rolls onto his back. His nose is bleeding and blood trickles down his throat choking him. His head flops to the side to see his watch: it’s 3:07! I gotta make the meeting! I’m not safe anymore! He took the phone! Bart begins to cry softly as he lies in the dirt.
—
Mary Wallace wrings her hands for the hundredth time. She sits on the couch, leaning forward, worry creasing her pretty face. Bart was gone again. The police are looking for him. But it’s been three days, and no word. She frets over a little scar on her finger. A squirrel had bitten her years back. It had been feeding in their yard for a good two years. Then one day, it seemed odd. Out of sorts. It bit her. Her dad had said it was sick and tried to trap it. It ran off. Mary scratches the scar, not thinking about it at all. Poor, poor Bart. Why didn’t we put him in the hospital? Schizophrenia.
Dennis sits down next to his wife and puts an arm around her shoulder. “They’ll find him hon. They have before. He’s sick, but he’s not stupid. He’s lived a long time on the streets before.” They sit quietly. The only sound in the room is the clock as it ticks out the minutes since Bart disappeared. Mary leans her head on her husband’s shoulder and weeps softly for her brother.
—
Bart finally stops crying. He’s in the open. They can see me! They can see me now! He flails his body over onto his belly and crawls under the overhang of the pier. His body is wracked with heavy breaths at the exertion. Safe. They can’t see now. Where am I? What have they done? He was CIA. I hope they don’t find Mary.
Hours later, as dawn begins to break, Bart tries to stand. My knee! They implanted something in my knee! He sits back down and leans against a piling. Reaching into his shoe, he pulls the small knife from next to his ankle. I’ll have to remove it. There’s no other way to escape. He rolls his pants up to reveal the dark bruise on his knee where little guy stomped him. There it is. It’s just under the skin. Bart digs the knife into his calf just below the knee and pries a chunk of flesh away. He breathes hard, clenching his teeth. He tosses the meat from the knife and puts it back in his shoe by his ankle. Finally. Now they don’t know what I’m doing.
Bart is staggered by the amount of blood pouring from his leg. He unbuckles the belt on his waist, then re-buckles it cinching it tighter. That should stop the blood. Just relax. Hard to breath now. They can’t track you without the tracer. He stands gingerly on the painful leg and hobbles about a hundred yards down the shore until he collapses amid a jumble of rocks and dirt. He rolls onto his back and shakes the black spots from his eyes. The cold wind coming from the water chills him, but he can’t seem to move anymore. His leg hurts. And bleeds. They must have a new ray. “I’m paralyzed.” He closes his eyes.
—
“I’m sorry ma’am. We found him just a little while ago. It looks like he bled to death. We don’t know yet if he was attacked or not. He’s got some injuries though. He didn’t seem to have anything with him, except this.” The officer holds out a little cross. On the back is Mary and Dennis’ phone number and address. On the front is inscribed, “We love you Bart.” “He had it clutched in his hand.”
Mary leans into Dennis and sobs bitterly. At twenty-four, Bart seemed to be a baby to her. He was so normal just three years ago. Things change.
Starlings
Wooster McDowel opened the screen door and carefully made his way to the old rocking chair that sat out on the porch. As usual, his slow progress meant that the screen bumped him as he went by, and as usual, he spilled some of his black coffee on the old porch boards. He hardly noticed anymore. There was a time when he used to try to stop the door from hitting him. And before that, he could get by easily enough without it touching him at all. But those days were long gone. Now that he was past eighty, he moved too slowly to side step the spring that pulled the screen shut. Ah well, that’s life.
Wooster turned his back on the chair, bent his legs as far as they would bend nowadays, and reached back with his left hand to find the arm. Once, he had thought he was gonna sit down, and found he had not been close enough to the chair. He spilled a lot of coffee that day! Funny how he always thought of that when he was sitting down now. His daughter had heard about it and given him a good tongue lashing about “now that you’re older you’ve got to be more careful!” and “you could have laid there for hours with a broken hip!” It seemed like her biggest fear was no longer the bogey man he used to clear out of her closets when she was little. Now it was “the broken hip.” A tight smile crossed Wooster’s face as he envisioned a leg, shrouded in a black cloak, hopping along with that Bela Lugosi music playing in the background!
Finding the arm of the rocker, Wooster settled back and finally plopped the last few inches into the chair. Ahhhhh. He’d been sitting in this chair for sixty years if it was a day. He had to have it rebuilt a couple times. The kids busted it up some when they played on it. That was years ago. They were grown with kids of their own and broken furniture in their houses now.
Wooster’s bright and very sky-blue eyes traveled up and down the street as he sipped his cup o’ joe. Since his Emma had died, he usually drank his coffee out on the stoop. They used to talk in the morning. They’d sit inside at the table in the kitchen and listen to the radio or TV, commenting on issues. They were very current for septuagenarians. She died of the cancer about four years ago. It was a blessing in Wooster’s mind. She’d been sick a long time. He mumbled softly to himself, “I just keep on goin’ though.” He’d sit out on the stoop and watch the street because it was nice to see people. He could sit inside, but he figured if an old man like him were ever gonna see people, he’d have to go out and do it, “‘cause they weren’t gonna come to him.” And since it was hard to get out a lot, sitting on the stoop was the next best thing.
He’d wave at Don Reynolds as he came out for work. Good man, Don. He’d been at the mill for years till it shut down. That would have broke a lot of men. Some had a hard time changin’ once they got settled into a job. But Don took it in stride, got some training, and was now working with computers. Wooster didn’t really know much about the field. He did actually have a computer, though. He got email with it. Don showed him how to use it. He set it up too. Wooster pretty much just checked mail. The rest was not of any concern.
Often he’d see the kids on their way to school. Some were brats. He chuckled. He was a brat when he was a kid. But most were good kids—like his own grandkids. “Living large” in the world, as the younger people said.
There was another good reason to sit on the stoop in the morning. It had nothing to do with people. It was for protection! He had to protect his strawberries! Although he was pretty stiff, and it was difficult, he still liked to plant strawberries and flowers in the front garden. Unfortunately, he couldn’t just leave ‘em to grow. The problem was those starlings. Darn starlings. He couldn’t think of any use for that bird. They were actually an import from Europe, he’d heard. He wished they’d have stayed put!
The starlings would fly about in big flocks. They’d hang out on the wires like a gang of dark feathered ne’er-do-wells. They’d be watching the plants growing all over the neighborhood. And when the time came, they’d come and settle on his strawberries just like a bunch of ruffians would take to a single man in a dark alley! They usually worked his berries in the morning. They liked to feed in the morning he figured. Anyway, Wooster put a small scarecrow up, and sat on his porch in the summer to keep an eye on those starlings. Stupid starlings.
While Wooster
