hit-man after all! He might’ve been up there with that guy lining up as many prospective customers as possible. If they could get a half—dozen clients to pay for a single job, why not—that’s what they call good business nowadays. Oh hell, what am I going to do? I don’t know what to think anymore. Am I totally losing it? It is possible I’m not his sacrificial lamb. Is it possible that, even if my hunch is right, Franklin would never do me in? Is my hunch just that-a hunch-a sick perverse hunch?

  Having no idea what was going to happen next, I wanted to run off that deck so fast that Solace would have had a hard time keeping up with me. But I couldn’t. With as nonchalant an air as I could muster, I slid a cigarette from my pack, lit it, and mixed smoke with my words while saying, “Well, Franklin, whatever a guy’s got to do to bring home the bacon. Things sure as hell aren’t easy anymore.”

  I stayed with him another twenty minutes or so. Male etiquette being what it is, if I had rushed off without finishing my beer he’d have known something was up. I kept the conversation flowing with small talk, hoping to somewhat smooth out the uncomfortable situation I’d created. Nevertheless, I remained as alert as an eight-point buck during hunting season.

  Franklin did not whip out a chainsaw, an axe, or any weapon meant for my destruction, but I still had one more night in the camper. Sure, I could have taken off right then, just turned over the engine and hit the road. But two things held me back. Number one, if Franklin had wanted to finish me off, odds were he would have done it right there on the deck—behind his house. There would have been no better place to execute the misdeed. Secondly, after all he’d done for me and Solace, as close as I’d connected with him; I seriously doubted he would do that for money. Not the fine human being I had come to know. Nevertheless, when I put the lights out in the camper that night, after kissing Elaina’s cap, I laid the loaded Glock beside it.

  I couldn’t fall asleep for two hours. Oh, I knew Solace would have alerted me had Franklin approached the camper, but there was yet another thing eating at me. With all that was running through my mind when I said goodbye to him, I felt like it was a hollow goodbye. I wanted to make it seem as heartfelt as it would have been had I not known he was a bounty hunter. But I knew it didn’t come across that way. Franklin hadn’t acted as if he was disappointed, but I know my sincerity had to seem somewhat fraudulent. He surely must have picked up on that.

  Though I’d fallen asleep later than usual, I still awoke at my usual time. The old cerebral alarm clock rang at 5:02. My first decision of the day was to forgo my morning jog—just to be on the safe side. After a quick shower, and all the rest, I fired up the engine. It was still black as pitch back there. All the lights in Franklin’s cabin were still out. Slowly, being as quiet as possible, I followed my low beams across the damp grass to where the dirt road began. As I pulled onto it, I said to Solace in the co-pilot’s seat, “What the heck do you suppose that is, partner?”

  Standing dead center in the narrow road was an upside down, white, five-gallon plastic bucket. Taped to it was a paper envelope.

  I put the camper in park, looked in all four directions then hurriedly opened the door.

  “Stay.” I told Solace. Then I climbed out.

  Before stepping into the camper’s beams, I looked around a second time. Then I scurried to the bucket. After picking it up, I quick-stepped out of the lights—back to the side of the road. There, in the darkness, I pulled off the soggy, duct-taped envelope. I then put the bucket down alongside the road and pulled myself back into the camper.

  After turning on the overhead light, I found a note inside the envelope. The words, scrawled with a ballpoint pen, were a bit runny from the moisture, but they were legible. The note said, “Keep in touch my friend. And take care of that puppy. I wrote my cell number on the bottom of this note. If you ever need something don’t wait ta call me. I’ll be pulling for you, Tom.”

  I gently laid the paper note on the console, and a small smile pulled at my lips. I rotated my head once or twice. A moment later, as I slowly followed the headlights down Franklin Dewitt’s long, dark driveway, my vision became blurry. It had nothing to do with the sleep in my eyes.

  Chapter 12

  After I left Franklin’s pla
ce, that early morning daylight took its sweet time coming. When it finally did arrive, it revealed a low, dark, tragic-looking sky. Solace and I were coming up on Pensacola when dawn finally arrived, along with a driving rain. Leave it to me to pick such a dreary day to return to a life of worry.

  Solace and I managed to cover four-hundred miles that day, but it was slow going on Interstate 10. Up to this point, I’d found Sundays the best day of the week to travel, but that rain really slowed us down. Heading west, we lost the most time sloshing through Mobile, Biloxi—with all its casinos, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge. What would normally have taken eight hours took ten.

  Needless to say, after all the peaceful time I’d spent at Franklin’s sanctuary, I didn’t exactly relish feeling like a moving target again. For the first time since Elaina and I took to the road, I found myself seriously entertaining thoughts of settling down somewhere. Being it was now early March, winter would soon use up the last of its cold fury. I could turn around; head northeast; follow the Appalachians all the way up to Maine. I could buy the small, isolated place Elaina and I had dreamed about so many times. I could go way up into those North Woods, where there was nary a soul. Yes, that’s what I would do. Just before stopping outside Lake Charles, Louisiana that late afternoon, I decided I definitely would settle in Maine—but not yet. It was a tad too early. Though my life surely would have been less precarious had Solace and I headed straight up there, I really wanted to see Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. They were three of the four states I’d always most wanted to visit. Alaska was the other one, but things being what they were, that would have been too much of a stretch.

  I knew that forging ahead to those Rocky Mountain States wouldn’t improve my sense of security like going to Maine would have, but it was now or never. We could make it in three days, four without pushing. I decided to go for it.

  Late that afternoon I stopped at a campground office just east of Lake Charles. After paying the fee, I drove beneath a canopy of dismal dripping oaks to our assigned site. As I looked around while plowing through a succession of muddy puddles, I wasn’t the least bit disappointed that the place was deserted. For the first time that day I felt at ease. And minutes later, after backing into my spot and taking Solace out to do her business, I felt even better.

  For the first time in over two months, I typed Soleswatch.com into my laptop. It still had PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER 1 across the top of the page and the five sketches beneath it, but when I pulled up the tracking map I let out an audible sigh of relief. That too hadn’t changed. The last place I’d been spotted was still Myrtle Beach. With that news, and the campground empty as it was, I slept almost as well as most nights at Franklin Dewitt’s.

  At seven the following morning, after feeding Solace and downing a bowl of raisin bran, we rolled out of the campground. The weather was as bad as the day before, and the farther we drove the more it deteriorated. Nevertheless, with the windshield wipers working overtime, we pressed on.

  At eleven AM we hit Houston. We also hit some of the worst traffic I’d ever encountered anywhere. The highway formed a wide loop around that city, and I had to get on the thing to pick up I-45 North. I can’t tell you how many lanes were in, above, or below that loop, but if you ever want a totally overwhelming, absolutely dizzying driving experience, be sure to put this one at the top of your list.

  What made matters even worse was not only the weather, but the fact I was driving a thirty-foot home on wheels. Driving one of those clumsy things in foul weather, particularly on windy days, is no easy task. It can be one heck of a nerve-wrenching experience. If you ever really want to get your adrenaline pumping, drive one of those leviathans in heavy, fast-moving traffic, in a narrow wet lane. Then get broadsided by a strong gust of wind. Though I’d experienced that frightful sensation a few times before, what Solace and I were about to get into made being blown into another traffic lane seem like a laughable inconvenience.

  We were rolling along about seventy miles north of that wild-and-wooly Houston loop. I remember locations, as well as times and dates, because I’d kept a log ever since Elaina and I bought the RV in Jersey. My thinking was, if anything happened to us—and later me—it could aid law enforcement in their inevitable investigation.

  At any rate, when Solace and I were about ten miles north of Huntsville, she started acting very antsy. She kept standing up in her seat—taking a couple of semi-circular steps—plopping back down—then doing it all over again. She did the same thing whenever she had to relieve herself, but I knew that wasn’t it since she’d recently emptied out. Her ears were now pointed straight up and her tail straight down. I knew her unsettled feeling was instinctual; her natural defenses telling her to take cover. I was sure it had something to do with the approaching abysmal weather.

  Dark as the afternoon sky had been it suddenly became far worse. Growing quickly, on the horizon, was an ink-blue wall of doom that would soon own the entire sky. It looked impenetrable. Shocking frenetic bolts of white lightning started networking all across it, and a wind I can only describe as explosive slammed head-on into the camper. In the snap of a finger I felt like a man trying to climb a mountainous ocean wave in an underpowered dinghy.

  With fingertips as sweaty as my palms, I hastily adjusted the rearview; then I checked the other two mirrors. Mine was the only vehicle in sight. It was as if everybody on the planet but me had been alerted of this horrendous impending weather.

  “Hold on, sweety,” I said to Solace, “we’ll get out of this mess somehow.”

  But I had no idea how. There wasn’t an exit in sight, and in a matter of minutes we’d be smack in the middle of this dark, evil tempest.

  Then the situation got worse. A string of unattached clouds, black clouds, started dancing in front of that evil-blue, malignant backdrop. With leg-like appendages forming instantaneously, they started dancing like angry tribal warriors. They were huge, and they were malevolent. And two of them soon turned into something even more ominous.

  One leg from each cloud suddenly reached for the ground. They were both formed by violent, rotating columns of air. I was heading straight towards not one but two gigantic, Texas tornados. They were bearing down on me faster than I was them.

  I thought about making a U-turn. But that was out of the question with the deep dip in the highway’s grassy median. The camper surely would have gotten stuck.

  Then, up ahead, through the pouring rain, I saw something—an overpass. I’d once seen a video taken by tornado survivors who’d taken refuge beneath a similar bridge.

  Then I saw something else! A stranded car on the road shoulder, maybe a hundred yards ahead, on the right. The person on the driver’s side had their arm stretched out the window, waving frantically.

  Clicking my eyes back at the tornados before me, I watched as the two of them now merged together. The larger one drew the lesser in and seemed to pick up even more evil energy. I had the gas pedal floored but was only going about thirty miles an hour. I was close enough to the rotating behemoth now to see a cloud of flying dust and debris beneath it.

  “Oh shit, what do I do? I can stop to let these people in. If I did, I probably wouldn’t make it to the overpass in time. Ah crap, I don’t have a damned choice!”

  As I slowed to a stop alongside the snazzy, silver Mercedes the two women inside tried desperately to open its doors. They just couldn’t do it. The wind coming our way was that strong. Solace was going berserk barking, howling, and whining.

  “Frigging wonderful!”

  I took off my cap, threw it on the console and shouldered my door open. With a thousand high-powered raindrops pelting me, all of them hard as cement, I fought my way around the front of the RV.

  The woman in the driver’s seat was pushing her door but couldn’t get it open. Leaning back into the wind, I grabbed a hold of the wet handle and pulled for all I was worth. After what seemed like an eternity we got it open, she made it out of the car, and I told her to hang onto the camper’s board
ing handle with two hands. Then, glancing at the tornado almost on top of us, I rushed around to the other side of the car. After going through the same drill with the second lady, I finally got them both, and myself, inside the camper.

  The frightened women fell into the sofa behind the driver’s seat, and Solace only added to the chaos by barking at them now. Whether she liked the idea of having them on board or didn’t, she was adding even more tension to this terrifying moment. I grabbed her by the nape of the neck, hollered, “No!” then threw the transmission into gear.

  Flying leaves and rubble were now thrashing the windshield. It had become dark as night. Leaning over the outsized steering wheel, I put my nose as close to the glass as I possibly could. Though I could see even less of the overpass now, we were gaining on it. About another fifty yards. The rain was beyond torrential at this point. A good sized tree limb flew across the swath of the high beams. The two dripping wet, thirty-something blondes were on the edge of the seat behind me, and they both leaned forward so they too could see what was coming at us. When they did, one screamed out in a strong Texas accent, “OH MY GOOD GOD, SHERRY! LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT THING! IT”S RIGHT ON TOP OF US! IT’S GOING TO HIT US… ANY SECOND!”

  Both of them were as close to a panic as we were to the tornado. I wasn’t far behind, but I fought hard to keep control of my mind. Trying to bullshit myself as much as I was the women, I said over my shoulder, “Just hold on! Hang tough! In about thirty seconds I’m going to pull over, beneath that bridge. We’re going to get out and… ”

  I was interrupted right there, when the other lady shrieked, “DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR? WE’RE GONNA DIE! THIS IS IT! THIS IS THE END!”