Pootie Game Revived #2: The Kid

November 11, 2015:

Evvie Johnstone had left the message on her grandparents' answering machine, urging them to come by the house in the evening. She had recorded something on her parents' DVR and she was sure it was something Grandpa Zeke would want to see. “Have you been filling her head with all that nonsense about Amelia Earhart's ghost again, Zeke?” his wife Emma asked. “She had asked you to tell her a humdinger of a story and you certainly gave her one.” Zeke had then reassurred his wife of two things: 1.) no, the topic of “that day in 1956” hadn't been discussed recently, and 2.) for what seemed like the one-hundredth time, he reiterated to his wife that the events of that day were not nonsensical, or at least not fictitious, in any way whatsoever. At 6:45 PM, Zeke and Emma were greeted warmly by their son Pete, his wife Gwen, and their daughter Evvie; older brother Pete Jr. was off to college and wouldn't be home until Thanksgiving. Gwen served raspberry pie with ice cream (Aunt Donna's recipe) and then everyone gathered in the living room. Evvie tuned the large Samsung hi-def screen to the DVR player and the last couple of minutes of a string of commercials played, and then the familiar CNN letters rolled across the screen, quickly followed by the AC360 logo. Anderson Cooper was sitting in his usual position behind the news desk with a thin smile stretched across his face.

“Tonight on the The Ridiculist,” he began, “we take you to Honolulu, Hawaii with what may – or just as likely, may not – be yet another minor development in the now nearly 80-years long mystery in the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan. It seems as though still another “Earhart enthusiast” has made one more discovery on Howland Island. Professor Henry Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunae VIII – the 8th?” Cooper repeated for effect and chuckled, “and a couple of graduate assistants from the University of Hawaii were scouring Howland Island near the site of previous findings. They were looking for anything that might help confirm claims that previous airplane wreckage found on the island irrefutably came from the Lockheed Electra Ms. Earhart was piloting in an attempt to circumnavigate the world in 1937. We take you now to Honolulu and CNN's Randi Kaye. Randi, Professor Henry Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunae the 8th?” and he started chuckling again.

“Yes, Anderson,” Randi replied, smiling pleasantly, when the screen bisected into two images, one of Anderson and one of Ms. Kaye. “It's quite a mouthful, isn't it? His family and friends simply refer to him as Henry the 8th.”

“I can't imagine why,” Anderson said with as cheesy a grin as he dared to muster.

“Indeed,” Randi said, wanting to get on with her report, and then the TV screen went full to a single image of Ms. Kaye only. “What the three men found was not another part of an airplane's fuselage, or any radio instrumentation or pilot's gear or anything of that sort. What was found was a handgun, specifically an H&R929, commonly referred to as a 'sidekick' back in its day.” She raised a large ziploc bag for her viewers to see and it was presumably the gun to which she was referring that was inside the bag. “It was the professor himself who spotted the gun lying between a couple of rocks and it was somewhat covered by the grass growing around it. Fortunately, he had the wherewithall not to handle the gun with his hands but instead picked it up with a 'grabber', the kind anyone can buy at a Walmart for about $13- or so. He bagged the handgun in this ziploc bag and it was eventually taken to the University of Hawaii for analysis. What was discovered then is a bit remarkable. The gun, though never thought to have been on board the ill-fated Earhart plane, seems to belong to still another person who has been missing for a long long time. The trigger was found to be in remarkably good condition, and if the gun has been here since its owner went missing, it is then nothing short of miraculous that a fingerprint was somehow successfully lifted from the trigger, and it came up as a match for Angie Rivers, a young woman who had been in the process of building quite a resume of criminal activity when she disappeared in 1956 after a foiled bank robbery attempt in Cleves, Missouri. Mr. Forrest Gump, the colorful retired CEO of Bubba Gump Shrimp, has long maintained that he saw Ms. Rivers get pulled into a tornado a couple of miles east of the little town of Carpenter, Missouri on the day of the robbery. Her body was never found. Nor was this gun – until now – and how it could possibly have made its way from rural Missouri to Howland Island, lying amongst wreckage that may or not be from Amelia Earhart's airplane is anyone's guess.”

“Is there any chance the gun may have been planted?” the screen had split again, and the dual images of the two reporters filled the screen.

“Well, that's certainly an obvious question, Anderson,” Randi answered. “But the professor, Henry the 8th, insists that if the gun was placed on Howland Island it was not done so by him, and he can't imagine what a hoax of this nature would hope to accomplish, if this is indeed some kind of hoax.”

“And no sign of the remains of Angie Rivers, I assume?” Anderson asked.

“That's correct,” Randi answered. “Still no clues as to the whereabouts of the body of Angie Rivers, who by the way would now be 81 years old if she might somehow still be alive.”

“Alright. Thank you, Randi,” and the screen went full to Cooper. “That is tonight's Ridiculist, and that's going to do it for us. Thank you for watching. CNN Tonight starts right after this.” The network broke to a Dr. Pepper commercial, and then the DVR stopped running.

Pete and Gwen hurriedly gathered the now empty pie plates, not wanting to get caught up in the inevitable discussion that was about to ensue – a conversation that never did materialize. Emma muttered something about any news report not reported on Fox was really no news report at all, and then decided to join her son and daughter-in-law in the kitchen. Zeke remained in the Lazy-Boy, his son's, though it was always relinquished for Zeke's benefit whenever he came over. On the sofa, Evvie sat and studied the expression on her grandfather's face, and she thought she detected a hint of sadness. Perhaps Grandma Emma's little jibe had hurt a little, or maybe it was something else altogether. Regardless of what it may have been, she said softly but with sincerity, “Grandpa, I've always believed you, you know?”

"Nobody's ever disputed the events of the bank robbery," Zeke replied. "There were dozens of witnesses and everything was plausible. Forrest saw me fall from the sky, but he never had any contact with Amelia and Noonan. So the only people who saw them were Angie Rivers, Sergeant Pepper, and me... and Sergeant Pepper never saw them up close or spoke to them. He may have seen Angie shoot at Noonan, but if he did he probably assumed Angie missed... which she didn't. Angie was up close and got an earful of them, I can tell you. She found out in a hurry that she wanted no part of them, and who could blame her? But, I assume she's been dead for all of these past 59 years, and so that leaves me. I'm the only one left who saw them and actually interacted with them. And I know one thing; they were not..." he paused, searching for the right word, "...tangible! Whether they were living or not, who am I to try and understand such things? And I can't blame your grandmother for her skepticism or anyone else for theirs. But I saw what I saw." He turned and looked Evvie straight in the eyes. "I love my family, and I regard my grandchildren as God's finest gift He's ever given me. But you... you're the only one who accepts my account of what happened that day without judgment or question. And you'll never know how much that means to me, Evvie. Thank you. And with that said, I think I could do for a second slice of pie." Zeke rose from his chair and headed for the kitchen.

The End?

Run! But where to? The little town of Carpenter was a couple of miles west; there were no barns or other buildings to try and get to, and any culverts that might be found in the ditch were undoubtedly filling up with rain water. The tornado, which was several hundred yards wide, was coming for her. It was coming for her; Angie could feel the malevolence. This was no ordinary tornado... this was whatever had occupied that damned biplane, and maybe even the plane itself. “That's right!” she screamed. “I shot you right between the eyes, and I have another round chambered just for you! So come and get it!” and she fired a shot at the approaching tornado.

In her mad wanderings through the cornfield, Angie had finally emerged farther west on her side of the road than had Zeke and Forrest on theirs. And she was right about the culverts; the torrential rainfall was filling the ditches, and the boys behind her had been forced to higher ground as well. They, like Angie, were transfixed by the tornado and neither party as yet had noticed the other. The shot taken at the tornado, though, got the boys' attention, and Zeke put his free hand on Forrest's shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. The wind, though, was making it impossible for anyone to maintain their balance and Forrest leaned heavily on Zeke, and Zeke leaned back. Closing in on the little group, the tornado was a monstrous vacuum and Angie turned her back to it and was now facing the wind... and the boys. She saw them at once and instantly set aside all thoughts of the tornado bearing down her, she being the first person it would reach. She raised her gun and sighted it in directly on Zeke's chest... and pulled the trigger.

Whether it was the tornado that pulled her back or the bullet fired from the gun of Sergeant Pepper that knocked her back was never known. Angie's gun never fired; her chamber was empty. Sergeant Pepper, from a position behind the boys, had seen Angie raise her weapon, and he had aimed and fired at her in an attempt to save the boys. But when Angie's backward motion gained momentum, rather than ending with her falling to the ground, her body actually became airborne and then was pulled into the giant vortex. Though endless speculation would ensue about where the tornado may have deposited her, her body was never found. Sergeant Pepper had raced up to the boys, wrapped his arms around them, and pulled them down to the road's surface, he taking a position above them to protect them from what seemed inevitable. But the tornado never reached them. Once Angie had disappeared it simply lost contact with the earth, rising higher and higher into the sky toward the cloud of its genesis. The rain stopped and the winds calmed. Sergeant Pepper and the boys sat up, and Zeke turned to the man and said, “I wanted to give this to the sheriff, but I'll just give it to you instead. Its' the...”
“...the money from the bank,” Sergeant Pepper finished for him. They all stood and began their walk back to town.

No further shots were heard, after the two the boys had heard when they were standing alongside the road. And neither of them really knew quite what to make of the situation. “I didn't fall a thousand feet out of the sky just so I could get shot by a crazy woman who wants this money I'm carrying around.” Forrest had then asked if the money was his, and then whose it was, and had Zeke gotten it at the bank robbery Forrest had run away from, and a few more questions before Zeke had asked him to be quiet so that he could think. Added to the uncertainty of whether or not anyone had actually been shot on the other side of the road and having to deal with Forrest's curious nature, the weather was quickly becoming a problem... something Zeke hadn't counted on. The giant cloud mass that had only a short while ago seemed so distant was quickly moving in and the wind, even from the shelter provided by dense rows of tall corn stalks, was gaining strength.

A bolt of lightning was followed by a frighteningly loud BOOM! “Can you hear the thunder?” Forrest asked casually.

“If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me that today, I'd need another briefcase for them all,” Zeke answered. A mass of gray clouds seemed to swallow the sky and then the rain began to fall, large cold heavy drops of water that seemed to be being driven into the ground rather than simply falling to it. “We need to find some cover, Forrest, and we can't see where we're headed from in here. We could follow this row of corn but I think we'll get to town faster if we follow the road. If we stay in the ditch, I think we'll be alright.” Forrest nodded his consent and they hustled back to the road from the direction they had come. When they reached the ditch they turned and were about to begin following it west to Carpenter... and then they looked up.

Angie wasn't sure if the cop had been hit by the shot she had fired or not. He had spotted her and told her to “freeze.” Never one to simply throw in her cards, she had instead turned and fired in the direction she thought the order had come from. A shot was returned in her direction and it missed, but she hadn't really gotten a glimpse of her pursuer. Reacting defensively, both had moved off from their positions so as to make themselves more difficult to spot. As far as she knew, the cop hadn't seen her since then; she certainly had not seen or heard him. “Maybe he's laying face down in the mud,” she murmurred to herself. “The crows have gotta eat more than just corn if they're going to have a balanced diet.” She kept on, not sure in what direction she was headed. The wind had come up – blowing hard, the rain had begun to fall, and now even small bits of hail were bouncing off the corn stalks and the ground. She was cold, tired, and bleeding, and she just wanted to get out of the weather and find a place to rest. When she finally reached the ditch leading up to the road, she looked up – at a tornado coming out of the southwest and making its way straight for her.

“That sure is a funny voice you have,” observed Forrest. And then Zeke started giggling... and crying, both at the same time. “Momma always says to leave the past in the past,” Forrest offered. “That's where it belongs and you can't leave it anywhere else anyways. The ground is right underneath of you now, Zeke, and you can't fall no farther.” And that made Zeke laugh, but the crying continued too. There were just too many emotions surfacing all at once.

“I suppose you're right, Forrest. The falling really is over, isn't it?” Zeke mused aloud, his voice steadily returning to normal. And then they both realized a third voice was encroaching on their conversation, though it sounded somewhat tinny and artificial. On the opposite side of the fence, where the fabric of the blimp lay spread out and various broken instruments of some kind or another lay in disarray inside the frame, a radio receiver was still working. “King How Able Queen Queen to Itasca, this is Earhart; are you there?” There was no reply, only the pilot repeating her request for a response every 30 seconds or so.

“She was trying to reach someone or someplace called Fulton before,” Zeke said. “Her friend Noonan wanted her to try for a place called Howland. Now she's asking for an Itasca, whatever that might mean. Maybe Noonan convinced her of whatever it is he wanted.” The boys looked skyward, searching for the biplane, and in the distance far to the southwest they spotted it. It was headed directly towards a giant cumulo-nimbus cloud with voluminous billows of white cloud at the top of the mass but dark heavy steam at the bottom. Streaks of lightning burst earthward from it and moments later thunder followed, rolling out over the landscape. “I guess Noonan got the thunder he kept wondering about,” said Zeke. And a moment later the plane entered the violent cloud mass and disappeared. And from that moment on there were no further appeals heard from the radio. "Well, I guess that's it then," said Zeke. "God help them, wherever they are now."

After Forrest explained to Zeke what it was he was doing out here by himself, Zeke reassured him that it would be alright to return to Cleves. They both began walking west, toward the town of Carpenter; Zeke with a few coins in his pocket that he hoped to be able to use at a pay phone to call someone for a ride. They had walked for a few minutes, quickly getting to know one another in the way that comes so naturally for boys, when the crack of gunfire erupted from the cornfield on the north side of the road. Neither of the boys could see more than two rows deep into the field, and though they couldn't see what was unfolding in the field, Zeke had a pretty good guess about who might be involved. “Forrest,” he said, “come with me right now!” He grabbed Forrest's hand, led him into the ditch, and the boys quickly scrambled over the fence bordering the cornfield on the south side of the road. He led Forrest twenty yards in and then stopped. “We should be safe now. Nobody knows we're here and nobody can see us from the road. Let's just wait and listen for awhile. If we hear more shots we'll just sit it out here until after sundown and then follow the ditch back to town.”

Rushing up to meet him was the ground... from his perspective, anyway, though he knew the opposite to be the truth of the matter. He was free falling, and as he looked at the small speck of a person below on the side of the road, he realized that whoever it was down there, he or she was going to be the last person he would ever see in this world. And that in itself was on odd thought, something he had never given any consideration to before – that out there somewhere, someday, someone's face was going to be the last face he would ever look upon. And now, suddenly, much sooner than he could have ever imagined, here was that person, though from this height Zeke could make out no details whatsover of whomever “that person” was.

How had his day come to this? All he had wanted to do was deposit less than $20 worth of coins into the bank, and now here he was just a few hours later falling to the end of his life. His thoughts – and there were so many – were all running concurrently; there was no time now for a string of consecutive reflections. His parents would be heartbroken, as would many of his classmates... but a few, maybe not so much. Why had he picked up that stupid gun? Why had Sergeant Pepper assumed the worst in him when he had done so? Why had he chosen to jump onto the wing of the airplane rather than simply drop the gun? He supposed he could guess an answer to that one; having a loaded gun aimed directly at you by another person can cause you to panic in the most unusual of ways. He had thought he was going to duck behind the fuselage from up on the wing to protect himself from the policeman's line of fire, but then he realized the one named Amelia was about to throttle up the engine, and again another instinctive reaction had immediately kicked in – hold on to something! He had wanted to protect the briefcase, had wanted to place it directly in the hands of Sheriff Younger himself. So he'd held onto it and dropped the gun instead and grabbed one of the wing's struts with his free hand. When he'd felt the force of the wind from the propeller, he had positioned his feet in such a way to gain the best sense of balance he could muster... and he had unintentionally stepped on the gun, thereby holding it in its position on the surface of the wing. When he had realized how tenuous his balance truly was, he hadn't dared to adjust his feet in the slightest. The plane was hurtling down the gravel road, and then they were airborne and things only got worse, the constant rush of the wind conspired to blow him right off the plane out into thin air. Why hadn't that ghastly figure of a person – Noonan; that was his name – extended a helping hand? The final tendril of hope snapped when Amelia had taken that hard turn to the right. It was as though his feet had been knocked right out from under him. The gun was suddenly gone, and only a moment or two later, so was the briefcase. And then he himself was gone as well, and now here he was, trying to make out the details of the face on the boy on the side of the road, as his fall neared its unforgiving point of termination.

The end was approaching quickly. Two hundred feet... one hundred... fifty... and then he was down to the last color he was ever going to see... and that, apparently, was yellow.

When he struck the blimp, much of the giant balloon's helium gas had already escaped from a small tear in its side, that as the result of its brush with the radio tower some nine hours earlier. The blimp was still aloft, but its mooring cable had dragged it down to its last twenty-five feet of elevation above the ground. The yellow fabric covering the skeletal frame of the blimp was now far less taut than it had been when its wayward journey had begun several hundred miles to the west. Zeke crashed into the top of the blimp and the fabric, by then, had a certain amount of give to it, and the force of his body hitting the blimp pushed the large balloon its last twenty-five feet to the ground, further softening his initial blow. As the blimp bounced off the surface of the road, the exterior fabric where Zeke had hit the blimp stretched to its maximum stress and was about to recoil and toss Zeke airborne again. But instead it ripped, and then Zeke was falling into the blimp. Somewhere within, he struck a light-weight table that was supporting what looked like scientific instruments of some kind, and the table broke and Zeke was falling again. He landed awkwardly on the blimp's bottom, and just to his left the fabric was tearing open again. It had caught on a barbed-wire fence, ripping the exterior of the blimp violently. And then, as if he were a chicken being hatched from an egg, the blimp simply rolled away from him and he was left lying in the ditch near the road, miraculously unharmed. The boy – the one he thought was going to be the last he would ever see – was standing up by the pavement, holding the briefcase. “Hello,” he said. “My name's Forrest – Forrest Gump. I think you dropped this.”

Zeke had been breathing high levels of helium during his brief tumble within the blimp, and in a voice that sounded something like Donald Duck, he replied, “I'm Zeke. Pleased to meet you, Forrest.”

“No gun!” Angie Rivers reminded herself of that for what seemed like the hundredth time. She was running through the cornfield, the myriad stalks each at least a foot taller than herself. They provided good cover, but as densely spaced as they were they also left a trail of noise as she collided with the stalks she was passing by – or through. Added to that, there was the problem of her shoes leaving a noticeable print in the dirt with each hurried step. Angie, though, had always been quick to recognize a situation for what it was, and she knew there was nothing to be done about the noise or the footprints. The cop was somewhere behind her; she had heard him crashing through the stalks as well, though seemingly a good distance behind her. He had a gun and she did not, though at least he was someone of the mortal variety and that made him far more manageable than the occupants of the biplane – whatever the outcome of all of this might be. All she could do was keep running, zig and zag, and hope that he would at least lose sight of her tracks during his pursuit.

She had heard the plane's engine roar back to life. It had certainly rumbled a great deal while idling, but then just a short time ago it had loudly announced its intentions of making a departure from its earthly surroundings. Shortly after that the engine sounded as if, in addition to being behind her, it was now above her as well. And while Angie was aware of these perceptions, she paid them no heed. Her intended escape by air was no longer an option, and only the things that might be useful to her in her attempt to evade the man following her found their way to Angie's immediate focus. Angie hardly noticed when the plane, banking hard to the right, passed directly overhead. It continued on, as did she, and then something struck her hard on her head, just where the hairline met the skin of the forehead. Whatever it was had hit her hard enough to cause her to fall, and her scalp had been broken open. She was already bleeding when she went face first into the rich black soil. The blood, sweat, and labored breathing attracted mosquitos almost immediately, but they were the least of her problems. Dazed, she pulled herself up to her hands and knees and paused to listen. Back there, somewhere, but a good distance off yet, the cop was still crashing through the cornfield. Blood was stinging her eyes, and she was trying desperately to still the vertigo caused from having been struck, or so she supposed. She doubted very much that she would now be able to outrun the cop... but at least now she could shoot. Oh yes, she could do that. Three feet down the row of corn from where she knelt lay the gun – her gun, the one that had hit her on the head, the one that had fallen from the airplane as it passed over her.

“East! Why are you turning east, Amelia? We need to be heading southwest!” Noonan was shouting at his pilot. He was itching for another argument. The biplane, with its three passengers, had lifted off perfectly with no other option than a heading of due north, and once airborne the standard practice was to bank left. But the gravel had been no airport, and there was nothing 'standard' about today's flight. Amelia banked hard to the right.

Amelia ignored Noonan, as she often did when he was inebriated and overbearing, and lifted the microphone handset from its mount on the radio, pressed the send button on the mic and began trying to open communications with Fulton, “King How Able Queen Queen to Fulton; do you read me?”

Immediately, his frustration and anger mounting, Noonan tried to talk sense to Amelia. “Damn it, Amelia, those are the tail letters for the Electra! This is Maxwell's Silver Hammer, the biplane... which by the way, you keep claiming to everyone you meet you named this plane after your father. Max was your father's friend, Amelia! Your father's name was Sam. People called him Edwin! Amelia, are you listening to me? We're not going to Fulton. We never were! We need to make for Howland Island!” Her stare, as vacant as an abyss, seemed to look right through Noonan. “King How Able Queen Queen to Fulton; do you read me?”

It had been difficult enough from the outset for Zeke to maintain his tenouous hold onto the wing's strut. He could only hold the the pole with one hand, the other being needed to keep a grasp on the briefcase. His feet were standing on a flat surface, but his balance was under attack by the gale force winds being generated by the plane's propeller. As the plane had risen from the gravel road, Zeke wondered almost at once about how long he could sustain the delicate balance he had established. And then the pilot, the one Noonan was calling Amelia, had suddenly banked hard to the right. At once, Zeke's feet slipped out from under him, dangling earthward, and his only link to the plane was his grasp on the wing's strut. “Help!” he screamed at Noonan.

Noonan altered his gaze from Amelia, turning his head to address Zeke. He recognized the impossible situation the boy had gotten himself into, but rather than extend a helping hand to him he merely repeated what he'd said before, “Can't you hear? Can't you hear the thunder? You better run. You better take cover!” and then smiled.

Zeke knew he wasn't going to be able to maintain his hold on the strut for much longer. The forces of the wind, the turning of the plane and whatever added g-forces that might have brought on, and even gravity itself were all placing demands on his physical presence. He looked again, desperately, to Noonan for help, and it was then the briefcase slipped from his grasp. “No!” he screamed, and instinctively reached for the falling case. And the act of reaching for the briefcase with his empty hand, in turn, loosened his fingers just enough on the strut... just enough to cause them to slip completely from their purchase on the pole. “AHHHH!” he screamed from several hundred feet up in the air. And as he fell, it occurred to him that he could no longer hear the thunder of the biplane's engine... and he had absolutely nowhere to run.

“East! It's drifting east and gaining altitude!” Private 1st class Carl Grell exclaimed, mostly to himself. As he watched the giant weather balloon, property of the United States Army, floating free and untethered, his mind entertained visions of a court-martial, a dishonorable discharge, and... “Who knows?” he whispered to himself in a state of near hysteria, “Maybe I'll have to go to prison.” Because the 'weather balloon' he had failed to properly secure was almost certainly more than just a weather balloon (if weather data was really a portion of what it gathered at all). There were sensitive instruments inside the giant bright yellow blimp, but neither Carl nor any of his associates believed those instruments watched the weather. What they did watch, he could only begin to guess at. He was, after all, a private, and privates weren't on the mailing lists of anyone who handed out top secret memos, letters, or any other kind of classified correspondence. The blimp, on its way to wherever it was now free to go, bounced off the side of a radio tower, and Carl thought he had seen - for just a moment - a piece of yellow fabric flapping along the side of the giant cylinder of gas. Had it been ripped? Was the blimp now damaged in addition to being loose? He shuddered at the thought. “Oh, the humanity,” he murmurred to himself, and began to whimper.

The blimp, to the half-dozen men who attended to its mooring, was referred to as 'the yellow submarine.' The base's C.O., Col. Harland Sanders, had once asked Pvt. Grell why they called it a submarine. “It's a blimp! Why don't you call it the yellow blimp?” Grell had tried to explain that calling it a yellow blimp would simply be calling it what it is... “It wouldn't really be a nickname for it then, would it sir?” The colonel had waved him off dismissively, having lost interest almost before realizing he'd had any at all, and gone in search of his dinner. Fried chicken was being served at the base commissary, and on such days the colonel could hardly be counted on to focus on little else. Now, it seemed to Private Grell, the colonel would have a good deal more to focus on than he would like him to. The blimp was more than a mile downwind at an altitude of 1500 feet and climbing, and from somewhere behind him Private Grell was beginning to hear the shouts of men who were just coming to the realization that there was something to be alarmed about.

Nine hours later...

The crack of gunfire that had pierced the air behind Forrest, somewhere back towards Carpenter, had given him pause. He stood, looking back in that direction, and for a time nothing further seemed to be happening. The gypsies were now a half-mile or more down the road, and Forrest simply watched the backs of the wagons as they diminished in the distance. But then there came the sound of the airplane, probably the very one he had seen circling earlier. And sure enough, within moments Forrest could see the biplane rising from the ground, gaining altitude quickly and heading due north. After a time, the plane banked to the right and began coming around in such a way that its flight path would bring the aircraft directly over Forrest's head. He continued watching the plane, following its every movement, and as the plane crossed over him, Forrest turned with it. And it was only then that Forrest noticed a giant yellow... “is that a balloon?” he wondered, bearing down on him, drifting only 25 feet off the ground and dragging with it a mooring cable.

“Take off, lady! Your friend stays here!” Angie commanded. Again, with the gun pointed directly at the bridge of her nose, it seemed to hold no sway whatsoever over the strange woman in the cockpit. Angie could see that the police officer, now a quarter of a mile behind them, had come to recognize that the plane might not be leaving after all, and he was now getting behind the wheel of his squad car. Soon, he would be around the sheriff's car and on his way to the standstill between the pilot, her friend, the kid, and – worst of all – herself. Angie could wait no longer. “Fine,” she exclaimed, “I can't shoot you but I can sure as hell shoot your friend.” She turned, aimed, and fired a shot, striking the man known as Noonan right between the eyes.

From a distance of a few miles, Forrest heard a crack pierce the air, and then a short while later there came another just like the first. He thought about what the gypsy had said when he had asked Forrest if he could hear the thunder, and the warning about taking cover which had followed. He hadn't seen any clouds at the time, but now – far off in the southwest – a line of gray was approaching. But the “thunder,” or whatever it had been, had sounded much closer than that. He took the final bite of “vegemite sandwich” and muttered to himself, “There isn't anyplace to take cover even if I wanted to. No sir. Not so much as even a culvert to crawl into with a muskrat.”

In the back of the state policeman's car, Trevor's eyes rolled up into their sockets until only the whites of his eyes shown. He jerked violently once, then again, and finally between clenched teeth he spat the words, “Don't shoot them, Angie! Don't! It's not the way! Just... just get away from her! Now!” In the front seat, officer Dick Starkey couldn't believe his bad luck and, panic stricken, said, “No no no no, please don't die no more. I'm tired of taking them to the morgue! No thank you please, just make yourself sneeze, and then I'll get you to the hospital door!”

Instead of the expected backward jerk that would be instantaneously followed by the bits of bone and crimson exploding out of the back of his head, Noonan's face seemed to shimmer for a moment... and nothing more than that. He continued advancing toward the airplane, cursing and demanding that the pilot (Amelia he'd called her) produce his spirits and a Jew's harp. Angie literally disbelieved her own lying eyes and fired again, which only produced the same result. Noonan was going to board the plane and she realized she wasn't going to be able to stop him. The cop was coming... and Angie leaped from the plane, onto the starboard wing. The gun fell onto the gravel road, but too many paradigms had suddenly changed in the reality that was Angie Rivers' mind. The gun stayed where it landed, and Angie ran straight for the cornfield.

Zeke followed Angie's lead, and he grabbed the briefcase as he was making his exit. Noonan was into the forward compartment as quickly as Zeke had exited, and Zeke lightly jumped off the wing onto the road. For the rest of his life he would never be able to sort out what it was that had possessed him to pick up the gun, but that's exactly what he did. And from behind him, he heard Sgt. Pepper shouting at him, “Freeze! Drop your weapon and the case!” Zeke looked up and saw the officer's gun levelled directly at himself. He leaped back onto the starboard wing, grabbed a strut, and then Amelia was hurtling the plane forward. Moments later, Zeke was airborne.

[puzzleme]

"Ever been to Howland Island, Missy?", shouted Amelia over the roar of the engines. "Take your breath away, it's that pretty."

Just as the wheels were about to leave the ground, Amelia caught sight of Noonan struggling to free himself from his parachute. Ignoring Angie's frantic gun-waving and cries of "Go! GO!! Get us the hell out of here NOW!!", Amelia pulled back on the throttle and stopped the plane just inches from the entangled Noonan.

"Scoot over there now, Missy, and make room for Noonan," Amelia ordered. "We're not going nowhere, nohow, and noway without my navigator. Why, we'd just go flying around in circles forever. Now scoot!"

[IMG][/IMG]

"I said I will lead this dance!" Barnabas giving dance lessons again.

“Ever go for a plane ride, kid?” The continued silence from the back seat was beginning to annoy her, but there was no time for conversation now anyway. "Let's go,” Angie commanded. “And bring the case with you.” The order might as well have been given in Greek as the kid remained frozen in his seat, frightened, and wide-eyed. “Move it – now!” she yelled. And that produced the desired results, as Zeke made for the door. Angie had turned onto the gravel road in the hopes of having a better shot at losing her pursuer. She had also guessed that the longer she remained on her original course the more likely she would soon encounter law officers coming from the opposite direction. Turning had seemed to be the best option. And then, out of nowhere, an airplane was suddenly landing in front of her... on the gravel road. The wingspan of the biplane left no room to negotiate her way around the aircraft, and she'd had no choice but to come to a stop. The police officer in pursuit would catch up to the unusual roadblock in a matter of moments, and Angie had thought she would be forced to make a stand and shoot it out. But then it occurred to her that the airplane might be more boon than bane after all. It might in fact just be the perfect vehicle for an escape. But she would have to move fast, and now she and the kid were making a dash to the pilot who was calling out something in the direction of the cornfield. The thundering of the plane's idling engine made it difficult to hear what the woman in the cockpit was saying, but it hardly mattered; she and the plane were Angie's ticket out of here.

“Noonan! Noonan, where are you?” the woman was crying. “We must be on our way, Noonan. They are expecting us in Fulton!” She had not noticed her hijacker until Angie was nearly standing on the lower wing of the biplane, pistol up and ready to brook no argument. If the woman in the cockpit was cognizant of the gun being aimed at her, she offered nothing in the way of concern. Instead, she addressed them. “They're looking for me, you know? They're always looking for me.”

“Well, at least we have that in common,” Angie shouted back as she glanced over her shoulder. The squad car was just now coming to a stop behind Sheriff Younger's stolen vehicle. Angie had considered taking the briefcase from the kid and leaving him behind, but the cop's arrival changed her mind. Kids weren't good for much... but they made excellent shields. A cop was far less likely to send a bullet down a path that might lead to an innocent child. “In the plane, kid – now!” Angie extended her right arm, aimed, and fired a shot in the direction of the squad car.

Zeke stepped up onto the wing, tossed the briefcase into the forward seat and then pulled himself into the plane, too. There was something creepy about the pilot; she seemed to be staring right through him. He didn't know whether he should sit down or simply scramble out the other side of the plane and just keep running. And then the pilot spoke to him, “Can't you hear? Can't you the thunder? You better run. You better take cover.” Zeke didn't have an answer.

“He's not going anywhere!” Angie shouted at the pilot. She too was now jockeying for her place in the forward compartment. Quickly, she shoved the kid forward, sat down, and then pulled him down into her lap. Looking back, with one eye on the squad car and the other on her pilot, Angie yelled, “Let's get this magical mystery tour started, sister!” Again she levelled her gun at the pilot, and again it seemed to fail to make an impression. “Come on now! Get this bird in the air!” The pilot appeared to be more placated than anything else, certainly not terrified. Whatever had prompted her to land the plane earlier seemed to either be dismissed or forgotten. Fifty feet behind them, the policeman was cautiously exiting his car, taking up a defensive position behind the open door. In the pilot's seat of the plane, Amelia sat, strapped herself in, released the brake, and gave the pistons all the gas they could take.

[puzzleme]

Like his father before him, Trevor had never commanded much of Lana’s love or attention. Trevor looked just like Angie – so much so that, early on, his mama took to calling him Caitlyn just to get his goat – but he was never like Angie. Where Angie had a wild and mean streak, Trevor, deceitful and sneaky as he was, had a kind and tender streak and he had loved his father. No, that’s not right; he still did love his pop. Alive or dead, no one knew because he’d escaped five years ago and no one had seen or heard from him since. A legend now, what with all the talk and scandal.

Just thinking about what his pop must’ve gone through and, certainly, Lana had never been any help to the man. Probably drove him half way to mad all by herself. But that day, that sad and terrible day… Why, Trever was just a kid then, himself. Couldn’t have been much older than Zeke when they took his pop away.

It was Sheriff Younger’s own father who finally discovered what had been going on with Trevor’s pop. The older Sheriff Younger burst in on his friend unannounced and found the babbling Rivers slow-dancing to “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” with Lucilla “Lucky” Strike who’d been dead for two days now! God rest her soul, her husband Mitch had had enough of her shenanigans and, as they say, that was that.

Now that dance might’ve been excused or overlooked, if you will, but for the added horror of the audience who were witness to the goings-on. There they were, dressed to kill and slouching in their chairs, all five of the recently departed hometown ladies and gentlemen looking for all the world like they didn’t give a damn about who Rocky Rivers was tripping the light fantastic with. Combed their hair, he did – coifed the ladies’ – shined their shoes, and set a good stiff drink in front of each along with cocktail napkins and a bowl of salted peanuts.

‘Course Rocky was just his nickname. Got it back in World War II. When nothing more was to be done for the mortally wounded, the tender-hearted medic would take the dying men and rock ‘em to sleep whenever he could. Likely that’s where his troubles began. Ironically, that’s where his talent and skill and life-long livelihood also began. You see, Rocky became an undertaker. Best in the business. Cared well for the dead and living alike. Not a corpse in his funeral home but that someone didn’t exclaim, “Why, my goodness! Doesn’t she (– or he, as the case might be –) look wonderful! The living, too, were petted and made to feel oddly at home.

So, there he was again, embracing the dead and caring for them like living folk. Chatting away, too, about the weather, the Platters’ great harmonies, and, “Oh! What beautiful hair you have, Lucky!” Swore he’d marry her soon as he could free himself of the loathsome, albeit breathing, Lana.

Trevor had been bringing lunch down to his pop whose place of business was on the first floor of their home when he heard the commotion and the older Sheriff Younger shouting for Rocky to, “Let go of her, dammit, Rocky, just let GO!”

The older Sheriff Younger was beside himself with grief for his best friend’s obvious mental breakdown and didn’t see young Trevor in time to stop the boy from hurling himself at Rocky and Lucky who still was held fast in Rocky’s embrace. They tumbled to the floor in a heap, living arms and legs tangling all around with, well, you know…

Later on Trevor wept at the memory of his pop being led away to the waiting ambulance all the while begging for just one more dance with his true love. Please. Just one more.

Lana was nowhere to be found to comfort Trevor, not that she would have done so anyway. Without her, it fell to the older Sheriff Younger to fill in the details for the fellows from the loon… ah… mental hospital before they took Rocky away.

“Yep, that’s right, fellers. He’s the funeral director, all right. Name’s Rocky Rivers. Oh, right, you mean his given name. Well, boys, nobody’s called him that in, well, I’d say ten years or more. Doubt he’d even answer to it. Real name’s Barnabas, a’course. Barnabas Rivers. You fellas be good to him, now. He’ll come around and we’ll be here waiting to welcome him home.”

The attendant shook his head sorrowfully, “I don’t know, Sheriff, he’s pretty far gone,”

“Well, I know,” said the older Sheriff Younger. “I know. Yeah. Beethoven was deaf. Helen Keller was blind. I think Rocky's got a good chance.”

Deputies Jerry and Barry Atrick stood in front of their boss awaiting orders. But as more and more help from the state police had begun arriving in town, the deputies were thankfully not needed for any remaining part of the investigation. The bank was now secure for the remainder of the day and the service station would also be protected after Sheriff Younger's departure to the hospital in Jefferson City. Neither business would be reopening until tomorrow, and the sheriff was reasonably confident that the bank robber, or robbers, had acted independently and weren't working with anyone employed at the bank. Ralph Wallace had already made a statement confirming the culpability of Trevor and his sister for the crimes committed at the service station as well. Now it was simply a matter of whether or not Sgt. Pepper had been able to catch up to the fleeing woman and the boy. And it was the boy that filled Archie Younger with a sense of regret. He couldn't help but feel that he had made a mistake in keeping Zeke with him after their departure from the doctor's office. He could have easily imposed on the doc to look after the youngster. Now there was a very real possibility that Zeke could be hurt, and Archie wasn't sure how he was going to be able to reconcile that with himself if the pursuit east of town turned violent. He looked up at his expectant deputies and told them to go and look for the missing Gump boy. “Radio the office if you find him. We need to get word to Treelore that the boy is alright as soon as we can.”

Dr. Pepper had attended to both, the sheriff and Trevor, and he was satisfied that neither man's wounds were of grave concern. A surgeon would need to remove the bullet in Archie's shoulder, but all that would be required of Trevor would be for him to hold still long enough for the doctor to stitch up the tissues where his ear lobes used to be. Neither of the diamonds had been located, but then it hadn't yet occurred to anyone that any needed to be looked for either. Still, both the sheriff and Trevor would be making the trip to the same hospital that had received Treelore Gump just a little while ago.

Trevor was in handcuffs, and would remain so even in the bed that awaited him forty miles away. After Sgt. Pepper had left to pursue Trevor's sister and the boy, Sheriff Younger had still felt fit enough to be able to place the young man in cuffs. Trevor had offered no resistance. He was still in a bit of a state of shock, in pain and replaying over and over in his mind the drama that had unfolded. He also couldn't stop thinking about what might have happened had either bullet's trajectory been just the tiniest bit more medial than they were. It made him nauseous to think about it. As to Angie and her part in all that had occurred... “She fired a shot right at me!” he realized, “And then she left – without me!” In Trevor's mind it had been nothing short of a betrayal, irrevocable and absolute. “How could she have done that?” he wondered again. Still, he hoped that she'd gotten away clean and that she hadn't harmed the kid. Trevor had never been one to mind helping himself to other people's assets, but at his core he was essentially nonviolent. Even tying up the service station attendant and forcing him to the car had left him feeling as though he'd compromised himself. And now one police officer or another, Trevor didn't recognize him from anywhere earlier in the day, was placing him under arrest. He was being charged with the kidnapping of Mr. Wallace, robbery of the service station, and as an accessory to the bank robbery. He nodded, indicating that yes he understood the charges against him, and then further indicated that “no” he didn't think he needed anything else in the way of assistance from Dr. Pepper or his nurse. Sheriff Younger would be transported by ambulance to the hospital once it returned from Jefferson City, but Trevor was being escorted to a state police officer's car, and that would be his ride to the room awaiting him. As he was being seated in the rear of the vehicle, he looked out at the assembled onlookers who were gawking at all the disorder that had resulted from the mayhem. And just before the door was slammed shut, he spied his mother, out there on the fringes, watching her son. It occurred to Trevor that the look on her face held about the same level of concern for him that Angie's had... which was to say probably not that much at all.

Right ahead, a small convoy of gypsies was approaching Forrest as he continued his run east out of Carpenter. The water at the fountain had helped, but hunger was now becoming a state of constancy and discomfort. And he was getting tired. His legs were beginning to strain under even the relatively small amount of weight that made up the rest of his body. He wanted to rest and he was confused. Forrest had never before encountered such people, but he had never developed a sense of distrust and he assumed the group would be both friendly and helpful. The half-dozen line of horse drawn wagons had now fully closed the remaining distance and Forrest said, “Hello. I'm Forrest – Forrest Gump. I think I might be a little bit lost. Do you know where we are, exactly?”

“We're traveling in a fried-out kombi on a gypsy trail, head full of zombie,” the man driving the first wagon replied.

Forrest didn't quite know what to make of the answer. “This is a hippie trail? What is a hippie?”

“You misunderstand,” the man said with an accent that was new to Forrest's ears. “I said gypsy trail. You look tired and hungry my friend. Do you accept food from strangers?”

“Well,” Forrest paused a moment to think about that. “Once, I met a strange lady. She made me nervous. She took me in and gave me breakfast.”

“Ah!” the man's eyes widened, as if in recognition of what Forrest had said. “Do you come from a land down under? Where women glow and men plunder?”

“No,” Forrest answered. “I'm from Greenbow, Alabama. Mama says some people up north think the south is down under but I don't really know what she means when she says that.”

“A pity,” the man said. He turned and reached for something behind him. A young girl appeared from inside the wagon and handed him whatever it was he had reached for. “I was buying bread from a man in Brussels. He was six foot four and full of muscles. I said, 'Do you speak my language?' And he just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich.” The man hesitated, giving much consideration to the food in his hands. Then he extended it to Forrest and said, “And now it is yours! Eat and fare thee well, my young friend.”

“Have you ever found a vegemite sandwich in box of chocolates?” Forrest asked the man.

“No. I'm quite sure that I have not,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”

“Mama always says life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. And I surely did not know you were going to give me this.”

Now it was the man's turn to be somewhat dumbfounded by what had been said. He nodded and replied, “Can't you hear the thunder? You better run. You better take cover.” Then he gave the horse a light smack of the rein and he and the others were once again on their way.

Forrest looked about and took a bite of the sandwich. There was only blue sky above him, and he hadn't heard any thunder. Farther off, from the direction he had come, he thought he could perhaps just make out the drone of an engine. And there, low in the sky, there appeared to be a small airplane circling over a field.