Roman Wolfe 2: Classroom Terror Part One

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life: “A fight is going on inside of me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil; he is full of anger, envy, guilt, resentment, lies, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, superiority, false pride, and ego. The other is good; he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, and compassion. This same fight is going on inside you and inside of every other person, too.”

          The grandson thought about it, then asked, “ Grandfather, which wolf will win?”

          Grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”       American Indian Proverb

“Wolf is the Grand Teacher. Wolf is the sage, who after many winters upon the sacred path, and seeking the ways of wisdom, returns to share new knowledge with the tribe. Wolf is both the radical and the traditional in the same breath. When the wolf walks by you ─ you will remember.”       Robert Ghost Wolf

Wolf Man

The wolf appeared in his dream,

To his surprise he did not scream.

He thought for sure it was the end,

But he glared back, did not bend,

Wolf’s eyes red with bloody madness,

Instead Wolf said it was his sadness.

Blood stained Wolf’s fur so white,

Crimson on white gave quite a fright,

Until Wolf spoke, “Have no fear.”

The man approached, got very near.

Then Wolf growled into his ear.

Wolf’s request was clear, but queer.

“A man like you is hard to find.

May I live in your courageous mind?”

The man accepted Wolf as a peer.

There Wolf lies dormant, year after year,

Until great danger appears too near.

A ferocious growl that man will hear.

Then man is wolf and the wolf is man,

As Wolf Man, they staunchly stand.

Liam Anthony

Previous books by Bill Sheehan

MARAGOLD IN FOURTH

MARAGOLD IN FIFTH

MARAGOLD IN SIXTH

ROMAN WOLFE’S ADIRONDACK ORDEAL

DEDICATION

To Sandy, my wonderful wife and to Mara, my precious daughter.

I am incredibly lucky to have their love.

To Mark French, my nephew and all-around great guy.

To Tony French, my nephew and good friend.

To Mike French, my nephew and the funny man in the family.

To Lori Bullock, my niece and, also, my lovely Princess.

To Todd Bonnewell, my hard-working son-in-law.

To Gus Kovalik, a great friend and fellow “shootist.”

ROMAN WOLFE II: Classroom Terror

BY

BILL SHEEHAN

Copyright 1989, 2010

PROLOGUE

Dear Diary,

          What do you say to someone who asks you how many people you’ve killed?

          What if that person with the curious mind is your ten year old daughter?

          What if your daughter has seen you kill viciously, but in self-defense?

          Do you ignore her or lie to her when you’ve always tried to be honest with her?

          Is answering with a lie better than the truth? I thought it was, but, luckily, I didn’t have to lie. I kept my response short, bland, generalized. I simply told Grace that I had killed, in self-defense, when I was in the Vietnam War and let it go at that,─ no details, no heroic stories, no showing of medals and no bragging. I wasn’t proud of what I did in Vietnam, though other, higher ranking, military people were.

          Was all the killing worth it? Not to me. Not to the dead, nor to the amputees, nor to the physically and mentally wounded, not to the PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) victims, nor was it worth the civil strife in America.

          I told Grace that, in my opinion, Vietnam wasn’t worth saving from the communists; not at the cost of over fifty-eight thousand American lives.

          The world is littered liberally with unjust opinions─ perhaps mine is one of them─ and lies, even in the bible-thumpers. Truth and justice are often lost in the shuffle and complexity of everyday life, while lies, much too often, become tools of everyday life. It’s nice to think the best of people, but being realistically honest is more important to me. So accepting lies, fantasies and/or myths, that encourage self-deception, and demand a rigid, unquestioning mind-set, without proof, is a life I can’t live. There definitely are atheists in foxholes; they fight just as hard and die just as easily as anyone else. The good may die young, but the honest die bravely without religious lies burning their tongues.

          I cannot believe that an ancient storybook (like the Bible), in which religious mythology is interpreted differently all over the world, should be the standard for guiding one’s modern life. Logically, it’s like asking millions of people to still believe that the universe operates as it is said to have operated in a book that was written two thousand years ago, and to believe this voluntarily, unquestioningly, without regard to two thousand years of technical and scientific progress. It requires a mentality that’s capable of vast, self-imposed ignorance, a mind-set with the ability to deny the immense strides in progress and knowledge that science has made during two millennium and to revere the myriad religious fallacies and myths that have been exposed during those two thousand years of knowledge and progress.

          So religion, all religions with a supernatural God, to me, are exactly as Richard Dawkins has stated: “Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakeable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.”

          Billions of people believe in a personal God (Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc.). But I think that the existence of a God described by Christians, Jews and Muslims is a world-wide lie; perhaps not a deliberate lie, not even a white lie, but simply a grandiose lie that people both like and need to believe. It’s an example of a lie that people desperately want to believe, despite its irrationalism, despite its lack of proof, despite its nonsense.

          Ironically and technically, we are all atheists whether we want to accept it or not, because most modern people do not believe in the ancient Gods of Rome or Greece or the Gods of any other early civilizations. We are all atheists when it comes to those Gods. But, to their credit, atheists simply believe in one less God and that God is the God of the Christians, Jews and Muslims. So what gives these religions, that bathe themselves in myth and false pride, the right to decide how modern, knowledgeable people live their lives? Is it coercion? Fear? Intimidation? Heritage?

          Popular religions are an immense tangle of falsehoods, exaggerations, impossibilities, contradictions, inconceivable fantasies, absurdities, irrational thoughts, out-right lies, revisions, errors of consistency, ineffable thoughts and concepts and, in many cases, just plain nonsense. Religion loves the Aristotelian tradition of articulating opinions, fantasies and myths without requiring any objective support. That’s the only way they can survive.

          I wonder, how many religions there are in the world? Over one-hundred, maybe? And they all differ in numerous and significant ways, yet each considers itself to be the true advocate of God. That fact itself has the thunderous ring of human ignorance, confusion, error, desperation and centuries of deceitful manipulation, with the end result being millions of lives using guidelines of mythical, ritualized dogma entrenched solidly in most of the world’s societies and cultures.

          So, I ask myself, what is truth? Perhaps truths and lies are simply evolutionary. Perhaps knowing when to lie and when to be truthful is a characteristic of the human genome, something in the DNA sequence that assists humans to survive; survival of the fittest. Lying convincingly could save someone’s life or the lives of others, whereas telling the truth may get someone killed and vice-versa. Perhaps when it came to evolutionary survival, belief in falsehoods was advantageous. Perhaps so advantageous that religious falsehoods were needed, liked, kept and obeyed without question. Then belief was easy; whatever mom and dad believe is what all their children believe, ad infinitum.

          But truth, lies and religious myths don’t bother me as much as the fact that I’m uneasy with the knowledge that I can so easily and skillfully kill and that I’ve done it too many times. For me, it’s a disturbing feeling, unrelated to religion, that makes me question my own humanity, even when justified by war or self-defense. But that’s probably as it should be or killing would be much more prevalent.

          When I’ve killed, I’ve taken away all of a person’s sunny days, all his hopes and dreams. I take away all he has and all that he could have had. I take the most precious thing life has to offer, life itself, and I annihilate it for all eternity. How could I not think about that? How could I not feel guilty about that?

          I only know a few things for certain─ though I cannot prove them beyond all doubt. One of those things is that God, all Gods, are myths. Perhaps useful myths, but still myths, and another thing I know is that the truth will, many times, not set you free, but rather, it will imprison you physically and/or emotionally. Evil watches us, sometimes invades us and even commands us, especially those of us with major character weaknesses and whose portals are invitingly open to Evil’s invasion. We can each look into ourselves and find that darkness, though few people have that kind of courage. Evil has always been there; it’s a primordial, innate, human characteristic.

          I also know that evil is immortal, but not omnipotent. It can’t be wounded or killed. It occupies the shell or the husk of a person. It claws, rips, dissolves and destroys the brain’s sanity and the brain’s ability to use logic and reason as guidelines for a happy life.

          It has been well documented, by physiologists and psychiatrists, that most happy people have important, similar character traits, but that most unhappy people are unhappy in their own unique ways of forming feelings of discontent. But killing a person whose husk evil occupies does not kill the evil. Evil simply finds another shell to occupy and to eventually destroy. And evil has thousands of brothers, sisters, cousins and friends that perform the same function in their struggle against the forces of good.

          I think that Evil is a traveler, like a breeze blowing an ill-fog. It surrounds you, entering your pores and orifices. You can’t help but breathe it into your lungs where it enters the bloodstream and travels to all regions of the inner husk that it will temporarily inhabit and eventually annihilate. Evil can overpower a person, but it can also be defeated. It can be refused access to the brain, but only by the strong, the determined, the persistent, the indomitable, those persons who are willing to repel it in their own way.

          So, dear diary, here lies my last dark thought for this entry. I think, since adulthood, I’ve had a death wish. I’ve always thought that I’d die young. I think that may be why I didn’t fight the military’s mistake in drafting me when drafting guys with families wasn’t usually done during wartime. I have always sensed an uncomfortable darkness within me; the fingers of death reaching out for me; a black, cold and quiet tomb waiting for me to take permanent residence; a place where guilt, shame, tragedy and savagery don’t exist; a place where the absence of light is normal and not evil; a place without pain, without disturbing thoughts, without stress or responsibility, and without heroes or cowards; a place where the weary, like me, can finally rest, peacefully.

          These are some of my secrets, dear diary. Keep my secrets safe.

Diary entry by Roman Wolfe

1

“To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.”

Samuel Butler

The nighttime air lit up with bright, enemy tracer-fire; taut ropes of green lights cutting through the air like laser beams zipping past our bodies, lighting the moist, hot jungle as we dove to the ground and returned fire.

          Then our own staccato-like, red tracer-fire filled the air, but not before we heard the anguished, desperate sound of our dying men, wounded and screaming in agony through clenched teeth, feeling their lives dripping or pouring away as their blood pooled, then soaked onto the jungle floor.

          In the morning, if they survived, the sight and smell of the blood would be as appealing as being a horse racing sulky driver behind a horse with full-blown diarrhea.

          Each man in the platoon desperately sought refuge behind anything they could find. Some men, in a state of panic and terror tried to bury themselves by digging into the dirt like burrowing animals.

          One soldier was digging a small hole and placing his head in it, as if he thought that doing an ostrich routine would save the rest of his body from being seen and shot at. In any other context, that action would have been hilarious. But it was a time of fear, terror, panic, a life-and-death situation. Absurd, nonsense things like that happened when you’re terrorized and feel death’s squeezing grip around your heart and its hellish breath in your nose.

          Roman’s body reacted to the terror; the sweat flowed freely, tunnel vision occurred, a numbness cloaked him, while, at the same time, adrenaline saturated his blood. His muscles soaked it up as his body prepared for the inevitable “fight or flight” reaction. But he knew that panic was the worst thing to do. Panic means the loss of control, loss of power, both mentally and physically. It means almost certain death because it often causes a person to freeze, to stand dazed and helpless as if paralyzed inside a cloud of chaos.

          Roman’s M-16 rifle was bucking at his shoulder. He fired bursts of three bullets at a time so he could shoot a running man, by aiming ahead of him, whereas single shots usually hit behind a running man.

          The enemy could hardly be seen, and even if Roman could see them clearly, they appeared as nebulous, dark shadows flitting back and forth in the background like fleeting, black wraiths.

          Roman’s Colt 1911, .45 pistol was in a shoulder holster, under his left arm. Outside his uniform, his Marine combat knife was strapped, upside down, and attached to the left shoulder of his uniform─ where the breast pocket would normally be─ for easy, quick access. His throwing knife lay in its sheath, under his uniform, inside his back collar, aligned with his upper spine and extending down the back of his neck. These three items were mostly useless in a firefight; the Colt was used for close targets, the combat knife was used for up-close and personal, hand-to-hand combat or when he was night stalking and silently killing with it, and the throwing knife was the most useless of all in the jungle, because there were too many dense trees, bushes and vines to deflect the blade from its target. However, it made a useful fork and knife combination if the real utensils got lost.

          Sweat was pouring off his forehead, into his eyes, stinging and making him blink, blurring his vision, frustrating him. His moist hands slipped easily on the plastic-like, fiberglass rifle stock. He tightened his grip, then swore silently as he gritted his teeth.

          It was difficult to see. The jungle foliage made the jungle floor look as thick and black as India ink so that the standing men could not see their shoes.

          Roman knelt, minimizing the size of his body. He reloaded the M-16 and suddenly Christmas came to his mind. It was an absurd thought, especially now. He wondered why his mind would do that, then noticed the red and green tracer-fire, the colors of Christmas, so maybe─ “Damn! pay attention,” he screamed at himself as a green laser beam passed just to the right of him. He could feel its lethal breeze on his cheek. He moved away quickly; someone must have me in their sights, he thought. He needed to change locations. Roman was well aware that at night, with tracer fire, he could be located easily by simply following the laser-like beams right back to the rifle that shot it.

          Shit! Dammit! Where’s Billy? he thought, then said, “How the fuck could I forget about Billy?” Roman surged left to get out of the rifle fire that was zipping past his right shoulder like crazed bees. He accidentally smashed into Billy, who fell farther to the left.

          Roman had told Billy to stay close to him, that he’d try to keep him safe. Billy was the new guy.

          “Billy?” Roman whispered.

          Billy didn’t respond, nor was he firing his rifle.

          Must have frozen in panic and terror, Roman guessed.

          Green tracers were shooting off to his left. Roman knew that the VC saw him lunge left and were trying to catch him running, so they shot ahead of where they thought he would be, hoping he’d run into their bullets. But Roman had fallen to the ground with Billy.

          Roman’s mouth felt as if he’d licked sand. He didn’t have enough moisture to even swallow his own fear. He was concerned for Billy, which took precedence over his dry mouth.

          Roman forced himself to focus. Damnation! That was damn lucky for Billy and me, he thought. The tracer-fire stopped just ahead of Roman; the bullets hitting a tree with rapid thump, thump, thumping sounds. He saw the liquid-like shadows of flying bark with each thump.

          Roman hugged the ground. He saw Billy doing the same. “Good. Stay down,” Roman said to Billy.

          Roman still hadn’t heard Billy shooting, but was less worried now because they were both prone, a position that made them a very difficult target, due to the thick brush, broad-leaf plants, vines, and tree trunks.

          Roman knew that Billy was terrorized, probably in a static state of panic. It happens a lot, he thought. Guys freeze, becoming perfect, immobile targets, like statues, then die riddled with enough bullets to make them a human sieve.

          Billy was still a teenager; only eighteen, with peach fuzz for a beard. Roman was trying to get him safely through the initial fear, panic, and terror of his first firefight─ quite a bit different than shooting paper targets at the Marine boot camp on Parris Island.

          Billy was a short, thin, shy, farm boy who always showed nervousness. One way he showed it was by talking almost non-stop, as if his life depended on it. He talked rapidly and continuously as if there was no such thing as a period at the end of sentences. You could hardly detect even the pause of a comma in most of his sentences. If he had been Wyatt Earp, in a gun fight, he’d be shooting from the lip. Luckily, he had to pause to breathe. But he was a good kid, just too young and innocent to be here, thousands of miles from home and trying to stay alive with too few combat skills. Probably got drafted. He should have joined the Air Force, Roman thought.

          Roman again whispered to Billy. No answer. Roman kept his head down as he crawled ahead using his elbows until he bumped his head into Billy’s boots. Roman’s initial thought was that Billy was performing the ostrich routine until he realized that the toes of Billy’s boots were pointing skyward. A fleeting, but ominous feeling stabbed his heart like a thick needle, then flew away on bat wings. Roman shook, then pushed Billy’s boots. Roman whispered impatiently for Billy to get moving, but Billy only slightly moved one leg.

          With tracer-fire all around him, Roman got pissed-off and dragged himself up to Billy’s shoulder. Through grinding teeth he whispered, “Goddamnit Billy! We’ve got to get out of here. Too dangerous. Stay down, but get your ass moving! Crawl behind that large tree.” Roman pointed straight ahead, about ten feet. When Billy didn’t respond, Roman’s anger choked him as it became a lump that lodged in his throat. Roman slapped Billy, hoping to snap him out of his immobilizing panic and terror.

          Billy’s head turned slightly to look at Roman, who was so close to him that their noses almost touched. Roman saw the dreamy gaze in Billy’s eyes. Shit, Roman thought, Billy must have dove forward and hit his head on a rock or tree root. He must have been knocked out for awhile and that’s why he didn’t answer or respond.

          Billy smiled weakly as a thick stream of chewing tobacco juice slowly traveled between his lips and ran down his cheek.

          But, then a rocketing icicle cold fear shot up Roman’s spine. Icy tentacles gripped Roman’s heart, making it skip a beat. Oh, fuck no, Roman thought. No. Please, no, Roman thought. Oh, shit. Billy doesn’t chew tobacco. Then, as suddenly as a broken shoelace, Roman’s head fell into the tightening claws of a monster migraine. “What the fuck’s happening?” he uttered to himself, amidst the cacophony of rifle fire and screams.

          Roman knelt close to Billy and placed his hand on Billy’s chest to check his breathing. His chest was wet, felt slick like oil. When Roman removed his hand and peered at it, it too looked as if it had chewing tobacco juice on it. His head pounded as if it were an anvil being hit with sledge hammers. He stared at his wet hand. Not oil. Not tobacco juice. Blood. Blood that looked black as tar in the jungle darkness. His hand was slick with Billy’s warm blood. Roman froze, as everything became quiet. He didn’t hear the screaming, the rifle fire, nor did he see anything, but Billy. “Damn me to Hell!” he screamed, but he couldn’t hear himself say it.

          Billy blinked sluggishly as Roman stared down at him with horror and sympathy. Billy was dying─ three bullets in his chest and abdomen. Roman realized what had happened; it was one of the most devastating events in his life. He’d promised to protect this kid, this teenager, and he had failed miserably. A monsoon of guilt poured over him.

          Billy coughed. A mist of unseen blood sprayed Roman’s face as more thick blood poured down Billy’s cheek, onto his neck. Blood pooled in the hollow of his neck. Then the tragic epiphany hit him like a brick to his head. The thump, thump, thumping sounds that he’d heard were not bullets hitting a tree. They had hit Billy. And the flying bits of bark that he thought he saw? They were really blood spray thickly out of the wounds.

          Then Billy’s words, like daggers, stabbed Roman in the heart. Those few words hurt more than bullets would have, especially because, when Roman had time to think about it, Billy’s words were true. Billy struggled to talk, then said, “You push . . . pushed me . . . int . . . into . . . th . . . the . . . bull . . . ets.”

          Roman’s jaw dropped in horror as Billy’s eyes were losing their spark of life. Billy’s final words strangled Roman. Billy gurgled, “Ya . . . kilt . . . me,” Billy weakly grabbed Roman’s arm.

          Tears flash-flooded Roman’s eyes. They streamed down his dirt-crusted cheeks. He gasped, wheezed, choked on his own saliva. He struggled not to vomit, then hyperventilated while completely unaware of his surroundings. He grabbed Billy, leaned over and put his lips to Billy’s ear. “I’m so sorry. It was an accident. I’m sorry Billy. So sorry.” But his words fell on dead ears. He sat up and held Billy’s head in his lap, not caring about the danger. “Shoot me, you fuckin’ bastards! Put me out of my misery!” he screamed into the blackness of his mind and into the blackness of the jungle.

          Roman became bloated with rage. He stood up and screamed maniacally at the VC, their bullets whizzing all around him. He screamed again, “Fuck you, you gook bastards!”

          Instantly he pushed himself off the ground and charged the nearest enemy movement. But before he could get to full speed, Hawk Eye tackled him, forced him down. Roman fought viciously, animal-like, as rage filled him with energy and strength. Roman and Hawk Eye were vaguely aware of puffs of dirt spraying upward all around them as they struggled, while miniature, lead jets looked for a soft runway of flesh to land on.

          Hawk Eye quickly realized that he couldn’t hold onto Roman any longer. Hawk Eye screamed at Roman to stop and when Roman fought him even harder, Hawk Eye crashed the butt of his .45 against Roman’s skull.

          Numbness. Relief. Blackness and tranquility relaxed Roman’s body within the safety of unconsciousness. Then, under covering fire, Hawk Eye dragged Roman behind a vine infested tree trunk.

          Upon waking, Roman’s first thought was, I accidentally killed Billy. Then, the platoon ran into an enemy kill zone and here I am alive, not a single scratch, except the lump on my head. Roman’s stomach churned with self-disgust.

          Nighttime in the jungle was like a bug infested cemetery. Only an occasional animal noise pierced the inky darkness.

          The next morning the enemy was gone, just vanished silently. Roman took care of Billy’s body, not allowing anyone, not even Hawk Eye, to assist him with the body bag. Roman carried Billy a quarter of a mile, to the nearest clearing, where he placed Billy into the helicopter, with all the other dead bodies and the seriously wounded.

          Thereafter, Roman wouldn’t allow anyone to get close to him, except Hawk Eye.

                  *

          The war has been over for a years, but Roman often awakens fearful, sweaty, cold, confused and always angry. He had awakened this morning just that way. It was that terrible dream again. His face and hands were slick with sweat. Each time he had that dream, the sweat felt like, even smelled like, Billy’s blood. The nightmare was always so clear, as if it were actually happening all over again. He’d tried so hard to cast the nightmare out of his mind, but it was an unfailing boomerang.

          He got out of bed gently, feeling the bottom sheet sticking to his back, wet with sweat. He straightened his twisted boxer shorts, then moved quietly so he wouldn’t awaken Sam. In the bathroom, he sat on the toilet─ more to think than to pee─ elbows on knees, fingers covering his eyes, crying silently. His body shuddered, quaked with guilt. The guilt hung precariously over his head, heavy, pointed and sharp; the Sword of Damocles. Roman whispered curses at the nightmare, cursed himself and pleaded for Billy to forgive him, which was his frequent act of contrition after each of those nightmares.

          But this was not Roman’s only nightmare. There were other nightmares that would not let him forget the terrors of war; all the horrible things men are willing to do to each other for a chunk of land or power or anger or ideology or just plain, ruthless stupidity.

          Roman lived with his nightmares, dealt with them the best he could simply because he now knew that he wouldn’t be able to forget them. They were like the sucking, poisonous tentacles of an octopus, a different nightmare occasionally grasping him, squeezing him until the guilt poured out of him like water from a hose, draining his energy and filling him with remorse, then enveloping him in emotional depression.

          Roman continued to think about Billy and all that Billy might have been, all that he might have done. The good things he could have done; the family he could have raised; the friendships he would have made. Roman knew that Billy was neither brave nor a coward. He was just Billy, a teenage boy in the wrong place, without adequate training.

          Thinking of bravery and cowardice, Roman realized that bravery and cowardice both have the same root, which is fear. The only difference between heroes and cowards is simply whether or not a person can confront and conquer the fear. The brave conquer it and take preventative, life-saving action, while cowards panic and/or freeze and cannot act or act in a negative way. Roman knew that most of the guys thought Billy was a coward. Roman didn’t. Billy needed help, training, guidance, but Roman couldn’t give those to him fast enough. The irony of the hero and the coward, Roman thought, is that most people are both. We have in us the ability to be both─ just like we are not all good or all bad. It’s only the situation and circumstances of acting as a hero or a coward that differ in all of us. Like Mark Twain said, “Except a person be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave.” You have to conquer your own cowardice to act bravely.

          Roman mused, Why do I worry about personal guilt, shame, pain and sorrow? Why do I occasionally think about suicide? The world is such a cruel place. “Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.” (Mark Twain)

          Thoughts of death slipped into Roman’s mind like a snake into a mouse hole. Seems like most people think of death as something that must be delayed, fought, struggled against. You’re considered a coward if you surrender to it, and definitely a coward if you cause your own death. On the contrary, Roman thought, a person has the absolute right to commit suicide. Roman remembered reading a quote by Arthur Schopenhauer that said something like this: “People tell us that suicide is the worst form of cowardice, that suicide is always wrong, despite the fact that it is extremely obvious that there’s nothing in this world to which every person has an unquestionable ownership to his own life, to his own person, to his own body and, therefore, has the universal right to end it if he chooses to.”

          Roman continued to sit on the toilet, using it as a chair, and thought that Death itself was no big-deal. How he died mattered to him, but not nearly as much as fading away, being forgotten by those he loved so dearly. His mind drifted into darkness. He thought, Facing my inevitable annihilation isn’t nearly as bad as having loved-ones placing me into their mental attic to collect dust and cob webs, to wither and fade away as they think of me less and less each year. Then the once bright, clear, joyful memories fade into a misty cloud of vagueness, as if precious memories were sugar cubes dropped into a glass of water. It’s bad enough to die and leave the ones you love, but much worse, you die a thousand more deaths as the pleasant memory of you dies within them, until all the memories of you are dead, buried in the dust of the unvisited attic, the closed and forgotten memory cemetery. But remembering dead loved-ones can cause suffering and Roman didn’t want that either. The dilemma was: Is suffering from the memories of dead loved-ones better or worse that not suffering by forgetting them? Roman also thought, It’s no consolation that the same thing will eventually happen to those who go on living.

          Roman quietly exited the bathroom and tip-toed to the living room where he sat, staring into the darkness, feeling depressed and angry and as empty and dry as a nun’s vagina. He wondered if a majority of war veterans with actual life-and-death combat experience felt like he did: the bad dreams, the depression, the PTSD, the haunting guilt, as if his and their minds were like haunted houses with roving ghosts stirring up the dust of guilt in each room.

          Serious depression was the worst condition for Roman. Luckily, PTSD plagued him less frequently now. Roman knew manifold ways of concealing depression. During his high school years he’d find a quiet, isolated corner of the cellar, or take a walk into the woods, or bury his face in a thick pillow and scream with rage and frustration, or he would perform one-hundred push-ups, sit-ups and knee-bends. Once he punched a hole through thick drywall, hitting a stud behind it. The edge of the stud splintered, resulting in abraded knuckles that didn’t hurt, at first, because they were numb, but the one inch, needle-like sliver that penetrated half way through the skin around his index-finger knuckle was a pleasing distraction. The blood pooled, then ran along all his knuckles like a drunken, red worm. It was then that he discovered that exhaustion and pain were a panacea, a distracting, pleasing, satisfying, but temporary relief from depression. The high school bullies he readily fought had no idea how welcomed they had become to him. Some days, Roman had even sought them out . . . he needed to fight.

/…/.-/-./-../-.--/../.-../---/…-/./-.--/---/..-/

2

“I found one day in school, a boy of medium size, ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: ‘The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.’ In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.”

Bertrand Russell

They sat in the prison cafeteria staring out of the grimy, spotted windows. Self-satisfied smiles etched into their faces as they viewed the hard and heavy April rain. They’d been waiting almost two months for this harsh, early morning downpour. It had to fall at the right time of the morning, but not on a weekend. It had been a long time coming, but today was finally their lucky day. Today they could escape this lousy prison, with its ubiquitous iron bars, myriad locks, manifold cameras, high electric fences topped with razor wire; its buried ground sensors; its cage-like cells, the depressing, chipped and stained walls and food that looked and smelled like vomit. Their cold, sinister eyes darted at one another, then sparkled with the joy of conspiracy.

          Otto Fangzahn continued to smile at Charlie Miller as they sat at their over-crowded, cafeteria table. Otto ran his right hand over his flat-topped, crew-cut, feeling the vertical bristles of hair similar to the bristles on a hair brush. As he did it, his hand resembled a jet landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

          The other inmates’ eyes gave fleeting glances to the two of them. Many of the prisoners knew about the escape plan, but said nothing for fear of a protracted death. Fangzahn, the undisputed king of the prison weight lifters and vicious street-fighters was nobody to rat on, unless you were suicidal.

          Otto Fangzahn. Everyone called him Fang because he insisted on being called that, but also because his right canine tooth was more horizontal than vertical; his upper lip often caught on the tooth, making a comical sight that everyone learned not to laugh at. Many other members of his family tree demonstrated the same tooth deformity, the result of hereditary influences.

          Otto’s surname was very appropriate, coming from the Proto-Germanic root “tunthskaz,” an extended form of the linguistic root for “tooth.” Otto came from German stock and was infamous for his sadistic viciousness. He would just as soon bite a chunk out of you or gouge an eye out if you crossed him. He liked to demonstrate a deadly, poisonous smile just before he bit off an ear or a nose, then spit it at his victim. He’d smile broadly, showing crimson teeth, lips and chin covered with blood, like fiendishly, scarlet lipstick. The blood also made the scar on his cheek appear prominent, the scar remaining white while the surrounding skin was bloody. When Fang smiled, his cheek stretched and the scar took on a bone-white color with reddish-pink edges. The scar looked as if was caused by a puncture, then a tear, resembling a keloid. It gave him an even more beastly grimace which he was quite proud of. He displayed the scar as a badge of courage and brutality, but, ironically, it disturbed him whenever anyone questioned him about it, even if it was Charlie.

          One “supposedly” accidental killing in the weight room, combined with two prisoners with “accidentally” broken arms, were enough to insure the silence of anyone who was privy to information about the escape. Fang would personally rip the throat out of anyone who crossed him, and if he couldn’t get to them, he’d order someone else to do the killing for him. Only extreme fools thought about crossing Fang. Not even solitary confinement could keep a person safe from Fang or from his loyal and sadistic, mindless minions.

          Charlie turned toward Fang and whispered, “Yuh sure the get-away car’ll be there? Yuh got someone a hundred percent reliable, right?”

          “A course. Yuh think I’d forget? Don’t be a moron. It’s ‘nough that my brother be one. An’ speakin’ a my brother; he’s the one bringin’ the car. An’, no, he’s not very reliable. But I made him a hundred percent reliable really fast with a phone call.”

          “Yeah? How’d yuh do it?”

          “I tol’ him that if he didn’t help with what I need, then when I got outta prison, I’d kill ‘im or maybe I’d have it done sooner by a friend on the outside. Then I tol’ ‘im that before I killed ‘im, I’d cut his finger-tips off and make ‘im eat all ten of ‘em. Then I’d castrate him and shove his balls in his mouth and tape his mouth closed.” Fang laughed quietly, not wanting to attract any attention. “He come aroun’ ta my way a thinkin’ real quick like.”

          Fang was the perfect example of a human gone terribly wrong; the perfect example of Darwin’s Theory of evolution colliding with Murphy’s Law. It was an evolution gone violently astray; seriously and unalterably warped so much that he personified evil. Fang was constantly a serious irritation to most other human beings, like a wool condom or wool tampon would to the ones wearing them.

          “You’d do that ta yur own brother?”

          “Fuckin’-A, man! Goddamn right I would. Anyway, he say it’s all set up. He’ll be waiting for us. Don’t yuh worry.”

          Charlie smiled and said, “Great. Good ta know.”

          Fang smiled, showing brownish-yellow teeth, though he didn’t smoke. He was excited by the sound of the drenching rain and the freedom it meant to him. He took Charlie’s hand and placed it gently on his groin, rubbing it in sensual circles, under the cover of the table.

          Charlie got the message. It was his job to satisfy Fang because Fang protected him from physical harm. But it was also a job that Charlie enjoyed. Charlie was very good at his job. He’d done this hundreds of times, in and out of prison. To Charlie, the word “succumb” was really two words.

          What Charlie hadn’t enjoy, however, was when Fang gave him a painful prison tattoo on his butt cheeks. The left buttock tattoo said FANGS, and the right buttock tattoo said HOLE─ Fang didn’t know anything about possessive, proper nouns, so he didn’t place an apostrophe between the G and the S.

          Fang deliberately looked away from Charlie, following a preset sexual routine. He started talking to another inmate who sat across the table. After Charlie sneaked under the table, all the inmates on that side of the table slid closer together so the space that Charlie vacated didn’t give a clue to the guards. Also, when this human barricade was formed, no one could see under the table, except at the extreme ends.

          Charlie, now under the table, on his hands and knees, pulled Fang’s zipper open. Fang seldom wore underwear because of his sudden sexual urges. He liked the feel of his penis rubbing against his jeans. He even liked the name given to wearing no underwear; “going commando.” It gave him an even greater “macho” feeling, only this wasn’t the power of swollen muscles, it was the power of his swollen penis, his sex weapon.

          He thought that underwear got in the way of his sexual spontaneity, though he didn’t use those exact words. Fang continued talking with the prisoner across the table from him. It was just idle chit-chat that would keep up appearances of normality.

          Fang could hear and feel Charlie maneuvering under the table. Charlie was excited as his salivary glands gushed saliva into his mouth. At times, like this, Charlie had to spit excess saliva out of his mouth, his hyper-excitement making his mouth water copiously.

          The sound of Charlie spitting onto the floor caught the attention of some inmates sitting at an adjacent table. Even though they knew that they shouldn’t stare, they looked longingly anyway; the envy slowly spreading across their faces, like thick syrup across a pancake, as the crotch of their jeans started to bulge. Then they quickly looked away; adjusting the fronts of their jeans to relieve their discomfort.

          Charlie carefully took Fang’s erection out of his zipper. Charlie was always very careful with the zipper. He remembered the time when the zipper teeth got caught on Fang’s flesh. He remembered even more the pain and bruises that Fang inflicted on him afterward. That’s why Charlie placed two paper napkins over the zipper teeth of each open zipper half before he began stroking Fang with long, slim, velvet fingers.

          Fang was pleased with how gentle Charlie was, with his smooth-fingered, even strokes. Charlie possessed soft hands; soft from the lack of hard work and further aided by his creamy, fragrant hand lotions.

          Charlie thought that Fang’s skin was like taut velvet as his fingers slipped up and down Fang’s turgid penis. Charlie stopped temporarily, teasingly, to increase Fang’s excitement and his own. Charlie spit again. He gently gripped Fang’s near bursting and pulsating erection. When Charlie’s delicate touch felt the mini-spasms of Fang’s penis, he knew it was time to succumb to the pleasure of his job.

          Swiftly Fang’s moist, warm flesh came alive, like a baby boa-constrictor in Charlie’s mouth. Charlie smiled triumphantly as Fang’s body jerked with small, controlled spasms, his eyes rolled upward, then closed. Fang opened his mouth wanting to scream with pleasure, but instead he clenched his teeth, imprisoning his orgasmic scream behind the walls of his teeth.

          The muscles in Fang’s neck tensed; his biceps bulged; his thighs hardened with strain, and his eyelids fluttered. He breathed rapidly and had trouble keeping eye contact with the inmate across the table, as a languid, semi-smile took command of his lips.

          A couple of minutes later he was able to continue his conversation with the other inmate, though his speech was garbled by his restrained, spastic ecstasy and the post-orgasmic spasms that followed, like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

          Charlie’s face looked like a child’s during a wonderful dream. Despite the obvious restriction to smiling, at this point. Charlie’s smile drifted to his eyes which sparkled so brightly that you’d think he’d had an orgasm, too . . . and he had. While attending to Fang, Charlie would get a hard-on, too. That’s why he always wore the end of a sock over his own penis, the sock pinned to his underwear so it stayed in place. While he was giving sexual pleasure to Fang, he was also giving himself sexual pleasure and when Fang climaxed, Charlie would swallow, which brought him to a peak of excitement that usually resulted with Charlie’s own orgasm . . . into the sock. This preparation was devised so that his own orgasm wouldn’t show by wetting the front of his jeans.

          Charlie wiped up the spit from the floor with a paper towel. It was important not to leave any clues, even though the guards, except for new ones, knew exactly what was happening. They kept their eyes and mouths shut and didn’t say anything because, when it was happening, there was no trouble of any kind. The prisoners behaved themselves so as not to interrupt Fang’s pleasure. The fear of Fang in them was as strong as skunk musk.

          Fang cherished Charlie because Charlie joyfully appeased his special sexual appetites. Being a pedophile, Fang liked having sexual encounters with little girls and little boys, girls in particular, but in prison he had to make do with the “fresh meat” that was available and Charlie was pretty good at arousing him, even if Charlie was normally too old for his special appetites. But Charlie did exactly what Fang wanted and needed, sexually. Charlie even made himself look younger by acting like a younger boy, talking like one, rubbing flesh-tone make-up over his closely shaven peach fuzz and keeping his head hair short. He also shaved off his pubic hairs as well as the hair on his legs, arms and underarms. A special trick that Charlie used to arouse Fang was to suck lollipops while makes slurping noises. That really pleased Fang’s pederast desires.

          Prison life frightened Charlie. He had noticed how many of the other inmates ogled him. Luckily, Fang had offered to protect him, and all Charlie had to do was give Fang exclusive sexual favors. Charlie often smiled privately, thinking that, actually, Fang was providing him with the sexual favors and not vice-versa, but the physical protection was an added bonus, though he was careful to keep that information to himself. It was a perfect symbiotic relationship for Fang and Charlie.

          Fang pulled his now flaccid penis into his jeans, removed the napkins and zipped up his zipper, all of which was concealed by the table-top. He threw the paper towels on the ground for Charlie to pick up and place in his pocket.

          Who needed bitchy women and crying girls? Fang thought, when I can have orgasms like this until I get out and find me some kid candy.

          Fang hated women─ a misogynist, with a capital “M”─ and couldn’t keep an erection with them, unless the sex act included humiliation and pain for them, which is exactly what he did to them if they angered him.

          Charlie felt the same way. Most women angered him, just by being women. His anger towards women was intense and rooted in his hatred for his mother.

          Charlie peeked at the guards. None were close to his table and, even if they were, they looked the other way when they suspected what was going on. Even the guards didn’t want any trouble with Fang.

          Charlie didn’t want the experience to end so he pushed other thoughts out of his mind and thought about being under the table, on his hands and knees, in front of Fang’s legs. He saw himself gently spread Fang’s knees apart. The imagined, white shaft that he saw filled his eyes with delight and literally made him drool; the saliva dripping down his chin. He let it drip into his hand.

          Fang’s erection looked as if it could raise the table. Charlie saw the power in it and in the man. He loved Fang’s power and felt as if he was sharing that power whenever he swallowed Fang’s ejaculate.

          He envisioned Fang’s erection being pale and unblemished. Charlie’s own erection grew quickly as he wrapped his moistened lips around the swollen head of Fang penis, feeling Fang’s rapid pulse inside his mouth and grinning as best he could with his mouth so full of power.

          Charlie knew that Fang leaned forward, putting his forearms on the table for support, prior to orgasm. Charlie could see it; a vivid vision. Charlie remembered sensing this and ejaculating into his sock, knowing that he could make this powerful and feared man weak with pleasure. He paid no attention to the sticky mess that his own orgasm made; the sock would absorb it. He was used to it. He liked the warm, sticky feeling. It was like an erotic glue that held him and Fang together.

          Charlie pushed Fang farther into his mouth, working his moist lips and tongue around Fang’s penis until he heard Fang grunt quietly and felt the final surging pulses. Then he licked faster as Fang’s hot, creamy, seminal fluid filled the back of his mouth. He had to swallow in order to keep Fang’s precious juices, his power, inside of him.

           Charlie saw his own skinny frame easily slide out from under the table and sit next to a robustly, grinning Fang. They stared at each other almost lovingly, Otto squeezing Charlie’s forearm affectionately.

          Five minutes later, Charlie came back to reality when he felt Fang’s elbow poke him.

          Fang looked at his watch and stood. He whispered, “Come Charlie. Time ta go ta the unloading bay. Time fer some freedom.” He sounded like a dutiful owner about to take his precious dog for a walk.

          Charlie rose quickly, following Fang like a happy puppy might follow its master.

/--/.-/.-./.-/../.-/--/.--./.-./---/..-/-../---/..-./-.--/---/..-/

3

“Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.”

Edward W. Howe

Every Monday the supply truck arrived at approximately 9:00 A.M. Usually the inmates disliked having the duty of unloading the supply truck because it interfered with breakfast. But Fang had surprised everyone by volunteering his and Charlie’s services to unload the truck and for two months they never missed it once. The guards expected them. Even the driver expected to see their familiar faces. The job had become routine.

          The driver and his helper appreciated Fang’s help, though they were wary and used extreme caution . . . at first. Fang, being five feet ten inches tall and two hundred forty pounds of bulging muscles─ his neck was as muscled as a bull, his flexing biceps looked like two Rottweiler’s fucking in a large sack, his thighs were as thick as the base of a mature oak tree, and his arms were like the largest branches of the oak─ could lift and carry just about anything that would ever need to be taken off of or put onto the truck. He could pick things up with ease that would take three normal sized men. Once, the driver joked that if he had a flat tire, he thought that Fang could lift the truck up and the tire could be changed without a jack. He said it jokingly, but there was an undercurrent to his voice that expressed sincerity.

          Such thoughts of raw strength added to Fang’s terrorizing reputation. But there was more to it. Fang believed that when he scared someone, he was controlling them. Fang prized control because control meant power. Last year Fang had knocked a guy to the floor, then ordered Charlie to bring him a spoon and butter knife. Fang threatened to cut the guys nose off with the butter knife and scoop his eyeballs out with the spoon unless the guy obeyed him. The guy was so terrified that he peed his pants. Thereafter, the guy obeyed Fang’s every order and involuntarily trembled even at the sight of Fang. That’s the power that Fang savored: having a man held like a marionette, the strings in his hands.

          Usually there were heavy boxes full of canned foods and prison clothing, ordinary supplies. Sometimes machinery needed to be unloaded. Fang took care of the heavy boxes, his upper arms bulging as stiff as a honeymoon hard-on. Charlie carried the lighter boxes.

          Butch, the truck driver, already had the truck backed-up to the unloading dock. Butch was average height, but stout and his plump stomach made him look pregnant.

          Butch was dressed in the company’s casual, but heavy-duty work clothes: a faded blue, long sleeve, industrial shirt with the company logo COSTLESS, INC above the left breast pocket, heavy-duty work pants─ featuring stains and rips. His tan boots looked like Chinese-made copies of Timberline, with steel-toes support. His Yankees baseball cap was dark blue; the white NY stitching was grimy. He also wore a sleeveless, waterproof, black vest.

          Butch was nearly as heavy as Fang, but he carried too much of that weight in fat. He had the quivering physique of a large water balloon. Though his arms looked big, upon closer examination they were mostly puffy flesh, like the soft, protruding stomach that hung over his belt, hiding the buckle and top of his zipper. His baldness and weathered skin made him look older than he actually was. His rotund face was highlighted with sagging jowls. The effort it took him to walk showed that his body struggled with the extra flab; his strides were slow, lumbering and heavy-footed. His nickname was “Bull,” but it had nothing to do with that animal or with strength. With his flat face and his puffy, flabby jowls, his appearance was like that of an aging bulldog, thus the name “Bull.”

          Butch, like many people, thought that denying reality, fooling himself, would keep him happy. Butch subconsciously knew that “reality” has an evil cousin called “disillusionment.” So Butch avoided disillusionment by living the fantasy of thinking of himself as being big and strong.

          Jim was Butch’s younger, slender assistant. If Butch resembled a bulldog, then Jim resembled a spry, young poodle, his steps being quick, short and bouncy. Wiry, curly black hair covered his head and arms. Out of the top of his shirt, under his Adam’s Apple, protruded a patch of thick hair─ his back was similarly carpeted.

          Jim also had the company uniform on, but since he was relatively new, his clothes looked newer, cleaner, as if someone actually washed them regularly. Jim, however, wore a tan, sleeveless work vest. His tan work boots─ hardly any scuffs or discoloration─ were also an indication that he was a new guy.

          Jim’s ears were too large and out of proportion with his head. His nose, mouth and chin protruded, giving the impression of a dog’s muzzle. The wiry hair and protruding muzzle reminded his co-workers of a poodle so, to his displeasure, they started calling him “Poo.” To make matters worse, those same co-workers referred to Butch and Jim together as “Bull Poo.”

          Jim shoved open the vertical, segmented back doors of the truck. Butch and Jim both waited in their long rain coats and hoods, waited for the “lion” and his “cub.”

          Neither Butch nor Jim liked their jobs. They were lazy so they did as little as possible to make it to the next paycheck. That’s why they were so pleased having Fang and Charlie unload the truck on Monday mornings.

          Fang and Charlie were a few minutes late getting to the unloading dock due to a hurried phone call that Fang made just a few seconds prior to arriving at the dock. But they arrived with their usual smiles and seemingly cooperative attitudes. The lone guard relaxed any suspicions that he may have had about their slight lateness. The guard smiled and they all started working.

          Butch and Jim shoved the boxes to the door of the truck, using a dolly for the heavy boxes. Fang and Charlie carried the boxes─ Fang shunned the dolly. He viewed it as a sissy’s toy─ to the warehouse. The guard stood on the unloading-dock platform, in the pouring rain, and supervised; his mind mostly on getting out of the rain which was trickling down his back collar like cold, slithering snakes.

          The steady, drenching April rain beat on the aluminum roof of the truck sounding like millions of small pebbles unceasingly plummeting from the clouds without a hint of stopping. Someone could easily get drenched in a few seconds of exposure. The rain was so heavy that it acted like a curtain, making the men strain their eyes just to see things that were close and making it impossible to see anything that was only a few feet away. The deluge made it seem as though the men had to peer through a waterfall to see even close objects. The downpour brought a chill with it, too, the kind of chill that went right to the bone marrow. But it didn’t bother Fang, nor did the wetness of the rain itself, though Charlie was irritated about getting wet. Fang acted stoically, concerning the rain. He could walk outside in the dead of winter without a coat and wearing a short sleeve shirt and the coldness wouldn’t bother him.

          Forty minutes passed as the four men worked continuously. Normally Butch and Jim would have to take turns shoving boxes and crates to the back end of the truck, toward the doors, while the other person had to shove the dolly under it. They would switch jobs mid-way. Sometimes they both had to be in the truck to push a very large container to the back doors and sometimes it took both of them to get it onto the dolly. Usually they got tired quickly and had to take rest breaks. So, a job that took Fang and Charlie an hour to accomplish, took Butch and Jim a little over two hours to complete. That left Butch and Jim two hours of freedom that their boss didn’t know about. They were free to spend it any way they wanted, usually at a fast-food place. That made Monday mornings feel wonderful to both of them.

          Fang and Charlie brought the last load of boxes into the warehouse. But only Charlie returned, slapping his shoes down with every step and splashing water in all directions. He was fatigued and breathing heavily. He wiped the rain off his forehead and addressed the guard. “Sir, Fang said that you’d better come in and check the contents of a box that just broke open by accident.”

          Charlie said it in a hushed tone so Butch and Jim wouldn’t hear him. The guard was pleased, but didn’t show it. Yes, indeed, he said to himself, I’ll take any excuse to get out of this goddamn rain. The guard followed Charlie into the warehouse. He was unarmed, as prison guards usually are when they work directly with the inmates. Before his eyes could adjust to the darkness of the warehouse, Fang smashed the guard’s face with his boulder-like fist, knocking the man unconscious before his body could crumble to the floor. The guard’s jaw hung at an odd angle, broken. Blood dripped from his mouth and right ear. Fang dragged the unconscious guard behind some boxes to conceal him. Then, looking at Charlie through gimlet eyes and clenched teeth, he said, “I ken gag an’ tie ‘im, then yuh get them other two bastards in ‘ere.”

          Charlie noticed the expansion of Fang’s thick neck. The trapezoid muscles were like large tree roots attaching his neck to his shoulders. To Charlie, it looked freakish.

          Charlie smiled, waited for Fang to gag and tie the guard, then walked out of the warehouse towards the truck. Violence done to other people, excited him, too. He could feel the tumescence in his groin. He reached down and pushed his erection to the side to decrease the bulge in his pants and to relieve his discomfort. When Charlie reached Butch and Jim he smiled warmly, saying, “Sorry guys. The guard wants yuh both to come back into the warehouse to see the strange stuff that came outta one of the boxes that fell and broke open. Might not be our stuff.” Charlie continued grinning as if both men were his best friends. Charlie displayed his most disarming smile; almost angelic, though it’s difficult to imagine an angel with a hard-on.

          “What the fuck’re yuh talking about,” Butch said. “It’s jus’ cans of food and clothes in them boxes,” he added in a voice the demonstrated his irritation

          Charlie, the consummate actor, raised his eyebrows, pinched his lips together, then shrugged his shoulders, all movements reflecting ignorance and innocence. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Up ta you. Come or don’t come,” he said, then turned and slowly walked back toward the warehouse . . . waiting.

          Butch paused for a second, looked at his wet boots and muttered, “Fuck.” Then he looked at Charlie walking away and said, “Wait a second. Hell, let’s go see,” he said to Jim. Butch called to Charlie to wait. They walked quickly towards the warehouse door, catching up to Charlie, who stopped to wait for them; their boots’ soles splashing water on each other’s pants.

          Inside the warehouse, about thirty feet away, stood Fang near what appeared to be a ripped open box. Butch walked straight toward Fang who was making arm motions that meant, “Come here.” Jim was in back of Butch, as if he were Butch’s shadow.

          Charlie grabbed a piece of pipe that he had previously set by the door and walked up closely behind Jim, just as Butch stopped in front of Fang and looked downward. As Charlie smashed the pipe onto Jim’s head, Fang thrust a pulverizing right fist into Butch’s solar plexus, knocking the air out of his lungs and leaving him weak-kneed and gasping for air, his face grimacing in pain. Then Fang kneed Butch’s bent-over head, breaking Butch’s nose. Next, Fang landed a vicious blow to Butch’s temple and within seconds of their arrival, Butch and Jim lay on the floor, unconscious, blood seeping from their wounds.

          Charlie, though frail and pale, had a vicious mean streak that he usually kept well concealed. Fang didn’t notice Charlie’s eyes, nor the slit of his lips as Charlie stood over Jim with the pipe in his hand. Charlie looked deceptively like a devilish china doll, pale, stiff, fragile, yet cruel. There was unconcealed viciousness in his look and distortion of the skin around his eyes and mouth.

          Sparks shot across Charlie’s pupils like flaming meteors across the sky. Sadistic rage tugged his lips into a twisted smile, like a jagged edge broken off a fine piece of china. Charlie could feel his throbbing, turgid maleness. So excited was he, that he suddenly had the spasms of a standing orgasm. Violence thrilled him.

          Fang and Charlie tied and gagged Butch and Jim quickly. A few minutes later Fang had Butch’s clothes, raincoat and hat on, while Charlie had Jim’s clothes, raincoat and hat on. The hats were pulled down low over their eyes as they walked out of the warehouse toward the truck.

          To the tower guard it appeared as if Butch and Jim had completed another delivery and were headed for the truck to exit the prison.

          Next, the tower guard checked the roof of the truck to make sure no one was hiding there, then said, “Roof is clear,” into a walkie-talkie to the guards at the gate. One of the gate guards responded, “Roger that.” The tower guard turned away and scanned other more remote areas of the prison yard. No one had ever escaped from the prison, though it was relatively new. He figured that if no one had ever escaped, then no one could escape.

          A prison guard’s job is repetitive, routine and dull. It created dull thoughts and minimal activity. Dull thoughts and minimal activity led to boredom and boredom led to carelessness, which, in turn, caused errors due to bored, slumbering complacency and drowsiness in the guards. The tower guard didn’t notice that both exiting men had prison shoes on, not the ankle high, solid looking, steel toed boots of the delivery men. He also didn’t question the fact that a guard that had entered the warehouse hadn’t exited because it would be normal for that guard to be supervising Fang and Charlie inside the warehouse.

          Fang and Charlie couldn’t see the tower guard . From the outside, the bullet-proof windows looked like a series of giant, one-way mirrors which reflected the immediate environment. The windows were wet now, but they could still see reflections of trees with newly budding leaves, some sections of the fence topped with razor-wire, some buildings and the pewter gray, cloud-filled sky.

          Fang and Charlie knew that the tower guard was watching them as they walked toward the truck, so they were very careful not to look up and show their faces. They continued to look slightly downward, with their hats pulled low over their eyes, and collars turned up as if to protect themselves from the driving rain. To the guard, it looked like a natural. Fang and Charlie had orally rehearsed this routine many times─ during those times Charlie would often get distracted because he was joyfully addicted to practicing orally.

          They climbed into the truck. Fang drove, just as Butch had been driving when the truck entered the prison yard. With their collars turned up, their raincoats and hats on, Fang and Charlie looked surprisingly like Butch and Jim. With luck, if the plan went correctly, they wouldn’t have to ram the front gate. And if they got out undetected, they’d have plenty of time to travel two miles down the road to where the get-away car was waiting.     Fang’s hurried telephone call had gone to his brother, Freddy, who was to bring the get-away car to a pre-arranged spot─ Freddy thanked God that he finally got the call, after waiting two months for it. The car contained three Russian designed AK-47 semi-automatic military rifles, like the Viet Cong and NVA had used during the Vietnam War. There were also three .357 handguns, a couple of knives and plenty of ammunition for the handguns and rifles, plus a few extra goodies.

          Fang drove the truck toward the gate. He looked straight ahead as he slowly, but carefully, drove through a curtain of rain. He looked out the windshield and his spirit lifted when he noticed that the windshield wipers could barely keep up with the rain. He knew that the driving rain would aid their escape more than any other single factor. The heavy rainstorm was exactly what they’d been waiting for.

          Fang spoke quickly, but clearly to Charlie. “The guard will come ta yur winda. Keep calm, stay cool. Keep yur head bent down so’s the hat will cover most a yur face. Sit still. Don’t fidget. If yur asked a question just roll the winda down a crack an’ mumble yur answer. Just answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ if yuh can, an’ don’t panic. The windas are all fogged-up an’ wet, an’ that will help hide yur face and muffle yur voice. Remember, keep calm an’ we  ken make it outta here.”

          Charlie nodded his head up and down as the truck approached the guard’s booth at the front gate. Sweat rolled down his face and stung his eyes. He felt a knot in his throat that he thought would surely choke him if he tried to talk. He glanced at Fang, who sat calmly with both hands on the steering wheel. Charlie noticed that Fang sat there like a block of ice, stoic, strong and as frigid as a glacier. It appeared that, as Fang grasped the steering wheel, it, too, was turning into a ring of frosty ice.

          Charlie calmed himself, went into acting mode and became the suave deceiver that he needed to be. Plus, he thought, the sweat will look like rain-drops. So no big deal.

          Fang looked straight ahead as he slowly, carefully drove the truck forward; the headlights making the rain look like tiny, beaded glass pellets.

          Fang looked out the windshield, then the side windows and smiled when he noticed that the windows were all streaked, distorting the view inside the truck. He was glad that he had been patient, waiting for this heavy rain. Fang stopped at the gate.

          The two gate guards reluctantly came out of their booth, their heads lowered to shield their faces. One guard approached Charlie’s side of the truck with a contraption that looked like a roller skate with a mirror. The mirror was tilted at a forty-five degree angle. Attached to the skate part, at one end, was a six feet aluminum handle, shaped like a broomstick handle. The other guard went to the back of the truck to inspect the inside.

          Fang cracked his window, then signaled to Charlie to roll his window down a crack so he could hear if the guard said anything. Charlie could feel the stirrings of panic, but quickly crushed them and settled back into his actor’s persona. Being a convincing actor had saved him during many awkward and sometimes dangerous situations.

          Fang’s instincts for opening the windows a crack were correct.

          Charlie’s guard said, “How yuh doing?” as he slipped his mirrored contraption under different parts of the truck’s undercarriage.

          The guard at the back of the truck peeked around the corner and yelled to Fang, over the roar of the engine and the pinging of the rain hitting the truck, “Piss poor weather. Could use some sunshine, right?” said the guard as he pushed the accordion door upward, then climbed into the back.

          Fang turned his head toward the crack in the window, as he felt the truck bounce gently while the guard did his checking, which wouldn’t take long since the truck was half empty now.

          Fang knew that if he didn’t answer or if his answer wasn’t loud enough, the guard might actually come and open the truck door to talk with him. That would completely blow their chances of escaping. Fang wasn’t worried about yelling his response, though. He raised his voice a little above the sound of the rain, saying, “Yes,” while Charlie answered his guard with a simple, “Yeah.” The sound of the rain and the roar of the engine covered-up the difference between the sound of their voices and the voices of Butch and Jim.

          Fang’s guard jumped off the back of the truck, but didn’t try to start a friendly chat as he normally would have in order to break the boredom. He wanted to get indoors as quickly as he could, so he grabbed at the pull-down-rope to pull the vertically moving door all the way down. But the rope was wet and soggy which caused his hand to slip off the rope and hit a piece of metal. “Damn it!” he cursed, then grabbed for the rope again. This time he was successful. The back guard then walked around to Charlie’s side of the truck. The guard with the mirrored contraption drifted toward the booth while the back guard slapped Charlie’s door and said, “You’re good to go. See you next Monday,” to which Charlie briefly replied, “OK.” Both Fang and Charlie rolled up their windows, then faced each other and smiled.

          Fang whispered, “Yuh did good. We almost outta here.”

          The suspense was over and Charlie relaxed his facial muscles.

          Charlie noticed that the side view mirror had been bumped, probably by the guard. Charlie could see his own face, though the rain distorted the image. He stared at himself and was disgusted when he thought of his mother who had said that he was an ugly kid and must have gotten it from his dad. Charlie stared at his face. It was pimply and showed pock marks; one of the things that his own mother taunted him about. His mother, instead of saying he was adorable, would tease him, saying that he was “odor-able,” then she’d laugh at him. He would feel humiliated, then he would think of ways to kill her.

          The guards ran for the comfort of the booth, then called the guard tower and the unseen tower guard pressed the button that electronically opened the front gate.      Everything seemed routine, and boring, just as always, just the way it was supposed to be, the bored tower-guard thought. Boring meant there were no problems. Sometimes boring is very good, he thought.

          Being a tower or gate guard wasn’t the kind of job you took if you hated simplicity, inactivity, and boredom. It took a certain character to do most guards’ jobs well and not become jaded, hostile, or afraid of the inmates. A person had to be lazy, but hide it convincingly; unmotivated, but only when alone or with someone that was trusted, and simple-minded, with no higher goals in mind and desiring no challenges to improve himself. He also had to be duplicitous, but good at these traits to prevent unsatisfactory, yearly reviews. No taxing physical or mental labor was expected─ simply follow orders─ and being, or getting fat did not count against him, since the jobs were mostly sedentary, so gaining weight was actually expected, though never mentioned.

          Fang drove the truck through the gate opening while he and Charlie smiled broadly, like children on Christmas morning.

          Fang turned on the defroster to clear the steamy windows. He grinned as he drove by the horizontally spiraling, razor wire which was attached to the top of the high fence that encircled the prison. And just before he went through the gate, he stopped to let a prison pickup truck go by. He burst out laughing when he saw the shotgun mounted inside the back window. It was one of the mobile guards who drove around the prison fencing twenty-four hours a day, just in case someone got past the motion sensors that were buried in the ground by the fence, or got by the razor wire that was connected to the fence. Fang laughed quietly knowing that he and Charlie were driving right out the gate, exactly where no one would have ever expected a prisoner to escape. All that fancy, complex, expensive, high-tech equipment to stop escapes and they were escaping right through the front gate, right under their noses.

          At the end of the prison driveway, Fang drove onto the highway toward Rochester, New York. He turned to Charlie and said, “Don’t worry, boy. I take good care a ya, like always. As soon’s we get ta the car, we be safe an’ free.”

          He took off his hat, grabbed Charlie’s hat and threw them on the seat. Then, while Charlie reached over from the passenger side and steered with one hand, Fang took off his raincoat and rolled down the window. He took the steering wheel back from Charlie, sat back and enjoyed the cool air as it blew up his bare arms and onto his face. He growled with joy as Charlie also removed his raincoat and rolled down his window.

          Both men sat back and relaxed. Neither of them minded the rain splattering their arms. They were free. Free to resume their lives. Free to find the children they needed to satisfy their pederast desires. Fang had pornography connections in the Rochester area and Charlie was anxious to learn who they were.

          Charlie was thinking about his freedom. He was a person that lived day to day and was mostly oblivious to the future. As he thought, he felt the breeze on his cheek, then gazed out the window and smiled with great satisfaction. He was looking forward to a change in weather that would bring a wonderful day, a day of sunshine and warmth, with the sky looking like a cumulus field of cotton.

          As he drove, Fang’s thoughts drifted off to his trial, when he had been convicted of several counts of rape, sodomy, sexual abuse, and endangering the welfare of children. He smiled as he thought about the other charges that he’d been convicted of over the years: statutory rape, deviate sexual intercourse with a minor, promoting prostitution, corrupting the morals of minors, indecent assault, simple assault, and second and third degree counts of felony sodomy. Pretty impressive record, he proudly thought.

          Then he laughed at the irony of his current conviction. He had murdered people for getting in his way. He had taken part in several robberies and car thefts and was a member of some nefarious gangs. He sometimes served as a money collector, an enforcer, for highly connected loan sharks. He would break fingers, ribs, legs and arms if the price was right. He helped in drug deals though he would never use drugs himself─ he was concerned with the health of his body. And, yet, after all these criminal activities, he had only been convicted of child abuse crimes and sent to a medium security prison. Then self-doubt set in. He wondered if he had been foolish escaping from the Grove Correctional Facility. But then he decided that he had done the right thing. With his extensive criminal background and his activities within the prison walls, he’d never get a quick parole. They’d keep him waiting and waiting, maybe for years before they would parole him. He might have even been sent to Attica because he was such a mislabeled hard case. And a break from Attica would have been a whole lot tougher; perhaps impossible. He wanted his freedom, needed his freedom and what he wanted or needed, he took. That was his life’s philosophy: You want something, you take it.

          He felt the same way about kids: He wanted them, so he took them. It was easy to do that in any large city. He could find a porn broker or do it himself. Kids were all over the streets, many of them selling themselves, offering their sexual services. Fang would cruise the streets and pick up a young looking girl, sometimes a boy, promise them money, food, and a good time, then drive away. He wouldn’t have to force them into anal or oral intercourse. They knew what their jobs were. They were street-wise at an early age. But after the anal intercourse, which purposely would not lead to orgasm, Fang sometimes had to use a little muscle to have them switch to oral sex. He liked to humiliate them; it heightened his sexual arousal, causing his pleasure to soar when he had to force them to complete the act which he also wouldn’t allow to reach orgasm until he was good and ready. When he was ready, he would have them strip, continue the oral sex, and spank them with his huge hand. He would tell them that he wouldn’t stop spanking until they made him have an orgasm, which they were forced to swallow. He further terrorized them by telling them he’d kill them if they bit him. The spanking was very painful for the kids, very pleasurable for Fang. By the time he had his orgasm the kids’ buttocks were covered with red welts and blisters so that when Fang released them back on the streets they could barely walk. He paid them, of course. It was part of the pleasure of humiliating them. He wanted them to feel that they got what they deserved. He would smile as he watched them stiffly walk away on unsteady legs. Then he would look forward to the next day when he could pick up another one and do something different.

          Fang’s ego was gigantic and warped. He wondered, even wished that he could make the top ten in the FBI Pedophile Task Force. Then he could brag, use it like a trophy, wave it like a flag. His warped ego knew no bounds.

          Fang continued his thoughts as Charlie’s thoughts reverted to his days of “wilding.” He was from the mean streets of New York City. It’s one of the things that he and Fang had in common. Only he wasn’t the loner that Fang was. Charlie had to depend on his gang. The gang protected each other; security in numbers. The gang had many skinny, wimpy looking kids in their early-to-late teens. They were quickly taught to be tough. They would roam the streets and wait for an opportunity to go wild. They had all sorts of weapons, since muscle wasn’t their forte. The weapons were small and concealable. Barbed wire wrapped around a pair of thick welders’ gloves was a unique weapon that could ruin a face, yet could easily be hidden inside an innocent looking backpack. Then there was a variation on the same theme, where the fists of thick welders’ gloves was smeared with superglue, then pushed into a container of finely crushed glass which would stick securely to the glove’s fist area. There were the usual assortment of knives, sharpened screw drivers, clubs (usually baseball bats), and chains (bicycle chains, usually, because they were light and easy to conceal; they gave a mean, scarring blow).

          Charlie liked to carry a hunting knife because knives scared people. He had slashed quite a few unsuspecting citizens with his knife. As a matter of fact, he was caught robbing someone at knife-point and that’s why he was in prison.

          But he also liked to carry a four foot length of common rubber garden hose. It could be concealed easily under the back of his coat in cold weather or in a backpack in summer or simply hanging down the inside of one of his pants legs. But he liked the hose for more than gang fighting. It was a sadistic, but pleasing tool for him and the gang. The gang would capture someone, usually a young woman (but a girl or boy would do, if no one else was available), gag them in an alley, and strip their clothes off. All the members of the gang would then pull their zippers down and pull their dicks out into clear view of the victim. The victim was ordered to give each gang member a blowjob that culminated in an orgasm before they would be set free. Charlie liked the terrified look in the girls’ and young women’s eyes.

          Usually the victim balked. That’s when Charlie would beat them with the rubber hose. Charlie learned this trick a few years ago from an older gang member who was later stabbed to death in a gang fight. The hose beating would inflict great pain; actually, terrible pain that reached the point of agony. Eventually no one could really resist the pain and the gang all got their blowjobs sooner or later, each of them laughing and cheering and waiting their turn. Charlie enjoyed using the hose on females more than getting the blowjob. That’s why, sometimes, he had orgasm before the blowjob. Either way, he had an orgasm. It was a game he couldn’t lose. He loved it.

          But the great thing, besides the delightful orgasms, was that a hose beating would usually leave no broken bones or skin cuts, so if the victim went to the cops, there would be little or no evidence of severe physical harm, so the cops would file the complaint and consider the person to be just another whining, crack-pot.

          Charlie always came up with a goods, so the other gang members liked him. The gang members made him their leader even though he looked like a skinny adolescent. Charlie became especially popular when he thought of the idea of sticking thin finishing nails through the sides of rubber hoses, then using them in gang fights. Those hoses proved to be devastating weapons and propelled his gang to dominance over other gangs. Some of the gang super-glued finely crushed glass to the end of their hoses. The hoses could rip and slash their way through clothes and flesh and the victims couldn’t get close enough to their attacker to retaliate in any effective way without, of course, getting ripped to shreds.

          Fang slowed down after about two miles, pulled off onto a side road where there were tall trees and bushes that would hide the truck from view for a little while. The awaiting get-away car was parked on the opposite side of the road, facing the main highway. The get-away car was a black Pontiac and from the rumbling sound of its idling engine, it was a sure bet that whatever was under the hood was powerful and built for speed.

          The young driver looked like someone from a school for retarded adults. It wasn’t that he had classic Down’s Syndrome features, but he did have a goofy look about him that was easily taken for stupidity. The driver’s window was down as he sucked on a cigarette and released the smoke through his nose, while watching Fang and Charlie.

          Charlie got into the back, while Fang slid into the front passenger seat. Fang shook hands with Freddy, then introduced Charlie to Freddy, telling Charlie that Freddy was his brother.

          Fang looked in the back seat and saw that it was empty except for Charlie, then asked, “Yuh got the weapons, like I asked for, Freddy?”

          “Yeah, Otto. In the trunk,” came the quick response as Freddy flicked the cigarette out the window and into the wet weeds.

          “Good. Now git us the hell outta ‘ere, an’ make it fast, liddle brother.”

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4

“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.”

Salvador Dali

The radiant, azure sky, dotted with pure-white, cotton-puff clouds looked pristine. The sun shone brilliantly, but temperately. The warmth on his flesh was comforting, like a baby must feel in its mother’s womb. There was a sense of moist, dreamy, floating comfort, as if he were lying on a cloud-like, heated waterbed.

          He had the feeling that destiny and fate had formed a partnership that guided his life to a positive series of events. That is, until a dark figure rose from the horizon. It’s blackness rivaling the ace of spades which, in Nam, was the death card─ some guys placed it on the dead VC and NVA soldiers.

          The horizon slowly blackened as the sun shied away behind a newly born, dark curtain of sinister-looking clouds, as if it knew that it was no match for the darkness that was approaching. Lightening flashed from the suddenly darkening, inky sky, looking more like daggers than lightening and the thunder sounded more like the raving, furious cries of Satan than the boom of a natural event. The luminous sun and its comforting warmth retreated farther behind his back as the furious storm approached on the flashing legs of lightening. The sound of thunder was the sinister screams of an evil being. Fear choked him. He could not swallow, nor could he look away. Uncertainty numbed and immobilized him. His legs became the stumps of dead trees; his arms became withered branches. He watched as the specter of a demon slowly approaching in the shape of a death’s-head skull; its red eyes glowing. It opened its fanged mouth as it continued its threatening approach. The gaping, fanged maw, he realized, wanted to devour his goodness; masticate, crush, mush and swallow every diamond of goodness within him, then transform him into one of its myriad minions of cruelty. He braced himself for its onslaught as the wind whipped his face, stinging it with grit and debris, then pummeling it with stones. Stones, like bullets, punctured the skin of his forehead, cheeks, lips and chin, but almost purposely missed his eyes so he could see clearly his helplessness and his hopeless future. Serpentine strings of blood sprayed horizontally across his face, then into his flying hair. He summoned his inner strength and indomitable determination only to see it vaporize, sucked into the black maw of doom. He couldn’t breathe; the air was being pummeled out of his lungs. Immobilized, breathless and in agony, he was suffocating as the skeletal specter robbed him of breath. His lungs burned. He knew that he was dying, could feel the emptiness of it as the blackness engulfed him. He struggled in vain like a landed fish gulping for air. His strength had vanished, drained from him by an overpowering force. He managed one final, desperate scream with his last breath, then popped up in bed like a jack-in-the-box.  He panted, then breathed deeply and quickly to restore his energy and sense of life. The sweaty bed sheet stuck to his back. He rubbed his eyes and felt the slick, salty sweat on his face. The sweat was foul-smelling and snapped him out of his sleep induced haziness. He was now cognizant of the fact that he had had a nightmare, the same recurring nightmare that frequently visited him. He remained still, gulping air like a drowning person who’s saved at the last second. He talked to himself: “A bad dream? A nightmare? A premonition? A sinister storm approaching?”

          The bed shook gently, then he felt pressure on his forearm. Samantha’s hand.

          “Same nightmare, Roman?” Sam asked sleepily.

          “No. Not the Nam one. A different one. I might as well get up. The alarm will ring soon, anyway,” Roman Wolfe said, with a frustrating exhalation of breath.

          “This Monday morning’s already started out poorly,” Roman whispered to himself, while approaching the bathroom to relieve his bladder. It was 5:12 A.M.

          Roman did his normal, martial arts exercise routines in the basement workout room. When he finished, he shaved and showered, then dressed in dark blue pants, a light blue shirt with various muted colors in vertical lines, and shined black shoes. He ate breakfast with Sam and Grace. When Sam departed for her school─ she’s a teacher─ Roman took Grace to the sitter’s house to await the school bus. Then Roman, also a teacher, drove to his own school.

          While driving to work, Roman thought of how pretty Sam had looked when she departed for school. Her make-up was perfect, hair styled nicely, fashionable, tan slacks and a silky blouse with muted orange, brown and tan patterns. Plus, she smelled flowery and had a happy smile. Roman thought that Sam stood out in a crowd, not just because she was five feet, nine inches tall. It was because she was like a beautiful and valuable painting, like Sandro Botticelli’s painting of The Birth of Venus, while all the women surrounding her, comparatively, might as well be part of the painting’s plain frame.

          It was raining as if all the angels began pissing pure water at the same time. The large rain droplets smacked the windshield like hail, making Roman slightly anxious about his newly rebuilt and repainted, royal blue, 1968 Mustang. Quickly, he reached toward the dashboard to turn on the headlights and the windshield wipers.

          All the way to school Roman was serenaded by the constant splash of water on the undercarriage of the Mustang and the tap-tapping sound of rain on the roof and windshield. The sound was like white-noise making him slightly drowsy.

          The Mustang was hard to miss. It attracted much attention and questions. Roman was proud of his classic car. He liked the feel of manually shifting the gears. The Mustang hugged the wet road and handled beautifully. Iacocca could be really proud of himself for this car. It had blinding acceleration due to the 390 horse power, 427 cubic inch, over-head valve V8 engine. It was a speed demon. It was a beauty, a classic, and Roman’s mechanical pride and joy. Roman turned into the nearly empty and shallowly flooded school parking lot.

          Roman parked, got out of the car and put his brown briefcase over his head as he rushed for the back door of Kroy Central School. Another Monday morning, he thought. The weekend went too fast, as usual. He knew it would be a lot easier once he started working, so he quickly climbed the stairs to the second floor where his fourth grade classroom was located. He opened the hallway door and walked down the deserted hallway to his classroom─ other than the maintenance workers, Roman was almost always first to arrive at school, before any other teachers.

          Roman’s long legs strode by rows of vertical lockers, like soldiers standing at attention. He grinned, looked up and down the hallway, making sure he was alone, then saluted the locker-soldiers. He laughed at himself. As he used his key to open the door, he wondered how many times he’d done this very same routine. He wasn’t bored with the routine; rather he was thankful for it. It was thousands of times better than being in the jungles of Nam where the sight of blood was as prevalent as the green of lush foliage.

          He entered the room, turned on the lights and walked to his desk, his heels clicking on the wooden floor. He set his briefcase on the table adjacent to his desk, then used a paper towel to wipe the rain off it. He took all the corrected papers out of his briefcase and put half of them on Alyson’s desk and the same amount on Steven’s desk so they could pass them out when they arrived. They both liked helping Roman do this chore.

          The desks were all in nice, neat order: four rows, six desks per row, directly facing the blackboard. Each desk had an upside-down chair on top of it, the chair’s legs pointed at the ceiling, like children’s toy rockets. The tops of all the desks were cleaned off by the students the night before.

          The floor was clean and the garbage cans were empty, thanks to the custodians. Everything was neat and clean, just the way Roman liked it; a place for everything and everything in its place. Even the counter-tops had been cleaned. Roman could smell the fresh pine scent of the cleaning liquid that had been used. Roman thought of the custodians and how important their jobs were, but, like teachers, they worked with little recognition and even lower salaries. Roman chuckled when he thought, Perhaps if we screwed up our jobs consistently, we could be promoted to Superintendent of the school or to the Board (Bored?) of Education, if the Peter Principal still works.

          The rooms and hallway were quiet at this time of morning. Roman enjoyed that. He could get a lot of work done when no one else was around to distract him. He valued the peaceful, early morning hours.

          He scanned his plan book to double-check what lessons he’d be doing that day. His lesson plans were usually completed a week ahead of time, so he knew exactly what he was doing each day of the week, although, sometimes, things had to be altered due to unforeseen circumstances.

          He familiarized himself with all the lessons that he would be teaching and made sure he had all the equipment needed for those lessons. Then, when he was satisfied, he began thinking about what he would be doing the next day. He checked to make sure there were no snags in the lessons for each day of the week and when he was satisfied that there weren’t any, he started correcting a pile of classroom work and homework that he hadn’t brought home. There were always papers and tests to grade or correct. Being a teacher meant a never-ending pile of paper.

          Roman liked to keep busy. It meant keeping the grasping tentacles of depression away from him. He thought about his bouts of depression, then connected it to his experiences in Vietnam. In Vietnam, the Viet Cong soldiers and the North Vietnam Army soldiers replaced the high school bullies as a temporary panacea for his depression. A blade through the throat or a garrote encircling a neck worked better than a Wellbutrin and Lexapro cocktail . . . in Nam. Roman wasn’t bothered as much now-a-days by the PTSD that he’d had to contend with after his discharge, but the bouts of depression continued to haunt him.

          After forty-five minutes of marking papers, he sat back in his chair to relieve his back pain. He always felt better after he checked all the students’ work papers and his lesson plans. He smiled with satisfaction knowing that he was well organized for the day and the new week.

          Soon he heard chatter in the hallway as other teachers arrived. The marble floors, that aided voice travel, made it easy to tell when someone was walking or talking in the hallway. The conversations and footsteps that Roman heard were quiet, almost like whispering, before the words reached his ears. That meant that no one was approaching his room. He smiled with satisfaction.

          He glanced at the clock. Nearly 8:30 A.M., fifteen minutes before the students would start arriving. He left his room and proceeded down the stairs to the ground level. He used the faculty men’s room, then entered the office to check his mailbox. There was nothing in it except the computerized attendance sheet. He was pleased that there was nothing else because the things that were usually in the mailbox often lead to more work or more meetings and on Monday mornings he especially didn’t want to learn about unproductive meetings being scheduled.

          He greeted the secretary with a pleasant “hello,” then did the same when the principal appeared. He joked with the principal for a minute.

          The overworked, but wonderfully efficient secretary was too busy to share in the jokes. Roman walked back down the hallway and greeted a few teachers as he passed them while returning to his classroom.

          Roman noticed some lower grade students’ classroom work hanging on the walls. The work was out for display, something that the students could be proud of and other teachers and students could enjoy reading or admiring. He wondered whose drawings and writings may, some day, be famous and valuable. He thought about so much potential, so tightly wrapped into such small bodies, with such curious minds. He wished them all the best of luck, then quickly ran up the stairs, two at a time.

          Two fourth grade teachers were in the hallway; he greeted them. He entered his classroom, took his student attendance book out, put the computerized attendance sheet in it and waited for the children to arrive from their buses. It was 8:45 A.M.

          As he waited at his desk, he thought of summer vacation and the fun that he, Sam and Grace─ his daughter─ had when they traveled to Freeport, in the Bahamas, during the second week in July. They stayed in the best hotel, the Princess Towers. It was mostly free, too, because Grace had won the trip in a New York State writing contest that she’d entered during the previous school year.

          Then, in mid-August, he and Sam went to Keene Valley in the Adirondack Mountains of northeastern New York State. They’d stayed for three days at John’s Brook Lodge and climbed Mount Marcy, the highest mountain in New York State (5,344 ft.). Grace had stayed with her maternal grandparents.

          Now Roman thought about Sam. She was wonderful and he didn’t deserve her, yet they were happy together, though it wasn’t always smooth. They’d mixed their tears of happiness and pain with each other; the happy times diluting the painful times. And, in mixing their tears of happiness, they discovered that, in some ways, those mingling tears of happiness were more intimate than sexual love.

          Roman heard the students entering the building. The hallway grew noisier and noisier, as was to be expected. When his students arrived at his room, he smiled at them, teased them a little and hoped he wouldn’t disappoint them with his efforts to make learning fun. He always wanted to make learning fun. He wasn’t always successful.

/../.-../---/…-/./-.--/---/..-/…/.-../---/-././

5

“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

Albert Einstein

Fang’s brother, Freddy, drove the Trans-Am through the rain as if he’d only recently gotten a learner’s permit. He tried to smile, to keep his head up, his chin thrust forward in a sign of arrogant confidence. But he wasn’t confident at all. He’d stolen the car from the long term parking lot of the Rochester International Airport so that no one would miss it for a few days, then hid the car until needed. In the dark of night, he had to practice driving it so he wouldn’t lose control during the get-away. He made sure that the car he stole was an automatic shift because he couldn’t handle a manual stick shift. Even so, the car was too much for him. The car rumbled and bucked with power. He gripped the wheel tightly and fed the carburetor gas in spurts. He enjoyed the response of power. It made him feel powerful, but he was like a boy riding a stallion, not able to really control or steer the powerful horse. He had practiced enough to be able to drive the car at normal speeds and hoped that was all he’d have to use.

          He looked at the rosary beads and crucifix hanging from the rear view mirror. He’d placed them there. He recited a silent prayer asking to be forgiven for stealing. He’d become a fanatic about religion while Fang was in prison. Previously he’d been indifferent towards religion. His life had been spartan, lonely and friendless, so joining a church group made him feel worthy of friendship and it assuaged his terrible loneliness and self hatred.

          Fang saw the rosary beads swinging on the mirror and, with sarcasm dripping from his lips like syrup, he said, “What the fuck’s that, liddle brother? Looks like candy on a string.”

          Freddy grinned nervously. “Rosary beads. I been saved from the torments of hell. I’ve been born-again while you was gone.”

          “One a them ridiculous born-again Christian things?” Fang responded with distaste.

          “Not ridiculous. I go ta church real regular now and try ta do good things. I got some friends now.”

          “Shit. Yuh just as stupid, too. Yuh haven’t yet figured out that religion’s jus’ like pro-wrastlin’. Every body know it’s fake, but they pretend it’s real or their fun goes outta it. Jus’ like religion, pro-wrastlin’ is showy, colorful; it’s kind a addictin’, too. Think of it like this, liddle brother: the alter area is the fightin’ ring, the fighters be the priests, the fans are the con . . . congray . . .”

          “Congregation?” Freddy corrected.

          “Yeah. That’s it. The fans are the congration. An’ the fight rules is the ten comamets.” Freddy didn’t even attempt to assist Otto with the word commandments, but he did smile with contempt for Otto. “The wimen wrastlers is the nuns an’ the ticket prices is the money given to the church. An’ just like wrastlin’ fans, my man, there be those jus’ interested, some that be faithful and then there be the fanatics. Wake up, boy! Yuh bein’ a sucker fer fairy tales.”

          Fang and Charlie burst out in another round of taunting laughter.

          “I have faith. And yur wrong, so fuck you, bro, and you too, Asswipe.”

          “Yeah, well, if yur born-again bro, then show me yur two bellybuttons,” Fang mocked Freddy. “Yeah, man, while in prison I become a born again atheist. Whaddaya think a that?” Then Fang and Charlie burst into louder mocking laughter.

          Freddy thought, Otto hasn’t changed at all. Still treats me like a retard, his personal gofer; his worthless slave. Bastard. I hate ‘im. What the fuck’m I doin’ here helping him? Dear Lord, my savior, forgive my swearing and hatred. Freddy glanced at Otto, thinking, Psalm 14:1 The fool says in his heart, there is no God.

          “It’s raining, bro. Why aren’t the wipers on?” Fang snarled.

          “Don’t wanna take my hands off the steering wheel,” Freddy said, lamely─ actually he didn’t know where the switch was and didn’t want to look for fear of driving off the road.

          “Pathetic,” Fang whispered, then reach for the dashboard, flicked a switch and the windshield wipers activated.

          Charlie started sniffing around the back seat, then sniffed over the back of Freddy’s front seat, near Freddy’s hair, and said, “Jesus Christ, man. Where da yuh buy yur after-shave? The Dollar Store? Shit, man. Smells like yuh got a bad case of the zackly.”

          “Yeah? And jus’ what the hell’s zackly?”

          “Oh, it’s terrible, man. It’s when your mouth smells zackly like your butt hole.” Charlie and Fang busted a gut laughing. Charlie laughed so hard that his stomach ached, then he farted.

          The fart made them both laugh louder, then Fang screeched, “Charlie, I think maybe yuh bet on a dry fart an’ lost that bet. Sounded juicy ta me.”

          Charlie, in the spirit of teasing Freddy added, “Hey Freddy. Of all the things yuh miss, I bet yuh miss yur mind the most, huh?”

          Fang’s and Charlie’s contemptuous laughter increased so much that they both started crying. “Hey, guess who said that? It was Ozzy Osbourne, that dead-head, heavy-metal music, druggie.” Now the laughter was so intense that tears were pouring down Charlie’s and Otto’s red faces.

          “Screw you,” Freddy said, then immediately became nervous. He thought, Yeah, Charlie, you’d be the one to know how someone’s butt smelled, up close and personal. Pervert. Freddy’s legs trembled and his sweaty hands slipped on the steering wheel. He would speed up, then slow down due to his nervous foot on the gas pedal. Then his foot had a spasm and he depressed the accelerator too hard.

          Fang vice-gripped his brother’s thigh, digging his fingers into the large muscle until Freddy got the message and slowed the car. “Don’t need no goddamn cop chasin’ us fer speedin’, Freddy, so slow down ta legal, an’ fer Christ’s sake, stay on the road. Yuh weavin’ an’ some cop’ll think yur drunk. It jus’ like yuh ta steal a car yuh can’t handle. I shoulda drove,” Fang said, gruffly, making Freddy more nervous. Freddy used his left sleeve and swiped at the beaded sweat on his forehead.

          “I thought a get-away car was supposed ta be fast,” Freddy said.

          “Just in movies an’ TV. If yuh get chased. We do not wanna be chased, but yur drivin’ this thing like yur drunk an’ that attracts attention, yuh shit fer brains.”

          “OK, then, I can pull over an’ let you drive,” Freddy stated, meekly.

          “An’ that would attract even more attention. People look at stopped cars. If they see me, then hear a description a me on the radio or TV, then we been made. Yur still a damn fool, ain’t ya? Goddamnit. Jus’ keep drivin’.”

          Freddy stepped on the gas too much and went too fast, again. He corrected himself immediately, then remained silent, but feeling humiliated, especially when he heard Charlie smirking in the back seat. He could see Charlie smirking in the rear view mirror. Sucks on Otto’s dick like a kid with a lollypop and he has the nerve ta laugh at me. Fuck ‘im, Freddy thought.

          Hard ta believe he’s my brother, Fang thought about Freddy.

          Fang tried to relax and pressed his back into the seat. He thought about how similarly his brother, Frederick, and Charlie were built. It would be easy to mistake the relationship of the three men. It looked more like Charlie and Freddy were the brothers. They had the same slender body build and the same taut-skinned faces, like leather stretched over a drum. Fang looked disapprovingly at Freddy and wondered if, perhaps, there was some mix-up at the hospital. Charlie had some brains, but Freddy often acted like he was a retard. Then Fang concentrated on Freddy’s sloppy driving. Freddy was still slowing down, then over-compensating and speeding up too much. First too slow, then too fast. His sweaty hands slipped on the steering wheel causing a weaving effect. Fang’s frustration heightened. Now is not the time for carelessness, he thought as if he was reprimanding himself. He turned and looked directly at Freddy.

          “Listen up, okay?” Fang said in a pretentiously patient and soft-spoken voice. “The guard an’ the delivery men we laid out will be found soon an’ the delivery truck’ll be found. We’ll have cops all over us if we ain’t extra careful. We probly don’t have much of a lead, maybe ten or fifteen minutes; half-hour at most. Cops don’t know what kinda car we in. That be an advantage fer us.” Then his voice lost most of its patience. “But if yuh keep drivin’ like a drunk, they gonna spot us an’ pull us over fer a fuckin’ ticket. Then we gotta shoot it out with ‘em or try ta outrun ‘em or both. So, bro, what I’m sayin’ ta yuh is,” Fang’s voice turned into a low, deep-throated snarl, “keep the fuckin’ speed ta the speed-limit. Ain’t no use us gettin’ stopped now when we almost have it made outta here.” Fang’s voice raised to a shout. “You understand!” Then even louder, full of rage, he started screaming, “I don’t want no attention while we─” Abruptly, Fang’s voice died in his throat as he lurched backward due to the force of the sudden acceleration of the car.

          Freddy was so nervous, scared, trembling and humiliated that he leaned forward toward the steering wheel. Tears came to his eyes and, without feeling it, his foot jerked the gas pedal to the floor.

          Charlie said, “What the fuck yuh doin’, man?”

          Just then a steak of blue and yellow passed them in the opposite lane, heading toward the prison. Then two more streaks just like it blazed by, roof lights flashing and sirens blaring.

          Fang looked at Freddy with a combination of rage and disbelief. He wanted to strangle his slow-witted brother. His searing rage made him want to strangle Freddy. But he noticed the exaggerated fear in his brother’s eyes; a fear that immobilized him, but made him tremble and spasm. Freddy was now driving like a robot. Fang looked over his shoulder, out the rear window, to watch the last New York State trooper car that had just passed them. The cop cars had all been travelling fast and heading straight for the prison. They must have quickly gotten word about the escape.

           “Oh, fuck!” Fang screamed as he pounded the back of his seat. “The last cop car’s turning around and comin’ after are speedin’ Trans-Am.” Fang gave Freddy a mean, disgusted look, then shouted, “See what I mean, retard! Yuh got the cops chasin’ us now.”

          “They’re drivin to a prison escape,” Freddy said. “They’re not chasin’ a speeding car when there’s a prison break.”

          Fang slapped Freddy on the back of the head once, then twice. “Yuh ever think that a smart cop’ll see a speedin’ car goin’ in the opposite direction as a prison break, an’ maybe think they be connected? Prison break? Speeding car? Get it? Yur such a fuckin’ retard. If yuh wasn’t my bro, I’da kilt yuh long ago.”

          Uncharacteristically Freddy screamed, “I wish I was dead because I am your brother! So fuck you!”

          Fang simply stared at Freddy, stunned. “Fuckin-a, man. Yuh do have some guts. ‘Bout time yuh stopped bein’ a pussy.”

          What Fang didn’t realize is that it wasn’t just the speeding car that made the cops suspicious. The cops had a description of all three of them. They knew that one of the escapees was body-builder large. It made Fang stand out in the car like a clown in a monastery.

          Freddy slowed down, then glanced into the rear view mirror and started screaming and crying, “Jesus. Yur right. They made us! They made us! I’m sorry, Otto.”

          Freddy felt another hard slap to the back of his head as his head jerked forward hitting the steering wheel.

          Charlie shouted, “No shit yuh goddamn, fuckin’ asshole!”

          Fang countered with, “Ya goddamn fuckin’ retard! Now’s the time ta speed-up. Now we need speed. Go! Go!,” Fang shouted. “Those cops wouldn’t a made us if yuh knew how ta think an’ drive like I tol’ yuh. Yuh floored it an’ got their attention. They put two an’ two together when they saw this fuckin’ speedin’ Trans-Am an’ they figure someone was nervous an’ trying ta get away fast. Well, Mr. Asshole, it don’t take much ta figure that this ‘ere speedin’ car of yurs is carryin’ people in a hurry, an’ maybe those people are escaped prisoners. Yuh bastard! We’re fucked now, so step on it!”

          Freddy glanced into the rear view mirror and saw that the troopers had completed their U-turn. Rain, like smoke, was wafting off the rear wheels.

          “They on are ass now, idiot, so yuh might as well floor it! Let’s get the fuck outta here!” Fang screamed. “Ya shoulda brought a common, everyday lookin’ car in the first place, not some fuckin’ advertisement fer the Indy-500. Dammit, those fuckers woulda drove right by us if yuh hadn’t panicked!” Then Fang lowered his voice, balled his hands into tight fists, shrugged his shoulders in anger and said to Charlie, “Meet my retard brother. The king of dumb-ass pricks.”

          “Otto, yuh know I don’t like bein’ called a retard,” Freddy whimpered.

          “Go fuck yurself, bro! An’ yuh know I wanna be called Fang, not Otto,” Fang said while glaring hatefully at Freddy.

          The Trans-Am was pulling away from the trooper car. But the Trans-Am was shaking and the steering wasn’t smooth. Charlie saw the rain water rising around the rear of the trooper’s car and knew that the cop had the gas pedal floored.

          Fang turned to Freddy and said, “Are the guns in the trunk?”

          “Yeah. In the trunk, right where yuh wan’ed ‘em and one there.” Freddy answered, his eyes red and teary as he pointed to the glove compartment..

          Fang opened the glove compartment and grabbed the .357 revolver. He caressed it like he would a young boy’s penis or the labia of a young girl. He stroked the barrel as he turned and looked at Charlie.

          Fang thought, The car’s too much fer Freddy to handle. Freddy’s reflexes be too slow an’ awkward and his brain don’t work as fast as it needsta ata time like this. He’s too nervous, scared an’ sweaty ta be behind the wheel. He swerving in the road an’ can barely keep the car in the right lane. An’ I can’t get out an’ drive. Fuck me. I shoulda known better. Shit!

          Out loud, Freddy said, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He─”

          Fang smacked Freddy on the back of the head, hard, and said, “Knock off that bullshit. Ain’t no Lord, fool, but I be the shepherd an’ yur one a my sheep, yuh wimpy, sorry-assed cry-baby.”

          Freddy was having an even harder time now that he had to look through a cascade of his tears and listen to humiliating insults and denigrating laughter.

          Fang looked out the rear window. “Oh, shit. They drivin’ one a them new Mustangs. Fuck! They’s gainin’ on us now. Soon they be right on are asses.” He thought, in desperation, There must be a way out of this mess. We can’t’ve planned an’ waited months ta have it all go wrong like this. Then he saw it; a sign; a sign of hope. To him it was their only hope; maybe a way out of this fucking mess.

          “Don’t stop at the red light. Jus’ turn right. Go through the fuckin’ light an’ turn inta the school parkin’ lot. Step on it! Get movin’!” Fang screamed. “Them cops is still gainin’ on us. They close ‘nough ta see there’re two of ‘em in the front seat.”

          Freddy came to the intersection, his nerves tingling and adrenaline flowing. He was so scared he thought he would pee in his pants, but he didn’t. The light had turned green─ not that it made any difference. He rolled the steering wheel to much to the right and swerved around the corner, making a wide arc. The rear end fish-tailed and he lost control. He stomped the brakes and slid into the other lane with squealing tires. He smashed sideways into the lead car that was waiting at the red light, then stepped on the accelerator and sped away.

          The troopers’ siren grew louder and louder as the special, police edition Mustang gained rapidly on the Trans-Am.

          Freddy was a nervous, trembling, sweaty mess. His hands and brow were wet. He could barely keep the car on the road. The sweat running down his forehead stung his eyes and made them water more. He wanted to wipe the sweat off his forehead, but didn’t dare let go of the steering wheel, even with one hand.

          Charlie yelled something about Fang’s asshole, retarded brother.

          Freddy seethed with anger and humiliation. “I ain’t no retard!” he screamed.

          The car engine roared, preventing anyone from hearing clearly.

          Fang lost his clear thoughts to a hammer-like feeling of an oncoming migraine. Blood was whistling through his veins and arteries, supercharged with adrenaline. His heart pumped blood so powerfully that the veins in his temples and the arteries in his neck were twitching like little blue worms puffing themselves up and down, while Fang’s large muscles tensed like coiled springs, aching for release.

          Freddy cried pathetically, “I’m scared, Otto,” though he slurred his words.

          Upon hearing that, Charlie shook his head and said, “Fuckin’-A,” to no one in particular.

          “Who ain’t, for Christ’s sake,” Fang responded to Freddy. “It’s OK ta be scaret, baby brother. Yuh just can’t stan’ still while yur feelin’ it. Dead men stan’ still jus’ before they die. Yuh gotta keep movin’ an’ tryin’ an’ fightin’.” To himself, he thought, I was so stupid ta ask him fer help. Shoulda kilt him years ago.

          Fang looked back at the trooper car, then screamed at Freddy, “Go ta the far enda the parkin’ lot an’ stop close ta the back door. Quick. Then grab the key an’ unlock the trunk. Then both a yuh get all the weapons an’ ammo out an’ run fer that back door while I cover yuh. Wait fer me inside the door. Don’t go no place. We need ta stay tagether.”      Fang pulled out his hand-gun.

          Charlie started to say something, but Fang cut him off by yelling, “Shut the fuck up an’ jus’ do what I tol’ yuh!”

          Charlie knew what that tone of voice meant. He wisely said nothing.

          Freddy slammed on the brakes as he passed the tennis courts on his right. The car skidded to a stop at the end of the parking lot, then slid onto a patch of wet grass that was next to the swings and slides and other play-ground equipment The doors flew open.

          The pewter sky cried rain that was constant, so now the puddles under each swing were so big that they were connecting to form what looked like a string of beads.

          The troopers’ Mustang pulled into the parking lot a few seconds behind them. Freddy was trying to open the trunk when the wet key slipped out of his trembling hand and fell to the ground.

          Charlie made a finger-comb and pushed his drenched hair to the back of his head, then shoved Freddy out of the way with a sarcastic growl. Charlie picked up the key and unlocked the trunk. He and Freddy grabbed all the weapons: three AK-47 (Chinese made, but Russian designed) rifles (7.62x39 caliber), the kind that the NVA and Viet Cong used in Vietnam; two .357 caliber revolvers; two hunting knives (in sheaths); and plenty of ammo for both the rifles and handguns.

          As the trooper car came streaking toward them, Fang took careful aim, with his handgun, at the driver’s-side windshield. He wiped the rain out of his eyes. As he squeezed the trigger he could see the windshield wipers sweeping in front of the driver and passenger, making their faces clear for a second, then distorted as the rain streaked across the glass before the wiper could clear it away, again.

          When the troopers saw Fang aiming at them, the driver braked hard. He must have realized that braking hard would simply put him into a forward skid toward Fang. His mind reacted automatically and he stomped on the accelerator in order to hit Fang. Fang fired his handgun rapidly, hitting the windshield with three out of six shots.

          As they ran, Charlie’s and Freddy’s athletic shoes got soaked and felt as if there were wet sponges in each of them. They were half way to the school’s back door when Fang fired the first shot into the cop car’s windshield.

          The trooper car abruptly veered into another parked car, the sound of collapsing, crunching, metal and shattering glass could be heard clearly in the damp air, like a thunder-clap.

          The impact lifted the Mustang into the air; its front tires on the trunk of the other car, like a stallion on a mare. The Mustang settled there, motionless. Steam rose from the hood.

          Fang ran for the school door.

          The sound of metal crunching against metal made Fang look back as the Mustang slid off the other car with a huge cloud steam rising from the engine. Both front tires were flat and the passenger door was ajar. There was no movement from the troopers.

          As Fang reached the door, Charlie pushed it open for him. Freddy sat on the steps scared and whimpering. He put his open hands together in prayer. “God is my savior now, Otto. I don’t want ta do this. I was supposed ta just drive you ta a safe place, then I’d be done with helping you.”

          “Why the sad face? Yur cheek muscle goin’ ta burst if yuh don’t stop clenching yur teeth. Shit, man. Looks like yur constipated. Yur not tryin’ ta take a crap on that step, are yuh?” Fang teased, oblivious to the pain and humiliation he had just caused.

          Fang and Charlie smiled at each other. Their smiles shone like searchlights toward each other, in silent agreement. The violence sexually excited both of them. More importantly, Fang saw that there was a whole lot more to Charlie than he’d known. Charlie wasn’t nervous or afraid and he knew how to follow orders.

          At the same time, Charlie was thinking about independence and confidence and that he’d need payment of some sort to continue to be Fang’s sex partner. But this ain’t the time to think about that, he thought.

          Charlie was pleased with the sexual tension and produced a dreamy smile.

          Fang and Charlie had huge, warped egos, larger than the Chicxulub Crater.

          Fang looked at his brother and said, “Where’s yur savior now? Give ‘im a prayer an’ ask ‘im ta rescue yuh.”

          Fang and Charlie smiled tauntingly. Fang said to Charlie, “Bring the weapons an’ stuff.” Fang ran ahead of them, up the stairs, to the second floor of the school.

          Freddy and Charlie grabbed the weapons and took the steps to follow Fang.

          At the top of the stairs, Fang peeked through the double-doors windows as he was waiting for Freddy and Charlie. Fang wanted the high ground and the advantage that it gave him. He knew about high ground being an advantage, but little else as far as tactics were concerned. And he certainly didn’t know the man that he was about to meet; the fourth grade teacher who had seen all those disturbing things in Nam that they had missed, including hundreds of body bags being loaded onto Army UH-1 Hueys─ helicopters. He knew all those things, saw all those things and hundreds more. His memories were all locked tightly in a remote section of his mind; maddening images in a locked box, a Pandora’s box, a box he hoped to never open.

          Fang didn’t know Roman any more than most people know that Michelangelo’s last name is Buonarroti. Most people thought of Mr. Wolfe as a quiet and solitary person. Fang, Charlie and Freddy didn’t know that Roman had once been called “solo-lobo,” or “lone wolf,” or “ghost wolf” or simply “Wolf,” and for good reason.

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