“There will be … great signs from heaven.”
Luke 21:11
At six-foot two, Jeff Ross had an athletic build, a tanned body and at one time, sandy blond hair. Now he was just glad to have hair at all, as the bald-fairy had been visiting on a regular basis over the last year. Still, he had very little gray, except for the slight-gray invasion of his sideburns.
Jeff looked like a golfer, wore the proper, spiffy attire and occasionally the Ivy League caps and knickerbocker-style pants of the late Payne Stewart, one of the world’s great golfers from the past, at least in Jeff’s mind. Thoughts of Payne Stewart and his tragic demise still stirred Jeff, wondering how in the world could Payne’s private jet have crashed on a bright, sunny day? He was sure that Payne would never have succumbed to the indiscretions in his life that Tiger had suffered, though he still had much admiration for Tiger Woods. He only wished he could have seen one golf tournament, Tiger Woods and Payne Stewart, one-on-one.
On his way home from a golf outing at The Sugarloaf Country Club in Duluth, twenty miles north of Atlanta, Jeff spotted Melissa, his ex-wife, pulling out of the post office. Melissa did not see Jeff as he merged his just-acquired 2011Nissan GTR behind her.
Most people, at least men, would have noticed the dark-gray GTR in the rear view mirror, 485 horsepower twin-turbo V-6, able to leap tall Porsches in a single bound. But not Melissa, who could care less about those testosterone-driven boy-toys.
Entering the countryside, apparently on her way to Lake Lanier, the most visited Army Corps of Engineers project in the nation, where Melissa and her new husband shared a summer home on the shores of the man-made lake, Melissa’s green Range Rover was no slacker with the new LR8, 510 horsepower engine, exceeding the power of Jeff’s Macho Machine, at least that’s the way she would see his brand-new car.
Jeff picked up his Blackberry, intending to let Melissa know he needed to talk to her desperately when, from the periphery of his left side window, he saw the large Amtrak Superliner barreling toward the intersection at Peachtree Industrial Boulevard. Jeff estimated the train’s speed at seventy-five and wondered why the crossing-lights weren’t on, nor were the barriers descending to the traffic-blocking position.
Melissa wasn’t going to make it, as Jeff sat on the horn of the dark-gray GTR. What the GTR had in speed, the horn lacked in decibels; and Melissa did not hear the horn.
Palms now sweating all over the new, leather steering wheel, Jeff ever so briefly wondered if Melissa was listening to her iPod head phones, something he used to constantly complain about when they were married.
As a runner, Melissa thought nothing of inserting her state- of-the-art Ear Buds, iPod’s latest earphone technology, and heading out on a six-mile run. Jeff wasn’t much of a runner but would often follow her in the car to make sure some whacko didn’t grab her, sneak up from behind, though of course no sneaking would be necessary. She would never hear the stalker- killer, because she was listening to Beethoven on V103’s Classic Favorites.
Today Jeff didn’t have to worry about a serial killer sneaking up on Melissa, because the Charlotte-Atlanta Superliner was about to take care of that fate. Melissa’s new Ear Buds did a great job of blocking out external sound, just like the advertisement stated, and she never heard the Superliner’s horn either.
The Superliner engineer must have seen that the green Range Rover had no intention of stopping, not realizing Beethoven’s Symphony #5 was about to reach climax. The engineer’s P5 horn system was loud, but it could have been louder except for the federal government’s regulation limiting the decibel level at 110, not a lot louder than a leaf blower.
By now Jeff was at full sweat mode; and apparently Melissa had noticed the dark-gray sports car following her and accelerated, leaving Jeff in the dust on Water Works Road.
When the locomotive of Amtrak’s finest slammed into the Range Rover, it was simply a matter of physics from that point on. Hitting Melissa broadside in the driver’s side, Melissa was relishing the last few seconds of her most favorite symphony as the flagship of the Rover line burst into a wedge of bright- orange flame as it traveled down the tracks, forming a horizontal cross-bar, similar to the crucifix she had just seen in the Passion Play, wrapped around the front of the massive engine, molded to the engine’s outer structure as tightly as OJ Simpson’s glove that didn’t fit.
The emergency braking system, already activated by the engineer, stopped the train about a half-mile down the track, Range Rover still wrapped around what had been the shiny, silverish engine, only now it was charbroiled, along with the Range Rover.
Jeff pulled off the road, knowing in his heart and mind what was to be, when a propane tank Melissa had picked up for the grill, exploded with a mighty blast and fire storm, flames leaping higher than the adjacent Sugar Hill water tower.
The ringing didn’t register at first, Jeff running toward the conflagration that had been Melissa, the ex-wife he still loved with all his heart, only now his heart was empty.
The second ring stopped Jeff in mid-stride as he rolled over in his king-sized bed, grabbed the landline phone, dropped it, found it and answered.
“Jeff, are you awake? I know it’s early buddy, but I forgot to call you back yesterday. It was a hell of a day at Goddard is all I can say. Jeff, are you there? It’s Chad.”
Jeff didn’t recognize his friend’s voice at first as his heart raced and the sweat continued to pour from his skin.
“Jeff? Wake up man. What’s wrong?” Chad heard the phone drop.
“Chad? I’m sorry Chad.” Jeff now waking, he slowly realized that the frightening scenario he had just experienced was only a dream. And he was happy that it was a dream, for he could not bear to lose Melissa, or Audry. He couldn’t even remember if Audry was in the Range Rover.
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I just had the worst dream of my life, it was way too real. What’s up?”
“I’m flying into Atlanta. Can you pick me up?”
Jeff, still having a little trouble concentrating, was shaken by his near-reality dream, wondering why he hadn’t been concerned that Melissa’s new husband might have been in the Rover. He hoped, but didn’t pray, that it wasn’t a premonition of some kind. He had those sometimes.
“Chad, please. Don’t get me in that Atlanta after- Easter weekend traffic. It’s bad enough normally. Can’t you just take MARTA? I’ll pay the three bucks if you’re broke.”
When Jeff moved to Atlanta from Charleston, S.C., MARTA was the new transportation concept to reduce the legendary Atlanta traffic. That was in the late seventies, and Maynard Jackson was mayor of Georgia’s capital city, modern not by design but because the “Old Atlanta” had burned to the ground, thanks to General William Tecumseh Sherman, September 2, 1864.
Atlanta was rebuilt on top of the Old Atlanta and now stood as a jewel on the horizon of Southern cosmopolitanism, modern buildings and gorgeous large trees, not the water oaks with hanging Spanish moss like those in Savannah and Charleston, but nice none-the-less, adorned her streets with flowers and spring pollen galore.
“What does MARTA mean?” Jeff asked the taxi driver, a Liberian according to the ID plaque mounted on the front dash.
“Moving Africans Rapidly through Atlanta,” the driver said, emotionless; so Jeff didn’t really quite understand what he had just heard.
“What? I know it doesn’t stand for that?” The black driver laughed out loud.
“I am just kidding, monsieur. It’s a joke around here, told by the white people. We still think it’s funny, and mostly true, I have to admit myself.”
Jeff liked the accent, maybe even more than he liked the Island accents of the Caribbean and Bahamas. He didn’t like the comment however and knew, had the Liberian thought about his ancestors, their suffering and indignities, he might not be joking about MARTA. Jeff wondered if the driver even knew that Liberia was born out of the African geography, purely for the freed slaves who wanted to go back home, but didn’t know or remember where home was.
“So what does it really mean?” Jeff asked again.
“Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transportation Authority, or something like that,” and Martin the Liberian laughed again.
One thing for sure, MARTA had not worked, because Atlanta traffic was worse than ever. Chad interrupted Jeff’s thoughts.
“OK, if you don’t want to personally pick up your old friend, let me rephrase that, your long-time friend, then I will do the MARTA thing. I should land about 4:30 this afternoon.”
“When you get on the train, call me. I’ll head to the Dunwoody Station and will meet you at the front entrance, not the side.”
Jeff hated the side entrance, because he would have to park his new GTR and walk to the entry; and that would invite the door-ding demon to leave his mark. Seemed to Jeff that some folks just lived to let their kids slam the door into your brand- spanking-new car. It never failed.
“Okie dokie, I’ll call. We have a lot to talk about?” Chad was upbeat, maybe, or nervous, though Jeff had known Chad Myers for years and had never seen the guy nervous, except one time years ago, about anything.
“Like what?”
“Well, like your flash in the sky that no one saw? Or the huge flare headed our way in less than three days? Or the newly discovered, soon-to-be Near-Earth ‘Objet,’ also headed our way?”
“Objet?” Jeff liked the way Chad could segue from English to French. “What kind of ‘objet?’”
“Like the kind of object we have not seen before, very stealth-like, maybe composed of graphite because there isn’t a lot of reflectivity, and very large.”
“Great!” Just what we need, Jeff thought, a broken worldwide economy and now a killer, desolation-driven asteroid headed for Earth. Super.
“You are always the bearer of bad news, my friend. I will see you this afternoon, and you have a lot of nerve expecting me to drive to Hartsfield- Jackson Airport in four-thirty traffic!”
“Jeff, don’t forget to bring some ladies with you. Have you told all the girls in Atlanta that I’m coming to town?”
“Not yet Chad. I just don’t want all those women driving by my house all day, looking for Wild Willy Briggs! We would end up with a bunch of cat fights in the middle of Sugarloaf Parkway.”
Like his friendship with The Admiral, Jeff’s friendship with Chad went back a long way, since the Navy days. Chad was unusual in several ways, but one thing especially unique was Chad’s ability to actually see the wind, wind-intensity varying by color.
“The colors are almost transparent,” Chad would later explain.
While stationed in Yokosuka, Japan, Chad Myers, Bill Briggs and Jeff met at the Officer’s Club one evening after stopping a bar fight, something that happened a lot more than one would think, in an officer’s club.
Jeff had a bloody nose and suturable lip after the fight, though he kept saying, “You should see the other guys.”
Chad had to admit, the four other guys looked a lot worse, having started the fight with a few racist comments toward not only Blacks but also Hispanics, something that Jeff had not considered officer-like and was eager to let the butt-heads know better as he presented Etiquette 101 with a solid-right to the solar plexus of one bigot, only to have the other three butt-heads jump on him. Bill Briggs and Chad Myers had come to his rescue.
Jeff had always been a pretty good fighter, having boxed a few rounds in Officer’s Candidate School and having a little redneck in his genetic makeup. He was, however, not good enough to take on four drunk soldiers who were not conscious of pain.
Bill (William), Chad and Jeff became friends that night and began hanging out together almost nightly, chasing the girls like all good sailors do.
Yokosuka had plenty to do and lots of pretty little Japanese ladies, maybe not quite ladies, hanging around anything Navy, hoping for marriage to an American soldier, sailor, marine; made no difference. Yokosuka was good duty, the largest U.S. Naval base in the overseas world and the centerpiece of the Pacific Fleet, but it was not known for its nightlife, at least in the sixties.
The most active local bar was Tommy’s Bar & Grill and was frequented by sailors and marines, which of course led to an abundance of fighting. Jeff, Chad and Bill were a part of that group, not usually the fighters, just the drinkers.
One evening after leaving at closing time, on the walk back to Jeff’s car, a 1966 bright- orange Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, all three laughing at how ugly the car was, Chad stopped in his tracks and looked west. The night was dark, though not moonless, and quiet as a mouse.
“We gotta get the hell out of Dodge,” was all Chad said, scanning for places to get out of Dodge and in to. Jeff would remember years later this night, the only time he had ever seen Chad Myers in an anxious state-of-mind.
Bill and Jeff looked at each other in confusion, not knowing what Chad was talking about as Chad’s eyes continued their scan of surrounding structures. There were no sounds, not even night birds or the crickets, which was highly unusual.
“There’s a wind storm coming, take my word for it. Follow me.” And Chad took off, heading back to Tommy’s Bar & Grill, Jeff and Bill in hot pursuit.