“Where’d the cage come from, Grandmother?”
“Had it tucked away in the attic. Long time ago Hurricane rescued it for me from the mines, gave me a little parakeet too when they got rid of the birds ’n put in the detectors. They used to hang ’em in the tunnels. Too much carbon dioxide built up, the little chirpers’d fall over a coupla minutes ’fore the miners. So they could get out ’fore asphyxiation got ’em.” She sighed, “Twenty years last week, your grandfather’s been gone.”
Franklin stroked his right temple with a couple of fingertips. He wanted Cynthia’s papers back in his bedroom. He nodded at her and slid his fingers beneath the box. Someone had thrown a handful of seeds in the bottom for Harry.
Mano’s lights from the workshop were out. Franklin set Harry’s soup box on the bed.
The top copy of USA TODAY was splattered with bird crap. A feather Harry had lost and a few leftover sunflower seeds slid aside as Franklin slipped out the second copy down. Only a few sheets thick, he thought. So thin — considering!
He stared at the headline:
WHO’S RESPONSIBLE?
Printed before the second bomb went off, a color map took up the rest of the page — the New York bomb’s blast surrounded by a series of ever smaller circles centered on the bottom of Manhattan Island.
He paged through stories of power, water and telephone outages. Expectations of food and medicine shortages. Predictions of “Total Dead” in the various boroughs — Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Manhattan, the Bronx — and in east New Jersey. The numbers sickened him.
He read until tiredness finally claimed him.
As he drifted off, he had a vague realization. He never did look at Cynthia’s papers or get anything to eat.
“RIIIIING!”
The loud bell echoed down the long, high-ceilinged room.
Slowly the massive machines began to turn. Faster. Faster still, moving the long wide glossy strips until they were whining, roaring overhead.
Color created long streaks of feathers on a bird. A baby’s face. Vibrant red borders known the world over.
“That’s some picture you took, Mike!” The publisher lifted one of the first copies of the latest issue of the red-bordered magazine off the press and handed it to a very satisfied photographer. “When things finally settle down you’ll be getting a ton of awards for this one! You know that’s the guy the President was talking about tonight.”
“I know.” The photographer neglected to mention he hadn’t sold the shot exclusively.
Cut in white beneath the photo of an attractive man with a strong but smudged face, long dark hair and bright cobalt-blue eyes, it read:
Between two buttons of the man’s button-down white shirt, looking at an infant the man held in his arms, was the feathered head of a tawny-brown owl.
Alone In His Office
From the bowl on his office desk, Everon grabbed an orange. As his right hand punched in a number on the phone, he stuck his left thumb into the orange’s center. Juice ran down his forearm. He pushed the phone under his ear to peel the fruit. The number rang.
He knew he probably ought to figure out what his role should be as Melissa’s uncle. He’d only seen her once before, a day after she’d been born. Franklin had handled her so far. Everon didn’t know how to deal with the sadness he felt every time he looked at her.
The phone rang a fourth time. He spread a grid map Hunt had given him at Teterboro Airport across his desk and traced out elements of the Williams Power system. What if the bank shutdown continues? He’d have to see about his own cash position — the bit on hand he had for emergencies wouldn’t go far.
“Hello?” an energetic female voice answered.
“Nan!” Everon’s main pilot — ever since he’d chosen to focus on running his growing company instead of flying. He told her about New York. She offered her condolences over Cynthia. Everon explained Hunt’s situation . . .
“ . . . and so a bunch of us are going back tomorrow — I know of a good lineswoman down in Phoenix we can use,” Everon said. “Look — I know you just got in a few hours ago, but can you fly the MD-900 down there early in the morning and pick her up?”
Nan offered a suggestion.
“A turbine guy?” Everon responded. “Yeah, well, get both of them if you can. Gotta be up here by tomorrow morning though. Offer double rates . . . that’s right, for all of us. Hunt Williams will pay it . . . you’ll earn it, trust me . . . okay. Oh, and tell them to pack their long johns. It’s gonna be chilly in Pennsylvania. See you tomorrow.”
There were more calls. “Hey Rani, I need your help . . .” Everon would be lucky to get any sleep tonight. Tomorrow, he’d catch a few hours. After the funeral. He could go over the big jet’s systems with Nan, and if she could take over some of the flying back, then possibly he could bag an hour or so in the pilot’s seat on the way.
A while later, he heard shouting. Nervous voices.
Shit! The mob guys! Back with reinforcements!
He was half out of his chair when the voices stopped and an unfamiliar hum penetrated his half-closed office door.
They’re starting it — the new line!
He picked up the remote on his desk and pressed a button. His whole wall came to life. There were Nick and Right. Vera from the cable line, some of the others. Plastic rolls turning. Cutters cutting. A new robotic arm stacking the panels. For just a moment he smiled, wishing he had time to enjoy another milestone with them. Video was never the same as being there.
He lifted the phone. Punched in another number.
“Hey Ortega, what do you say to . . . ?”
In the dim hall lighting outside Everon’s office, the frail old woman listened long enough to be sure of what she’d been worrying over for the last two hours.
Then she turned away.
Collecting The Divine
Dressed in jeans, a yellow blouse, a warm down parka and a pair of nice comfortable flats, Methodist Bishop Elizabeth Hoy opened her motel room door and stepped onto the upper walkway into the cold morning air.
Unfortunately her room was in the rear of the motel. She saw the first man in a clown mask at the same moment her door clicked shut behind her — as the second clown tried to slip a black bag over her head. She knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t the first time she’d been raped.
It was too late to lurch back inside the room, but Elizabeth had spent six years training hard for this very moment. She wasn’t going to end up with a wrenched neck, a shattered orbit and a cracked skull like last time.
Her hand came up hard, pushing the hood away. “Kaah!” she screamed, as her long right leg kicked out.
“Gaaah!” the first clown responded, hands dropping to his crotch, doubling over.
A perfect shot straight to the balls.
Her dark pageboy hair flew as she twisted in the narrow space throwing an elbow into the face of the second clown with the hood. The man literally flipped over the railing.
Rape was not about sex but about power and violence and a feeling of powerlessness in men.
Well, let them feel powerless now!
She twisted back and snapped forward sending a well-deserved high kick to the first clown’s head. Presiding Methodist Bishop Elizabeth Hoy was fighting for her life.
She had traveled all day from Chicago, only to find when she arrived in New York two nights ago, there was no hotel room booked for her at the Waldorf. And no award ceremony scheduled. They hadn’t heard of her. Had she gotten the date wrong?
She tried to call her assistant. Her cellphone couldn’t find a signal. Six p.m. and she couldn’t even find a reasonably priced room in the city. The rates were outrageous.
She left in disgust, driving until she found something decent all the way over in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, expecting to stay one night. To head home to Chicago the next day.
Then the bomb went off. I-80 filled with cars trying to get away from the are
a. So she stayed put. Expecting things would clear up. Why add to the confusion?
From the opposite direction she heard a tiny PFFFT!
“Oww!” she screamed, turning to see a third clown standing there, holding a strange looking gun. She twisted. Found a small object attached to the back of her jeans, the middle of the pocket on the right side of her derrière. There was time for only one word.
“Ohh.”
The hood.
The moment the dark impenetrable cloth covered his head, Reverend T. Jefferson Parker knew exactly who they were and what they wanted. He’d been expecting them for years.
Parker wasn’t yet as famous as Dr. King. Perhaps known about as well as Jessie Jackson in his prime. His eloquent attacks on racial inequality had made him a popular talking head — a guest-head, as it was known in the business — on Good Morning America, Fox at Night, The Prime Time Final Edit. And especially The View, where those five ladies simply adored the handsome, erudite black man.
The appearances made his new book, More Than Black — hailed as the new Roots, the new Color Purple — sell millions of copies.
Now the true price of fame had come home.
Images of fiery crosses in Mississippi fields flowed across the dark inside of the bag on his head. Obviously the Klan or some other white supremacist group had finally come to take him. The only question was how he was going to die. But as they tightened the dark hood around his neck, he also wondered what he could have done differently. Like a film, the last few hours flashed before his eyes.
By the time the first bomb went off, he’d already been in Washington. He wished he’d chosen to head home immediately. Not taping that damn television show. His only thought should have been for his wife Marylynn, now probably beside herself with worry.
The journey back to Philadelphia had taken all night. The nearly empty train stopping and starting; a conductor checking tickets, speaking in low tones. People rising from their seats, leaving quietly. None returned. He’d suspected nothing. He said his quiet prayers for the dead and dying.
The train ran along smoothly for more than twenty minutes. The winter sky grew lighter outside. He looked around. He was the only one left in the car. The train slowed and stopped inside a tunnel. No courtesy lights came on. It was dark. Really dark. He’d checked the time on his phone. Eight a.m. Still no signal. He hoped his wife was okay. He put the phone away.
His head turned at the first rustle. Two spooky glowing red circles, floating in the aisle — right where a man’s eyes would be. He felt rough hands grab his arms and he tried to strike back. His fist connected with something that went “OOOF!”
His arms were wrenched behind his back. Plastic tie-strapped together. “Hel — !” his yell cut off by the hand clamped across his mouth.
Then the hood.
He felt a sharp prick on the side of his neck.
As he lost consciousness and they shuffled him off the train, Reverend T. Jefferson Parker, President of American Baptist Churches USA, knew precisely what they wanted. Knew exactly what to expect.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Taking Cynthia
“No reason for any autopsies, is there,” the diminutive, gray-haired examiner, Doc Brown said.
“For what, Brownie?” Del shot back. Cynthia and Steve still holding each other, their abdomens connected, pierced by a random scrap of New York City.
“Don’t worry about it.” Doc Brown rewrapped the charred blanket’s top, closed the long metal zipper. He verified the New Jersey death certificates and left.
Everon and Franklin hefted the thick rubber bag into the simple coffin, and along with Mano and Jack carried the wide box to the back of the old family pickup. Franklin and Everon stepped up into the Chevy’s bed and rode on opposite rails, hands resting on the smooth light-colored wood, as if trying not to lose contact.
Del held Melissa on her lap in front. The usually-so-fierce black eyes in Mano’s round-cheeked face held only misery as he got in next to Del. Short wiry old Jack — dark hair, a tan and grizzled face — started the truck on the first try.
It had always been difficult to tell the truck’s rust spots from what was left of the brown paint. The truck had been old even when they were young. Two wild brothers and their ponytailed tomboy sister, standing in the truck bed hanging on, yelping above the top of the cab. Older still by the time Cynthia taught Franklin to drive, out on the ranch’s dusty roads.
Franklin blinked. The old truck felt just the same. Bouncy. Rough. Yet Mano had always maintained it in such perfect mechanical condition. He studied the sanded pine beneath his hand. A last ride, Cynthia.
Jack drove easily, keeping down the dust thrown up by the wheels as they passed the family’s small orange grove. None of that New York exhaust dirt around the red cliffs. And the air wasn’t on fire. It smelled fresh. The view open and clean. A different kind of world than what Cyn had known at the end. Here, you could see for miles.
Steve’s parents were gone too. Franklin often wondered if that was part of what had drawn the two of them together.
Jack slowed as they approached the family plot, surrounded on four sides by the black waist-high spikes of the wrought iron fence. Everon looked at Franklin. Neither of them wanted to move but Jack appeared around back. Mano dropped the tailgate.
Together, the brothers let go a quiet sigh, nodded to each other and got down from the bed. The four men slid out the wide box, then began up the hill ahead of Del.
At the wide rectangular hole Jack and Mano had dug, each man used a foot to trap one of four bright blue ends of the two pieces of webbing laid across the hole. Then gently laid down the box.
The four of them knelt carefully, gripping the web as Del slowly made her way up the path with Melissa.
When she stood next to them, at Everon’s nod they gradually released pressure, lowering Cynthia’s and Steven’s bodies into the earth.
Cynthia was moving away from them.
Franklin looked up from the hole as the straps went slack, tears filling his eyes. Part of him wouldn’t accept it. Cynthia wasn’t going into the ground, she would always be standing right there next to him.
His eyes shot to the red rock headstones:
The north Pahrump random-species bird choir sang some unbearably sad tune. Sage and olive and lime-colored cacti wavered in air that seemed to vibrate with their every chirp. Our family’s shrinking again, Franklin thought.
Some of the stones were older, their letters worn by wind and rain:
Alma. The faint, crudely carved words on the oldest of them all. The only one bearing a symbol of any kind. It was the same cross Franklin wore around his neck. He’d often wondered why there was no date on hers, its carved letters barely legible.
Everon appeared lost in thought.
Probably picturing another, a white stone, Franklin guessed. One they’d visited together at a graveyard in New Jersey.
It’s worse for Everon. His father dies in an explosion at Bell Labs. His mother moves out here and marries Dad. She has Cynthia. And almost as soon as Dad adopts Everon, their mom dies.
Franklin stared at two more of the flat red stones. His own parents Harrison and Weather, trapped in a cave-in in the family gypsum mine not ten miles away. The upbringing of the three of them falling on Del — Franklin and Cynthia’s paternal grandmother. Franklin could barely remember his parents. I was only eight. At least I’ve always had her.
He looked up. Around the circle. Everyone was waiting. For me to say something: Life and God and hope! A prayer. Magic words. A wizard’s spell to alter this dark part of their universe. To give us back Cynthia!
He tried to shake off the pervasive blackness, looked into the clear blue sky and closed his eyes . . .
Burying Cyn
“In the last years of our childhood in this valley, Grandmother, you raised us. It’s only right we return Cynthia to this place.
“Cynthia meant something diffe
rent to each of us.” Franklin opened his eyes and looked at Everon. “She talked you into moving from fixing power lines to making solar panels, didn’t she? Even worked side by side with you when you first began building the shop.”
Everon smiled grimly. “More than once she loaned me money. Helped me straighten out the company’s books, too, when we started growing too fast.”
Franklin looked at Jack and Mano — their childhood teachers and friends. Tears running down Mano’s uneven cheeks, he said, “Cynthí always happy and funny. One reason we love her so much is the way she just be with you make your day.”
Jack blinked rapidly and looked away.
It’s all so trivial, Franklin felt. Anything I can say. It’s just — just meaningless! He gritted his teeth, hands shaking, anger cutting through. He swallowed it down.
“She went climbing with me once,” he whispered, pointing at the red cliffs, a dusting of snow across their distant tops. “She saved my life right up there. Without Cynthia I wouldn’t even be here!”
Of the two dozen funerals he’d presided over at the church, he’d never felt anything like this. She’s part of ME!
He fought through a long deep breath, turned to Jack and Mano. “We’re here to say goodbye to a good friend, almost a daughter . . . ”
He looked at Del. “ . . . a granddaughter . . .” The dry cool desert whipped at her parched skin.
He looked to Everon, then down at the wide pale box sitting in the earth, “ . . . and to a sister. Pierced by a piece of the city she . . .”
Franklin closed his eyes . . . “Who the hell knows why she loved it there so damned much!”
He looked at Melissa in Del’s arms, then back to the wide hole. “And with Cynthia we place our brother Steven. Every one of us loved him. He was the kind of warm, fun, joyful mate Cynthia deserved,” Franklin’s words fairly vibrated. “We’re the fortunate ones to have known you.
Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2) Page 7
