The Great Escapee Series

Chapter 14

Fourteen

Clarence picked a path around debris in the alley behind the grocery store, sidestepping the occasional dog pile, puddle and tire rut. Arms extended on either side, he felt like a tightrope walker—minus the pole. He stopped to rest every once in a while. Felt like he'd been gone all day. Missed lunch. His stomach rumbled. Maybe supper, too.

He stooped to pick up an object that drew his attention from among the weeds. Key? No. Junk. He tossed it down and took another step. He tripped when he spied something and leaned over for what turned out to be a gum wrapper. Wrigley's. He threw it to the wind.

Something else sparkled—a bright something. He balanced, only to find another candy wrapper.

Half burned trash and papers littered the alley and lot. Rusty pipes, bent this way and that. Overgrown weeds and brush.

Another shiny object gleamed through the refuse. He groaned as he bent to pick it up, turning it over in his hand. A dime store ring. Cheap plastic thing. The finish had rubbed off and the rhinestone was loose. He flung it away and gasped as a scene from his past unfolded before him.

A much younger Clarence squatted easily and sifted through the tall grass to fish out the gleaming diamond ring, dazzling and blinding as it reflected the sun's rays. He knelt on the hard gravel and stared at the beauty of the facets, turned it this way and that, admiring the cut, the brilliance, the colors emanating from deep within.

Stunning.

"And I will not marry you in a hundred million years," Sally wailed. "Not ever. Ever."

Clarence glanced at her, and stared as the young woman slowly morphed into a tree standing in the distance, his mind still in the past, his body stuck in the present.

Deep rattly breath.

A train whistle startled him.

He trembled as mind and body reconnected, searching in the weeds, parting the grass, combing through the debris. Where had it gone? He cut his finger on a rusty can. Damn. That nurse Carol would make him get a tetanus shot. Or take some kind of antibiotics. Or both. He sucked on the cut.

A white van drove up the hill. Large green letters on the side read Hillcrest Home, "Home of God's Most Beloved."

Cringing, he ducked behind the corner of the grocery store then peered out. He hated that slogan. If he were God's Beloved, he certainly wouldn't be living at Hillcrest.

He'd be back in prison.

Or dead.

The van turned into the parking lot, then circled back out. Jim the maintenance man was driving, and Bill his assistant hung out the passenger window, squirming in his seat, craning his neck, his ball hat cockeyed on his head.

"Buzzards," Clarence muttered. "Flying around looking for dead stuff." He ducked behind the brick wall, scanning the alley, feeling more alive than he had in years. He could barely make out the silhouette of a hawk in the tree against the darkening sky. "Ha, old bird. Trying to sneak up on me, huh. You thought you had me."

Clarence studied the bird as it c****d its head, studying him. Stare-down. Man against bird. Bird against man. Neither giving in. Both stubborn. Both toughened against life.

Clarence held up a fist. "What have you got in you, old bird? What are you made of?" He stopped to listen and dropped his fist against his leg. "You are made of feathers and that's all. Feathers. You hear me, old bird? Just feathers and bones."

Screech!

Clarence jumped and covered his ears. The bird pushed out of the tree, wings flapping, beating the wind, rising higher. Powerful. Damn, that wingspread had to be over four feet.

Something tiny dropped out of the sky. Clarence ducked, covering his head with his arms. It bounced off his shoulder and pinged off a rock, into the rubble below.

He sighted in on the landing place, crawled to it, and picked up the dime store ring.

"Argh." He sat in the dirt and held it up. The cheap metal and rhinestone barely reflected the remaining sunlight. "This again."

He searched the sky for the hawk.

Gone.