August 2002

Chapter 1

It was early spring and the ice upstream in the mountains was beginning to thaw in earnest now. The crocus was poking their cheerful white blossoms through the patches of ice and snow that lingered. This was my favorite time of year really.

I sat on my veranda and heard male fox squirrels barking at one another as the spring mating ritual got into full swing. As much as I hated the little bastards when I had sweet corn just on the verge of husking, I dearly loved their antics as they played at mock combat for the paw of the fair lady squirrels.

The rest of the year they were nothing more than plundering thugs and ruffians. I took perverse pleasure in lining one of them up the sites of my Winchester.22 rifle and showing the little upstarts who was really the toughest bastard in the woods.

My wife never understood how I could claim to hate the way they pillaged my sweet corn but sing their praises when I had one of them baking to a tender golden brown on a bed of new potatoes, onions, carrots, and shredded cabbage.

Like the wild hare, a steady diet of either one would result in death by starvation. They had no fat on them and other than having an interestingly gamy flavor after soaking the carcass in salt water overnight, offered no other virtuous claim as a food.

The thought of my wife brought tears to my eyes yet again though she had been gone nearly four or was it five years. Yes, it was five, I remember clearly now.

She and my daughter Jamie had been stopped at a rail road crossing waiting for a train to pass by when it happened. A large tractor-trailer hauling logs pulled up behind her and though the driver tried to swerve and miss her when his brakes failed, caught the right rear bumper of our car and slammed her and Jamie into the side of the fast moving freight train. Something to do with water in his system. A blow down valve failed and didn't purge the moisture as it should have. The mass and kinetic energy of the truck booted them like a football.

Thankfully, little Jamie died instantly, my beloved Heather lingered for days in excruciating pain before she gave up the ghost. I sued the trucking company and received a handsome settlement but it was a hollow victory and brought me no pleasure. It was the only way I had of punishing them for taking my family from me.

I made them bleed money, I would rather it had been blood.

Heather and I met while I was stationed at Fort Hood where I was a rotary wing flight instructor. She was an Army brat as I was and though she understood that my chances of surviving in combat were excellent compared to an infantryman, nearly worried herself ill when I was sent to fight in desert storm.

I was on the leading edge of the assault but our Apache helicopters were deadly and routed the enemy in every engagement. I once herded prisoners with my helicopter believe it or not. They were generally well behaved but a few tried to monkey around so I reminded them to get back in line with a burst over their heads.

At first I was upset with the devastation they had wrought on Kuwait until I saw that whole part of the world was a fucked up mess. If it wasn't for crude oil, I'm certain the free world would probably ignore them. They were all just a bunch of fucked up fanatics in my book. The way they treat women and children is unthinkable and stupid in the extreme. If it wasn't because of the loss of innocent lives, the whole mess should be cleaned up and set right. I get angry thinking about it. I met some very nice and intelligent Kuwaitis but there isn't enough of them as long as they have kings, princes, and shit like that to deal with.

It was pathetically laughable, we were killing idiots so idiots could continue being idiots because they had oil to sell. What a fucking joke.

I came back home appreciating our way of life a great deal more. Heather gave birth to Jamie and I have to say I was a very happy man for a long time. Much longer than I deserved I suppose.

When Jamie and Heather were killed, I was flying 'Life Flight' for the large hospital that served the region. After they were killed, I couldn't take seeing children butchered in accidents or worse. My last trip was to the burns center in Louisville Kentucky and the smell of charred flesh stayed with me for several days.

I got a job flying for a corporation and though it isn't rewarding by any standard of measure, it pays good and allows me the opportunity to retire sooner. Another five years or so and I'll hang it up.

Chapter 2

I was on vacation and it just so happened my birthday was during that period. The lady at the liquor store asked me how old I was and I had to stop and think. I was going to be fifty-two in a few days.

On the way home, I crossed the highway and saw what looked like a motorcycle in a drainage ditch. I thought about it and decided somebody must have junked it and pushed it in the ditch. That reminded me of an old Harley I had restored from literally being a basket case while I was still in Army a few months before I met Heather. She had really enjoyed helping me fix it up and did a perfect job of painting and restoring decals and whatever.

I stopped and turned around then hightailed it back to the cycle. When I saw it up closer, I realized it was fairly new, a Japanese bike about one thousand to twelve hundred cc's I guessed. I saw the saddle was missing and the front forks were bent. The front fender was a mess. The tire and rim must be on the bottom of the ditch. I hitched my snatch strap to it and drug it up on dry land.

I was studying the bike when a flash across the ditch caught my attention. I stared where I thought I saw the flash and damned if I didn't see again. It came to me then, something or someone was moving to cause the flash.

The only way to the other side was through the ditch and I nearly decided to call 911 instead of going over to see what was flashing. The water was ass chilling cold and chest deep as I waded to the other side. I headed where I had seen the flash and heard a weak cry, "Ohhhh help me!" then sobs

When I got there, it was a young woman with a sapling through her side. I don't have a clue how it happened but a sapling about an inch and a half in diameter had impaled her through her left side.

She must have come down on top of it and broke the top off then fell on down to impale herself. It was a gruesome looking mess. Not a lot of blood I was thankful to notice.

I flipped open my cell phone and called 911. She moaned, "Where's my brother mister?" I blinked and told her, "I don't know honey! I'll look for him. Don't move... You're not bleeding very much which is a very good thing. Helps on the way ok?" She nodded and answered weakly, "Ok mister."

I ran to search the area and decided he must still be in the ditch. I moved down about ten feet from where the bike had been and dove in the water. I figured he must have been in control and held on as long as he could before the impact threw him. About ten minutes of staring in the water which wasn't real muddy, just muddy enough to make searching underwater a bitch and I saw a shape that had to be him. I surfaced and took a deep breath then went down and pulled him up.

It was a mess but he wasn't very big maybe one hundred twenty pounds as I got him up on dry ground and started giving him CPR. Naturally I filled his stomach full of air and he wretched up muddy water but started breathing. He looked at me and I patted his chest and said, "You're gonna be all right son."

Later I learned the near freezing water helped but he was without oxygen for too long and suffered some brain damage. They said he would be nearly normal in time but it would be years probably before he fully recovered.

A couple of tv stations interviewed me and another one started to until they asked me about my family and the lawsuit that was settled. I walked off with them standing there staring at my back as I left. They called me again so I told them if they wanted to talk about the motorcycle accident I would talk to them otherwise I had nothing to say. They never called back and my vacation was over anyway.

I never gave the accident much thought after that and forgot about it eventually.

Chapter 3

I heard Ral say, "Oh shit!" then the big motorcycle seemed to take off into the air. I found out later Ral said that because the throttle broke just as he cranked it to pick up speed as he shifted gears. He unconsciously released the clutch lever and the sheer power of the bike shot us across the highway airborne.

I remember waking up and trying to stand but felt a pulling sensation in my side, I looked under me and saw a little tree had jammed into my shirt. I didn't know till later the tree had gone into and through my side.

It was a brand new motorcycle so the manufacturer settled out of court when the investigators discovered the cable was well below standard. The company recalled nearly fourteen thousand motorcycles and replaced all the cables on them.

That was six years ago. I was fourteen then and Ral was seventeen. He's improving but he still has trouble walking unaided and his speech is slurred. With the settlement he got, he never has to worry about money for the rest of his life. I received enough to pay my medical bills and four hundred thousand dollars.

My attorneys received thirty percent of the settlement.

I was attending junior college and rode the metro which tailored its schedule so kids like me could ride to school and back each day. The short walk to my house wasn't bad even in bad weather.

When I walked in the door, I saw Ral, short for Raleigh, seemingly agitated in that herky-jerky way he got in sometimes since the accident. I'm ashamed to say it had been so long since he had been normal, I had forgotten how he acted back then. Anyway, he called to me and was holding a tape in his hand. It took a minute for me to understand what he was saying because he was so excited but finally he got through to me, 'the man'.

My heart jumped into my throat and I gasped, "You found out who 'the man' is? No shit now Ral... It's the man?" He nodded excitedly and said, "Yes... yes... he lives in Chicago and is some kind of big gun with the Airline Pilots Association."

He shoved the tape in squealing, "Watch... watch!" He waited and then started moaning when this man dressed in a business suit stood up as the camera moved through the closed door then sat on the edge of his desk and said, "My name is Sean Vandeventer and when I'm not flying this desk for the APA or Airline Pilots Association, I am in a helicopter flying passengers from and to Chicago's Weir Cook International airport. I won't take but a moment of your time but I am asking you to take a few minutes and send a message to your senator and congressman telling him or her that you support arming commercial airline pilots so they can protect themselves and their passengers from terrorists. Its not a pleasant thought, but a pilot and co-pilot in command of an airliner carrying two to three hundred passengers is also a man we can trust to have a firearm ready in case of an emergency. This country is at war ladies and gentlemen. Don't send our airline pilots into harms way without a fighting chance to fight back if necessary. Thank you"

I stared as Ral played the tape a couple of more times. I started to ask Ral about him when he excitedly pulled me to the PC and got on the web. He pulled up the APA and found Sean's page, it told he was a big shot with the APA and a widower and had over twenty thousand accident free hours as a helicopter pilot and had fought in two conflicts.

Then Ral pulled up another web page and it had Sean's address and phone number. I damned near pissed my panties then.

Ral was getting exhausted from being excited but he kept repeating, "We go... Nanna... We go Nanna to see Sean Nanna... ok Nanna? Ok? Ok?" Ral wasn't stupid, a brilliant mind was behind that pitifully maimed body.

I smiled and hugged him real tight and said, "We sure will honey! You bet we will baby."

Ral and I had become orphans when he was sixteen. He became my dad for the next year until the motorcycle accident then I became his mommy. I thanked god everyday for the court settlements. It was truly expensive having nurses around the clock for him plus hiring a car to take him to physical therapy several times each week. We made it though and by god's mercy, we would continue to make it.

Neither of us wanted much except to find the man who rescued us that day and personally thank him for saving our lives. Within hours after the accident, the ditch would fill level with the ground around it hiding the bike underwater and a heavy freeze would have killed me shortly after Ral died from drowning.

The problem was the idiot tv people never got his name or address... All he told them was his name was Sean. We didn't know about the independent station finding out about his suing the trucking company. It would have made it lots easier had we known.

We tried every way we could think of to find him and quite honestly, I had given the idea up. Not old Ral though, he kept on keeping on. Following every lead until he saw the commercial on tv for the APA. Ral knew then he had 'run him to ground' like people say where we come from.

I helped Ral get in bed after supper and then sat down by the phone and took a few big breaths and then dialed Mr. Vandeventer's number. It was about eight p.m. back east there in Chicago, seven p.m. here in western Utah. I heard the phone ring then suddenly I heard a deep male voice say, "hello? Sean Vandeventer speaking." I gasped then managed to say, "Mr. Vandeventer, my name is Nancy Armstrong, my brother's name is Raleigh Armstrong. The reason I'm calling sir is my brother and I want to meet you and personally thank you for saving our lives sir."

He was silent for a moment then said, "you were the children on the motorcycle that day?" I grinned, "Yes sir, except we're all grown up now." He gave a soft chuckle then said, "Yes I wouldn't be surprised to hear that you are."

I laughed and said, "We wouldn't have if you hadn't come along." He was silent again then said, "Yes I suppose so... someone else might have come along though."

I replied, "Not very likely sir. Not on that road. We would be dead if you hadn't been there."

He went silent again and I thought to myself, "He must think before he says anything I guess." I waited then heard him say, "Tell you what... I'll send you complimentary airline tickets for Salt Lake City to Chicago. When would you like to come and visit me?"

I smiled, "How about this weekend?" He answered, "All right, hold on a moment and I'll tell you when to go and board."

He explained everything to me and we broke the connection after I told him we would see him Friday evening.

I didn't wake Ral up and tell him but he went ballistic when I told him about our plans the next morning. He was so excited it worried me for a while. But he got a hold of himself and I thought he seemed to be improving a lot suddenly.He even seemed to be speaking more clearly.