John Gilstrap - Nathan’s Run

Once the cop was done with the car, he waved that driver on with a smile. And stopped the very next car!

“Oh, shit!” This time he said it out loud, a whisper. In the green light of the instrument panel, he could actually see his right leg shaking now as it tried to maintain even pressure on the brake pedal. He tried to swallow, but his mouth felt as if he’d been eating chalk.

The officer seemed particularly interested in the vehicle in front of Nathan, spending a long time shining the light carefully around the interior of the back seat, and then talking for a good thirty seconds with the driver. Nathan couldn’t hear the words—he couldn’t hear anything but the drumbeat of blood in his ears—but the conversation seemed to be heating up. The cop opened the driver’s door and motioned for him to step out, motioning for his partner in the other lane to come over and help. Obediently, the driver of the car stepped out and placed his hands on the roof of the car.

As the cop reached for his handcuffs with one hand, he motioned with the other for Nathan to drive around. There was some very brief eye contact, and Nathan thought for an instant that he was busted. But whatever recognition there may have been on the part of the cop quickly evaporated when his prisoner started to struggle, and they both tumbled to the ground. Nathan watched the brawl for a moment in his sideview mirror, and nearly rear-ended the car in front of him in the process.

It took a couple of miles of driving for Nathan to realize that he’d made it. After the roadblock, the traffic thinned out, moving at posted speeds or better. Nathan cruised into the right-hand lane. A green-and-white sign announced that Route 66 was just three miles away. He felt nearly dizzy with a sense of pride and accomplishment. He’d beaten them again. With each passing hash mark on the road, Nathan sped closer to his freedom, and further away from the nightmare that his life in Brookfield had become. Before him lay his future, where his past didn’t have to matter. He could start over, and somehow pretend that Uncle Mark and Ricky and judges and death itself had never entered his life and so abruptly shut down his childhood.

The windows were up, the radio was blaring, and the air conditioning was turned on high. He was free, and he planned to stay that way. As a sense of pure triumph washed over him, he threw his fist into the roof liner and shouted at the top of his voice, “Yes!”

When Monique Michaels rolled over to spoon up with her husband, she noticed he was gone, and she was instantly wide awake. The digital clock on her nightstand read 3:21, while the one on his read 3:28 and the VCR across the room flashed its perpetual 12:00.

Leaning up on her elbow, she listened for sounds, but the house was silent. She was worried about Warren. He wasn’t himself tonight. Even the sex was a little off. He did his part well enough, but half his mind was somewhere else.

It was happening again, she knew. He was shutting them out. Something was chewing up her husband’s insides, and rather than sharing it with her, or leaning on her for support, he was falling back into his macho, suffer-in-silence bravado.

Before she could control it, old anger bubbled up again from deep within. It had been nine months since their son, Brian, had been killed on his newspaper route, but only two since Warren had started to deal with it. In between, Monique and the girls had been stranded alone, left to deal with unspeakable grief in virtual silence.

Monique thought—she prayed—that they’d worked through it all. Through counseling that Warren had fought every step of the way, Monique was finally given the freedom to grieve openly. Freed from the shackles of the make-believe strength she showed to the girls, her emotions had flooded out of her, raw and bitter in their purity. Week after week, the anger and grief and bitterness spilled out to the therapist.

Yet, week after week, Warren just sat stoically, clearly in control and clearly concerned for his bride. He held her hand; he spoke sympathetic words; yet he never shed a single tear where she could see. God, how she’d hated him for that!

In the end, as the counseling diminished from three sessions a week to two sessions a month, her anger subsided just enough to let the love return. And Warren was still there. Still stoic. Still strong. Still kind.

But the pain remained as an open wound.

Slipping on the summer-weight robe with the big flowers—the one Warren hated so much, making it fun to wear—she swung out of bed and left to find him. On the way out, she habitually checked on the girls, who were sound asleep.

Normally, when Warren couldn’t sleep, he simply went downstairs to watch TV until he faded off, but tonight he wasn’t there, either. “Warren?” she asked the house softly. “Where are you?” No answer. Now she was really concerned.

Then she saw movement on the front porch, and noticed the door was ajar.

“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked as she glided silently out onto the porch to join him.

Warren greeted his bride of nearly fifteen years with a smile. He was sitting in one of the wooden rockers, holding three fingers of Scotch in a glass, wearing a T-shirt and sweat pants, with his bare feet crossed on the porch rail. “Hi, babe:’ he said. “Kids okay?”

Monique sat down in the rocker next to his. “They’re fine,” she said. “Out cold. You’re the one I’m worried about.”

“I’m fine,” he assured her. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

He was anything but fine, and Monique could tell. “Like what?” she probed.

“Work stuff.”

“What kind of work stuff?”

“Stuff stuff,” he insisted, trying to blow her off. “Really. It’s nothing for you to be concerned about. Why don’t you go on back to bed? I just need to work through some things.”

“Warren, look at you.” It was the same tone she used to scold the kids. “You never sit on the front porch, and I don’t remember the last time you had a drink by yourself.”

“If I was by myself, you couldn’t remember me having a drink. Sort of by definition.”

“Don’t change the subject. Tell me what’s going on in there.” She tapped his temple with her forefinger. “You promised you’d never shut me out again.”

Warren inhaled deeply and noisily through his nose and let it go as a silent whistle. He started to answer once, but stopped and looked away. “I’m—ah—I guess I’m having some problems keeping this Nathan Bailey thing in perspective.” His voice sounded weak, and a little shaky. He told her of the video and of Nathan’s transient likeness to Brian.

So that was it. Monique hugged him as best she could from a different chair. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” she soothed. “I know how much you miss him. But all kids that age look alike sometimes.”

He forced a chuckle. “I guess. But it makes it tough to throw him in jail.”

“But it’s your job. You said yourself…”

“I know what I said, Monique,” he barked, much more harshly than he would have wanted. “You don’t know the whole story. You don’t know what his life has been like. In the past two years, he’s lost everything:’ So have I, he didn’t say.

Monique let the silence that followed linger in the humid night air. Promises aside, this was how Warren worked out his problems. He guarded his pain the way a gambler hides a losing hand. As long as no one could peek at the cards, he could bluff forever.

The moment when Jed Hackner entered the house with the news about Brian, Monique watched her husband die inside. Warren was a man of many talents and many interests, but his son was his life. They breathed the same air and thought the same thoughts. Identical in looks and personalities, they laughed at the same movies and together dreamed up the most ridiculous practical jokes, which only they thought funny. They shared a very special world, those two, one in which girls were simply not allowed.