“Sure. You know we’re best friends. Remember how we made us into blood brothers last summer?”
“Yeah. But we didn’t cut our arms like that cowboy and Indian did in the movie.”
Dan pulled Stanley closer and whispered. “Pricking our fingers with a needle made enough of our blood come out seeing how we’re just kids. Besides, if we cut our arms with a knife like they did in the movie we’d have ourselves a fearsome scar. Then everyone would know about us being blood brothers. This way we can keep it real secret, okay? Just you and me know about it.”
Stanley smiled. “Okay. You think maybe I should help folks out like you do?”
Dan heard the distant call of big brother Karl, sent to find him. “Sure. Mom says the Bible says we need to treat other folks like we want to be treated. I hear Karl. I gotta go. See you later, alligator.”
“In a while, crocodile.”
After supper, Stanley stared at the ceiling from his bed and pondered his father’s oft-repeated saying to “either fish or cut bait.” After an hour, Stanley decided it was time to fish. As soon as he heard his father’s snores, he dressed and crawled through his bedroom window. Because Pastor Trueblood often preached on “saving souls from the clutches of the devil” maybe his parents would understand his stealth after he rescued the most bound soul he knew.
It took ten minutes to walk to the last house along the two-lane highway where fields and woods replaced civilization. The small home was 200 feet from the road, its long dirt driveway overgrown with weeds. Stanley wondered why the owner had extended the highway’s drainage ditch through the driveway.
Must be to make it harder for people in cars to turn off and help the devil’s prisoner.
Stanley had met the chained-up boy only once. About his age, the boy had screamed whenever he saw someone walking by along the road’s shoulder. Out scavenging for soda bottles with his wagon a week before, Stanley had heard the faint screams and investigated. He had promised to return with help.
That help was a file borrowed from Jason’s toolbox. Stanley thought it would be of little use if the devil appeared. He had caught a glimpse of the huge cursing figure as he had crept from the property after his first visit. The devil had carried a pitchfork in one hand and blood red eyes in his head. When one of his hell hounds started yapping, the devil had hurled the pitchfork toward the direction the dog pointed. It had landed two feet from Stanley, who wet his pants. If not for the ten-gallon hat on the devil’s head, Stanley was certain he would have spied his two horns. But those blood red eyes and pitchfork were proof enough; he was the devil and the boy was his captive waiting to be set free by the servant of the Lord, Stanley Dalrumple, who had returned per the boy’s pleas.
He waited until he was under the windowsill before calling the prisoner’s name. “Hey Leroy. It’s me.”
“I knew you all would come on back and fetch me. Hurry on up before my pappy comes back.”
His pappy? Wow! The devil must’ve put a spell on him. Stanley climbed through the window and landed on the wooden floor with his hands and head.
“Oh, thank the Lord you came on back. How you gonna get me free like you promised you would?” He rattled his chain.
“With this.” Stanley pulled the twelve-inch file from his pocket and started to etch a groove on a link of chain fastened to the leg of a rusty woodstove. He filed nonstop until a blister formed on each hand. “I got to go before the devil comes back and chains me up too. You’re going to have to finish cutting through where I started. Once you get free go out to the road and go left. Run on over to my house. It’s the green one. My mom will figure out what to do next. She’s real smart.” He covered up the partially cut link with a log. “Just don’t let him see where you’re cutting. I figure it’s gonna take you a while to finish cutting it all the way through.”
“Okay. You be the onliest friend I gots in this whole big world. I be obliged to you forever and ever. I been praying you all would come along for years.”
“I’m going to skedaddle before the devil gets back and puts his pitchfork in me. He almost did the last time I was here. Don’t forget. The green house.”
“Good bye.” He went to work on the partially cut link.
A day later, Stanley walked the road again in search of soda bottles. In front of the devil’s house, he parked his wagon and jumped down into the drainage ditch. He tarried as he retrieved three bottles. Distracted by the playing of his role of passerby, he did not notice an approaching figure until it was thirty feet from him.
“What you doing on my property?” Gone was the pitchfork, replaced by a shotgun filled with rock salt.
“Just picking up pop bottles.” Stanley held two of them above his head.
The devil jabbed his gun at the intruder. “You better git right now. And don’t come back no more.”
Stanley scrambled out of the ditch and grabbed his red wagon’s handle. Several bottles bounced out of it but he did not stop running until he was home.
***
Five nights later, Jason heard someone pounding on the front door. He switched on the porch light and peered through a window at the small boy who kept glancing over his shoulder. Jason lowered his head to the brass mail slot. “What do you want this time of night?”
“Help me, mister. Stanley said to come over here.”
Jason opened the unlocked the door and stepped back from the ten-foot length of rusty chain that dragged after the boy into his living room. “What the heck?”
It took a police officer fifteen minutes to arrive and almost that long to piece together the story told by Leroy and Stanley.
“What happens now?” Jason handed the cop another cup of coffee.
“I’m calling for backup. Then we’ll go pay his father a visit. You think you can watch Leroy until we get the social worker over here first thing in the morning?”
“Sure.”
***
The devil, alias Monroe O. Lithington, was certain that the police had arrived to shut down the still that he operated in the woods on the backside of his property. He sighed when the two lawmen explained their visit at 2:34 a.m.
Leastways they ain’t here after my moonshine. He spent the night in jail and said little until he appeared before a judge the next afternoon. The Dalrumples and a reporter from the Madisin News were the only spectators. Leroy sat at a table with a social worker fifteen feet from his father. Judge Bellow read from the court docket.
“This is a preliminary hearing of Monroe O. Lithington on the charge of child neglect. In the interest of time, I would like the defendant to give his side of the story. Then we’ll listen to his son. Any objections?”
The public defender turned to the social worker, who shook her head.
“No objections, your honor.” She spoke for both.
“Good. Mr. Lithington, is it true that you chained your son to a woodstove and if so, why?”
The accused coughed and his voice quavered. “Your honor, I had no choice. I was fearing that Leroy’s mama would come on back home and take him away once and for all.”
“Where is his mother?”
“I don’t rightly know. About six years back she runs off with some piano player. From what I be told he plays down around the Chtilin’ Circuit.”
“The what?”
“Chitlin’ Circuit. That be all the dance halls and juke joints that be spread out all over everywhere in the South.”
“Did she take the boy with her when she left?”
“At first. Then one day about five years back, she dropped him off. She said she’d be back for him but I ain’t seen her no more since.” He turned and pointed at Leroy. “I didn’t mean him no harm. I just wanted to keep her from snatching him when I wasn’t at home is all.”
“I see.” The judge turned toward Leroy. “Now it’s Leroy’s turn. Do you remember your mother at all?”
“Yes, sir. But just a little bit. Mostly I just remember one day she hugged me and told me to be good and she would
be back to get me. I figured I must not have been good enough because she never came back for me.”
“How long has your father chained you up?”
“He only does it when he be gone a spell. Like when he goes on off to town or out to work on the fields. He takes the chain back off when he be in the house.”
“I meant how many years has he been chaining you up?”
Leroy shrugged. “Long as I remember for.”
The judge sighed and stared at the gavel he had wielded thousands of times to maintain his sense of order. “Will you two please approach the bench?” When the social worker and attorney were two feet from him he lowered his voice. “Any deal you two can work out between you?”
“I’d like to keep Leroy at the children’s home until we can investigate his home and their stories further, your honor.” She tapped her crimson nails on the oak top of the bench, reminders of the blood she had drawn in other court battles.
“Meantime I request the accused be released on his own recognizance, your honor.” The lawyer placed both his hands by the gavel.
“Very well.” He waited until the two had returned to their clients. “Leroy Lithington is hereby remanded to the children’s home. Monroe Lithington is released pending investigation of the living conditions at his home and verification can made of the mother’s whereabouts so that custody can be granted to the appropriate parent. Court adjourned.”
***
The lone detective from the Madisin Police Department stared at the teletype message from Mobile, Alabama. He tore off the sheet and walked across the street to the public defender’s cramped office. The balding attorney stared at him over stacks of dusty folders. “What’s up, Vic?”
“Remember the guy who kept his kid chained up?”
“Monroe Lithington?”
“Turns out his wife died in a car wreck about four and a half years back. The only ID on her listed a Georgia address so they never found out about her husband and kid.”
Chapter 23
“Whenever a new agency starts up, get in on the ground floor.” Agent Bill Sampson’s supervisor gave this advice to two kinds of agents, those he liked and those he wanted to get rid of. Bill was the only one to follow it.
“I’d move on over to the Defense Intelligence Agency myself if I were younger,” his boss said.
“Well, I figure I got another six or seven years before I can retire,” Bill said. “Maybe the change will help me ease into my golden years.”
“I hope so. Good luck.”
***
With its Uniform Code of Military Justice and multiple chains of command, the military needed a separate intelligence entity to flush out any spies or traitors within its ranks. Such beliefs intensified at the DIA when an ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald defected to Russia.
Bill did not know what to make of his new job. After comparing notes with agents at the FBI and CIA, he wondered if his move had been right. But when an organizational structure was cemented at the DIA his new supervisor squashed such misgivings with Bill’s first assignment.
“Have a seat, Agent Sampson.” He continued talking before Bill had settled into the green vinyl chair. “I have an important assignment for you. You’re going to check out the bases in Southern California that are doing research and development. We’ve got to catch any more like that Oswald nutcase before they defect. The CIA handles all the hush-hush stuff over at the Nevada Test Site so that’s out of our hands, at least for now. But I want you to assess the security risks there in California. Any questions?”
“Can I have a list of the personnel assigned to the bases?”
“Sure. My secretary will bring the lists to you.”
Only one name jumped out from the lists, Technician Dave Freight. Bill jotted his name and location in a notebook and went home to pack.
LAX reminded Bill of a hornet’s nest as he counted the dozens of aircraft arriving, departing, and sitting on the tarmac. His 707 was on time, nonstop from Washington, D.C. The expanding federal bureaucracy had enough of a presence in Southern California to merit its own motor pool of vehicles near the airport so Bill took the shuttle to it and checked out a 1961 black Ford two-door sedan. He found the 405 freeway and began winding through the concrete maze that connected L.A. with dozens of suburbs.
By the time he reached Whittier, the cool ocean breeze had died. Just west of San Bernardino the temperature was twenty degrees hotter than at LAX and the smog tasted nasty so he rolled up the windows and searched for a distraction on the radio. He found it on KFWB.
The disc jockey sounded like he was high on bennies or too many cups of coffee or both as he crammed his patter between the 45 rpm discs he played. Bill had promised his teenaged sons and twenty-two year old daughter to listen to top-40 radio at least once in a while “so you can dig us, Dad.” He ignored the DJ’s spiel and tried to focus on the music.
Elvis Presley’s latest album was out and the song Blue Hawaii made him sound tamer than his days of dancing to the jailhouse rock after suffering a breakdown at a heartbreak hotel. The Marvelettes pled with Mr. Postman to bring a letter from lover boy. Harry Mancini’s Moon River calmed Bill’s nerves as he battled rush hour traffic but then Ray Charles’ backup singers began calling him Jack and telling him “to hit the road.” Jimmy Dean spoke more than sang about Big John, who was as bad as he was tall. Roy Orbison had two hits in the top 40, Candy Man and Cryin’.
Folk music was still popular and the Highwaymen harmonized about Michael rowing his boat ashore. There were songs about a water boy, a great imposter, an astronaut, an errant girlfriend named Runaround Sue. Moving one’s feet was expected, according to the Bristol Stomp and Foot Stompin’ (Part 1).
The station’s signal was fading by the time Bill pulled into his motel’s parking lot. He reviewed the hour of music he had endured. Out of fifteen songs, he had enjoyed three.
“Guess I’m just a hopeless square,” he grumbled as he carried his suitcase to his room.
The window air conditioner lowered the room’s sweltering temperature by only ten degrees so Bill swam laps in the 30-foot long pool. The remembered lyrics to Hit the Road Jack, Candyman, and Michael inspired him to finish forty laps. He was far enough out in the desert that only one of L.A.’s eleven television stations produced a decent picture on the room’s 15-inch TV screen so he opted for a local station. He fell asleep during a movie from the 1940s and awoke the next morning as the station began its day with the national anthem.
By the time Bill reached the first installation on his list it was 8 a.m. and his stomach growled. He followed the directions of the MP stationed at the front gate and found a cafeteria that served eggs greasy, bacon burnt, and coffee strong.
One out of three is not bad. Bill finished his second cup of coffee and drove to the base commander’s office. His clipped manner did little to hide his nervousness.
“DIA, huh?” The colonel studied Bill’s I.D. card. “I heard about you guys.” His voice went up an octave as each sentence ended and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. “What are you looking for?”
“This is just a routine inspection, sir.” Bill employed his slow-paced monotone, which had calmed many such scared individuals during his long career with law enforcement and espionage. “We don’t sweat the small stuff, Colonel.”
“Well, I do. Now that President Kennedy wants us on the moon within nine years everyone is sweating bullets.”
“I’ll talk to you before I leave. You, know, to debrief you on any findings.”
“When will that be?”
“Depends on if I find anything questionable. Then I have to dig deeper. If not, I’ll be done by tomorrow.”
Agent Sampson spent the morning checking the security for the base. Then he interviewed those who commanded the secret projects. Finally, he walked through the sites of those projects, occasionally talking to random workers. At 4 p.m. the next day he drove off of the base after assuring its commander that he “ran a t
ight ship.”
The next military installation interested him for only one reason; it was where Dave Freight labored. After his initial inspection of the fort, Bill repaid Dave for the meal of Mexican food from fifteen years ago.
“First time I ever ate at an officer’s club.” Dave admired the white table cloth, bow-tied waiters, and fancy place settings.
“Rank has its privileges,” Bill said. “I’m high enough up the GS chain to get me in here. So, what’s with the beard?”
“My goatee?” Dave stroked the mostly gray hair. “Have to have it to be hep, man; a cool cat. You dig?”
“The only people that talk like that on the East Coast are beatniks.”
“Ten-four, daddy-O. Beats are the coolest cats around. Too bad I can’t take you to some of the folk clubs in L.A. They’re really swinging.”
“You still have your ear to the ground on what’s going on?”
“You fishing for the unofficial jive? You know, the buzz on what’s really going on down?”
“Yeah. I’ve been fed the official line for three days now. It’s all sounding the same, whether it’s Air Force or Army. I have a feeling the Marine and Navy bases will be the same too.”
“I can dig it. Man, you need to be checking out those cats over at Area 51 in Nevada. What’s going on down here in California is small potatoes compared to what’s happening over there. Most of what we get here was developed over there. We just run the final tests before it goes operational.”
“My boss said the CIA runs that show.”
“All the more reason for a cat like you to be keeping them honest.”
“About what?”
Dave glanced around the room. Because it was two days before payday, the club was mostly deserted as officers stretched the last of their monthly pay at home on meals of pork and beans or tube steak. He lowered his voice. “There’s no way of knowing what all they’re doing. A while back pilots flying near Area 51 that saw the new top secret jets being tested out of there swore they saw gorillas flying them.”
“Those were just test pilots wearing masks. They were messing with the other pilots’ minds.”
Dave nodded. “That’s my point. They’re messing with our heads.” He pointed at his and rotated his finger. “The stories I hear are that they’ve got access to alien technology from the crash at Roswell, New Mexico and are back engineering it.”