Chapters 31 through 33

Chapter Thirty-One

“When I woke up, I was wearing a mask.”

“A mask?”  

Wanda looked at me impatiently.  I resolved to make a better attempt at fulfilling my promise to hold my lawyerly inquiries until the whole story had been told; all the testimony had been taken as it were.  For me, a most difficult task. 

“Yes, a mask.  It had eyeholes but no openings for the mouth. It was difficult to breathe.  And the eyeholes were irregular, like someone had cut them out with a pocketknife. I couldn’t move my head at all.  The mask was attached to the table I was lying on.  Later I learned there were actual buttons that snapped the mask in place.  The rest of me was restrained.  I pulled against the restraints. There was a little give, like the first set.”

“This was a second set?  You were on a different table?”

Wanda shook her head.  Resigned.  Evidently, she was giving up on keeping a lawyer quiet during a deposition.

“Yes, I had been moved.  And, no, I don’t know how.  But there was a large round machine, a device of some kind suspended over my head.  It reminded me of those giant tires on trucks at a destruction derby.”

I filed away for later perusal this new knowledge about her entertainment choices.  

‘I could detect blinking lights to the right side of me.  Well, not blinking exactly, just going on and off at regular intervals.”

“What color were they?”

“Oh, shut up for a minute, will you?  I don’t know, white, yellow maybe.  Not harsh just flashing like, you know, studio lights.  Like when you go on a sound stage and they flash these lights, so you don’t talk.  Lights like that.”

“Okay.  Go on.”

“Thanks, Asshole.  Anyway, a voice came on, from an intercom.  It was Arnold’s voice.  He said, “This won’t hurt.”  Which meant to me it was going to hurt.  The machine over my head started making a rattling sound like marbles were rolling around inside it, and they were speeding up.  Faster and faster. Then they seemed to be a uniform sound and the middle of the machine opened and a light came on, it was bright.  It was blocked at first, I could just see the edges and then as the center of the big tire machine opened more and more it burned.”

“Where?”

“It was on my face.  I know what you are thinking.  It wasn’t that kind of burn.  But it was really hot.  Like sunburn.  It went right through the mask.”

I looked closely at her.  It was too dark in the car to see very well, and I hadn’t noticed any difference back at the school, but maybe her skin was a little darker. If I wasn’t just imagining it from her tale.

She was quiet a moment. Against my instincts, I remained silent too.  Then surprise of surprises, Maurice spoke up.

“They hurt you bad, Wanda?”  Another surprise was the tenderness in the tone of his voice. 

She took a deep breath. 

“Yeah.  They did.  But it wasn’t just that.  I could take that.   You know?”

Maurice’s head nodded up and down.  I don’t think either of us believed there was much in terms of physical abuse that Wanda couldn’t take.  And I don’t think either of us believed either one of us could say the same about ourselves. 

“There was more. I was tied down.  I couldn’t fight the bastards.  The air conditioner came on real loud and blowing hard and I realized I was naked.  And that was humiliating.  I could even hear that prick, Arnold, giggling a little.”

She stopped again.  And she took another deep breath.

“But the burning continued and then the machine started moving first from one side to the other and then it went above my head, it must have been on rails or something, and then it traveled the length of my body, from head to toe, burning all the way, and the table turned so I was upside down, hanging there and the burning started on my back, they must have used mirrors or something, and then I was flipped back over and the light on the machine went out, the opening closed and I was left lying there.  I felt roasted.”

“I laid there a few minutes.  I don’t know how long.  But it seemed like just a few minutes.  Then Arnold’s face appeared over me.  He was smiling again.  I felt a pain on my arm. They put a needle in me and then I was out.”

“When I woke up, there was blanket over me.  I felt the restraints and they had been loosened. A lot.  Even the mask was not all the way buttoned to the table.  I could turn my head just a little.  I saw Arnold. His back was turned.  And I saw Wanda.  She was looking at me.  She winked.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

“What did you do to Arnold?”  I couldn’t wait for her to get around to telling us.  I wanted to know.

“I broke his fucking neck.”

Well, there was no ambiguity there.  I decided I would wait for her to tell the how in her own way.  All three of us were quiet.  There was pensiveness in the way Wanda looked down to the floorboard.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have.  Maybe I didn’t have to, but I did it.  I was feeling the pain from the burning and, I didn’t have any clothes.  I wanted to get out of there.  I felt like I was going to die if I didn’t get out of there.”

Maurice was nodding his head as he drove.  Like me he was living the moment through her words.

“I used every bit of strength I could muster and pulled. The bindings came loose.  I rolled off the table and hit the floor. It was cement and it hurt like hell when my knees hit.  Arnold turned around and came after me.  He started hitting me in the back of the head, on my shoulders everywhere.   His blows landed all over; he was just hitting, throwing punches, one after the other.  It was hurting and I was losing it. I was fading.  I couldn’t get up. Then the blows stopped. I looked up and he was staggering. There was blood coming down one side of his face and there, right behind him, was my new best friend Wanda holding a broken glass beaker, you know, like those they use in chemistry class.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said

“Arnold turned toward her and looked to be going after her and I grabbed an ankle and pulled.  Pulled as hard as I could, and he fell. His face hit the floor and I remember he moaned.  I crawled up on the son of a bitch. I straddled him, put all on weight on him.”

I nodded, just not quite like Maurice had.  I knew what it was like to have her full naked weight on me though my experience had been in a more pleasurable situation.  I hadn’t been able to move either.  She had liked me immobilized.  As had I.

“And I grabbed his head, he was turning and squirming, he was strong, but I got a neck hold on him and I turned it with everything I had, every bit of strength I had left I put into that turn and there was a crack. I remember it was incredibly loud.  And he was dead.”

“Where was Wanda?  The other one?” I asked.   There was no pretending that I was now going to wait for her to tell the rest of what happened in her own way.

“Well, that’s the thing. I wasn’t letting go.   I think if she hadn’t stopped me, I would have twisted his head completely off.  I was that mad.  Angry and scared too.”

“Why isn’t she with you?  Where she was at back there, you know, on the screen?”

“That is where I was.  She stayed there. There is a section in the building.  Well, it’s past a special door.  She told me, she had to go there.  She wanted to help keep the others safe: some were being killed off, others were suffering.  It’s the way I would have felt, you know?  She said she had to stop it from happening, but she made me promise to come back for her and the others.  She said it is horrible there and they all want to come out. They don’t want to end like that.  They want to come home.  She’s the only newbie left there.  The other new ones went out into the world.  The others back there are the old ones, the ones that got changed.  The mistakes.  The ones that it didn’t work on. They are excess now.”

“Where is this place?  How far?”

“Let’s take care of some things first.  Not the least is your leg.  You need stitches and maybe an injection.  And then I want to have a plan.  And, Nick, listen to me.  We have a person in custody we need to get out.  You may still have a trial to do, a prosecution of some criminals, but it’s not going to be against him.”

“Yeah, well, you talking about us, I guess.  I’m not sure we, me, any of us are up to something like that.”

“Look, lover boy, other than Lawyer stuff, you ain’t worth much.  You know that.  But in court everybody says you’re good, really good, even with a hangover.  Hell, they say you can be impossible to beat when you’ve actually stayed sober two days straight.”

That sounded kind of like a compliment.  I was considering saying thanks or saying something appropriately modest, but she didn’t pause long enough for my reply.

She continued on. 

“You are going to be earning your pay soon.  There are some people in this who’ve been playing God long enough to think they are untouchable.  They aren’t going to like it when they find out they got to fight.  They won’t put up with it.”

She glanced over at me. 

“The law, the court is maybe the one place to bring them to heel.  Maurice and I can help.  We damn sure will, but it’s going to get down to, well, to you.  Eventually it will have to be you to stand up and call a case.  And bring it.”

“That’s pretty vague.  What are we talking about here?”

“Let’s get that leg fixed. Then we talk.  Let’s go Maurice.”

Maurice turned left and sped up.  He wasn’t going back to town.  I figured we were headed somewhere else, maybe another city, for my medical care.  Wanda was quiet now, staring out the window into the passing darkness.  I guessed she was planning her big plan.  I needed a drink.

I knew I couldn’t have one and, besides, I had a tale of my own to impart.  

“Maurice asked me to work with the F.B.I. guys,” I told Wanda, “while he looked for you.  You know, keep them out of his hair so he could do what he needed to do to get you back.”

We both looked at Maurice. 

“Well,” I continued, “I ended up going to their office.  They seemed to know what happened to you.  And they had me read some files.  I didn’t understand a lot of it, I’m still not sure why they had me read all this stuff, but I think its related to what happened to you.”

I played like Maurice and held my tongue for a few minutes.  I think they knew I couldn’t keep it up, so they never asked any questions.  They were right.  I went ahead and told them everything.  

Chapter Thirty-Three

What I didn’t expect was that Maurice’s destination would be a military hospital.  We were pulled off the highway and down a long access road toward Lemoore Naval Air Station.  Every resident of the county knew, if they read the papers at all, that LAS was a Master Jet Base where squadrons of jet fighters assigned to carrier wings of the Pacific Fleet, were flown for maintenance and security while the Carriers were in dock.  

When we drove up to the front gates of the base, Maurice pulled over to the side of the guard house and stopped.  Wanda got out, opened the back door and half lifted and half pulled me out of the back seat.  I stood partially upright to face three men who had appeared out of nowhere.  They were in suits.  Nice suits.  The ties were in place, the shirts looked fresh.  I felt I looked anything but fresh.  

“Mr. Easley,” said the shortest one, incongruously to his dress and manner, he sported an unruly shock of red hair, and a wispy goatee.  “I’m with a military intelligence unit , these gentlemen,” he waved his hand at the other two, “Are my associates.  We will be escorting you onto the base.  Our first stop will be the dispensary to get you fixed up. You will be meeting with Captain Singleton, the base commander.  He is at the dispensary and is expecting you.  Please come with us.”

I looked at Wanda, who was standing close to me, seemingly at the ready should I fall.  And then at Maurice who had remained in the car.  

Wanda smiled.  Well, not the full smile she wore when she was being mischievous, but a half-smile like she was sorry to be doing this to me.  And there was also a little of the “just be patient, it will all be explained soon enough” in her posture.

“You need to do this,” she said.  “They will take care of your leg and then when you’ve had a chance to talk to them, I think you will understand a lot more than you do now.  Maurice and I have work to do.  I’ll see you later, at your place.  I’ll even take care of you, you know, nurse you a little.”  She smiled again. 
This one was mischievous.  There seemed to be a nice promise in that smile.

I opened the door and sat in the front seat of sedan with the red haired military man.   He started the car and looked over at me.  “Mr. Easley,” he said.  “Have you ever tried a case in federal court?”

For Earlier Chapters of the Alumnus and other writings by Phil Cline visit philcline.com