He jerks the door open. Clambering up into the comparatively dark interior of the van, before he is sure anyone’s inside, he jams his index finger down on the nozzle of the aerosol can, sweeping it back and forth.
A lot of electronic equipment fills the vehicle. Dimly lit control boards. Two swivel chairs bolted to the floor. Two men on the surveillance team.
The nearest man appears to have gotten out of his chair and turned to the rear door a split second ago, intending to look through the porthole. He is startled as it flies open.
The thick stream of deicing chemical splashes across his face, blinding him. He inhales it, burning his throat, lungs. His breath is choked off before he can cry out.
Blur of motion now. Like a machine. Programmed. In high gear.
Ice axe. Freed from his waistband. Smooth, powerful arc. Swung with great force. To the right temple. A crunch. The guy drops hard. Jerk the weapon loose.
Second man. Second chair. Wearing earphones. Sitting at a bank of equipment behind the cab, his back to the door. Headset muffles his partner’s wheezing. Senses commotion. Feels the van rock when first operative goes down. Swivels around. Surprised, reaching too late for gun in shoulder holster. Makeshift Mace showers his face.
First man on the floor, spasming helplessly. Step on him, over him, keep moving, moving, a blur, straight at the second man.
Axe. Again. Axe. Axe.
Silence. Stillness.
The body on the floor is no longer spasming.
That went nicely. No screams, no shouts, no gunfire.
He knows he is a hero, and the hero always wins. Nevertheless, it’s a relief when triumph is achieved rather than just anticipated.
He is more relaxed than he has been all day.
Returning to the rear door, he leans out and looks around the street. No one is in sight. Everything is quiet.
He pulls the door shut, drops the ice axe on the floor, and regards the dead men with gratitude. He feels so close to them because of what they have shared. “Thank you,” he says tenderly.
He searches both bodies. Although they have identification in their wallets, he assumes it’s phony. He finds nothing of interest except seventy-six dollars in cash, which he takes.
A quick examination of the van turns up no files, notebooks, memo pads, or other papers that might identify the organization that owns the vehicle. They run a tight, clean operation.
A shoulder holster and revolver hang from the back of the chair in which the first operative had been sitting. It’s a Smith & Wesson .38 Chief’s Special.
He strips out of his varsity jacket, puts on the holster over his cranberry sweater, adjusts it until he is comfortable, and dons the jacket once more. He draws the revolver and breaks open the cylinder. Case heads gleam. Fully loaded. He snaps the cylinder shut and holsters the weapon again.
The dead man on the floor has a leather pouch on his belt. It contains two speedloaders.
He takes this and affixes it to his own belt, which gives him more ammunition than he should need merely to deal with the false father. However, his faceless superiors seem to have caught up with him, and he cannot guess what troubles he may encounter before he has regained his name, his family, and the life stolen from him.
The second dead man, slumped in his chair, chin on his chest, never managed to draw the gun he was reaching for. It remains in the holster.
He removes it. Another Chief’s Special. Because of the short barrel, it fits in the relatively roomy pocket of the varsity jacket.
Acutely aware that he is running out of time, he leaves the van and closes the door behind him.
The first snowflakes of the storm spiral out of the northwest sky on a chill breeze. They are few in number, at first, but large and lacy.
As he crosses the street toward the white clapboard house with green shutters, he sticks out his tongue to catch some of the flakes. He probably had done the same thing when, as a boy living on this street, he had delighted in the first snow of the season.
He has no memories of snowmen, snowball battles with other kids, or sledding. Though he must have done those things, they have been expunged along with so much else, and he has been denied the sweet joy of nostalgic recollection.
A flagstone walkway traverses the winter-brown front lawn.
He climbs three steps and crosses the deep porch.
At the door, he is paralyzed by fear. His past lies on the other side of this threshold. The future as well. Since his sudden self-awareness and desperate break for freedom, he has come so far. This may be the most important moment of his campaign for justice. The turning point. Parents can be staunch allies in times of trouble. Their faith. Their trust. Their undying love. He is afraid he will do something, on the brink of success, to alienate them and destroy his chances for regaining his life. So much is at stake if he dares to ring the bell.
Daunted, he turns to look at the street and is enchanted by the scene, for snow is falling much faster than when he approached the house. The flakes are still huge and fluffy, millions of them, whirling in the mild northwest wind. They are so intensely white that they seem luminous, each lacy crystalline form filled with a soft inner light, and the day is no longer dreary. The world is so silent and serene—two qualities rare in his experience—that it no longer seems quite real, either, as if he has been transported by some magic spell into one of those glass globes that contain a diorama of a quaint winter scene and that will fill with an eternal flaky torrent as long as it is periodically shaken.
That fantasy is appealing. A part of him yearns for the stasis of a world under glass, a benign prison, timeless and unchanging, at peace, clean, without fear and struggle, without loss, where the heart is never troubled.
Beautiful, beautiful, the falling snow, whitening the sky before the land below, an effervescence in the air. It’s so lovely, touches him so profoundly, that tears brim in his eyes.
He is keenly sensitive. Sometimes the most mundane experiences are so poignant. Sensitivity can be a curse in an abrasive world.
Summoning all his courage, he turns again to the house. He rings the bell, waits only a few seconds, and rings it again.
His mother opens the door.
He has no memory of her, but he knows intuitively that this is the woman who gave him life. Her face is slightly plump, relatively unlined for her age, and the very essence of kindness. His features are an echo of hers. She has the same shade of blue eyes that he sees when he looks into a mirror, though her eyes seem, to him, to be windows on a soul far purer than his own.
“Marty!” she says with surprise and a quick warm smile, opening her arms to him.
Touched by her instant acceptance, he crosses the threshold, into her embrace, and holds fast to her as if to let go would be to drown.
“Honey, what is it? What’s wrong?” she asks.
Only then does he realize that he is sobbing. He is so moved by her love, so
He presses his face into her white hair, which smells faintly of shampoo. She seems so warm, warmer than other people, and he wonders if that is how a mother always feels.
She calls to his father: “Jim! Jim, come here quick!”
He tries to speak, tries to tell her that he loves her, but his voice breaks before he can form a single word.
Then his father appears in the hallway, hurrying toward them.
Distorting tears can’t prevent his recognition of his dad. They resemble each other to a greater extent than do he and his mother.
“Marty, son, what’s happened?”
He trades one embrace for the other, inexpressibly thankful for his father’s open arms, lonely no more, living
