Ken Douglas - Ragged Man

Four more times he repeated the ritual. Four more birds, Ballerina, Cyclone, Thunder and Lightning, followed Dancer into the air, forming a great circle above J.P., stealing his heart as he tried to keep them in sight. He watched as they circled for bearing and smiled when they headed south, into the wind, toward home, Dancer in the lead.

J.P. turned and saw a large black man standing on the boardwalk. He was watching J.P.’s birds with a smile on his face, so that made him okay as far as J.P. was concerned. The man waved. J.P. waved back, wondering if the man had had pigeons when he was a boy. Rick had told him that a lot of people did in the old days.

He turned from the black man and picked up his binoculars. He tried to follow the birds, but it was too hard to keep them in sight, so he faced the binoculars toward his mother. He yelled and waved, but she was too far away to hear.

Down the beach, Judy Donovan wandered listlessly, occasionally picking up a shell or two and dropping them into a fringed straw sombrero. She had been in a daze for over a year. She had loved her husband and the thought that he didn’t love her back tore at her heart. Fortunately, when she flew with J.P. from the never stopping pace and traffic of Toronto, they landed next door to Rick and Ann.

J.P. took to Rick like a bird to the sky and, to her great relief, Rick returned the boy’s affection. In addition, Ann’s friendship had become an important building block in the foundation necessary to put herself back together and make her life whole again.

She shivered. Somebody was looking at her. She looked right and gave a start. Red eyes, blazing with fermenting hatred, glared at her. They were a window to a soulless heart. She looked into the red ringed pools of anger and wanted to run, but she was frozen.

She felt an ache in her chest and swallowed back rising bile. She tried to rein in her fear. If anything happened to her, who would care for J.P.? She concentrated on the nauseating taste as she held back the vomit and sought strength, and failed. She closed her eyes and felt the man approach.

Satisfied that the birds were headed home, J.P. again trained the binoculars down the beach. He saw the man approach his mother and he saw the Jim Bowie knife clutched in a gnarled hand held behind the man’s back. A Jim Bowie knife, bright as a mirror, reflecting the morning sun.

He screamed a warning, but his mother couldn’t hear. He screamed again, louder. He was afraid the man was going to cut her. He was going to slice through her Levi jacket and kill her.

He dropped the binoculars, screaming in desperation. Then he saw Rick’s red Jeep, the old Jeep that he had brought back from Australia, coming down the hill and turning onto Across The Way Road.

“ Rick!” he screamed, running toward the Jeep. He didn’t want to run from his mom, but Rick couldn’t hear. “Help!” He waved his arms, but Rick didn’t see him. He ran as fast as his new Nikes could carry him, but the sand slowed him down. He stumbled, fell, skinned his hands, got up and ran. He screamed again, but still Rick didn’t hear. He ran harder, breathing too fast to shout anymore, but he kept waving his arms, hoping to attract Rick’s attention.

Then he saw Ann pointing.

“ Help,” he choked, the word burning raw in his throat. He was fighting to hold back tears. “Please let him come,” he cried. “Please let him come.” And he yelled “Yes!” when the Jeep jumped off the road and came toward him.

Rick drove the Jeep alongside J.P., sliding to the right as he stood on the brakes, throwing sand as an ice skater does ice.

“ What’s wrong?”

“ Homeless man down the beach, going to kill my mom.” J.P. gasped, fighting for air.

“ Stay here.”

“ No.” J.P. jumped into the back as Rick popped the clutch. “Get him!” He was slammed against the back seat as the tires spun and dug into the sand.

Judy tried to scream, but her throat was numb and the morning breeze chilled her sweat drenched body as she stared at the man coming toward her. She was used to the winos who begged quarters at the mall, but the thing she saw getting closer, ever closer, made them seem appealing. His dirt stained, tattered clothes hung from his corpse-like body, like rags on a line, but it was the piercing laser-look shooting out from his red-rimmed eyes that set him off from a wino begging a drink. No wino’s eyes had ever burned with the steaming evil she felt from his glare.

Then a wave, louder than the others, crashed on the beach and the sound reverberated through her, snapping her out of her shock. She ripped her frozen feet from the sand and she ran.

“ He has a knife.” Ann was holding on to the roll bar as the Jeep bounced and jerked over the sand.

Rick shifted into third.

“ Get him,” J.P. said again.

“ Hit the horn,” Ann shouted as she clenched her stomach against a stab of pain.

Rick punched the horn, stabbed his foot to the floor and Ann flinched as they bore down on the man with a knife. Although Rick was many years away from combat, Ann knew he was still able to make a life or death decision in less than an instant. The man with the knife was going to die, the accelerator was the trigger, the Jeep the bullet. Rick punched the horn a second time, but something told Ann that death was the only thing that would stop that evil looking man.

The man kept on.

The Jeep kept on.

“ Hurry!” J.P. urged.

The man leapt aside, scant inches before collision, and they shot by. Rick made a sharp right to avoid hitting Judy, downshifted into second and spun the Jeep around. Ann hoped he had discouraged the man, but in her heart, she knew he hadn’t. The man had resumed the chase, oblivious to the red Jeep.

Ann caught a quick glimpse of bloodshot eyes, liver-blotched skin and stringy hair as Rick pushed the accelerator to the floor, aiming the Jeep, and for a third time he punched the horn. This time the man stopped and turned when he heard the blast. His screaming eyes were as red as the car that bore down on him. He flung his hands in the air, losing the knife and Rick stomped on the brakes, but they were too close and too late. The Jeep hit the man head on, waist high, breaking his back as it flung him aside, a lump of clay tossed on the sand.

Rick stopped the Jeep, jumped out and hurried to the man he had run down. J.P. hopped out of the back and ran toward his mother. Ann remained seated and silent, too shaken to move, doubled over, arms wrapped around her chest, the pain intense.

“ Mom,” J.P. yelled as her seven-year-old son leapt into her arms and Judy wrapped him in a great hug.

“ It’s okay,” Judy said. “It’s okay.”

“ He was going to kill you. Why?”

“ I don’t know.”

“ I was scared. I yelled but you didn’t hear me. Then I saw Rick’s Jeep and I yelled and yelled and he came.”

“ Are you okay?” Rick said.

“ Is he dead?” Judy asked.

“ He’s dead.”

“ What do we do now?”

“ Get the sheriff. Come on, get in.”

“ Shouldn’t somebody stay here with that?” Judy pointed to the dead man.

“ I’m not going to and I know Ann won’t, so that leaves you and J.P. It’s up to you.”

“ Let’s go,” she said.

Straining, Judy lifted her son over the tailgate. Then she climbed over herself, grabbing onto the roll bar to pull herself in.

Rick started the car, pushed in the clutch, shoved it into first and drove off the beach, going through the gears, driving fast.

The car bottomed out as it flew over the curb and hit the street. “Needs shocks,” Rick said, spinning the wheel to the left and going into a slide. He corrected by turning into it and adding power. Then they sped down Across The Way Road, turned right on Kennedy, and left the beach behind.