Pootie Game Revived #2: The Kid

[LLapp]

"Keep in mind, I told you this would be a humdinger," Zeke said. "The woman crying in front of the bank was the birthday girl herself, your great-aunt Shanah. The very person who Donna bought those earrings for."

"Oh! And Trevor stopped in his tracks because he felt bad that he stole them?"

Zeke pulled his granddaughter onto his lap. "Yvette, you have a good heart. The truth is, I don't think Trevor even saw Shanah. There was another women there too, and Shanah was crying and hugging her like she had just found all the lost diamonds in the world. I guess it was that other lady who Trevor saw, but he may as well have been looking at Shanah. Those two women had one and the same face."

Evvy stared at her grandpa with wide eyes. "They both had the same face?"

"I don't suppose you've heard about Aunt Lana," Zeke said. "We still don't talk about her too much."

* * *

Frozen in place on the sidewalk, the diamond-earred Trevor -- or Caitlyn; at this point he wasn't sure which -- cried out louder than he meant to: "Ma!"

[Barnabas]

"Angie?" Lana said as she turned her head and saw the young woman standing not far down the sidewalk. It hadn't sounded like Angie, though. Still, when she'd heard someone cry Ma!" she had turned to see who it was that sounded so distressed. The young lady was the spitting image of her daughter Angie, Trevor's twin.

[Barnabas]

Next - Lana paled. "Trevor," she barely exhaled as the realization of who was standing before her became clear. Precisely at 11:22 AM, Lana then managed to say, "What do you think you're doing?"

At exactly 11:22 AM, the horrified bank teller stared directly into the barrel of the pistol and, barely above a whisper, managed to utter, "What do you think you're doing?"

Trevor/Caitlyn, reaching for the earrings he/she was wearing, paused for a moment. Vertigo gripped him momentarily, and his hands instead went to cover his face rather than to pull the earrings. It had happened just like this so many times before. "She needs me, Ma," he said. "She needs me."

"Yes, she does," Lana replied, knowing intuitively of whom Trevor was speaking. Two blocks away, the bank alarm began ringing.

[Barnabas]

“Grandpa, did you hear the bank alarm too?” Evvy asked. “Were you there that day?”

“Well, yes I was,” Zeke replied. “In fact, Evvy, it was probably on that very day that you came the closest to not ever having me for a grandpa.”

[Barnabas]

“As I approached the bank's front door – it was a little before 11:30 AM, I suppose,” Zeke began, and Evvy was all ears... and then Zeke found himself immersed in 1956 all over again.


It was the same old joke, told by and hooted over by the same old teller of the joke, that being old man Gump as he sat on the bench outside the bank sipping his Dr. Pepper, “You gonna be able to get all them quarters up to the bank teller today, Zeke?”
Zeke, at 11 years of age and all of 4' 6” tall, wished he were about two feet taller so he could drop the sack of quarters on top of old man Gump's head. Instead, he politely answered, “I expect so, Mr. Gump.” The quarters (and nickels – and dimes – and pennies) were the sum total of coins Zeke had collected from his newpaper route customers over the past two weeks. The coins were inside of a tightly drawn drawstring bag, and the bag was inside of a faux leather briefcase from Sears and Roebuck. Zeke's father, in a mix of pride and humor, had purchased the briefcase for his son.
“So my son wants to be the little businessman about town, huh? Well then he ought to have a businessman's briefcase to carry all of his important items,” his father had said when he presented it to him. Zeke never seemed to have any important items other than the money, but he did prefer carrying all of his silver with a handle in his hand instead of a drawstring that occasionally rubbed uncomfortably against his palm. Hoping he could step into the bank without any further comments from Treelore Gump, Zeke pondered the inadequacies of his height for about another half-second when in the very next instant the Saint Louis Cardinals ball-cap sitting loosely on top of his head was suddenly blown away... along with a fair amount of hair and a line of skin from his scalp as well. The crack of gunfire was all the confirmation Zeke needed to realize that it was the lack of height that had just saved his life.

[imported_Lurker]

Even as Zeke pondered his ironically good fortune, he saw that he was the only lucky one. Old Man Gump was leaning to one side, his Dr. Pepper smashed on the ground into a sharp puddle. The bullet that had grazed Zeke had landed in Gump's shoulder, perilously close to his neck.

Zeke turned around to look for help, which was when he saw who had fired the bullet. It had not occurred to him until then that it had to come from somewhere. The robber was headed down the steps of the bank, as the alarm started to ring.

[Barnabas]

George Bayh (affectionately known as By George to all his friends) grabbed Treelore Gump's nephew by the arm; the boy had been sitting quietly next to his uncle. George yanked him to his feet and yelled, “Run Forrest run!” He then turned to John Deere and said, “Run and get Dr. Pepper!"

Although nothing ran like a member of the Deere family, it was also true John could sometimes be a little slow on the uptake. "By George, he's been shot! The last thing he needs is another bottle of soda."

"No, John! Not more soda! Go and get the doctor!" George nearly screamed. "He should be in his office! I'll stay with Treelore!”

As it turned out, the local physician was Edgar Pepper. A medic during World War I, Dr. Pepper would not be easily cowed if the bullets were still flying when he arrived. John Deere found Dr. Pepper in his office chatting with his neighbor, Mr. Pibb, who had recently married Joy Almond, Dr. Pepper's office nurse. The three of them had been idly wondering if perhaps the bank might be testing their alarm system, what with all the racket.

[Barnabas]

Twitchy and bitchy... that's how she felt whenever her gun was drawn. It's how she needed to feel. And whoever happened to be on the business end of that gun had best be giving her his undivided attention, or twitchy might just get the best of bitchy. And that's how she felt now; the adrenaline running like an electrical current, the peril perfectly balanced against the thrill, the heightened sense of awareness. Oh yes, the awareness... he was nearby! She had no doubt of it. Her connection to him could never be called into question, but be that as it may, it might not be the best time for him to make a sudden entrance into the bank just now.

"That's all there is, ma'am." The bank teller. Her peripheral vision had never been any wider than it had before this exact moment, but her eyesight tunneled its way back to the faux leather briefcase being snapped shut in front of her. Her ice blue eyes conveyed nothing but a world of malice, and the teller mustered his courage to speak once again. "Honest. I grabbed every hundred and every fifty within reach. And you got more twenties in there than you could spend in a year's time."

"I'll be the judge of that," she replied, and grabbed the briefcase. In one fluid movement she turned, her gun-hand went to her waist, and the briefcase was in the other hand, slightly higher than the gun hand so as to call attention to the case rather than the gun. Standing by the door, Wally Greve was again confusing his responsibilities as bank security with official greeter, but he knew a H&R 929 Sidekick when he saw one, and he caught a glimpse of one now... in the right hand of the woman with the briefcase. Angie missed nothing (well... except for Mr. Greve). She saw his eyes widening, and immediately the gun came up. "And the winner is - Twitchy," she said. Greve stumbled and then fell backwards against the glass door, Angie's gun following downward as she fired, the bullet missing its intended target, punching a hole through the glass, and on its way to a Cardinals ballcap at the bottom of the bank steps.

[Barnabas]

Stupefied and stunned, Zeke stooped to pick up the briefcase he'd dropped, and a droplet of blood splatted on its side. He wasn't all that cognizant of the commotion surrounding him, and he took little notice other than to see the bank robber as she came bounding down the bank steps. Zeke's personal radar then completely failed to identify another person bearing down on him from the direction of the sidewalk. Trevor, noticing the kid with blood running down his forehead and cheek, saw that Angie was flying down the steps with her head turned toward the bank door, her arm outstretched and a gun in her hand. She was going to bowl over the bloodied kid, and Trevor sprinted toward the boy with the intent of tossing him aside. Trevor was just a single stride away when Angie, still not watching where she was running, missed a step and pitched forward. Knees and elbows collided with an already somewhat traumatized head, and all three went down in a pile.

“Angie, Angie!” Trevor shouted as his twin sister was already bringing the pistol around for the express purpose of neutralizing whatever or whoever it was that had placed himself between her and a quick escape. The mirror image of herself brought up short the whip of her gun hand. “Trevor?” she asked, recognition rapidly catching up to the shock of her twin brother's appearance. “You get a little confused about which of us is which this morning?” she said, a smile widening on her mouth.

At the bottom of the pile, and perhaps a bit concussed, Zeke gazed at the two lookalikes and said the first thing that came to his mind, “Angie, there ain't a woman that comes close to you.”

“SHUT UP, KID!” the twins shouted in unison. Trevor grabbed the briefcase as Angie swept her gun hand in an arc at the gathering crowd. Not dispersing to her satisfaction, she fired a shot in the air and that set the domesticated folks of this sleepy little burg to running! And then they were both running themselves, together, away from the bank and away from the crowd.

Zeke sat up, surveyed his surroundings, and saw his Cardinals ball-cap lying twenty-five feet away. He stood, and then stooped again to pick up the briefcase, and idly wondered what had happened to the blood stain on the side of case?

[Barnabas]

Edgar Pepper had stanched Treelore Gump's bleeding and had done all that he could for him. All that was left was to wait for the arrival of the ambulance, which would be coming from forty miles away in Jefferson City. There was no exit wound to be found, and that left Dr. Pepper confident that the bullet was still lodged inside Gump's shoulder. Gump was both conscious and lucid though, and the doc felt encouraged by what he saw.

“Has anybody seen Forrest?” Treelore queried, obviously in a great deal of pain.

“Who?” asked the doctor.

“My nephew, Forrest,” Treelore answered. “By George told him to run, and the thing is... well, Doc, he's a bit simple. He won't stop running until somebody tells him to.” Gump saw the 'your pulling my leg now' expression on Dr. Pepper's face and said, “I'm not kidding, Doc. He'll be halfway to the next county by now if somebody hasn't corralled him. He took off to the east. Could you humor me and have a deputy go look for him? He'll be on one of the gravel roads east of town.”

The sheriff was hunched down thirty feet away, asking questions of the boy who had been grazed by the very same shot that had ricocheted off a car fender and then hit Treelore Gump. Edgar Pepper called to him, “Archie? When you have a minute, Mr. Gump here needs to ask a favor of you.”

[Barnabas]

“Uh, Sis?” Trevor was in the back seat of the '51 Pontiac Chieftain, along with its owner Ralph Wallace. Unlike Mr. Wallace, Trevor's wrists weren't bound behind his back with electrical cord. Alone in the front seat, Angie was driving. Mr. Wallace had been sitting idly behind the cashier's desk at the Standard service station, flipping through the pages of a months old and badly grease spotted issue of Look when a couple of young ladies... “or wait a minute.” he'd wondered, “Were they both women?” They both looked so similar, but one had a look of some masculinity to her as well. He was waffling on the man vs. woman issue for only a moment and then the gun came up and it was in his face and the woman was making demands of him. “Put that damned magazine down!” she'd said. Then she wanted to know where the keys to his car were, how much money was in the cash register, and well... “what the hell are you waiting for? Get it out of the register,” she'd said - “all of it!” The young man, Ralph had definitely decided that the other young woman was a man, had found a lengthy extension cord and quickly bound Ralph's hands behind his back just as soon as the register had been emptied. And then they were off, all three of them, in Ralph's car. They were probably ten miles or more out of town, and had just blown by some youngster running east on a gravel road ("Had he been at the bank when all the excitement was happening?" Trevor wondered), when the young man who looked like a woman had become interested in the contents of the briefcase, the one with the singular dried blood spot on the top of it.

“What is it now, Trevor?” Angie asked.

“What did you ask for when you were in the bank, all the quarters or something?” Trevor asked, a bit confused.

“What are you talking about? Everything I got was paper. And there were large numbers on every bill, too,” Angie said with a smile.

“Yeah? Well what did you tuck the paper into? All I see here is maybe twenty or thirty dollars worth of change.”

They both thought about that for a while. A minute passed, and then another ten or fifteen seconds, and then, as it often did, the realization of what had happened struck them both at the same time. “The kid!” they exclaimed in unison. “He had a briefcase too,” Trevor recalled, thinking out loud. “That kid has our money!”

Angie hit the brakes. “We're going back!,” she nearly screamed. “If that snot-nosed punk thinks he's going to spend my money then I'll just show him what his little payday is going to buy him!”

[Barnabas]

“My my, young man, that is some paper route you seem to have. Why, you must be the envy of every paper carrier in the country.” Sheriff Archie Younger was standing over the shoulder of Dr. Edgar Pepper while the doctor continued to administer tests that should either confirm or rule out the presence of a concussion. Treelore Gump was on his way to Jefferson City, and now Dr. Pepper, the sheriff, and Zeke had made their to Dr. Pepper's office and found themselves in the examination room. Ostensibly, someone had been dispatched to fetch Zeke's parents, but whether or not anyone had actually gone to get them was unclear.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Zeke replied. Respect your elders, respect authority, and mind your manners; lessons that had been ingrained in him for as far back as Zeke could remember. But his response to the sheriff was also one of true bewilderment. He could read in the sheriff's demeanor that the man thought Zeke was hiding something, but Zeke also had absolutely no idea why the sheriff would make such a comment about his paper route. He suddenly felt a bit frightened – again.

“What's on your mind, Archie?” the doctor asked. “I'll be needing the boy's attention for a while longer.” Dr. Pepper had picked up on the edge in the sheriff's voice, too, and as neither of Zeke's parents had yet arrived, he now felt it might be necessary to take on the role of becoming the boy's protector and perhaps even his momentary lawyer, in addition to being his physician.

“Oh, you go right on doing whatever you need to do there, doc,” said the sheriff. “I'm sure our bank robber – or robbers – are a couple of very patient folks. I imagine they'll just wait around somewhere close by until I have a chance to get everything sorted out, and then just wait for me to come and get them.”

“What does any of that have to do with my patient?” Dr. Pepper asked.

“Oh, maybe nothing at all,” replied the sheriff. “I've just never known a paper boy who makes collections in stacks of 100s, 50s, and 20s. Why, I'm quite sure there must be in excess of a few thousand dollars in this young man's briefcase, and I'm more than a little curious what this young man had in mind to do with all that money.”

[Barnabas]

“You see him anywhere back there in the service bay?” Jerry Atrick called to his younger brother Barry. They were looking for Ralph Wallace, but it appeared the service station attendant was nowhere to be found.

“Nope. He's not back here,” Barry called back. He surveyed the area once again, as if Ralph might miraculously reappear from thin air, and then decided to rejoin his brother in the customer service room. “We need to get some petro, Jerry, or Archie will have our hides again.” The brothers were deputies, though Sheriff Younger privately referred to the two as his “diputies.” The sheriff, not wanting to have two of his men standing around idly at the scene of a robbery, had told the brothers to make themselves useful and go search the town. “Look for anything out of the ordinary,” he'd told them. “And if you find anything get back to me immediately.” The boys had their orders... but their squad car was in need of fuel.

“Lookit here, Barry.” Jerry was pointing to the cash register. “That knucklehead Ralph left the store and didn't even bother to close the cash register. Looks empty, though, so I guess there wouldn't be any money to steal anyway.”

“Well that explains it then,” Barry offered. “There's no money in the till. He's run down to the bank to make a deposit.” The brothers thought about that for a moment, both shaking their heads at Ralph Wallace's obvious stupidity. “Leave it to Ralph,” Barry further observed. “Only an idiot would try to make a deposit during a bank robbery investigation.”

“Roger that, little brother,” Jerry concurred. He leaned over and picked up a copy of Look magazine off the floor. It was crumpled and partially torn, as if it had been discarded somewhat violently. “Now that's just a shame. A perfectly good picture of Jayne Mansfield and it's nearly torn in two.” Again the brothers shook their heads in disbelief at the careless nature of Ralph Wallace's behavior. “Well, Barry, do you think you can figure out how to run that pump out there? The sheriff will be expecting us to be out looking for anything suspicious.”

“Yeah, I can manage it I think. It would be nice to have Ralph here to check the oil and clean the windshield, though. How you planning on paying him for the gas?”

“I'll just write him a note. I hate to do it, but I may have to word it a bit strongly,” Jerry said. “I don't appreciate him not being here when we're in an emergency situation like this.” He reached over and grabbed a Hershey's bar from the box next to the register, grabbed another, and then grabbed a couple more for his brother. It wouldn't do to have those on the note, though. Archie wouldn't want to be paying for Jerry and Barry's candy bars. “Well, consider it an inconvenience tax,” he muttered to himself, and pocketed the candy.

Barry was placing the pump handle back on its holder when Jerry met him at the car. “Wouldn't it be great, Jerry, if we came across another crime that these half-witted bank robbers committed, and we were the ones to discover it? That would be just bitchin!”

“Yeah, it really would,” Jerry agreed. They both got into the car and then they pulled away from the gas station. They had their fuel. There sense of purpose was renewed, and they were now on a mission. If it took them all day, by God they were going to find something that was out of the ordinary!

[Barnabas]

Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot by just watching.” Ike Green was a Yankees fan through and through; always had been. And the owner of Universal Pawn smiled (but only a little; his smile always came off as something more like a smirk) as he reflected on his favorite catcher's seemingly silly comment. But he knew what Berra had meant by the comment, and it occurred to Ike that you could learn a lot by just listening as well.

Ike was a master at slipping into and out of buildings, rooms, places... or just situations... without ever being noticed. He'd never intended to be that way; it was just something that had seemed to come by him naturally his whole life. To this day he remembered quite clearly the day when, as a boy, he'd been standing silently behind his mother and she had nearly scalded herself with boiling water as she moved the pot of spaghetti noodles from the stove to the sink. She should have known he was there; it's where he always seemed to be... but once again she was unaware of his presence. Tripping over her son, the pot had somehow miraculously been pitched forward instead of back onto the woman and child. “Isaac!” she'd said, the exasperation and hysteria growing with each word. “How many times do I have to tell you not to do that!” The chastisement hadn't delivered its intended effect, and it was in that moment Ike Green realized that perhaps he had a gift, one that might be deemed as quite useful over time. And so, now more than a half-century later, Ike found himself in Dr. Edgar Pepper's waiting room, completely alone and unattended. Dr. Pepper's nurse, Joy Pibb, was still over at the bank attending to the minor injuries - cuts and scrapes mostly - that had occurred to several people during the robbery. The doc, the sheriff, and the kid were in the examination room... and Ike was listening to every word.

He'd slipped into the waiting room, unnoticed as usual, only for the purpose of picking up the topical cream that would help control his psoriasis. Joy, the nurse, always referred to it as “Pepper's persistant, pasty, psoriasis patch putty.” It was the doc's own concoction after all. Ike never bothered to remind Joy that the “p” in psoriasis was silent, thus rendering her little witticism as more witless than witty. But the topical cream could wait... oh yes it could. Ike had heard mention of a briefcase filled with cash, and the sheriff had carelessly left it sitting next to the reception counter. “The silent slithering that has been my life,” Ike thought to himself. “The gift that just keeps on giving.” He padded over to the briefcase, picked it up, and noiselessly slipped out the door.

[Barnabas]

Ralph Wallace sat in silence as Angie blew by the sign announcing the city limits. For someone who might not wish to draw attention to herself, Ralph thought the young woman may want to consider easing off the gas pedal. Besides, even with all of the attention that Sheriff Younger would be giving to the bank and its immediate surroundings, surely someone by now would have noticed Ralph's absence at the service station. Everyone in town knew he drove a green '51 Chieftain, and that would certainly make it even more difficult for the kidnappers to evade detection if they were going to continue driving his car.

Jerry and Barry Atrick waved at the young woman driving a green '51 Chieftain as she went by them headed in the opposite direction, perhaps a bit too fast in the estimation of Jerry Atrick, and he again felt a momentary sense of pride in the belief that there wasn't much that got by him. “Did Ralph Wallace sell his car?” Jerry asked his brother.

“No, not that I know of,” replied Barry. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

“I sure am. It looks like there's another green Chiftain in town,” Jerry remarked. “I probably should turn around and pull her over. She was well over the speed limit, but I think it might be best if we let it go today. It's not every day you have a bank robbery in town, and we've got a crime to solve.”

“Roger that, big brother... roger that.” The brothers' eyes were like lasers. Surely something big was about to happen, and they were determined to be on hand when it did.

Angie's stomach nearly leaped into her chest when she saw the squad car approaching from the opposite direction. She knew she was driving much too fast given her location – Main Street. Unbelievably, the two police officers in the car merely waved as she went by. She immediately checked the rearview mirror and watched in astonishment as the police cruiser just kept on going, as if the most important thing on their minds was getting over to the local coffee shop for a couple of donuts and a cup or two. Angie, recognizing her good fortune, forced herself to try and calm down and slowed the vehicle to what felt like a crawl. In the back seat, Ralph shook his head in disbelief, "but then," he reasoned silently, "it was undoubtedly the Atrick brothers who had just gone by. God help us all."

Darren Pepper, a 2nd or 3rd cousin to Dr. Edgar Pepper, was a sergeant with the state police. He'd been 15 miles away, in the town of Renville, when he'd began hearing reports over the radio of a bank robbery in nearby Cleves. Darren was acquainted with Sheriff Younger and his deputies, Barry and Jerry Atrick, and he had quickly concluded that the sheriff would more than likely need all the assistance he could get. Twenty minutes later, he had parked his cruiser near the bank and found Nurse Joy Pibb administering small bandages to a couple of folks at the scene of the crime. “Excuse me, ma'am, but would you happen to know if the sheriff is still here inside the bank? I'd like to see if he needs my help.” Joy Pibb had said that she expected him back at any time now. He'd asked the bank tellers some questions, and then had followed the boy who may or may not have been shot over to Dr. Pepper's office. But he'd given the bank employees and everyone else who had been inside strict instructions not to leave. “He needs to talk with everyone – no exceptions,” Joy had said, and then had pointed the officer in the direction of his cousin's office.

“Darren, I'm damn glad to see you're here,” Sheriff Younger said just minutes later, as the sergeant stepped into the examination room with the others. “Doc, I'd like to introduce you to a fine policeman with the state's force.” Edgar turned and recognized his cousin but before he could interrupt, the sheriff was already making the introductions... “Dr. Pepper, Sgt. Pepper – Sgt. Pepper, Dr. Pepper.”

“We know each other, Archie,” Darren said. “Now, how can I be of help?”