Lone Rock Read online

  She glanced up and caught his eyes, held them for only a moment and jerked away.

  She’s afraid, Adrian thought with some surprise. Afraid of what? A stranger on the bus? He pursued the thought and its implications to his own life: How often did he turn away from something –or someone—because he was afraid? Wasn’t it fear that kept him from a better job, a bigger apartment, a wife?

  These were all new thoughts for Adrian Beck. The engineer’s life had been a secure way to live: from school to school to work to here. Was here good? He’d never questioned it before, never wondered why people seemed to live lives of such quiet desperation.

  He thought about his own life and smiled. Not me, he decided. I’m going to be a new man.

  The bus stopped and all hell got on at Spenser Street.

  Oh, Shit.

  Seven of them, a pack. All metal and leather, jiving to an unheard beat, led by a chubby faced skinny kid with a peach fuzz beard, acne and swagger. They wore ratty hooded sweatshirts with gaping holes, droopy jeans, open sneakers, fat pants with too many pockets. The alternately shaved heads, or spiked hair, orange and green or thick black, shouted warnings and threats. “Look at me,” they demanded harshly, “Don’t you look at me!”

  Most had the low baggy pants made popular on MTV. One wore ripped jeans and another ridiculously wore a purple suit jacket, like a zoot-suiter of the twenties. He had dread locks to his shoulders and a pack of cigarettes in a chest pocket.

  They glared at the driver, intimidating their way around the fare and started down the narrow aisle, smirking and dangerous.

  Adrian slouched low in his seat when they got on, slunk lower when they passed. Who were these guys? A symbol of failure for the Juvenile system? The cast of a slasher movie? Everyone’s greatest fear, the future with switchblades?

  They were goblins in the dark, trolls beneath the bridge, sudden noises in the dark.

  Whoever they were, they were his greatest fear. Once, when he was eight, Adrian had walked face first into a big spider web. It had wrapped around his entire head, all gossamer nothingness, suffocating him. But it was the spider that had totally freaked him. Scrabbling desperately, the little creature had scuttled wildly across Adrian’s face. Nightmares had followed for months.

  That fear was nothing to this. Every chemical the body produced suddenly burned in his throat and churned in his stomach. He wanted to throw up. He bowed his head and watched from lowered brows, ashamed of himself for cowering, feeling dirty and small because he just wanted them gone.

  Better to be a live jackal than a dead lion. Isn’t that what they said? Don’t make waves, don’t fight back, just give them what they want. Pride wasn’t worth dying for.

  The driver began to slow for a stop and Adrian felt a thrill of hope. Yes! Stop the damn bus. That hope was dashed when a guy with a tattoo of two women going down on each other suddenly poked the driver and snarled something Adrian couldn‘t hear. With a practiced ease he spun a butterfly knife and touched the blade against the man’s neck.

  The driver swerved back into the street.

  Adrian watched them harass the old man with the oxygen bottle, slap around the guy with the apron. The victim’s expressions matched his own—leave me alone, bother someone else, go away...go away...please go away.

  But they didn’t go away, they never do. In the history of the world, a wish has never deterred a bully, has never stayed his hand for a single heartbeat. Adrian knew this in the way he knew the sun would rise, the way his lungs knew air. They’re here and they won’t go away.

  But he kept his head down anyway, hope springing eternal, the way everyone else did. A hand the size of a small ham thrust into the view of his lap and grabbed his book. For a moment Adrian resisted, then let go.

  “Fuck is this? A fuckin’ ‘cyclopedia?” The voice was loud and low, a rumbling bass. Adrian heard the derision in the voice, the scorn of one who values strength in hand, over knowledge in the bush. The thug fumbled with the title, snorted, and threw the book onto Adrian’s lap, where it landed heavily on his crotch.

  For a second pain overwhelmed common sense and Adrian looked up in anger. The guy was huge! From his seat Adrian looked up - and up - past dirty jeans purposely cut to show skinny brown legs and baggy boxers. Past a faded gray sweatshirt to a pale skinned face glaring down at him.

  “Don’t be no fuckin’ hero.” A hand slapped the back of his head and Adrian dropped his eyes. He heard footsteps scrape away and breathed hot air through relieved lungs. He was gone (they’re never gone), Adrian was safe (you’re never safe), it was over (it’s never over). It’s over, he insisted.

  Sitting, hunched, Adrian remembered something he’d learned in some history class. “When they came for the Jews,” it went. “I never protested, because I wasn’t a Jew. When they came for the Gypsies I remained silent because I wasn’t a Gypsy. When they came for the Protestants and the Catholics I remained still because I wasn’t a Protestant or a Catholic. When they came for me there was no one left to speak for me.”

  Had he always thought that violence existed somewhere else? That it raised its head only in Warsaw, Poland or Sarajevo? Always in the past, always somewhere else?

  It wasn’t true. Violence was as near as the number 29 bus - State Street to the Civic Center. And all it took for evil to flourish was for good men to do nothing.

  I have to do something, Adrian thought. Part of him cringed, horrified. The voice of reason. “Sit down,” it told him. “For God’s sake; just sit down and shut up.” Adrian remained sitting in the brown plastic vinyl seat, head down. His stomach ached with tension and his shoulders hunched as if beneath weights.

  Then they reached the girl.

  She screamed and Adrian kept his head down. His hands were stiff claws squeezing his book and his neck ached as if the muscles would rupture.

  “Please don’t.” She begged them and Adrian kept his head down. He felt an enormous pressure building up, like a steam kettle was about to erupt.

  “Somebody...?” she howled and Adrian looked up to see the apron man staring unseeing, his lips making in prayer. Adrian drew his head down again like a turtle. He felt the hot bum of tears in his eyes.

  A long shredding rip of fabric. “Fuck her, man!” Obscene encouragement. Adrian’s head was pulsing with his own blood, his heart pounded like a hammer. He kept his head down.

  “Do it: J-Roc! Do it! Give her your dick!”

  “Fuck her! Fuck the bitch!” Fuck her...”

  In the end there was no grand vision, no flaming letters that said. “Go. Adrian, and smite the wicked.” There was no telephone booth to be ducked into for a red cape or black cowl. No Bat mobile. In the end there was only Adrian Beck, 34, design engineer, who stood up.

  He rose from his seat and walked down the aisle, swaying easily, his fingertips gently touching the polished silver rails. The book, forgotten, was cradled in his left arm, pressed against his chest like a shield, or a talisman. Lords of engineering protect me.

  Past one seat after another. Past two, three, four of the astounded gang. They sat or leaned around him, frozen in place, eyes wide, mouths open.

  In his mind Adrian heard the advice: take out the leader, it’s your only chance - take out the leader. But which one...? The one with the woman of course. The leader is always the one with the woman.

  The spoils of war. Adrian, unthinking, stepped forward, book in hand like Moses with the commandments when someone - the guy with the ridiculous green spiked hair - stood and blocked the aisle. Without slowing Adrian shoved him hard in the chest. The guy fell back down in surprise, his ass rocking hard on the seat. Adrian took another step and the leader - gotta be the leader, he’s got his hand on her torn bra - looked up. His expression moved swiftly from surprise to pissed. Just like that, Adrian could see it, fury and rage and...mad, really mad. He came to his feet and a gun appeared from nowhere and the bus swayed and he fired.

  3 – Shot Through the Heart

 
I’m dead. Adrian thought.

  He froze. His thoughts became jumbled, his blood ran cold, his eyes bulged: even the hair on the back of his neck seemed to stand up. He looked into the eyes of this young menace and saw death. An enjoyment of death. A certainty of death.

  The explosion in the confined space of the bus echoed and roared like thunder. A punch like the heavyweight champion of the entire universe and the book, Applied Field Chemical Measurement Standards and Practices, smashed back against his chest just below his throat. Adrian gagged, heard three rapid clicks and a shrill scream that cut into the booming roar in his ears.

  The gun was empty or jammed. The young thug still pointed the mammoth pistol, his expression baffled, People he shot were supposed to be dead. The gang crammed into the narrow aisle, faces reflecting the shooters. The girl continued shrieking.

  Adrian looked at his chest expecting to see blood. But still held tightly in his arms was the book, the blessed book. Over the top, wedged against his sternum. he could see the jagged tear where the bullet had entered, burrowed and stopped, centimeters from exiting straight into his chest.

  Cordite smell filled the space left by the receding sound. It plugged the nostril s with pungent odor as thick as the musk of a wolverine.

  Eventually, time began again, but moving in high speed, everything happening faster than life. The shooter stared at his gun with disgust and dropped it to the floor. Before it hit he was already pulling out another weapon. Fearing another gun, or knives from the gang behind, Adrian also moved swiftly.

  He felt, rather than directed, his hands to turn the book, grasp it by the edges and twist it into position. Felt his left foot go backward, his weight shift for balance. His arms swung in unison across his body, bringing the heavy volume over his right shoulder like a stubby leather baseball bat.

  His body pushed against his right heel, overbalancing his weight, and he launched forward, all speed and momentum, angles and velocity. Two quick steps and his arms flashed, the book a brown blur.

  He saw the shooter look up, almost comically astounded. The book arced around in a wide circle, and hit the boy flat across the side of his face. The bound leather made a heavy meaty thud as it struck.

  Adrian felt a heavy pain race up his arms. He whirled around with the force of his swing, nearly falling down against the opposite seats. The shooter’s head jerked to the side with an audible crack, his body fell with a crash against the metal railing, making a sound like a Chinese gong.

  As fast as he fell, the gang reacted. In eerie silence they surged forward, like a tidal wave of bodies, an avalanche of human flesh, clothed in leather and denim and punk hatred.

  Two clamored over the seats, the middle three were backed up slightly, trying not to step on their fallen leader. Adrian used the book like a club. He battered at anything that came near, knowing everything that moved was an enemy.

  Blind and dumb with chemical adrenalin and emotional terror, his arms and legs moved jerkily like a marionette on twisted wires. His own body concealed the amount of damage it received, blocking the pain signals from the brain until the danger passed, a survival tool as old as the race, as deep as the blood.

  Blood dripped into his eyes, blinding him. With it some awareness returned. Christ! They were everywhere.

  He held some at bay with the book, but they reached him from the sides, pulling at him. A knife sliced and a sharp pain bit his left leg. He looked down to see the blade sticking from his calf. It was still in the hand of a kid who lay on the dirty floor.

  He shifted his weight and kicked, feeling the shudder as his foot connected. He saw the rest of them rushing at him like an avalanche.

  I’m going to die here, Adrian thought. I’m going to die on the bus. The idea brought no fear, only numbness, as if his mind played the same ancient tricks as the body, anesthesia of the brain.

  The one in the suit got through and Adrian fell, hearing a sickening snap as his ankle twisted and broke. His face smeared against the dirty rubber matted floor and in an instant they were on him, slashing blades and heavy bodies, crushing weight, dirty fists.

  The air squeezed from his lungs, thick, like toothpaste from a tube. He felt his eyes roll back as his mind shut down

  Tomorrow, Adrian thought. No more tomorrows. Another thought, this one wan and ethereal, fading as the lights went out all over. I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry.

  He remembered what happened in bits and pieces. They came like foam drilling up with the tide. He saw things, or felt them. Or thought he felt them.

  Most vividly, he recalled his cheek pressed against the sticky rubber matting of the bus, how his jaw pushed sideways until it popped. The rough texture abrading his cheek, the dimples making wavy patterns on his face, the smell of age old dirt washed and re-washed forever. He saw a piece of gum stuck to the underside of the seat above him as he was turned. The gum was bright pink, plastic and glossy, like enamel, with ridges and bumps that looked almost like a brain.

  He smelled blood, thick and coppery and thought he saw it, but it could have been the red lights of police cars pulsing with his heartbeat.

  There was pain. An ache so intense that for a while it seemed he’d become the pain; just an unthinking mass laying on the dirty floor, pounding with a heartbeat that got slower as it grew louder. Finally, he couldn’t hear it at all and darkness moved in to claim him.

  A tin ceiling and the idea of movement. A strange clack clack clack sound, like tires over bad pavement, and his heart now moved in that rhythm, thump-clack, thump-clack, thump. A sense of activity around him. Busy hands and straps and needles - he hated needles - had to tell them that - but that went away too.

  More motion, more people, no meaning. Bright rectangular boxes of light going by, on-off on-off shiny and dim, pleasantly hypnotic. Adrian tried to count with them, one...two...one.... Tile ceiling in little squares, antiseptic smell. A deadening sort of ambiance, like a sound chamber, sucking away noise and echoes, leaving only isolated little noises. Something dripped in another room...drip. Rough sheets.

  Picture yourself, he thought absently - drip - on a boat on a river. Drip. It was a pleasant sound. Eternal and restful, soothing. With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

  “Mr. Beck?”

  Somebody calls you.....you answer quite slowly...

  Mr. Beck? Can you hear me?” The voice came from somewhere else. It covered the drip, which was sad. Adrian felt like crying. Petulant, he closed his eyes and wouldn’t answer at all.

  ...the girl with kaleidoscope eyes...

  Later, he tried to open his eyes and couldn’t, He fought to make them move, squeezing his face, sweating with the effort and suddenly one eye opened. He saw the ceiling again. This time in low lighting, a peaceful muted amber glow. He sensed something, a white blotch of some kind and he tried to puzzle it out, but it moved when he turned his head.

  Daylight came. Pale light through closed lids.

  “You can’t be in here.” A soft voice, a woman. The sounds were words without much meaning.

  “Ma’am. We need a few minutes.” Gruff, low pitched.

  “You can’t—”

  “Ma’am...··

  “I’m getting the doctor.”

  “Yeah.” the harsh voice said. “Do that.”

  Clacking heels on tiled floor, silence for a moment. Harsh voice again.

  “Mr. Beck? Can you hear me?”

  Adrian heard the words but didn’t care. He struggled with his eyelids—why were they so heavy?—managed a slight fluttering, had a disco flash of two silhouetted shapes.

  “Mr. Beck?”

  “We have a few questions.”

  “Mr. Beck?”

  “I’ll have to ask you to leave.” A different voice, baritone, slightly nasal...Mr. Beck is clearly not up to being interrogated at this time.”

  “At this time.” Sarcastic and amused. “Fine. At what time exactly will he be up to it?”

  “Maybe Tomorrow. Perhaps Wednesday. I
can’t say for sure.”

  Adrian had a sudden image of a book—his book Engineering something. He held it tightly to him, as if it belonged to another world, a place he’d once belonged as well. The book was brown and thick and... There was something wrong. It had a gaping hole in the cover, like a wound, like a rip in a pillow, white paper spewing outward like feathers.

  That night, other voices spoke. A faint tremor of meaning coming to him.

  “Broken ankle.” Was that the earlier voice, the baritone?

  “Wrist broken in three places. Four broken ribs. Punctured lung. Stab wound in the left calf, multiple abrasions, a concussion for sure...” Sounds of paper rustling.

  “Knife wound on his face. That might be the worst. Forty-three stitches. Post-Op says it’ll scar.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Think he can hear us?”

  “Doubt it.”

  The voices receded. Just about out of hearing a small sound, “The police sure are eager to see him.”

  And focus. Coming to suddenly, like waking up before an alarm. Asleep—awake. Adrian swallowed, his throat dry. He looked up, saw a familiar tile ceiling, inhaled and felt a stab of pain in his ribs. Looked down, felt whiskers scratch his chest. His eyes were sticky and he blinked to clear them, brought up his hand to rub...his arm, heavy, a thick plaster cast covering it from elbow to fingers. The weight pulled his arm back down.

  That white blur was with him, an annoying presence beside his left eye. He turned his eye outward to see, but only got dizzy, vertigo spinning the room around and around.

  “You’re awake,” a voice said, startling him.

  He opened his eyes and saw a small woman in white—a nurse. She had a pointy little hat perched on a tall brunette hairdo. “I’ll get the doctor,” she said and left.

  “Get the doctor,” Adrian agreed. He continued to take stock. He hurt everywhere, a dull ache. How long had he been here? Where was here?