Benjamin

Shy, brunette and very much a loner, Sarah was just the way Adams liked his prey. His nostrils had flared the day she walked into his Pennsylvania Avenue office for the interview. Standing a petite five foot two; she was twenty four years of age, educated, beautiful, and ruthlessly efficient. But it would be her lack of humour that clinched it.

For the first week Adams played the father figure; a compliment here, an encouragement there. He'd asked her to work back on the Monday night of her second week and insisted on thanking her with a hug.

"I see something special in you" he'd said, "but you're carrying far too much pain for someone so young and so beautiful." He'd insisted that he walk her to her car and thanked her again for working late but this time it was with a kiss on the cheek.

For most of the second week he played her hot and cold, one moment a compliment, the next a subtle displeasure, and by the Thursday evening of the third week, in a quiet car park in Baltimore, she would step out of her VW and climb into the back seat of his Maybach.

Thursday was also the day that Benjamin planned to pack up his camp bed, renew his medications and return home to his apartment. In his manic state he was confident that all was well. But just to be doubly sure, he would run one last check on the fertigation.

In spite of an overwhelming odour of ammonia in the air, Benjamin robotically continued to follow the computers instruction to increase the ammonium sulphate to the maximum. And by the time he turned the key of his Mazda to go home, the misters were well on their way to delivering a lethal dose to every living thing inside the glasshouse.

The following morning, Adams was halfway across the flagstones when the smell registered. He couldn't quite place what it was, but he knew it was bad. He was almost at the glass house door when Benjamin came bursting out coughing and gasping for breath. "What in the name of Christ is going on?" Adams shouted.

Coughing and wheezing and with his eyes bloodshot, Benjamin tried to explain about the computer, and how it would be alright because he'd turned all the misters off and opened the ventilation.

Adams stood silent, in the open doorway. If he hadn't known any better, the view of the plants would still have been one of extreme beauty. But he did know better. He knew full well that in a matter of hours the plants would start to droop, the leaves would blister and within days the glass house would be reduced to a graveyard.

It may have looked like Benjamin had gone mad, and if it got out, there was plenty to back that theory. But Adams knew only too well that this was an evil calculated invasion, an invasion without a name or a face, an invasion that was way bigger than Benjamin.

Adams's cold rational mind was already digging a bunker. Benjamin would be dismissed without reason or reference. The computer and fertigation system would be pulled apart and analysed. There was no rage or sign of anger as he told Benjamin.

"You are dismissed. You will collect your things and leave the property immediately."

In spite of the cold certainty of Adams's words, Benjamin had collected his things and started his drive back to his apartment on an optimistic high.

When he stopped at the traffic signal in Reston, it was six am. He observed young ambitious drivers awaiting a green light in the adjoining traffic lanes, a cell phone, a battery shaver, a quick touch of lipstick while the tongue searched for the last remnants of a bagel. C-Span breakfast politics dominated the airwaves and Benjamin was feeling strangely good. God was good he thought and America was blessed.

The apartment that came with the job had been home to Benjamin for almost a year but it felt strange and cold as he stepped through the door. "Good morning Captain" he said looking at the picture of his father. In full uniform his father cast a dashing portrait. The pride, the conviction was there for all eyes to see.

"Why did Mom leave?" She'd squeezed her Benji so tight the day she left. She'd told him, how she ‘loved him more than life itself and that there was no other way. One day you will know the reason why... she said, as the black streaks of mascara lined her cheeks.

It was only two days after his mother had left, that Benjamin was taken to the principal's office to meet the child care worker. It was Benjamin's thirteenth birthday and he would forever blame his mother for his father's suicide. ‘A shooting accident' was how it was first explained. The newspapers would run for almost a week with the ‘local war hero's dead' story. The word ‘suicide' was inescapable.

‘The Captain' as the local media had dubbed him, would be the inspiration for Benjamin enlisting in the marine corp. The ‘Captain' was the inspiration for everything. Benjamin would have walked through the fires of hell for ‘the Captain.'

Unsure if the black emptiness inside his head was a pain he opened the medicine cabinet in search of Parasetamol. He picked up an empty plastic bottle that was sat on top of a repeat prescription for Lithium. "****... Lithium..." He said it like it was supposed to mean something.

Expressionless he stared at the ‘Captain.' "The drug store," he heard his voice say. It was definitely his voice but it was coming from beside him. Put one foot in front of the other, was another emergency response he had drilled into his subconscious. "Lithium, Lithium, Lithium," he kept repeating Lithium as he dragged his leaden legs to the top of the stairway.

The ride to the Mal saw him circumnavigate the neighbourhood several times before finally entering the parking lot.

Benny's drug store was clearly visible from where he sat parked in the Mazda. He had turned the motor off more than twenty minutes earlier, but with no conception of time, his mind had unhinged from his body and drifted into a painless state. He wondered what it would be like to not be here, to be nowhere, to be nothing. A car horn jolted him back to a different reality. He was alone, alone and going through the same perpetual motions.

There wasn't an arm wrestle when he entered the store, and the choice didn't even rate as important. He simply paid for the Potassium and left with the prescription for Lithium unused in his back pocket.

It had been on special, the first thing that caught his eye as he walked through the door. Buy two packets, get the third one free. ‘Sixty capsules, 500mg each is definitely a one way trip' he said throwing them on the passenger seat.

Lake Moomaw filled his head. He was eight years old again; sat on the log between his mother and father and he was watching the sparks from their campfire as they disappear into the air. His father had told him that the stars were sparks that had managed to make the journey all the way up to the great beyond and he believed him. His father was the wisest man in the world. His mom was the warmest mom in the world and he was the happiest boy in the world.

The fuel gauge was showing near full and he smiled a bitter smile at the thought that it would be enough to complete his journey.

Reaching reached behind the passenger seat he felt the half empty bottle of JD. He smiled another bitter smile as he remembered his father telling mom, that she was always ‘a glass half empty.' Benjamin felt a strange euphoria as he looked to the potassium capsules. ‘He was a man who got the job done' he told himself. His dad had told him that "the world was no place for half measures."

He heard himself laughing and couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed. "You have all the time in the world," he heard himself say and he laughed again. It was like there was two of him and as he entered the Shenandoah Valley he put the top back on the whisky bottle. He needed to focus on Moomaw; he needed to do this right. Somehow if he could just get back to where they were all happy, he could maybe draw a thick line under everything. But twenty three years had past since that happy night and his chances of finding the exact camping spot around a two and a half thousand acre lake would be slim to say the least.

The signs to the Garthright Dam were clear and plenty. There was also a feeling of excitement as he saw the first sign to Lake Moomaw. He remembered a small town called ‘Warm Springs' and a camping area called ‘something Point?'

The man at the diner had directed him to ‘Bolar Flat' "Ask at the marina" he'd said. "They know every goddamn stick in them parts"

Approaching the marina Benjamin felt a quiet familiarity. A young boy, no more than twelve, wearing summer shorts was trading gas bottles with the middle aged storekeeper. The smell of gasoline and fish bait filled his senses. He could now smell the cold depth of the Lake itself and he felt suddenly cold.

"Can I help you?" the old man asked. Benjamin turned and as if in slow motion, and without speaking, stared blankly into his face. "Can I help you?' the man asked once more. 

The liquor on Benjamin's breath was unmistakable. "I'm looking for a place near these parts, called ‘something Point?' The man looked sideways to a middle aged woman as who was stacking the cooler.

"How many points we have in these parts Thelma?" She stopped what she was doing, and after first raising her eyes to the ceiling in thought, she looked directly at Benjamin.

"Let me see" she said, "there's ‘Bells' and there's ‘Bald Eagle.' Then there's ‘McClintic' and..." 

"That's it" said Benjamin. ‘McClintic... McClintic Point" he repeated excitedly. "How do I get there?"

"Hope you aint in no hurry, honey," she said as the old man left them and went to serve a customer. "The trail to McClintic has been closed to cars for the past weeks, due to them finding the Anderson girl. A sad business, that was. You look like you could use a coffee, honey" she said, passing him a newspaper. "Sit yourself down and I'll have one over to you quicker than you can say Nixon."

Benjamin sat at the white plastic table and stared with little or no interest at the front page of the newspaper. "Twenty three years ago," said the woman, passing him the coffee in a paper cup. "The poor child, imagine it, ten years old. It was the biggest search in the history of Bath County. One minute she was riding her bicycle, the next she was gone.

Benjamin's eyes had locked on a sentence that read, Anderson family goes through twenty three years of living hell when it registered with him, that he was here twenty three years ago. It was a special treat for his tenth birthday. The coincidence was amazing. Sophia Anderson had gone missing on that very same weekend. There was also a girls bicycle. His father had found it on a trail. He'd said that it had probably fallen from a passing trailer, and that he would give it to the charity shop when they returned to Covington. Benjamin had wanted the bicycle for himself, but his mother wouldn't hear of it. "Did they find the bicycle?" he heard himself ask. The woman looked at him amazed, "You know something honey, I thought I heard every darn question there was to be asked, but I'll be dammed...You're the first one I hear ask about her bicycle." Before the woman could say another word her attention was taken by a dozen or so cub scouts who had started to empty her freshly stacked cooler. Benjamin took one of the tourist maps from the rack near the counter and rolling it inside the newspaper he drank up what was left of his coffee made his exit from the store.

Confused he started to drive back in the direction that he'd come from. His romantic image of happy families had been soured and after twenty three years the last place he wanted to be, was McClintic Point.

He turned left at the sign for ‘Bolar mountain camp site,' and the road took him steeply back onto the ridge. It wasn't until he'd reached the entrance to camp site ‘one' that he realised how much he didn't want to be there. Steadily gulping the JD, he drove on past another two camp sites before reaching a sign that read ‘Road Closed' He laughed, as he drove the Mazda up the bank and squeezed it in between the Dogwood and the makeshift gate. The road was now little more than a stony goat track as it climbed the mountain towards the setting sun and after what seemed like a life time of an up hill climb the road eventually began to plateau.

It became obvious to Benjamin, from the remnants of a stone chimney and rusted out water tank that the plateau had once been cleared for a homestead. In the fading light he stopped the Mazda, turned up the car radio and switch on the interior light. You got to know when to hold em; know when to fold em, know when to walk away know when to run. As he sang along with ‘the gambler' He meticulously took apart the gel caps and emptied their contents into the remains of the Tennessee whisky. The gambler hadn't quite finished when Benjamin suddenly turned off the radio. The silence felt good, the power felt good and as he drank down his last swallow and turned the interior light off, the prospect of nothing at all was irresistible.

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Keyword: Eleanor

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Comments (3)

Posted by chaabuk 2008-07-31 05:00:25 .... Ben has finally come to McClintic Point after 23 years. There is a sort of mystery thet envelopes the tale now. The girl and her traceless bicycle are intriguing. He seems to be heading for exciting times. Good read here. + Report this comment
Posted by philneale1952 2008-07-31 05:48:55 Stringing This is how a good crime mystery should be written. The reader has to be given a certain amount of indformation and denied the rest until later. You've got the balance exactly right, and I for one am chafing at the bit for the next installment. You're one after my own heart. Good read. + Report this comment
Posted by Something Indecent 2008-08-02 22:31:55 .... I like how all of your characters are getting backgrounds so as not to just make them transparent backdrops. You're doing a very thorough job with this which is always good. I can see this turning into a book. + Report this comment

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