by Bill Myers
“They’re down at the pool right now,” Beth answered. Another wave of static washed over the phone, drowning out the sentence but clearing in time for the words: “…and Sarah’s turning into this bronze goddess. Oh, Philip, we’re having such a good time, I wish you could join us.”
“Soon, hon. I hope, very soon.”
“Something happened, didn’t it?
“What makes you think —”
“Don’t lie to me, Phil. I can tell by your voice. It’s something big, isn’t it?”
“Beth —”
“You won’t tell me when you can come down, you’re vague about the reasons. You won’t even talk to me over the office phone. Is it Murkoski again? Is it the project?”
O’Brien gave no answer.
“I thought so.” There was another barrage of static that ended just in time to hear the words: “…more important, our relationship, or working with some scientist you don’t even trust.”
O’Brien gave a heavy sigh. “Beth, this is more than just —”
“I’m not angry, Philip. But maybe we should start to seriously —”
“Beth —”
“— reevaluate our priorities. Maybe we should ask ourselves what we really expect out of this rela —”
“Wolff’s dead.”
“What?”
“Wolff died. Congestive heart failure.” There was silence on the other end and another wave of static. “Beth, are you there?”
“How?” came the shaken reply. “He was barely thirty. He was so young, athletic.” There was a brief pause. “Do you think… he wasn’t doing drugs, was he?”
Another pause, this time at Philip’s end.
“Philip?”
“He’s diabetic. The insulin he kept in the refrigerator at work — someone tampered with the vials.”
Beth gasped. “Are you sure?”
“One of his colleagues thought they looked suspicious. We ran some tests. Without knowing it, Wolff had been shooting up with a new version of Interleukin.”
“Of what?”
“It’s an experimental gene used for cancer treatment.”
“And it causes heart failure?”
“This type seems to eat into blood vessels, causing them to start leaking.”
“Leaking?”
“Like a sieve. The autopsy showed his heart was weak and mushy, like a sixty-year-old who’d had multiple heart attacks. And his lungs were filled with liquid, indicating that the vessels in them had also opened up, filling the lungs with blood.”
“Did Wolff have cancer? Could he have been experimenting on himself?”
“No.”
“Have you gone to the police?”
“Not yet.”
“Phil, what’s going —” The rest of her phrase was lost in static.
“Hold it,” Murkoski interrupted. “Rewind that last section.” He leaned forward toward his desk, ear glued to his receiver, as he heard the whir and whine of voices running backwards. There was a click on the other end and a repeat of the conversation.
“…lungs were filled with liquid, indicating that the vessels in them had also opened up, filling the lungs with blood.”
“Did Wolff have cancer? Could he have been experimenting on himself?”
“No.”
“Have you gone to the police?”
“Not yet.”
“All right,” Murkoski ordered. The taped conversation stopped. It was 4:50 in the morning. The young man turned to his office window and instinctively checked out the lines of his suit. They were good lines, ones he usually appreciated. But this morning they gave him little pleasure. “What time did she phone him?”
“Shortly after seven last evening.” The voice was heavily accented. Murkoski had never been able to tell what nationality, although he knew it was Asian. “Mr. Murkoski, I am certain you can appreciate our concern, can you not?”
Murkoski ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah — no — I mean, sure, I understand.”
“If Mr. O’Brien were to connect your technician’s untimely death with our project, I am afraid it could seriously jeopardize our date of delivery.”
“I agree.”
“The situation is not getting out of hand, is it, Dr. Murkoski? You will be able to meet your deadline, will you not?”
“Of course,” Murkoski said, turning back to his desk, trying to hide his irritation.
“Good. Word is spreading. Competition is asking very sensitive questions. You can appreciate our need for haste.”
“I’ll get on the problem right away.”
“We were certain you would. Good morning, Dr. Murkoski.”
Before he could respond, the phone disconnected. Murkoski slowly leaned forward and replaced the receiver. Then, even more slowly, he turned to look out his window and into the darkness.
The crack stings his throat and burns his lungs. He holds it until he must exhale and gasp for breath. The rush is immediate, exhilarating, running through his chest, his arms, into his fingertips.
He is it.
Unstoppable.
He grabs the shotgun from the front seat and steps out of the car. He sees everything. The ice machine out front. The barbecue charcoal display. The neon Budweiser sign in its final stages of flickering out.
He kicks open the door, a grand entrance that has the desired effect. The clerk, a boy with long hair and earring, is speechless. He won’t try anything. He knows Coleman means business.
Coleman heads toward the counter, pumping his gun. The kid’s boom box blasts out an oldie, “Hotel California.” The guitar licks are intoxicating, making Coleman sail. The crack screams through his body. He is all-powerful.
Omnipotent.
The clerk falters, throws a look at the security camera. With one hand, Coleman lifts the shotgun and blows the intruding eye to smithereens. There is no sound. Only a flash of light and flying glass and plastic. One chamber is still full. He knows it. The clerk knows it.
“Come on! Let’s go, let’s go!”
The kid hits the cash register. It flies open. Bills are grabbed, stuffed into a Quickie Mart bag. Coleman grabs a Snickers bar, then several more. He knows he’ll be hungry.
“Now the safe!”
The kid makes an excuse. A lie.
Coleman points to the floor. He knows where the safe is hidden.
The kid protests.
Coleman levels his gun.
The punk is shouting at him as if volume will prove his sincerity. Coleman’s finger wraps around the trigger. He is grinning.
The boy yells at him. Wide-eyed. Terror-stricken.
Coleman’s grin broadens.
The boy turns. Coleman thinks it’s towards the safe. But it isn’t. He’s turning back. There’s something in his hand. It’s a pistol, a .22. The kid is an idiot, one too many Rambo movies. There’s nothing Coleman can do now. He squeezes the trigger.
Another silent explosion of light.
A bell rings, keeps ringing. Somehow the kid has tripped the alarm. Coleman reaches for the bag on the counter, then hears breathing. It’s coming from behind. Wheezing, coughing. He spins around, but no one is there. The aisles are empty.
It grows louder, bearing down.
Coleman breaks open the gun. With trembling hands he yanks out the spent casings.
The breathing is louder, roaring in his head.
Coleman backs up, shoving his hands into his sweatshirt, fumbling for two more shells.
He smells the breath now. Alcohol. His father’s. It’s all around. Coming from all sides.
He turns, stumbling toward the door, but it is locked. He bangs on it, desperate to get out.
“Michael!” It’s his father’s voice shouting, swearing. “Michael!”
Coleman doesn’t look back. He pounds on the glass, trying to break it, but it won’t give.
“Michael!”
He continues to bang, but it is no longer glass, it is wood. And it is no longer his father’s voice. It is a child’s
. “Mr. Michaels? Mr. Michaels, are you okay?” The banging continues.
Coleman awoke with a start, cowering, preparing for the blows. But none came. His father wasn’t there. The breathing had disappeared. The dream was gone. Only the knocking remained — and Eric’s voice. “Mr. Michaels? Mr. Michaels!”
The picnic had been Katherine’s idea. Another week had passed, and it was time to make the trek back up to Arlington. Since they were paying her good money to take the day off, and since Eric had never really been up into the mountains, she figured — why not take advantage of the situation and go on a little outing.
She glanced at Coleman as she drove. He was in the passenger seat, poring over the Bible she’d given him. In the days since their last trip, he’d been true to his word. He hadn’t pried. He hadn’t said another word about her past. For that she was both pleased and disappointed. A week ago, it had taken so little effort for him to reach through her barriers and touch her. And now, as the days passed, as she saw his goodness, and as her trust built, she knew it would take even less effort for him to reach in and move her even more deeply. But he respected her; he would not abuse his power. And it was this combination of restrained power and tenderness that made her start finding excuses to spend time with him.
Her walls were crumbling. She could tell by the way she stood at the closet trying to decide what to wear, by the stirring inside when she heard him arrive at the store. She could tell by the way her body began to take on a softness when they talked, becoming curves instead of rigid lines.
Then there was the drinking. She hadn’t quit, but when sobriety came, it didn’t carry the piercing sharpness it once had. She was beginning to experience a different high.
She glanced into the rearview mirror. Eric was reading. Another miracle. No Game Boy in his hand, no laptop computer. Just a book, a real book.
“You’ll like it,” Coleman had said when he had tossed it at him. “I got it at the bookstore down the street. It’s called The Last of the Mohicans, and it’s all about Indians and survival in the wilderness and stuff.”
Eric hadn’t stopped reading it since he’d first opened it.
They’d been on the road forty-five minutes, heading up the Getchel Highway and into the Cascades. Once again she glanced at Coleman. But this time his face was wet with tears. “What’s wrong?” she asked, concerned. “Are you okay?”
He glanced up, a little embarrassed. When he spoke, his voice was thick with feeling. “I never knew what …” He searched for the word. “Wisdom…”
Katherine smiled. One of the other things she enjoyed about this man was his childlike wonder, his sense of awe, sometimes over the simplest things. She didn’t always understand why it happened, but this time she did.
“This ache I have,” he was saying, “this emptiness. It’s like he understands — like somehow, he’s able to meet that hunger and, and…”
“Help ease it?” she asked.
He nodded and looked up at her in quiet amazement.
“I guess that’s why he called himself the ‘Bread of Life.’ ”
“He called himself that?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Coleman was dumbstruck. “And people — people know this?”
She couldn’t help laughing at his astonishment. “A few.”
Coleman looked back down to the page, then up again. “And you?”
The question caught her off guard. “Me?”
“Do you believe it?”
Katherine took a long, slow breath. “I don’t know. When I was a kid, that was all I heard about. Then, as an adult, I had a long stint with AA. When everything else failed, my faith was the only thing that kept me sober, that pulled me through. But now —” She took another deep breath and let it out. “I don’t know. I guess I just don’t see it anymore.”
“And seeing is believing.”
“It is for me.” She sighed wearily.
She could feel him looking at her a long moment before returning to his Bible. She was grateful to be off the hook. Grateful and disturbed. This man was stirring other things inside her as well; deeper things, long-forgotten.
A half-hour later they were at Granite Falls, a huge rocky formation deep in the foothills with towering cliffs and an angry Stillaguamish River that dropped nearly a hundred feet, thundering and crashing into gigantic boulders before slamming, swirling, and crashing into a dozen more.
“Wow!” Eric cried over the roar. “This is so cool!”
“Don’t get too close,” Katherine shouted, doing her best not to sound like a mother and failing miserably. But neither boy nor man seemed to notice. She watched as, instinctively, Coleman rested his hands on her son’s shoulder. The unconscious act of kindness brought a tightness to her throat. She turned, fighting back the moisture welling up in her eyes, pretending to notice something downriver. Eric had missed so many things in his little life. At the store, day in and day out, with only the computers and people on the Internet as his playmates. What type of existence was that? No interaction with others. No men to model after. How could she have been so insensitive, so selfish, not to see this?
They hiked downstream a quarter of a mile for lunch. Banter and teasing came easy between Coleman and Eric, and Katherine was grateful to feel like the third wheel as she watched their friendship grow. She’d seen it at the store, this male camaraderie thing, but it had always been on Eric’s turf. Now Coleman was able to take charge, showing her son how to skip rocks, how to sneak through dense undergrowth so quietly that even crows could not hear and sound the alarm.
Later, she watched as the two studied an animal’s track in the mud beside the river.
“Looks like a deer.”
“How can you tell?”
“See here, this V.”
“Oh, yeah. Cool.”
“Look at the size. It’s a buck. Probably a big one.”
Then there were Coleman’s Indian stories. How they survived, what they ate in the wild, how they fought. Some of the details were a little too gruesome for Katherine’s taste, but the facts seemed to thrill her son.
“How come you know so much about Indians?” Eric asked.
“You don’t grow up in Tecumseh without knowing your Indians.”
“Tecumseh? Where’s that?”
“Little town in Nebraska. Named after Tecumseh, a Shawnee. His name meant ‘Panther in the Sky.’ He was the greatest Indian ever.”
“Oh, yeah? What about Chief Seattle?”
“He was okay for a Northwesterner. But the real Indians, like the Shawnee, they were back in the Midwest.”
“Says who?”
“It’s common knowledge.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
And so the sparring continued, along with the macho challenges, races, and leaps from rock to rock (with more than one slip and crash into the water). But wet clothes and bruised bodies were only a preliminary to the end of their little outing. As they headed back up to the car, they spotted an overgrown path, a shortcut that was clearly only for the strong-hearted.
Immediately they began goading each other to take it. And, of course, they both rose to the challenge. Just before entering the tangled pathway, Eric turned back to his mom. “Aren’t you coming?”
Katherine peered into the dense undergrowth. “No, I think I’ll stick to the path here.”
“Come on, Mom.”
“No — too much testosterone in this one for me. You boys go ahead.”
She watched as they began plowing through the brush, sometimes racing, shouting, always inciting the other to continue. But in less than a minute their outlook had changed.
“Ow!”
“Ouch!”
“Yeow!”
“What’s wrong?” she shouted.
“Blackberry bushes,” Coleman called.
“They must be twenty feet high,” Eric yelled.
“Maybe you better
turn around and come out,” Katherine suggested.
“No way!” Eric shouted. “I’m not afraid of a few blackberry bushes. Are you?” he called to Coleman.
“Not me,” Coleman shouted back.
“Me, neither. Ouch! We’ll be fine, Mom. Don’t worry ’bout us.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she shouted back.
Twenty minutes later she arrived at the car, but they weren’t there. It took an additional half hour for them to finally emerge from the bushes, their arms, hands, even their faces scratched and bleeding.
“You guys look awful!” she cried. “What happened?”
“A few more blackberries than we anticipated,” Coleman said.
“It’s not that bad,” Eric insisted. “Just a few scratches.”
“A few,” Coleman had to laugh. He held up Eric’s bleeding arm. “You’ve got scratches on top of scratches.”
“Oh yeah,” Eric retorted, grabbing Coleman’s other hand and raising it up. “What about you? You got scratches on top of scratches on top of scratches.”
“Guys,” Katherine protested, “look at you, you’re getting blood all over each other.”
They looked at their hands. It was true. Both had smeared their own blood onto the other.
“Cool,” Eric said staring at his palm.
“You know,” Coleman said, “some Indians believed that the soul of man resided in his blood. That’s why they mixed their blood together to become blood brothers.”
“That may be true,” Katherine said, pulling her son toward her and trying to wipe some of the blood from his face with a tissue.
“Mom —”
“But in this day of AIDS and every other blood disease imaginable, I think that’s one ritual we can live without.”
“Too late,” Eric said, reexamining his palm.
Katherine glanced at Coleman, who was looking at his own hand.
“I’m afraid he’s right, Katherine. Looks like we’ve become official, honest-to-goodness blood brothers.”
Eric looked up and beamed. But Katherine barely noticed. It was the sound of her name that had caught her off guard, that had made her legs a little weak, her hands a little less sure of themselves. This was the first time he had spoken her name out loud, and she quite literally had to catch her breath. The walls were crumbling again. If Coleman had looked into her eyes at that moment, he would have known everything she was, understood all that she was feeling.
