Collected Short Stories: Volume I by Barry Rachin - HTML preview

The Kidnapped Bride

Paige Endicott, court reporter for the Brandenberg Gazette, arrived early and hunkered down with her notes on a hardwood bench in the back of the district courtroom. The town solicitor had been caught ‘soliciting’ something off the beaten path and was due for arraignment shortly. His defense lawyer was elsewhere in the building haggling with a representative from the district attorney’s office. Meanwhile, a young man in his early twenties, Norman Snyder, was standing before a rather irritated Judge Felicia Kirk

Judge Kirk’s weathered face offered little encouragement. When she attempted anything resembling warm emotion, the pendent bottom lip jutted forward in a disconcerting leer and a ribbon of crow’s feet dribbled away like a pair of dried up riverbeds above the cheeks. After years covering Judge Kirk’s courtroom, Paige had begun to wonder if the diminutive woman, who stood a tad less than five feet in her birthday suit, didn’t suffer a Napoleon complex with the accompanying, psychological excess baggage.

“You spent last night in the lockup, Mr. Snyder?” Judge Kirk noted.

In stark contrast to the judge’s shriveled physique, the blond-haired man sitting in the straight back chair twenty feet away was tall and muscular with broad, shoulders and a dusting of freckles around the hazel eyes. Paige recognized him from Brandenberg High School, where Norman was president of the honor society and ran long distance on the track team. The last time she saw him was at a senior awards banquet, where Norman won a scholarship to Brandeis College in Waltham, a short commute north of Boston. Norman attended college a scant three months. Rumor had it that he stopped attending classes after the first few weeks and returned home forfeiting the lavish scholarship. Despite the fall from academic grace, he still had that dreamy-eyed look of a poet – or unrepentant anarchistic.

 “Yes, that’s right,” he murmured contritely.

“Would you like to tell the court, why you were arrested yesterday afternoon?” The judge spoke in a lilting drawl, calculated, like vaudeville shtick, to enhance both the courtroom drama and casual onlookers’ vicarious interest. Over the years, Paige had seen Judge Kirk bait defendants with a similar infantilizing tone.

The young man’s lips pressed together so hard they blanched white. The mouth twisted perversely as he stared at the tiny woman in the black robe elevated on the dais. But Judge Kirk had pivoted in her seat facing the far wall and never witnessed the defendant’s Jekyll and Hyde transformation. “I’d rather tell you what I did and work backwards.”

The bailiff, a robust man in his late thirties with a sleepy face, gawked at the headstrong man. Judge Kirk demanded discrete decorum in her courtroom, and God help anyone who, resorting to theatrics thought they could bend the rules. “So, what exactly did you do, Mr. Snyder?” The judge said peering over her bifocals.

“I didn’t murder anyone, prostitute myself, rob a bank or embezzle money from an employer.”

“But you did run up a tab of a hundred and eighty-five dollars in unpaid parking tickets.”

Norman breathed out sharply, expelling all the air from his lungs forcefully. “I do the bulk of my shopping downtown, but there’s never any on-street parking, and the computerized meters you installed last year eat up all my spare change.” “A crummy quarter buys fifteen minutes on a municipal parking meter,” Norman continued bitterly. “If town officials cared about local merchants, they’d do away with the meters altogether. It’s just legalized extortion.”

The courtroom doors inched open, and an emaciated, gray-haired woman slipped noiselessly into the room, choosing a seat at the rear. Paige recognized Norman’s mother. Even back to their high school days, Mrs. Snyder affected a chronically careworn, beaten-dog demeanor. When the reporter looked again, the woman had slid strategically fifteen feet to the left on the oak bench and was hidden behind a thick column.

The judge picked up the mahogany-colored gavel and ran a finger over the broad head. “You’re wasting the court’s valuable time.”

“I am the court.”

Judge Kirk winced. She sat up straight, waving the gavel at the young man. “What did you just say?”

Norman Snyder rose to his feet behind the defendants’ table. “As a citizen, my tax dollars provide for all this.” He waved a hand in a sweeping gesture. “I don’t pay your salary as a public servant so you can talk to me in that officious, condescending tone.”

Danny Sullivan, the bailiff, leaned forward, crooked his head to one side and gazed at the judge trying to decipher her intent. Did the defendant need to be restrained? Removed from the court? No one had ever been so outspoken. They wouldn’t dare. “That bit of histrionics,” Judge Kirk returned coolly, “just cost you another hundred and fifty dollars added to what you already owe.”

“Which is to say,” Norman lowered his voice in a baiting tone, “you run your court like a cab company, where the meter keeps ticking until the patron reaches a final destination.”

Judge Kirk chuckled, but it was not a terribly comforting sound. “You can debark, get out of the taxi right here by paying the various fines, if you like,” she shot back, “or try my patience further and see where that gets you.”

Now Danny Sullivan relaxed. The bailiff leaned back again and rubbed his wide, clean-shaven jaw with an oversized fist. Danny worked the district court, specifically Judge Kirk’s courtroom, for the past fifteen years, and Paige doubted the court officer had ever seen anyone go at the judge like this spunky defendant.

“Welcome to the electronic age, Mr. Snyder.” Like a theatrical entertainer, Judge Kirk was playing to the crowd. At the same time that she admonished the defendant, the woman was putting on a command performance. “You conveniently confuse progress with coercion,” the judge rebuffed. “But this isn’t a college debating team and civil law demands that you stop wasting the court’s valuable time and pay the fine and fees.” Judge Kirk spoke in a measured, off-hand manner, but it was clear that she had no intentions of allowing the spectacle to drag on much longer.

Paige was familiar with a broad range of miscreants, the flotsam and jetsam that flowed like human sludge through district court. There were the surly, inarticulate types too stupid to hold their own with the irascible judge. Most, a solid eighty per cent, were grungy lowlifes - gamblers, petty crooks, alcoholics, druggies and middle-aged, recidivists with anger management issues. Norman Snyder fit neatly into none of these categories. The robust defendant lowered his eyes and seemed lost in private reverie for the better part of a minute. When he finally raised his head, the body language was thoroughly relaxed, almost congenial. “There are two things,” Norman spoke easily, measuring his words. “After spending a wretched night in jail, I entered your courtroom this morning with the intent of paying the parking tickets. But now I’d rather rot in hell than submit to your vindictive whims.”

Dead silence.

Judge Kirk removed her glasses letting them slip down on a beaded, gold chain. She made a tent with her hands, flexing her knuckles in and out. “Two things… you said there were two things you had to say.”

Norman glanced at the judge for a brief second then directed his words at the empty stenographer’s chair. “Autocrats rules by decree. They are cruel, despotic, overbearing… value nobody’s opinion but their own. You are a goddamn autocrat!”

A wave of jittery uncertainty swept over the courtroom. Danny Sullivan, who had been staring intently at the blonde-haired defendant, blinked violently and averted his eyes. Several visitors squirmed uncomfortably in their seats. Judge Kirk kicked at the floor sending her leather-padded executive chair spinning a full hundred-and-eighty degrees. As though she had disappeared behind an inch-thick, armor-plated shield, the woman lingered facing the wall for a solid minute before swinging back around.

“That sophomoric remark, Mr. Snyder, earned you another night in jail. I’ll see you again tomorrow morning, and we will pick up where we left off.” She lifted the gavel high in the air. “Additionally, I’m assigning your case to a public defender, who hopefully will prove savvier with judicial protocol.”

She brought the gavel down with a resounding crash that startled several spectators, causing them to lurch disjointedly in their seats. Paige watched Norman as he was led in handcuffs from the courtroom. What had he accomplished by badgering the judge? The more Paige thought about it, Norman’s surly nonchalance suggested that there might be even worse fireworks in the morning.

* * * *

The following Friday morning, Paige dropped by the Silver Palate Diner, where Norman had been working since his academic disintegration. Sitting at the counter, the reporter lingered over a plate of scrambled eggs and hash browns. When the waitress finally brought the check, she asked, “Is Norman working today?”

The waitress seemed momentarily flustered. “Norman’s on indefinite leave.”

“How indefinite?”

She pawed at the linoleum floor with the toe of her shoe. “I ain’t at liberty to say,” the waitress mumbled with lowered eyes, whisked the empty plate off the counter and hurried away.

From the restaurant Paige drove to the county courthouse. No cases were in session. Wandering about the building, she finally located Danny Sullivan sipping a cup of tepid coffee in the jurors’ holding room. “That guy with the unpaid parking tickets…whatever happened to him?”

The bailiff’s expression turned grim. Danny raised a stubby hand and directed an index finger at a stain on the oak floor between his legs. “He’s still here… two floors down in the hoosegow.”

“You can’t be serious?” When there was no immediate reply, she added, “It’s been a freakin’ week!”

“He still refuses to pay and Judge Kirk won’t give an inch.”

“He called her an autocrat… a legal bully.”

The bailiff cracked a close-lipped smile. “Despite his abundant shortcomings, Norman Snyder is an excellent judge of character.”

“He won’t pay?”

“Not a cent.”

“Then it’s a hopeless impasse.” Paige watched as a lawyer sporting a blue, pin-striped suit sauntered down the hallway dragging an unwieldy thick briefcase.  “Did Judge Kirk set a public defender?”

 “Ernie something-or-other.”

“Smoltz?”

“Yeah, that’s it!”

Paige rolled her eyes. “A perfectly wonderful choice!”

Ernie Smoltz, Esq. was a trial lawyer who had been disbarred several years back for misappropriating an elderly client’s funds. He had since made restitution in full and been reinstated. Ernie was considered semi-retired and generally held in very low regard by the other legal staff.

“Mrs. Snyder dropped by earlier this morning.” Danny Sullivan’s normally impassive features cycled through a series of violent contortions eventually settling on a comical grin. Edging closer, he positioned his lips within an inch of her left ear. “The woman offered to pay all her son’s outstanding parking tickets plus the contempt of court fine.”

“And?”

A steady trickle of prospective jurors began filling up the room. Some brought books or newspapers. One middle-age man carried a pair headphone and an MP3 player. A woman sporting a flowery print dressed was channel surfing on a TV in the far corner of the room. “Norman said that, if she paid the court, he’d recite the Jewish prayer for the dead and never talk to her as long as she lived.”

Paige winced. “I don’t suppose that went over well.”

Danny greeted a recent arrival, handing him a brochure describing court protocol as he entered the jurors’ room. “Mrs. Snyder was an emotional wreck when she arrived and even worse when she left.”

* * * * *

A week later, Paige’s mother stood outside her daughter’s bedroom. "Mrs. Snyder's downstairs in the living room and wishes to speak to you." She wore a pinched expression as though the neighbor waiting at the bottom of the stairs was more intruder than guest.

"About what?"

"She wouldn’t say.”

"Have Mrs. Snyder come upstairs," Paige replied.

Her mother went off and a moment later Paige heard the creaking of the risers as the dour-faced woman with the lugubrious disposition trudged to the second floor landing. "Sorry to bother you on short notice," she remarked absently, her almond eyes flitting distractedly about the tidy bedroom. "How's everything at the newspaper?"

"Fine." For a fleeting moment, the thought occurred to Paige that Mrs. Snyder might pester her to find an entry-level position at the Brandenberg Gazette for her discombobulated son, but the woman quickly laid that unnecessary fear to rest.

"Norm isn’t doing so hot these days." She made a sniffing sound and rubbed her longish nose. "I need a favor.” The middle-aged woman threw formality out the window. "Someone with a head on her shoulders to talk horse sense with Norman.”

“I don’t follow you.”

Mrs. Snyder picked at a piece of lint on the sleeve of her blouse. "My son's washing dishes in a greasy spoon.”

“He’s still employed at the diner?” Paige asked.

“Yes, of course. He went off to work six o’clock this morning,” she confirmed.

Paige lowered her eyes. Norman was out of jail, and his mother clearly had no intention of mentioning anything about the parking ticket fiasco.

"In recent weeks, he goes away, disappears for days at a time." Mrs. Snyder jutted her flabby lower lip in a theatrical scowl. "I say, 'Norman, I tried to reach you a dozen times over the weekend. Where the hell were you?'"

"And?"

"He says he traveled north."

North - what did that signify? Up the road to Foxboro Stadium where the New England Patriots football team played, still further north to New Hampshire or Vermont… north to the polar latitudes? "So what do you want from me, Mrs. Snyder?"

“Norman’s always been an impressionable soul. What with all the crazy books he reads and that god-awful German poetry, his brains got muddled something awful."

"Norman speaks German?"

"No, not a word," Mrs. Snyder clarified. She began to cry, making horrible snuffling sounds, her pendulous lower lip quivering under the burden of grief. Reaching into her purse, she withdrew a scrap of paper and handed it to Paige. "He reads this mystical gibberish in translation and then the poor boy doesn't know which end is up anymore."

Paige laid the sheet on the bed without looking at it. "You brought something that belongs to Norman with neither his knowledge nor consent."

Mrs. Snyder slumped down on the edge of the bed and shrugged dismissively. "It's just a poem by Rilke that he downloaded off the internet."

Paige lowered her eyes and read silently.

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

                                             Rainer Maria Rilke

"So what the hell is a church that stands somewhere in the East?" Mrs. Snyder rose and began pacing the room, becoming more agitated by the minute. "It's a lot of sappy malarkey, right?" She threw her arms up in an attitude of utter despair. “One lunatic rushes to the East in search of nirvana… some illusive pipe dream, while my son travels north on secretive missions. How can anyone to make sense of such unmitigated foolishness?”

"The church in the East probably refers to some spiritual quest or Holy Grail."

“Norman’s agnostic. Holy relics don’t figure in the grand scheme of things." When there was no immediate reply, the woman added, "The few times your name came up during high school, Norman always had flattering things to say about you. If he wasn't so painfully shy and tongue-tied around the opposite sex, my son might have even…" The woman cut herself short, abruptly sallying off in another direction. "Maybe you could drop by the diner after work and give the poor boy some moral encouragement. A kind word might lift his broken spirit."

Paige felt overwhelmed. With her gloom-and-doom pronouncements, Phyllis Snyder resembled an emotional pestilence; she sucked every molecule of nourishing oxygen from the air. "I'll go by after work tomorrow."

Mrs. Snyder reached out tentatively and squeezed her hand. "You're a kind-hearted soul." Without another word she retreated to the doorway and lumbered back down the stairs.

*****

Sometimes a man stands up during supper...

Later that night after supper, Paige located Rilke’s poem on the internet. Mrs. Snyder had, in typical hysterical fashion, omitted the final refrain:

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,

dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go far out into the world

toward that same church, which he forgot.

Yes, of course, Mrs. Snyder would miss what was most essential. Like a Zen koan, an inscrutable riddle, one had to work out the meaning on a personal basis. Turning his back on the hum drum, the adventurous narrator in the Rilke poem journeyed east. Norman Snyder, college dropout, jailbird and intellectual bubble brain, ventured in a hazy, northerly direction. To what end? What ultimate purpose? The forgotten church – where did that ambiguously foggy metaphor lead?

* * * * *

At six-fifteen the following afternoon, Paige wandered into the Silver Palate Diner, took a seat at the counter and ordered coffee. A moment passed and Norman came bustling through the door from the kitchen with a plastic rack full of clean water glasses. Noticing his former classmate, he hurried over.

“What a nice surprise!” Norman stood on the far side of the counter grinning good-naturedly, his wavy blond hair cascading down over his ears. He could have passed for a West Coast beachcomber or hippy with mystical affinities. "I heard you got a plum job over at the newspaper." In no great hurry to stack the glasses, Norman rested his fists on the marble countertop.

Earlier in the day, Paige had rehearsed several, equally distasteful strategies for finessing the encounter. She would open with innocuous pleasantries and, once the conversation hit an awkward snag, cut her loses and slip out the door. Properly understood, the visit was nothing more than an empty formality, a bit of misplaced altruism foisted on her by a manipulative, blatantly neurotic and over-protective mother.

Mrs. Snyder had resorted to emotional subterfuge, whining and wheedling until Paige agreed to do her bidding. But Norman was neither morbidly depressed nor emotionally unhinged. He had apparently survived his week in the town lockup unscathed. "Actually, I'm here under false pretenses," Paige blurted.

"Excuse me?"

"I came under your mother's auspices, to talk you off the ledge… a mission of mercy."

She hadn't intended to say anything of the sort. Norman wagged his head in disbelief. "My mother came to see you?" Paige nodded. Norman reached out and patted her wrist, a reassuring gesture. "You're the fifth sacrificial lamb." His expression turned reflective. "Look, I go on break in ten minutes, if you don't mind waiting around."

"I came here expressly to see you," Paige reminded him. Norman cracked a boyish grin and went off to unload the drinking glasses.

*****

"In answer to your unspoken question," Norman noted, "I'm not quite sure what I'm doing bussing tables, scrubbing pots and pans. Think of it as an existential rite of passage."

"A dark night of the soul."

"Yes, something of the sort."

"But scrubbing pots and pans… how does that make sense?"

"Sometimes doing nothing can be proactive." His tone remained cordial if a tad flippant. "Say, what are you doing next weekend?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I'm heading north on a little adventure next Friday afternoon and was wondering if you'd like to join me."

There was nothing salacious in his tone or body language. Rather, it was the unsettling and ill-defined 'north' that put Paige's nerves on edge. "How far north?"

"Scarborough, Maine…. on the ocean just over the town line from Old Orchard Beach and the boardwalk. I walk the sand dunes and contemplate my navel among other things."

"It's the middle of November, a week before Thanksgiving. Isn't it freezing up there?"

"Brisk… maybe a bit chilly," he countered, "but on the plus side, room rates are dirt cheap and coastal Maine is especially scenic this time of year."

"No, but thanks for the invite."

Behind the counter, a waitress was gesturing frantically. She needed Norman to finesse a five-gallon milk carton into the chrome dispenser. "If you have a change of heart, here's my cell number." He scribbled the digits on a napkin and headed back to work.

* * * * *

A year earlier in celebration of her tenth year anniversary at the courthouse, the newspaper published a full-length article on Judge Kirk. The senior editor suggested that, rather than focus on her professional achievements, which had already been documented ad nauseam, perhaps Paige could take a human interest slant – research the early childhood years long before the diminutive woman ever considered a career in law. Paige called the middle-aged woman at home later that evening; Judge Kirk was ecstatic at the prospect of a feature article cobbled together with a lavish spread of full-color pictures in the Sunday supplement.

Felicia Gwendolyn Kirk was the only child of a neurosurgeon with a three-story brownstone in the posh Chestnut Hill section of Newton. The doctor owned a second, vacation home on Block Island. “We stabled horses. It was a bucolic existence, like something out of a Victorian novel,” the judge gushed.

 “Pride and Prejudice,” Paige offered.

“Yes, exactly that same sort of rustic perfection.” As they chatted, a photographer scampered soundlessly about the living room snapping photos. Judge Kirk’s husband, who joined his wife for pictures, had since gone off elsewhere. “All summer long, I rode bareback through meadows filled with tiger lilies, salt spray roses and humming birds. From June when school got out straight through to Labor Day, I hardly ever wore a pair of shoes.”

 Paige thought the last remark a bit of a stretch, but obviously the youthful Felicia Kirk lived a blessed life far removed from the humdrum monotony that most middle-class working stiffs endured. “Our summer home was a mile and a half from the Southeast Lighthouse. A favorite tourist spot, it draws thousands of visitors to Block Island each year.”

“I toured the structure during a trip to the island a few years back,” Paige remarked. The lighthouse featured a six-sided, red brick base leading up to a formidable steel enclosure which housed the light element. An attached, three-story building with scalloped windows was only slightly shorter than the massive light itself.

“There is so much history in the region,” Judge Kirk gushed. “The area around Block Island has been the site of numerous shipwrecks, including the Larchmont, in 1907.”

“I wasn’t aware – “

“And, of course,” she was almost tripping over her words, “the wreck of the Princess Augusta, also known as the Palatine ship which was later immortalized by John Greenleaf Whittier in his famous poem, The Wreck of the Palatine”. The judge sat up straighter on the sofa just as the photographer sneaked around the walnut coffee table to snap a flurry of additional pictures. Raising an arm in a theatrical gesture, she recited from memory in a stilted, breathy monotone.

“Circled by waters that never freeze,

Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,

Lieth the island of Manisees,…”

“Very nice!” Paige responded when the woman was done with the poem.

She felt like throwing up. This dwarfish gnome, who sat in judgment throughout the week and sent people off to jail with a resounding crash of her mahogany gavel, hadn’t a solitary clue how the other half lived. The woman spent her childhood summers galloping frenetically around an historic island off the Atlantic coast and clearly considered herself royalty, an aristocratic breed apart.

Paige wrote the puff piece, which appeared the third weekend in July. Readers found the story of Felicia Kirk’s early years bewitching, magical. As a child, Judge Kirk enjoyed a fairy tale existence. If she was an insufferable egomaniac with an atrocious sense of entitlement, it didn’t come across in Paige’s article. Or perhaps it did, but most people opted to ignore the obvious.

* * * * *

Back at the Brandenberg Gazette, Paige checked messages and set to work on the lead article describing the horny town solicitor’s fall from grace. The community would be outraged. A longtime, city employee, who received a generous salary plus benefits, caught betraying the public trust – the taxpayers would scream for blood.

Over the remainder of the morning into the early afternoon, Paige polished the article about the wayward town solicitor. Two more pieces had to be proof read before sending them off to the printer. Shortly after lunch, a group of students from Brandenberg High School had arranged to visit the paper on an informal walking tour, and Paige invited them back to discuss job opportunities in the print media and field questions.

What did she like best about journalism?

Journalism, at its best, was a rather glorified term for unearthing the subtle nuances hidden away in seemingly innocuous stories. What was it H. L. Mencken had said about the profession? Journalism provided its readership with hard facts while literature and poetry dealt with truth. Yes, something to that effect. A crotchety Felicia Kirk could ride bareback through the wildflower meadows of Block Island, recite Whittier’s poems by heart and schmooze with politicians, but she was still nothing more than an autocratic fact, never a sublime truth.

* * * * *

A week passed. Paige had all but forgotten about her clandestine visit to the Silver Palate Diner. In the kitchen the telephone clattered. "It's Mrs. Snyder," Paige's mother yelled up the stairs.

Paige blew out her cheeks and counted to ten before reaching for the phone. “Hello?”

"You saw Norman?" The tone was belligerent - borderline confrontational, as though the woman expected Paige to fax a twenty-page, confidential report after returning home from the diner.

"I met with Norman last Thursday and can assure you he's not the least bit distraught about his current lifestyle."

"Well, he ought to be, considering what that boy put me through these past few years." The sarcasm was palpable. Without skipping a beat, the woman demanded, "So tell me what he said."

"Certainly not! I don't appreciate the cloak and dagger intrigues or being blackmailed into becoming your surrogate. Goodbye, Mrs. Snyder." She hung up the phone and promptly burst into tears.

"Your fingers are shaking something awful." Mrs. Endicott pulled her daughter close and bussed her cheek, quickly rubbing the wetness away with the heel of her hand. "In the future when that horrid woman calls, I'll simply tell her you're not available."

"No, it's not Mrs. Snyder's fault." Paige insisted, blotting her eyes with a napkin. "There was some ugliness at the newspaper earlier today and I'm still feeling a bit shaky."

"Anything you want to talk about?"

"No, it's over and done with." She pushed her mother away at arm's length. "What's the weather forecast?"

Mrs. Endicott eyed her uncertainly. "Chilly… below freezing overnight but warming into the low thirties by midday."

Paige retreated back upstairs.

She took a bath and steeped in the warm sudsy water for a half hour before finally washing her hair. Paige chose a pair of flannel pajamas and prepared for bed. Shutting the bedroom door, she reached for the cell phone. "Hello, Norman? Your mother's a royal pain in the ass, but that's not why I called." Perched in a lotus position on the top of her queen-size bed, Paige took a deep breath and blew all the air from her lungs in one sinewy thread. "That escape weekend you were telling me about… is it too late to reserve an extra room?"

"Probably not." His tone was relaxed, nonplussed. "I'll call and check accomodations." He hung up the phone. Ten minutes later, Paige's phone twittered. "I reserved two adjoining rooms on the first floor with baseboard heat. The place is rustic… no frills but very clean."

"Thanks." Paige could feel her mood brightening.

"I can pick you up at the newspaper after work if you like."

The girl flinched. "I'm calling in sick tomorrow. Drop by my house instead."

"Be re