Shadows

Before my real life.

Shadows

It had only been a week since I’d last seen Carol, her face contorted with disgust as she angrily flounced past me on her way to her father’s office. I couldn’t help it. She wanted things from me, I’d politely declined. Dinner was the most she would ever get. My heart belonged to another, simple as that. “Hell hath no fury...”

“You’re up, son! That once-in-a lifetime assignment you’ve been wanting? This could be it. Or, it could be something else. But you’re up!”

It was just what I’d been waiting for. The words came from the assistant editor himself. I’d had a bag packed for the occasion for nearly two years. An assignment of my own! Plane ticket, passport, an expense account, and very specific instructions.

“What’s the something else?” I queried.

“Oh, I don’t know. Seems a little odd. And dangerous. Okay, one day the chief is lookin’ for reasons to let you go, the next, he’s sending you to South America on assignment. Solo! That's the part I don't get. Your contact is legit, though. The story is cartel activity. I’d advise you to get in and get right back out. A couple days, tops! Story or no story. You won’t get any pictures.”

“No pictures? What kind of coverage is that?”

“All cartel activity is illegal, son! Nobody would let you leave with pics if you got ‘em. And by the way, you’re under no obligation to take this assignment. Don’t know if I would. Of course, if you don’t, you might as well find another job. Say, what’s up with you and the big guy’s daughter?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“I’ve heard some crap, that’s all.”

Sometimes it seems like my whole life has been a tangle of strange happenings, one odd experience drifting into another. I’ve tried to learn from all of them. Played back in my memory like well-worn recordings, over time they usually fade to just mental shadows. The clarity diminishes as they gradually surrender to an enveloping darkness, that shrouds past events.

The “big guy’s” daughter was still fresh in my mind. She wasn’t bad looking, but she was nobody special and I just wasn’t interested. I had every right to make my own choices, and it should never have affected my employment. It wasn’t like I’d had sex with her. Which may have been part of the problem.

But far, far back in the shadows was one experience I’d replayed thousands of times, until I thought I’d probably imagined most of it. In my heart, I knew I hadn’t.

I was only ten years old. It was a warm, sultry summer day and a light-hearted child’s game at the local playground, a bunch of us kids were trying our hand at our own version of spin-the-bottle. I don’t recall whose idea it was, but the objective was to participate at the risk of “losing.” The first girl the bottle pointed to would have to hug the next boy the bottle selected (of course, he had to hug back). Essie, a visitor from another town, “lost” first. Then I did. Ten kids were in the circle and we were the first to lose, so of course, all our shaking of heads and denials that we lost were hooted down by all of the others. So we stepped up, making faces and carrying on about it. Then we stepped forward, all the while displaying our embarrassed, grimacing smiles, and we embraced.

I’d had no idea what it was like to hold a girl. I was too much of a kid to have even wanted to do anything like it, but that attitude was gone in an instant. What I remember best about it was that Essie was a perfect fit. I can’t explain how that happened between two ten-year-olds. But she didn’t let go, and neither did I, much to the joyful dismay of our fellows.

I think we were the only two that actually hugged. Most just pushed each other away, laughing, until the game collapsed under its own weight, and we all disbanded to do other things. The playground swings were where most of us went. But after a while, Essie came up to me and asked shyly, “Wanna go for a walk?”

Essie’s real name was actually Esmeralda, not a name you commonly hear. She was visiting in town and would be leaving soon. I walked her back to her friend’s house and we stopped at the gate in front of a little Cape Cod. I stood there, immobile and quiet like a typical kid, until she grabbed me and hugged me again. Then she ran to the house.

I was completely in love, for the first and only time in my entire existence.

People think kids can’t be in love. That’s on the same level as claiming that animals don’t feel heat or cold, or that they can’t experience feelings. And to this day, I’ve never completely gotten over Essie.

I grew up with that experience shadowing me everywhere I went. I dated in high school, I took a girl to the prom, I’ve cuddled and held women and more. But none of it was even close to that first contact. All of my efforts to find out where she lived were in vain. Her “friend,” Audrey, whom she had been visiting, refused to tell me anything. And later that very summer, her family moved away too.

Eventually I graduated from college and sought employment as a journalist. I worked for a few newspapers, then finally landed a job in the city with a major news magazine. At the time, I felt as though I was finally on my way to bigger and better things.

But just two weeks before my first big assignment, who should show up as a new employee, but...you guessed it!

When we were kids she was actually a little taller than I was. Now she was a head shorter, but her face was still lovely and distinctive, the same little cleft in her chin, the same dark brown hair and green eyes. And I fell in love all over again.

But Essie didn’t recognize me. I know she probably thought I was weird, as she caught me staring at her twice. But there was no doubt it was she. Her new-hire name tag bore the word “Essie” and thereby confirmed it. I don’t know why I didn’t break the ice right away, maybe I was afraid. I wouldn’t have handled rejection well at all from this particular lady.

But going off on my first big assignment seemed to change everything. Every person, every piece of furniture in the building somehow seemed different. Now, I thought, I could actually be somebody. I would have something to offer. I could actually think about settling down. And now, I regretted keeping quiet about my memory of Essie, because I was being given all of ten minutes to prepare to leave for the airport.

So it had to be right then, and I went looking for her. After a few minutes, I found her in the break room of the floor where she worked, sitting across the table from three other women. I heard snippets of their conversation as I approached, and what I heard I didn’t put together until I was on the plane. I was too intent on what I’d come to say.

I stepped right up. “Essie,” I began, “I know you don’t remember me. We met when we were just ten years old.” I blurted it all out. The game, the embrace, I had walked her back to Audrey’s home. And I’d fallen in love.

“I’ve never been able to love anyone since,” I finished, “because I only wanted to find you.”

I know it was lame. I knew it was the wrong thing to do, to dump it all out at once. Maybe she had no memory of it.

Ha. Maybe pigs can fly. So I told her I’d be back.

After I thought about the things I’d heard as I approached, I realized she was being propositioned by one of the women at the table, and the others were egging her on. But at least I did know Essie remembered me, I could see it clearly on her face and plainly in her soft, wistful smile.

*****

I didn't know I would never return to New York, or that my new assignment would halt my career as a journalist, or that I was about to enter the world of the damned, the most tortured and harrowing three years of my life, most of it spent as a fugitive or a captive. The story I'd thought I was sent to get was not at all what I found. In fact, what I was about to live through was too awful to ever fully relate. I never shall.

It was an uneventful flight. Upon entering my hotel room, I had only placed my suitcase on the bed when I was visited by four armed thugs. The police would only find my unopened suitcase, right where I left it. I would not see civilization again for a very long time.

In the jungles of Ecuador and the mountains of Columbia, the animals to be most-feared are creatures of night that might be considered human. Some may be. Others are not. My face is deeply scarred, my bones have been broken, I’ve been deathly sick, starved, beaten repeatedly and was eventually returned for the ransom raised by my family. I’m sure it was only my ransom value that kept me alive. What I witnessed being done to others was far worse than anything that happened to me. I believed my fate would be similar sooner or later. At thirty-five, my hair had become fully gray.

I’ve been waiting a decade for the experience to diminish with the others, into the shadows of the past. It still hasn’t happened. It was far too real, the images, too vivid.

Surely Essie is somewhere else, likely married, probably with children.

If I ever did return to New York, I’d been thinking it would be to kill the man who arranged to have my life taken from me. But I asked myself, how could a man be as small as that? The answer is simple. Wealth, power and influence can reduce a man to no more than a shadow of what he could have been. Perhaps I should feel sorrier for him than I have for myself. I shall not descend to the level of such a man, someone who is no more human than those that might have killed me. And from that realization, I’ve learned something priceless.

There are the few among the world’s wealthy and powerful who have seen they are not so special, not so gifted, but quite fortunate. These few have begun to use what they have to assist humanity through educational grants, endowments to science to combat disease, think tanks to solve the knotty problems created by industry, expansionism and population. How great is the contrast to others whose goals are naught but self-serving and the accumulation of even greater wealth and power!

It is no crime to work hard to succeed within the system that exists. It is a great crime indeed to misuse the fruits of having done well, especially when that misuse does harm. Or to turn one’s back on one’s fellows as if they were not the source of what has been accumulated, denying them their rights or joint ownership of this planet.

So now we shall see if indeed the pen is mightier than the sword.

At long last, I’ve begun to feel alive again. I will never look the same, that’s true...but I’m looking for someone, someone similar to a certain sweet girl, now a part of my deep past.

*****

I nodded my head slightly toward a wide-eyed Essie, hoping my admission of adoration had not shocked her to excess. Then I turned and walked away in silence, knowing the eyes of all four of them were upon me.

I stepped outside alone with my suitcase and approached the waiting airport taxi, parked in an ominously prescient shadow.

A cold rain was falling.

********