The Prodigal Son Page 3

  He thought of these things, and others, as he drove along the lonely stretch of highway. After a mile or so past the crest of the long hill, the state forest ended and the land opened to reveal a few small farms that lay on both sides of the highway. Long, green rows of soybeans and cotton grew in this soil, and here and there someone grew corn and sorghum in the fields that were surrounded by the thick stands of pine that separated one field from the other. As he crossed the state line into Alabama, these fields were broken here and there by patches of land that recently had been cut clear. Piles of jumbled and twisted timber lay in those fields, ready to be chipped or burned and for the land to be turned into more fields of cotton and soybeans. Somebody actually does this job for a living, he thought. He wondered what those same people would think if they knew what he did, how he made his living, but it made no difference really. He was paid quite well to do what he did and, apparently, there was plenty of it out there to be done.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon when he reached the interstate north of Brewton and he turned onto the entrance ramp and quickly merged with the northbound flow of traffic. The highway rose and fell through this rural area covered by more thick pine forests, and high, billowy white clouds now filled and drifted across a sky that not long ago had been so clear and deep blue. As he clicked off the miles heading north and northeast, Jack noticed those clouds had begun to thicken and turn a dark, lead grey. Rain up ahead, he thought. Slowly the land rose higher and the pines gave way to a mix of hardwoods that lined the ridges on the left and right sides of the interstate. Exit ramps broke off occasionally, leading to small towns east and west of the interstate, but their names meant nothing to him as he read them. He was watching for the exit that led to a particular town where he would find a particular resident of that town and deal with him according to the wishes of a very particular client of his.

  The exit leading to the one he wanted came faster than he had anticipated, and he entered the off-ramp for Fort Deposit. Jack quickly decelerated and pulled up to the stop sign. He was told the intended target could be found at this time of day at his home just west of the exit, and so he turned left onto the two-lane county road and looked for the small, white, wood-frame house and the owner’s white F-150 with its Rebel Flag license plate mounted on the front bumper. As he drove along the road searching for the man’s residence Jack opened the glove compartment, pulled out the .45 ACP, and laid the pistol next to him on the passenger seat.

  Dusk was closing in, and the lead-grey clouds overhead began to release their load, and the rain began to fall, softly at first, then heavier and thicker, pelting the hood and roof of his car. He was confident he’d find his intended target soon and would deal with him accordingly. Rain or shine, it didn’t matter, especially after what he went through back in those rice paddies and villages and jungles in ’Nam. He recalled what the lieutenant told his men before each mission: “Just get the job done. Watch each other’s backs.” And with deadpan seriousness he would add, “And don’t make me have to drag any of your butts outta there.” Jack and the others on his team had no problem taking out the VC, and even the local villagers they came across who all too often lent their support to them. The LT was a hard man, loved and respected by his men because he genuinely loved and respected each of them, as well. Jack reasoned if the LT were alive today then he would probably have a real problem with this hit, especially since the intended target of the day had also seen action in Vietnam. This posed a slight issue with Jack when he had read the details, but he quickly let it go. He remembered thinking, Not everyone who wore Army green gets off easy back in the states. He had to admit he did wonder what this guy must have done for somebody like him to come way out here in the middle of nowhere, and he had wondered what his reaction would have been if the hit was to be done on a former Green Beret, but those thoughts quickly passed. None of my concern anyway, he concluded. My interest in this matter is strictly business. Just like all the others. He repeated the LT’s mantra out loud. “Just get the job done.” There. It’s said and done.

  * * *

  When it was finished—and he was on the long drive southward on the interstate, and he was wet from the heavy rain and had used a towel to dry himself off and he had thrown the towel on the floorboard afterward and he had turned the heat on low, just enough to keep from shivering—Jack began to think about what had happened. How it went down back there wasn’t according to plan. He found it puzzling to be so troubled after this hit. He found it hard to shake the memory of it, seeing it so clearly in his mind. It was as if he were detached from himself, observing it as if he were a spectator on the sidelines, watching what was unfolding.

  He replayed the scene in his mind. This hit was going to bother him for sometime...

  The three-hundred-and-fifty-pound man lumbered toward Jack as he fired into him. Two quick shots, the first in the man’s chest, near the heart, and the second right at the heart, but the huge man somehow just kept coming. Like some wild animal intent on killing what was killing it. Jack had placed his shots carefully, yet the man did not go down. Jack’s next shots were to each of the huge man’s kneecaps, and the man finally fell to the ground, only to continue moving forward, crawling over the rain-soaked ground. Jack watched in amazement, and in awe, as the man willed himself forward in the mud toward Jack. Finally, exhausted and with his life ebbing from him, the huge man stopped and quit breathing and was still. Jack walked up to the prone body, knelt, and with a great deal of effort rolled the heavyset man on his back. Jack stood and fired a final round into Fat Man’s forehead, just above the bridge of the nose. He retrieved the empty casings, walked back to the Camaro, started the engine, turned the vehicle around on the muddied ground, and pulled back onto the road and drove eastward, back toward the interstate.

  . . .His forehead and hair still felt wet. Jack reached for the towel again and dried himself once more. My God, man! How did you get so fat? he thought as he continued his drive southward, toward home. One, no more than two shots and all the others would go down. But not you! Two more in the kneecaps and yet you still kept coming. Crawling, but still moving. Jack wondered what Fat Man would have done had he reached him, and was glad he hadn’t. The picture he had been given of the man must have been five years and a hundred pounds ago. Jack made a mental note to be a little more demanding in the future. He’d make sure he would get more recent photos of his assigned and intended targets. Err on the side of caution, and avoid surprises at any cost, he remembered the LT telling him. Jack figured the LT would forgive him for this oversight as long as he learned from this mistake.

  Jack pulled off the interstate, onto the exit leading to Flomaton, and then drove back across the state line into Florida and onto the four-lane highway that led south to Pensacola. A wave of relief came over him, as if crossing the state line somehow allowed him to be able to handle and deal with it. The thoughts and images of Fat Man, for the rest of the drive back to his apartment, could somehow be put aside, at least for now. It would be expected of him to handle it, both by himself and by his client. Not that he’d let his client know the hit troubled him like it did. After all, he was “Mr. Cool.” That’s the label they stuck on him, in Vietnam and then in the CIA. There were a few other names and titles bestowed on him, mostly from other platoons. He only heard about them; they were never spoken to him face-to-face.

  Then there was the one that army shrink had laid on him. Jack remembered it vividly. While he was a Green Beret, on his last tour. It had come on the heels of one of those many “incidents” that happen in war, in one of those obscure villages where they seem to always take place. But this one was different, and was legit as far as Jack was concerned. If only that lousy shrink knew the full story about that VC double agent, Jack thought. He might not have agreed to what took place, but he would have at least understood. But he didn’t, and then came the shrink’s official report after the numerous sessions Jack was forced to undergo. How did that report g
o? Jack thought. Oh yeah: “It is my professional opinion that Specialist 4 John Thomas Brantley, of the 5th Special Forces Group, Company D, harbors deep-seated sociopathic tendencies and behavioral patterns. . . His actions could be construed as borderline psychopathic in scope and nature. Furthermore. . .” Blah, blah, blah. That shrink didn’t know anything. Sitting in his air-conditioned office in Saigon, analyzing me! Overeducated egghead! But none of it mattered anyway. What mattered most was that Specialist 4 Jack Brantley got the job done. And that he, “Mr. Cool,” “Jack the Man,” could be counted on when it all broke loose. Besides, the LT had ordered the execution, and Jack always followed orders.

  No one in the company revealed the LT’s role in the death of the VC agent, nor would they. Jack endured the negative aspects of the report out of respect and admiration—and love—for the LT and his reputation. Even when the lieutenant was killed, the secret remained. All the men in the company agreed to it. Swore they’d never reveal they were ordered to do it. Jack was the trigger man, and didn’t mind doing it. Didn’t mind it in the least. That filthy, double-crossing VC got what he deserved, Jack reasoned. A bullet to the head, and his body dumped in the nearby river. “Sociopath.” “Psychopath.” Screw that shrink, Jack thought. He didn’t have a clue what it was like in-country.

  * * *

  Jack continued driving on Highway 29, south through the small town of Century, and then on through the McDavid community. Up ahead was Cantonment, and then back to his apartment on Ninth Avenue. He did not want to go there, but knew he had to. He would see Fat Man again this evening or some time in the dead of night. He had to face his fears—all of them—once again. He kept those fears to himself, and in doing so he paid a price. No one knew, nor would they ever know, how it was for him when the night came and it was still and he laid in the quiet of his bedroom, waiting for the demons to arrive. They always came. They were relentless, patiently waiting for him to fall asleep, to slip into their world. And it was there those demons would remain with him through the long, dark, lonely hours until dawn.

  CHAPTER 2

  Jack woke to the distant sound of a dog barking somewhere in the neighborhood behind his apartment complex. Fat Man and the demons didn’t come calling last night; he was puzzled by it, but when he shook the cobwebs from his head he was grateful for the uninterrupted sleep. Then he thought, They must have taken the night off, planning to visit me tonight instead.

  He looked over to the window he had left open overnight and watched as a soft breeze licked the thin curtains that hung on each side of it. He reached over to the nightstand, pulled a cigarette out of the pack, grabbed the lighter next to it, and lit it, then listened to the morning sounds, similar ones that now took him back in time to his parents’ house on the west side of the city, to that small, wood-frame house his father so proudly built in the early fifties and where he and his three brothers grew up. He remembered the warm, mid-spring Saturdays when he was allowed to sleep in, when he would wake to the sounds of his neighbors and their dogs, but mostly to the aroma of frying bacon that came from the kitchen. He loved those big breakfasts his mother made for them on Saturdays—scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes, with milk for her boys and a big pot of coffee for her husband—and how she would smile that contented smile of hers at the scene of domesticity before her.

  He loved those mornings, and longed for the peace they brought him. He thought of the late winter and early spring, when the blood-red camellia blooms burst forth and filled the yard; he also remembered the radiant pinks and purples and softer reds of the azaleas that burst forth not long afterward. His mother had planted those bushes just after the house was completed and then christened by Father De Marco. Watching them grow and burst forth in their vibrant colors caused envy in Edith Brantley’s neighbors; they had tried in vain to duplicate her yard and those massive bushes. But their efforts were in vain. She tried to tell them if they would just join “the One True Church” they could get the good Father to bless their house and yard, as well. “I’m sure Our Heavenly Father will see fit to adding to the beauty of your yards then,” she would tell them. Jack remembered some of their replies. Things like, “Thank you all the same, Mrs. Brantley, but we’ll pass.” As much as it hurt her to hear them say that, she let it go, thankful that at least her husband Frank had finally left those “heathen Baptists” and converted to Catholicism.

  Jack remembered how his father promised to someday take his mother to Italy, to see the Vatican and the Pope. “Someday, Edith. When the boys are all grown, we’ll go,” he often said to her. “If it’s God’s will, Frank, then we will go,” she would always reply. Jack remembered his father never had the money even after Richard, the youngest, graduated from high school and had joined the Marines. Then there was the accident at work that took his father’s life and ended the dream he had of that trip to Italy. He often wondered if Mom still wanted to go after that, even without his father, but then she, too, died soon afterward. “She died of a broken heart,” he heard everyone who knew Edith Brantley say. God, I sure miss those two, he thought. He made a mental note to go by the cemetery tomorrow afternoon before heading to the gym for a workout.

  Jack began thinking of the day ahead of him as he laid there and finished his cigarette. But his thoughts were soon broken by the loud slamming of a car door in the parking lot in front of his building. The car-door-slamming was soon followed by the equally loud voices of the all-too-familiar couple next door to him. He couldn’t remember their names, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he did. Mr. and Mrs. Loud Mouth began to yell at one another and their bickering soon escalated into another one of their infamous fights as they walked from the parking lot into the breezeway and up the stairway to the second floor and into their apartment. Jack heard their door slam. The walls between his apartment and theirs weren’t thick enough to fully contain their heated arguments. He’d already reported it to the apartment management, to no avail, and he had to listen to it again.

  “You no good, worthless bum!” Jack heard the woman yell. Jack then heard the man reply “Don’t you ever talk to me that way, woman!” That was followed by the sound of another door slamming shut (bedroom, probably), and then Jack heard the muffled sounds of the woman sobbing and the man knocking on the door, and then he heard the man’s muffled voice pleading with the woman. “Come on, baby. Open the door.” And then it was quiet for a while. Too quiet. Then the moaning soon followed. He laid there and couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought of this thirty-something couple making love after another one of their infamous fights.

  After a few minutes the moaning ceased. He’d heard too many of their stupid arguments and too many of their doors slamming and too many other things, and he was just plain sick and tired of Mr. and Mrs. Whatever-Their-Names-Were. He chuckled, and thought for a moment, and then he laughed as he pictured the image of them in that bed. I’d be doing everybody else in this building a favor if I just go over there, bust the door down, and shoot each of them in the head while they’re lying there, he thought. He wondered how much it was worth to the others in the building. I’ll make it cheap. My rock-bottom price for the hits. Maybe a two-for-one special. He reached over for another cigarette and lit it. What the heck. I’ll do it pro bono, just to have some peace and quiet.

  Jack continued to lie in the bed and finish the cigarette, and then got up to go to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, and noted the circles under his eyes had somehow grown darker over the last couple of days. In desperate need of some coffee, he wandered into the kitchen and opened the cabinet above the dishwasher and found the can of coffee. He popped the plastic lid, dumped in too much coffee into the filter of the coffee maker, added the water, and turned the switch to on and stood there in a daze. The gurgle brought him out of his stupor, but it would be a few minutes before he’d be able to pour the first cup that would kick-start his mind and body for the day. He opened the refrigerator and found a half-empty carton of milk. He opened
it and smelled it. It was beginning to sour but it would be good enough for the coffee. He looked through the refrigerator again and saw there was some leftover pizza in a carry-out box from a few days ago. He then looked in the cabinet above the sink for other options. He shook the two boxes of cereal he found there. Not much in the Cheerios box. Even a little less in the Golden Flakes. He thought about combining the contents of the two boxes. Just may be enough to fill a cereal bowl. But how will it taste? Unsure how that combination would end up tasting, he returned to the refrigerator and pulled out the pizza. Nothing wrong with a little cold pizza in the morning, he thought. He extracted a slice from the box and bit into it and chewed as he watched the coffee finish dripping into the pot.

  Jack fumbled in a drawer, pulled out a piece of paper and a pen, and started a list of things he’d get at Winn-Dixie over on Davis Highway and set the list by the keys he had laid on the counter last night. First and foremost, he needed the coffee. To wash down the slices of pizza that served as a makeshift breakfast. Get real, Jack, he thought. You want that coffee to kick-start your butt. Confident that they’d be enough to get him going until he’d go through the drive-thru at Whataburger later in the day, before hitting Winn-Dixie, Jack finished the last slice of pizza and a second cup of coffee. Feeling awake now, he made a mental list of the other things that needed to be done, slightly irritated with himself for letting all of them pile up over the last two weeks. He’d been busy, far too busy to do the things most people somehow found or made the time to do. He’d simply get them out of the way today and tomorrow, and then he’d be busy again with the next job, this time to the west, in New Orleans. He was looking forward to the Cajun and Creole foods that always satisfied his palate; Jackson Square and the riverfront, and especially the ladies he’d find at the bars in the French Quarter who would satisfy his other senses and needs beckoned him, as well. He remembered an advertisement in the Travel section of the News-Journal: Come to the Big Easy and Stay a While. He planned to do that very thing, starting Monday morning.