by Brandt Legg
My eyes flew open, and I ripped my hand away. It wasn’t until I jumped to my feet, ready to defend myself and ready to fight, that I saw him on his knees before me. He caught my eyes in his, and I experienced his life. It had all been lived in fear. Everyone he ever loved—his parents, siblings, a woman, children, and friends—had been murdered by invading Romans, all, except Ignacio. Amparo mentioned him in our first meeting at the Laundromat, the one also affected by our karmic crisis. He had been the other guy on the boat who corroborated Amparo’s story and was his only remaining friend. Ignacio was about to take responsibility before Amparo thought to blame me.
He looked at me so full of regret and agony that I knew his soul had carried the heavy burden for two millennia. It wasn’t a decision made by Nathan Ryder but rather by my soul.
“I forgive you,” I told him. Instantly, a release occurred making me lighter and freer. So great was the high that when I next heard the voice of Helna’s mother, I welcomed her.
The peasant morphed into her as I watched. Remaining on her knees she looked up into my face so lovingly that I must have appeared not as Nate but as Helna. Her life before I was born played between our gaze, and again I witnessed our experience together as mother and daughter. This time I was seeing all the sacrifices and missing parts from her point of view. Next came her time in prison, not much different from my own, but she lacked youth and rage to carry her through. In the end, there was no excuse for turning me over to the Church; they had just worn her down. The act of surrendering your child to end your own pain is not natural, and it had distorted every life she had lived since.
“You are forgiven,” I whispered. The surge of joy in me was immediate, powerful, and transformative—my thoughts were clearer and my whole being calmer.
Then she became Marlene’s daughter, who was sixteen by the time she brought the SS to exterminate us. When she found my eyes, her face displayed pure terror. She had no idea what she had done until it was too late. It would take many more years before she learned the whole truth of what consequences had resulted from her actions. She was merely trying to impress a young German soldier she had a crush on stationed near her village. She thought we would be sent home to work in some kind of internment camp until the war was over. Her mother was the first to explain what she had really done, but it would take eight more years before the full repercussions became known. Consumed by unbearable guilt, she had taken her own life at twenty-four.
Even then, forgiving her would have been out of the question without the first two forgivenesses. I looked at her for a long time, trying to see past the atrocities of Dachau, and although those ghosts would never release their grip on me, I fought through my conflicts. Taking her hands, I raised her up never losing eye contact until tears flowed.
“I forgive you,” I said, hugging her tight. Instantly ecstatic euphoria overtook me, and we both started laughing. Then she was Amparo again.
“Thank you,” she said through tears. There was something different about her appearance. She was healthier, younger, happier.
We didn’t share many more words, as I was suddenly completely fatigued and needed sleep. She sat in the chair next to me and found a blanket somewhere. I slept as peacefully as I could remember; forgiveness was a deep, soft, comforting place.
32
Wednesday, September 24
At 5:30 a.m., my phone rang. “Hello Mr. Ryder, this is your wake-up call.” Kyle snickered. “We hope you enjoyed your stay at the Shakespearean Inn and Campground.” I quickly rearranged my backstage bed and removed any trace. I had to get out before the first workers arrived, but waited until the last moment. Outside worried me. I was excited about getting Dustin, but something about the day ahead made me uneasy. In fact, the future in general was beginning to feel claustrophobic.
It was a typical brisk late September morning in Ashland, heading fast toward warm. Clouds didn’t exist, and the sun seemed to know its annual three-month battle with fog was still six weeks away. Rounding a corner, on the ten-minute walk from the theater to the Station, I almost tripped over one of the town’s rare homeless. With dirty hair matted in dreads and clothes worn and soiled, the bearded man looked ancient but, if cleaned up and shaved, was probably only fifty.
“Watch it, kid.”
“Sorry, I didn’t see you.”
“Yeah, pretend we’re not here, the invisible, scavenging downtrodden. Look the other way—you may catch leprosy,” he said with a glare. “You high and mighty people can’t abide by the scourge of us lost and forgotten souls. Careful, I might touch you!”
“Maybe other people are afraid of you or want to pretend you don’t exist. I just think you’ve got an attitude problem.”
He laughed so hard, for a minute I thought he might die coughing. About to leave, I waited to make sure he lived through the spasm.
“I wasn’t always like this,” he said.
“Of course not. No one is born that filthy.”
He laughed again, this time rolling over.
I started to walk away.
“Hey, could you spare a few thousand dollars?” he called.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“How about more then? I could really use a million. I need to buy a house,” he cackled. “I’m homeless, remember? You know that fancy neighborhood above the boulevard? I’d like a house there. It would make those uptight people very nervous. I’d have my hobo friends over, and we’d dress like this and live out on the lawn. Never even go in the house.” He was hooting now.
I handed him a five-dollar bill. “Well, start saving.”
“Hey, what do you know? Kid’s funny and has a heart. See, here’s the thing.” He produced a wooden match from somewhere and struck it with his tooth. “This money isn’t even real.” He lit the five-dollar bill.
I reached for it, but he swung it away. “I guess you’re not eating today then, or drinking,” I added under my breath.
“Why, because that money’s gone? It wasn’t real in the first place. If I’m hungry, I’ll eat. And if I’m thirsty, I’ll drink!”
“Hard to do without money.”
“Money, why are you so obsessed with it?” He fanned five-dollar bills, hundreds of them.
“Where did you steal that?”
“People give it to me.”
“So you can burn it?”
“It’s mine. I can do what I want with it. Want yours back?”
“No.” I started to walk away again.
“Good because yours is just a pile of ashes.” He lit the others.
I thought of stomping on the pile. It was probably more than a thousand dollars; he was obviously out of his mind. Instead of leaving, I watched it burn. “Were you rich once?”
“I’ve been everything once,” he hesitated. “But none of it really matters. Nothing matters but this moment. People get weighed down with money and all that it buys. Stuff, everyone has so much stuff. It ends up ruling them. A man with possessions is not free.”
“A warm dry house with a roof over your head and food in the kitchen can be nice.”
“Then why did you sleep in the theater? It has no roof.”
“How’d you know that?”
“It’s easy to see where people have been. Once you’re not mired in the muck of the material world, everything is apparent.”
“Who are you?”
“My friends call me Crowd.”
“Funny name for a guy who doesn’t like people.”
“Who said I don’t? I like them. I just don’t want to be around any. I feel sorry for them.”
“Why?”
“Because the unseen world is all around us. It’s where everything really happens, where everything originates. But ninety-nine percent don’t see it. All they see is TV and Walmart.”
“Sure sounds like you don’t like them.”
“People passing by me every day think I’m dirt. For all they know, I’m a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, a Nobel Laureate or
someone’s grandfather, but they don’t know because they never bother to stop. Busy, busy, busy! What if talking to me could solve all their problems? Answer all their questions?” He kicked at the ashes of the money. “When someone goes into a shop, a bank, or a restaurant, clean, nicely dressed people serve them, but they’re still indifferent or even rude, downright mean to their servers. And the thing is they have no idea what is going on in the clerk’s life or the teller’s or the waiter’s. For all they know, that morning the clerk found out her father had a stroke, or the teller discovered his wife was leaving him, or the waiter is waiting for test results on whether he lives or dies. Maybe one of them lost a child a few weeks earlier. No one knows; no one cares. How did this happen that strangers got so strange?”
“Am I supposed to be able to answer that?”
“It’s a shame you have so much to do. What with all the older generations screwing everything up so bad. The youth, as always, is our only hope.” He held a hand up offering me a five-dollar bill again.
I shook my head.
“I’ll see you again sometime,” he said, grinning. “Think about what I said. Ask, seek, think. One day you may need to understand people better. Teenagers don’t know everything; they just think they do. The difference is they’re more open than the grown-up sheep.”
33
During the drive to Mountain View, I tried to keep the conversation light. I didn’t want Mom to change her mind. “Josh offered to help with Dustin once we get him home,” she began. “They were so close. Dustin used to hang around the Station every day after school, helping him and your dad.”
“I remember. I was there, too.”
“Just younger.”
“Yeah, I’ve always been younger than Dustin. That’s why he’s my older brother.”
She broke the tension with a quick laugh.
The woman at the desk said, “Good morning, Mrs. Ryder.”
“Hi Kristy, I’d like to sign Dustin out for a family visit.”
“What do you mean? I thought you knew,” Kristy looked very concerned.
“Knew what?’
“Dustin’s no longer here. They transferred him.”
“Transferred? Where? Who?”
“It was some government thing.”
Her words nauseated me. “When?” I demanded.
“Just a few hours ago.”
“Kristy, what is going on here?” Mom was losing it.
“Let me get the administrator.”
“You better get someone. I want to know what the hell you’ve done with my son!”
Moments later a man in a white coat was there. “Mrs. Ryder. I’m sorry, I was planning to call you this afternoon.”
“Dr. Crane, you had better tell me where Dustin is right now.”
“He’s been transferred to St. Elizabeth’s.”
“Where is that?”
“Washington.”
“You let someone take my son out of state? Where is he, Seattle? I’ll drive there right now.”
“Not Washington state, Mrs. Ryder. St. Elizabeth’s is in Washington, D.C.”
“What? You’ve moved him to the other side of the country? Under whose authority? Why wasn’t I called?”
“The Department of Homeland Security.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked. I found a chair and fell into it.
“Mrs. Ryder, their paperwork was all in order.”
“What are you talking about? How do you know their paperwork was in order? Does Homeland Security come in here regularly and take your patients? Is this common?” Mom was angry but clearly thought this was some classic government snafu. All I could think was the faceless man who killed my dad now had my brother. I didn’t know what to do. He might not even be alive anymore.
“I did call Washington and verify.”
“Let me see the paperwork, I want to know who to call to fix this mess.” He handed her a clipboard. “Look right here,” she pointed to the form. “This is obviously a mistake. It says here he is being moved because of national security reasons. And the box next to “threat” is checked. Dustin has been locked up here for more than two years, before that he was playing high school baseball and Little League, before that he was in goddamn diapers. He’s no threat to national security.” She actually laughed. “You people are the crazy ones around here. Make me copies of these and get Homeland Security on the phone,” she demanded, as she pushed the clipboard back to the doctor. “Don’t worry, Nate, we’ll get this straightened out.” She looked at me. “Nate, are you okay?”
“No,” I said, too upset to cry.
Before she could respond, the doctor handed Mom a phone. More than half an hour later Mom slammed it down. “I’ve never been so frustrated in my life. They slid my call around to six different people and finally told me this case is classified. I’m his mother, and they tell me it’s classified. They’re sending me forms to fill out. They’ve got my boy and they’re sending me flippin’ forms. Dr. Crane, you better lawyer up because I’m going to close you people down.” She scooped up the papers Kristy had copied. “Come on, Nate, we’re going to hire the meanest son of a bitch lawyer we can find.”
“Can you believe this?” she said once we were in the car. “And don’t start with me because I know you’re going to tell me this is all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault, it’s mine. They’re using Dustin to get to me.”
“Who is? What are you saying?” she shrieked.
“Mom, we need to talk.”
“I’m right here. Start talking. Are you somehow in trouble with the federal government? What on earth is going on?”
“I can only do this if you promise me that you won’t say anything until I’m done and that you’ll keep an open mind.”
“Okay. I’ll try.”
“Dad was murdered.”
“Oh, come on, Nate. Did you get that trash from Aunt Rose?”
“Mom, you promised.”
“There was an autopsy for God’s sake? Who’d want to kill your father? He was the kindest man on earth. You’re making me very upset.”
“Jesus, Mom, the autopsy was faked. Do you believe everything they tell you? Dad was killed by someone in the CIA because he knew too much.”
“You’ve been watching too many stupid spy movies with Sam. What would he have known? How to design a menu? What inventory to have on hand for Super Bowl weekend? The only thing your father knew about the CIA was the time he spent at the Culinary Institute of America! This is ridiculous.”
“He knew some serious secret stuff. He was psychic. That’s where Dustin and I got it, and Grandma had it, too. Are you going to tell me you really didn’t know about his powers, our powers? Why do you have such a hard time believing your sons?”
She started to cry.
I took the papers and held them in my hands. A minute later I knew every thing they said. The only part that mattered was they had been signed by Agent Sanford Fitts. My enemy now had a name.
“I don’t know, Nate, I don’t know. I’m not completely blind. Your dad tried to tell me some things around the time I was pregnant with Dustin. I never wanted to hear it. I loved your dad, but all this witchcraft stuff, it isn’t natural.”
“It’s not witchcraft, and there’s nothing more natural than connecting to our soul. It’s the human world that’s not natural.”
“I grew up a good Catholic, and it’s hard for me to not think of ESP, reincarnation, and talking to the dead as wicked and sinful or plain silly.”
“What if I told you the Catholic Church taught reincarnation for its first five hundred years? It was a Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who said, ‘We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.’ Dustin and I have special abilities. You can’t deny what is true, Mom.”
“I’m listening.”
“Are you?” I stared. “Good. Then hear this. The CIA has psychic spies, and the corrupt man in cha
rge of them is using ESP to get money and power for a small group. Dad had a friend who was working for them, but once he discovered the truth, he was about to go to the media with the whole story. They killed him, but not before he told Dad. Only they didn’t know which Montgomery Ryder he told, so they killed all eleven of them.”
“Oh my God! How do you know this?” She was pale, but I repeated it again so she could not miss how horrific it was.
“They killed eleven innocent people just to be sure they silenced one. Four years later, Kyle, Linh, and I searched the Internet with the code name of the agency along with Dad’s friend’s name. And suddenly they’re after me. They couldn’t get me easily, so they took Dustin.”
“Is it true?” she asked through tears.
“I’m afraid so. And at the same time this is going on, I’m fighting for my sanity. I’ve seen visions of hundreds of deaths from past lives. Spiritual guides whisper in my ear, and I can see images and things you couldn’t believe.”
“Like Dustin.”
I nodded.
“Oh God, what have I done to Dustin? To both of you?” She sobbed uncontrollably now. I held her.
“Mom, get it together. We need to go.”
“Can you ever forgive me?”
“I’m working on it. You really need to ask that question of Dustin.” This set off another round of crying. But relief surged. She finally believed. More than Sam or Spencer or anyone else, that made me know for sure I wasn’t crazy—my mom believed me.
Any joy from the resolution between us was quickly replaced by awful thoughts of what was happening to Dustin. We had to find him. “Mom, we need to see Aunt Rose. It’s not safe for me in Ashland, and Rose can help us.” She was in no condition to argue. I explained how Rose had visited Dustin regularly to try and keep him sane.
“We’ll fix this, Nate,” my mother repeated every time there was a lull in our conversation. But she, like me, was in over her head. I told her more about the people after me and could see her struggle to concentrate on driving. Mom’s face showed emotions ranging from confusion to real fear. Would she have a breakdown once it had all sunk in? We needed her strong. She had to have hope, or the weight of her mistakes and the potential loss of her sons could engulf her.
