As his eyes set upon it, all the wonder that had bedeviled Jay these many years seemed to triple upon itself, all other things thought fantastic paling now. Paling in comparison to what he saw on the paper in his hands. It was a copy. A copy from a newspaper. A copy of a news clipping, all of which was dreamily familiar.
West Porter Couple Killed In Collision
Buddy Svendsen—Staff Writer
West Porter, Wisconsin—Tragedy struck yesterday at the intersection of Flynn and Woolsey in the West Porter business district when a car driven by Walter Grady apparently ran a red light and was broadsided by a police car from neighboring La Salle, resulting in his death and that of his wife, Jean. Their young son Jay survived the crash, and the two La Salle officers were injured. Both are recuperating at Langdon Memorial Hospital and are expected to recover fully.
Authorities say that the La Salle unit had its lights and siren active at the time of the collision, and that it had the green light. They are at a loss to explain how Grady could have not been aware of either the traffic signal, or the La Salle unit’s warning devices, which were active as it pursued a car stolen by one Anton Green, who was wanted for questioning in a confidence scam reported to have bilked area senior citizens out of thousands of dollars. LaSalle and West Porter authorities confirm that Green evaded pursuit and capture after the accident, and is still at large.
He read through it once, then again, before looking up to Mr. Wright with the most perplexed look upon his face. “I don’t understand. This says nothing. Just who the police were chasing. I could have found that out. I probably did know that when I was a kid, I don’t remember. My Aunt probably told me. What does this have to do with what the bum said he could tell me?”
Mr. Wright tapped the top edge of the paper as Jay held it. “Hurricane Anton, Grady.”
Jay puzzled at that statement briefly, then an ashen mask spread over across his face.
“Him, Grady. It was him in that car.”
A hard swallow bulged down Jay’s throat, stealing all the moisture from his palate. “Him? The bum? Sign Guy?”
“Yes,” Mr. Wright confirmed, and the paper slipped from Jay’s grip and fluttered to the floor. “The police were chasing him, and he did not want to get caught, I suspect. I also suspect that your father never knew he was running that red light, or that there were any lights and sirens rushing toward that intersection. If you’d been able to see his face I would bet my life that he was smiling, Grady. Smiling big, and wide, and ignorant of what was happening until it was over.”
“He...he killed them,” Jay said, stating the obvious and fantastic truth. The answer to his ‘why’. The...reason? for all that had happened. “He killed my parents.”
Mr. Wright nodded. “And
you
killed him. You put a stop to him.”
“This was all about...vengeance?” Jay asked, troubled by that. Troubled deeply by that.
“You can call it that, or you can call it justice,” Mr. Wright suggested. “Or you can simply believe that at least one old cliché rings true—what goes around, comes around.”
That was very thin reasoning for an event, for a collection of events, and lives, and deaths, that spanned so long a time and so many places. A thing now more inexplicable than ever. A force impossible to fathom. Whose genesis could now be marked, whose beginning was known, but...
...but was all that had begun so long ago at that intersection in a small Wisconsin town now over? Really and truly over?
Jay looked to the damaged man who had brought him so many truths in so short a time and begged that question with his eyes before ever voicing the wonder.
“Yes,” Mr. Wright told him. “It is. It is over, Grady.”
The years of hurt, and loss, and searching, and running had built a reservoir of things in Jay that would not drain right then. Could not drain right then. He could not slap on a pleased and relieved smile like the happy mask some wore courtesy of the bum and forget all that had come to pass. In time, maybe, but the key now was that there was time. All the time of all the days until the sun set on his life one final time to let memory swallow the bitter past. All the time he would need.
“It is over,” Jay said to Mr. Wright, the words a pronouncement now, not a spoken doubt.
Mr. Wright nodded, and smiled, and put his hand out.
“Thank you,” the man said, and Jay took his hand. “Thank you for what you’ve done, and thank you for my life.”
They shook hands for a few seconds, held their grip for a few beyond that, and then they let go. Mr. Wright wheeled himself backward and tapped on the door. “You can go, Grady.”
Jay stood with some effort, holding onto the table, but very soon the same man who had come twice before returned with his crutches. Jay took them, and steadied himself, and though his leg hurt it did not seem to matter as much. There was space for that pain now.
Two other men stood out in the hall beyond Mr. Wright and the bearer of crutches. They were obviously waiting to assist Jay in leaving, but he crutched his way to the door and then paused. He looked down to the man in the wheelchair, the man whose life he had saved, and the man who had taken a chance on a story and, in the end, spared his. “Is Mari all right?”
“She is,” Mr. Wright told him, and then Jay left, the two men who had earlier dragged him into the room now helping him toward some sort of freedom that might be strange, and frightening, but that would also be good, because what else could freedom truly be?
The men led Jay to a door and let him out into the cool morning air, and then closed it behind him. He was not alone.
Mari was there, standing away from the building. A building beneath what he now saw was Whistle Creek Air Force Base’s long empty control tower. A place that Jay knew would be abandoned once more before the night fell full away. She was staring at him, still wearing her nightshirt, and over that a green coat that someone had given her. Her feet were bare, and so were her legs, but she seemed more than content to be just looking at him. To be near him once again.
Jay crutched himself to where she was waiting. He said nothing to her, and she nothing to him. They simply began to walk away from this place, down a road that stretched out as a stripe in the lightening distance.
After a while Mari put her hand upon his where it held tight on the crutch, and her other slipped into the coat’s warm pocket. It froze in there for a second, and she stopped on that spot, as did Jay, who watched as her hand came out with a smattering of coins. She held them out to him and he took them, held them for a moment, and then let them drop, starting down the road again before the small metal rounds had settled. They clinked dully behind as Mari walked with him, her hand on his again, and for an instant wonder tugged at Jay (were they heads? all heads? or...), but he did not look back. Would not look back.
“Where are we going?” Mari finally asked, looking at Jay as he stared purposefully ahead. Straight ahead down a dark road that ran toward blue morning slumbering on the horizon.
“I don’t know,” he answered, and smiled at the hint of new day coming. He didn’t know what lay ahead, in the new day, or the next day, or the day after that, and he found that imprecision and the promise of more so very comforting. It was life, the way life should be. The way it would be for him, finally, once more. “I really don’t know.”
Acknowledgments
This is for you. The reader. Without you, this is just electrons on a hard drive.
About The Author
Ryne Pearson is the author of several novels, including
Cloudburst
,
October’s Ghost
,
Capitol Punishment
,
Simple Simon
,
Top Ten
,
The Donzerly Light
,
All For One
, and
Confessions
. He is also author of the short story collection,
Dark and Darker
. His novel
Simple Simon
was made into the film
Mercury Rising
. As a screenwriter he has worked on numerous films. The film
Knowing
, based on his original script, was released in 2009 and opened #1 at the box office, going on to gross more than $180 million worldwide.
He lives in California with his wife, children, a Doberman Shepherd and a Beagle Vizsla.
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