Venting

Last night I was board and worrying about my brother and his family, so I started writing. Five and a half pages later I felt a lot better, and I had a really weird story sitting on my computer.
Anyway, for some reason I decided to post, so here it is. I hope that it's half way decent and not too strange.


I was eating diner when the phone rang, “Hello, Vincent residence, Amy speaking.”
“Amy, thank God,” it was my brother’s mother in law, Candice, “He’s gone. Mark turned a way for a second and he was gone…”
“Candice, what happened to Derik?” I asked trying to stay calm. My parents had died when I was 15, and then 2 years ago my younger brother, Andy, and his wife had died in a car crash. Derik was the only family I had left.
“Mark took him to the park, and then he left for a second to talk to some friends. When he got back Derik was GONE! Somebody took him!” said Candice as she dissolved in tears.
I wanted to grab Candice and shake her. My five year old nephew was missing and she was having a nervous breakdown. He shouldn’t have even been out with Mark in the first place. Mark was 15 and one of the most irresponsible people that I had ever met. I took a deep breath, “Are you sure that somebody took him? Maybe he just wandered off, you know how little kids are.”
“No, he was kidnapped!”
“Candice I’m sur…”
“There was a note,” she sobbed, “They want money…”
“I’ll be there in 3 hours,” I didn’t wait for Candice’s reply before I hung up the phone.
Two hours later when I pulled up in front of Candice’s little house the street in front of it looked like the parking lot at the local police station.
When I knocked on the door I half expected a police officer to answer, but when the door opened Mark was standing in front of me.
He looked so scared, “Amy, I didn’t mean to I just… just for a second, and…”
I took Mark’s arm. He winced when I touched it, but he let me lead him past all of the police officers. I set down on the couch and pulled him down next to me.
He was in tears, and I pulled him close, “It’s alright, everything is going to be alright.”
As Mark relaxed into me I shot the police officer who had followed us into the room a reproachful glance. He looked guilty but he just shook his head. He had seen the bruise on Mark’s cheek as clearly as I had, but there was nothing he could do about it.
There never was. I had made three complaints about Candice since I had found the first bruises on Derik’s arm, but no one ever did anything. Sure they’d sent out a social worker, but all they ever found was a clean house and a happy family full of clumsy kids.
My train of thought was interrupted when Candice came into the room. She was hysterical and when she saw me she threw herself at me grabbing for my arm, “Amy, thank God. They want $250,000, and I don’t have $250,000.”
I pulled back and stared at her, “What!?”
“They…want…250,000…dollars,” she repeated slower like I was a little bit slow in the head.
I turned to look at the police officers who had followed her into the room wondering if that was the typical fee for finding a missing child.
Apparently not since she leaned forward and handed me a folded piece of paper. On it typed in neat letters were the words “Bring $250,000 to Mission park at 7:00PM tomorrow or we’ll kill him. No police.”
Evidently we weren’t going to be taking that advice.
A man in a suite had set down on the coffee table across from me, and as I finished reading the letter he started to speak, “Ms. Vincent, first I have to tell you that Mrs. Murray has called you against our advice. In our experience…”
But I didn’t get to hear what their experience was because Candice cut him off, “They said that they’d kill Derik if we didn’t give them the money.”
“Mrs. Murray, in these situations the kidnappers don’t always return the child even if they get the money,” said the detective reasonably.
“I’m not going to let you take chances with my grandson!” Candice yelled at the detective, “We’re giving them the money!”
As Mark recoiled from the sound of his mother’s voice I was tempted to ask where all of her compassion was when she was beating the crap out of her children, but I bit my tongue.
“Mrs. Murray, forgive me for being blunt, but it doesn’t look like you have $250,000 just lying around,” the detective shot back, and I wondered if Candice had finally met her match.
Then her finger shot out towards me, “but she does!”
The next morning at seven I was dressed and standing in the huge basement of my little house. I had been standing there since six staring at the 7 perfectly restored classic motorcycles that set in neat rows in my basement.
Every year since he was 15 Andy would go out on his birthday and find a beat up old motorcycle. Then he’d spend every free moment for the rest of the year fixing it up. He, Sheryl, and Derik had used to come over every weekend for diner, and after diner Sheryl and I would sit upstairs and talk while Andy took Derik downstairs and worked on his latest project.
After I had gotten home I had called the homes of every motorcycle shop owner in town trying to find someone to buy the bikes. It wasn’t until I had called Mike at three in the morning that I got a break. Mike had a collector friend in Connecticut who was interested in classic American bikes. By the time he gave me the number of the man it was almost a Godly hour in Connecticut. Maybe that was the reason the man agreed to buy all seven bikes sight unseen. Then again maybe not considering that as soon as I had finished listing off the bikes the next words out of my mouth had been “you can have them all for $250,000, but the money needs to be in my bank count by noon today.”
The money was already in my account. Now all I had to do was get the bikes over to Mark’s where they would stay until his friend could send some one to California to pick them up.
My eyes kept drifting back to the Indian that was sitting in the center of the room. It had been Andy’s first, and he would roll over in his grave if he knew what I was doing with it.
It was 7:00PM, and I was sitting on a bench in Mission Park holding a large black backpack full of money and eating a hotdog. The note hadn’t said anything about a hotdog, but for some odd reason when I had seen the hotdog vender I had gone over and bought one. I hadn’t even been hungry, but for some reason I had felt the need to buy a hotdog.
I took another bite out of my hotdog and looked around me. Everybody looked so happy, and I wondered if there were any plane clothes policemen in the crowd. There always were on the TV shows, but then again on the TV shows you knew ahead of time that the kid was going to be fine.
A man walking towards me drew my eye. He was dressed like a biker, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. The fact that he was wearing black bike helmet with the visor down so that it covered his face was what caught my attention.
As he walked past me he motioned for me to follow him. I got up and followed him.
After walking for a few minutes we met up with two other helmet clad bikers.
I had been nervous from the start, but now I was terrified. They didn’t say anything, and whenever I looked at their faces all I saw was my face reflected in their visors.
The first man reached out to take my backpack, but I wouldn’t let it go, “where’s Derik? I won’t give you the money until I see him.”
At that the first man let go of the strap as one of the other two reached into his pocket. He pulled out a note and handed it to me.
I opened it. If you don’t give us the money our friends will kill him.
I handed the backpack to the man standing next to me, but as he reached for it he must have seen something over my shoulder because he looked down at me, “You called the cops.”
“No, no. I didn’t call them! I swear!” I tried to explain, but they were turning to run. I couldn’t just let them go. I grabbed at the closest thing, the bag of money, “Please, please!”
“Let go!” he said as he tried to pull the bag away, but I wouldn’t let go.
For a second he struggled with me, but when he glanced over my shoulder and saw the police getting closer he backhanded me. I staggered backward and landed hard on the ground.
I watched as the men ran down the path. The police ran past, but the men had already reached their bikes and were speeding off by the time the police had crossed the park.
Then an officer was kneeling next to me asking if I was alright, but I couldn’t answer.
It had been two weeks and we hadn’t heard anything from the kidnappers. This morning I had gotten a call asking if I could come into the city, and I had been sure that they had gotten a lead. They hadn’t. They wanted to tell us in person that there was a chance that the kidnappers had killed Derik after they had gotten the money, and we would probably never see Derik again. What all of this translated to was that they were putting the case on the back burner.
Candice had been livid. She had started screaming at the police, but I had been different.
As soon as they had told us I had gone numb, and two hours later as I was driving home it still hadn’t warn off. I hadn’t even realized just how fast I was going until my car lurched over the little asphalt bump where the road merged with the bridge across the bay. I started slowing down, and then I came to a complete stop there on the side of the bridge. For some reason I got out of my car and left it sitting on the edge of the road.
I walked over to the railing and looked out over the water. I had grown up in a little town on the edge of the water. I remembered that once a man had tried to kill himself by jumping off a bridge at low tide, but the bridge was too short and he had failed. This bridge was taller.
“Miss?” a man’s voice broke into my thoughts, “Miss are you alright?”
I looked at him, and he looked so far away, “No,”
“Why don’t you come away from there? You don’t want to do something you’ll regret.”
“No… I don’t,” I moved away from the railing towards him.
“That’s right. Come on,” he said as he rapped an arm around my shoulders and started to steer me away from the railing. His arm around me felt so strange. Andy used to put his arm around me whenever I was upset, but my brother was dead and now so was Derik.
I turned shrugging off the man’s arm. He tried to grab me as I ran towards the railing, but I was faster. I didn’t slow as the railing loomed in front of me. I grabbed the railing in my hands vaulted over it, and as I cleared the railing and dropped towards the pitch black water I knew without a doubt that I was doing the right thing.
My body ached and my lungs burned as I surfaced by the bank.
After I had crawled up onto the bank I just set there for a minute watching the scene on the bridge. People were crowded around the railing scanning the water to see if I would surface. I had come up well outside of their field of vision, and I knew that none of them had spotted me.
I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I still had a lot to do. I pushed myself up off of the ground and started walking along the service road that ran along the bay.
After walking along the road for about a mile I finally found what I was looking for.
A little over two weeks ago I had sold all of Andy’s motorcycles, well all of them except one. After I had delivered the other bikes to Mark’s I had driven Andy’s prize Indian out here. I had carefully covered it with a tarp and hidden in the underbrush next to the service road.
Now I pulled the camo tarp off of it and took a change of clothes out of one of the saddle bags. Once I had changed I gave the bike a quick onceover before I pulled on the black and red helmet Andy had given me the day he had given me my first driving lesson.
Then I pushed the India up onto the road. I had worried about the condition it would have been in after sitting in the woods for a week, but when I it roared to life on my first try.
I flicked the headlight on as I turned off the side road and onto the main road.
The bridge was lined with rescue vehicles, but I wasn’t worried as I cruised towards it. In all of the confusion and chaos who would ever even consider that the young woman on the powerful bike was the same woman who had just vaulted over the side of a bridge?
That was probably why it surprised me so much when a young police officer stepped out onto the road and motioned for me to pull over. There wasn’t a lot of traffic along the bridge and I couldn’t exactly ignore him, so I pulled up next to him.
“That is one beautiful bike,” he said and I knew that I had nothing to worry about.
I tipped up my visor as I fought not to smile, “Yeah, and she’s fast too.”
“Were’d you get her?” he questioned as he looked me over.
“At a junk yard, I just got her all fixed up,” I replied trying to stick as close to the truth as I could.
“So you probably wouldn’t be interested in selling her, would you?” asked the officer with a hopeful smile.
“Not a chance in hell,” I said with a wink.
“I didn’t think so,” said the officer as he stepped back from my bike. I nodded to him as I flipped my visor back down and took off.
When I pulled up to the ranch house in Arizona the next night the party had already started. I climbed off of the Indian and walked over to where a couple of guys were standing around drinking beers. I asked where I could find Jason, and they all smiled and gestured in the direction of the backyard. Then they moved in to get a closer look at my bike.
I started around the house only to run into Jason.
“Hey, baby.” he said as he stepped closer and rapped his muscular arms around me, “The guys were afraid that you weren’t going to show up.”
I almost laughed, “Seriously? You have my nephew and they thought that I wouldn’t show up?”
“Yeah…” he kissed me gently and when he pulled back he was smiling, “Come here.”
He put his arm about my waist and led me around the corner of the house. The backyard was full of people. The adults were milling around drinking beer and talking. A group of men were grilling stakes on a barbeque, and the younger kids were playing on a swing set in a corner of the yard.
As we got closer I watched as a woman knelt down next to a little boy. She said something to him and point towards me.
He’s eyes followed her hand, and when he saw me he took off running across the yard.
I dropped down on my knees and he ran full steam ahead into me. I rapped my arms around him pulling him close.
“I missed you, Aunt Amy” Derik said into my hair as he buried his head in my shoulder.
“Oh, I missed you too, but I’m here now,” I said as I held him tighter.
Later that night I was relaxing on a lawn chair watching as the party wound down. As they left a few people stopped to say goodbye and to wish us good luck with our new life, but they were all careful not to wake Derik who had fallen asleep on my lap.
During a lull Jason walked over and handed me a Pepsi, “How are you holding up?”
“Great actually,” I said with a smile, and then after we had set there for a moment in silence, “Jason?”
“Yeah?” he said as he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the stars.
“I just… thank you, for everything. You took a big risk for us,” I said quietly as I looked down at Derik.
“Don’t mention it,” he said modestly, and as I shook my head he added, “Your brother was an amazing guy. He was always willing to go out on a limb for his friends, and there wasn’t one guy in the club who wasn’t willing to take a chance to help Andy’s son.”
After another pause Jason spoke up again, “So what are you going to do now?”
Without thinking I said the first thing that came to my mind, “Sleep.”
He laughed, “and after that?”
I held Derik tighter as I turned to meet Jason’s eyes, “We disappear.”
Without a word he nodded. Then he got up and came to stand next to me. He bent down and easily picked Derik up off my lap. While he held him in one arm her reached down again and helped me up.
He didn’t say anything as we walked to the house. He didn’t say anything as he led the way to his bedroom. He didn’t say anything as he gently laid Derik on the bed. He didn’t say anything as he kissed me on the forehead. He didn’t say anything as he picked up a blanket and went out to sleep on the couch, and I was grateful.
Early the next morning I looked over at Derik who had been sitting on Jason’s bed watching me put his things in my saddlebag, “You ready to head out?”
“Yep!” he said as he offered me the stuffed penguin that Jason had given him.
“Okay,” I replied smiling as I unzipped his coat a little and stuck the penguin down the front so that only its head was sticking out.
Even though it was early and we had practically snuck out of the house Jason was standing in the driveway waiting for us. He took my saddlebags from me, but instead of putting them on my bike he stuck them in the back of his truck, next to a half full black backpack.
“What…” I started to ask, but I stopped as I reached up to catch the set of keys he had just thrown at me. I stared at them.
Jason pulled on his helmet and walked over to my bike while I stood there staring at him like an idiot. He flipped up his visor and looked at me, “Did you honestly think I’d let you go again?”


-Aaron