Trench Coat Love

Love seemed so beautiful then. I felt as though I was the only person who actually understood it. When I thought of Mom and Dad and how tense they looked all the time, I thought that they couldn't possibly understand this wonderful feeling I was having. Sometimes I thought that no one else in the whole world could understand how wonderful and precious John was to me. I knew he wasn't perfect or anything, but I felt perfect when he held me or kissed me or did other things that my parents would be furious about if they only knew.

I smiled thinking about it and gazed at the ring on my finger. I knew it didn't cost that much, but I would rather have this fake ruby red ring from John than the biggest diamond from anyone else -- especially that creep Walsh. Lanny Walsh – I shuddered thinking about him. He had asked me out last week to drive around with some friends of his. He said they might go to the target range and shoot at tin cans.

Even now I could see the tall weirdo dressed all in black and wearing that long trenchcoat. What a strange guy. His friends were even worse. They all wore trenchcoats like they were some kind of uniform or something. I wouldn't go out with Lanny for a million bucks. Not him or any of his other creepy friends.

I sighed. Part of it had been my fault. I shouldn't have sat with him at lunch. He had been sitting all by himself and I felt sorry for him. He wasn't a bad looking guy and so I sat down. He looked up from his food and smiled at me. He had a beautiful smile, straight white teeth, and such deep blue eyes. Before I could even think about it, I was smiling too and we started talking. He was fun to talk to. I couldn't believe that he liked Eric Clapton too. I almost forgot how ridiculous he looked in that stupid trench coat.

But everything changed when his friends sat down. I could see his chin quiver and then get firm. It was the kind of firmness my Dad's chin gets before he heads out the door to his law office. I always think of it as the preparing-for-tough-work look. Lanny had it now. His eyes were different too. He wouldn't look me straight in the face anymore, but would sort of glance at me quickly and then look away.

Lanny and all his friends wore trench coats. They looked like aliens from some sci-fi movie when they strolled down the hallways at school or sat at a bench in the cafeteria with their coats dangling on the dirt streaked linoleum. As I sat with my back tense and rigid, I felt this shiver creep up my spine. I couldn't pinpoint why I felt this way. Now I would call it a premonition, but at the time I simply felt jittery and my stomach hurt.

I believed that people shouldn't judge each other by how they dress or how rich they are. Lanny came from a rich enough family. His dad was a pilot or something. And I didn't mind those trench coats that much. It was something else that gave me the heebie-jeebies.

"Hitler's birthday is coming up. We need to do something special for that." The tall boy beside Lanny spoke. I thought his name was Bill, but I wasn't sure. I thought it odd that he would care about Hitler's birthday.

"We are – remember?" said a small boy across from Lanny. The boy had black hair and dark eyes and he glanced at me with this penetrating stare before looking away.

"Watch what you say, Kyle," Bill told him. "You don't know who may be listening." He jerked his head in my direction.

Something was going on that they didn't want me to know about. Instantly, I became curious. "Hitler was a murderer and a coward," I said loudly and jerked my hand nervously. It hit my spoon so hard that it clattered to the floor.

As I bent to pick up the utensil, Bill said, "He was a hero. He tried to make the world a better place."

"By killing all the Jews?"

"No. By cleaning the world of human trash so good people could survive."

"I call that murder!"

"I call it justice." Bill leaned over and glanced at me with a smile painted on his pimply face.

"You're sick!"

"And you're dead!" Bill pointed his finger at me like a gun and said bang. Then he blew on the end of his finger as though he were blowing away smoke.

I grabbed Lanny by the arm of his coat. "Do you think like this?"

Lanny smiled weakly at me. "Lots of things happened in the past that seem bad because historians make them look that way. Hitler did a lot of good for the German people."

I felt my hands shake.

"We've talked enough about this," Bill said as he touched Lanny's shoulder. "Remember what the boss said."

"Loose lips sink ships – pretty cliché if you ask me. He almost acts like Hitler." Lanny mumbled these words so I could barely hear him.

"Hi there students." The voice came from behind us and we turned at the sound. The principal, Paul Hammond stood smiling with his sparkling white teeth, thinning blond hair and blue eyes. "Lovely day today isn't it." He put his hand on my shoulder and I squirmed at the touch. I had this problem with my personal space. I only liked certain close friends to touch me.

"Isn't lunch about over. I think you kids might want to get ready for your next class." He pulled his hand away and I relaxed.

"Sure," they all mumbled.

I pushed away from the table and stood up. As I strode away, I felt a hand on my elbow and that was when Lanny asked me out. As I turned, he stopped for several seconds as though he didn't know what to say. Then he blurted it out. "Um. Judy would you like to go to a movie Saturday and then maybe we could go for a drive in the mountains and I can show you our special private target practice that we use to shoot at tin cans." The words came in a rush as though he had been planning what to say and wasn't comfortable talking to me.

I smiled and pulled away from the hand on my elbow. "That is so sweet of you to ask me Lanny." I smiled again hating to lie. "I'm busy with my mom that day -- sorry."

He walked away with shoulders pushed in and head staring at the floor. I could hear his shoes scuff against the linoleum as he disappeared around the corner.

I was in the library hunched over a book of poems by TS Eliot when the gun shots exploded. I thought it was a car backfiring or something. I had no clue that anyone would fire guns at school. But, the sharp bangs continued and then I heard screams, doors slamming, and feet pounding in the hallway outside. Soon the wasteland I contemplated became an immediate reality.

Marsha stumbled into the library and fell against one of the scarred reading tables. Tears streaked down her face and her mouth formed an expression of anguish and terror that I had never seen before. She held up red stained hands. "They're killing us! Everyone is dead! Run! Hide! They're coming this way."

Slowly I closed the book I had been reading and glanced back at Marsha. My arms transformed into these huge blobs of concrete so heavy that I couldn't move. Something terrible was happening in the school. Marsha was hurt, certainly scared, but maybe this wasn't really the way it seemed. But the blood certainly looked real. I felt like my mind was moving a million miles an hour as thought after thought came rushing across the little television screen in my forehead. I should get up and help Marsha or find a place to hide, but I was glued to my seat and simply stared.

Marsha climbed onto a table that was pressed against one of the walls. She moved slowly as though she were underwater and had to push through the heaviness and resistance of some liquid blanket to make even the smallest movements. She rammed her hand against a ceiling rectangle with its swirling designs. I don't know why I remembered the swirls, but they reminded me of Van Gogh and his skies with their chaotic moons of thick paint. Starry Starry Night.

Marsha wanted to climb into the ceiling and since she wasn't tall enough, I helped her. I found a wooden chair that stood steady on top of the table. Back in my seat, I watched as Marsha disappeared above the ceiling tiles and I wondered if the whole ceiling would come tumbling down.

Trench Coat Bill appeared in the doorway, a shotgun dangling from one hand. "Where's that jerk Marsha? I saw her run into here. She's on our list." He looked around the library and noticed a couple of students hiding under their desks. He pointed the shotgun at them. "Outa there or I'll blow your heads off."

They crawled out and Bill started laughing. "I'm fucking God aren't I? I decide whether you live or die." He laid the shotgun on a desk, pulled out a semi-automatic pistol, and pressed it against a student's head. "You're Samuel aren't you? Samuel! Samuel!" Bill was shouting now. "Why should you live?" I thought of the Samuel in the Bible who kept hearing God calling him, but thought it was the prophet Eli. Bill was certainly no God.

"I'vvve always beennn niccce to your kind." The boy smiled weakly. "Please let me live." His lips twitched and he folded his hands together like he was praying.

"My KIND!" Bill was almost screaming now. "You bastard! You'll never know anything. Such an idiot, too stupid to live." A loud bang filled the air and Samuel slumped to the floor, blood pouring from his head. I watched it gather dark on the light beige carpet soaking into the fabric in an ever widening circle.

This was no game, no play or movie, but it had this feeling as though it wasn't real. A fellow student who I had been sitting with just a few minutes ago was now dead. Maybe he had been thinking about the weekend like I had. Did he have a girlfriend who would be heartbroken now? What about his family? They would be devastated.

I imagined that my eyes were two big video cameras recording a film. I knew this was real, but it wasn't real also. This couldn't be real for such things never happened -- not in Richfield. We were good people who cared about each other. We had nice homes in safe quiet neighborhoods. We went to church and prayed and then went to sleep at night knowing that God would protect us. This was a school. I should be safe here, but I wasn't. I wondered if I would ever be safe again.

Bill must have felt the cameras for he glanced up at me with a twisted smile on his face. My mind stopped its whirling and the cameras shut down as he picked up his shotgun and sauntered over to me. "Well, well. If it isn't the Jew lover." He stopped about a foot from where I sat and reached out to touch my face. "Such a pretty girl, but not for the likes of me huh?" He grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. "Look at me, creep!" I stared at him trying to keep the fear and loathing out of my eyes.

Then he shot me.

At first, all I knew was this roaring in my ears and then as my eyes cleared I saw my arm – what was left of it anyway. The skin and muscles had been torn away leaving the bare bones with tendons hanging like limp clotheslines. Blood gushed out so I wrapped my scarf around what I could. I looked up into Bill's eyes. They had a fire inside of them and I knew he was going to shoot me again. He cocked the shotgun.

Voices poured into the room and I turned toward the sound. A tall man with a black hood over his head stood inside the doorway with Lanny beside him. Lanny's dark trench coat was smeared with blood and he carried a weapon that reminded me of a machine gun. My eyes bore into his and he glanced away.

"Aren't you done here yet?" asked the hooded man.

"Nah," Bill answered. "Started looking for Marsha, the creep cheerleader, but she disappeared." His eyes swung around the room searching.

"Well hurry up. We've got to prepare the rest of the bombs." The hooded man stared at the chair on top of the table. "What's this?" His eyes turned to the ceiling. A single smear of blood was visible against the white ceiling tile. "I think we found our little escapee." He motioned to Lanny. "Take care of it, boy."

Lanny opened with a rat-a-tat from his weapon and Marsha fell through the ceiling, flailing with her arms. She crashed against the hooded man and grabbed at him, pulling against his shirt, ripping it open. The man grunted and pushed her away. As she lay on the floor, he kicked her limp form. I stared at his torn sleeve that revealed a tattoo of two lightning bolts. Where had I seen that emblem before? It took a couple of seconds for me to recall a picture I had seen last year from a book on World War II. A man was shown saluting the Nazi flag. Around his sleeve was a black armband with double lightning bolts -- the symbol of the dreaded SS.

The hooded man swung his head around and our eyes locked for a second. He had green-gray eyes. Then he turned to the open doorway. "Clean up this place," he told Lanny. "Kill all of them." Then the man disappeared into the hallway with Bill following along behind.

Lanny gripped his weapon tightly and focused on a red-haired girl who stood beside Samuel's bloody remains. The girl was silent and still as a statue, her face white and her hands pressed against her sides as though she were at attention before the stars-and-stripes.

"Do you believe in God, bitch?" I hadn't realized how harsh and cruel Lanny's voice could sound.

"Yes, I do," she said quietly.

"Is he going to save you?"

"I don't know. I hope so."

Lanny smiled in a grimace that revealed sharp white teeth like a shark does before chomping on a victim. "God is dead or at least powerless. No one can save you."

The machine gun erupted and the girl's head exploded like an overripe cantaloupe.

Then Lanny turned to me. I stared into his eyes and he didn't look away before I noticed a flatness to their luster. I kept seeing those eyes for months afterward wondering what gave them that look. I had never seen such eyes before as though they absorbed light like a black-hole without letting any out. John had told me once that eyes were doorways into the soul. I had loved to stare into his eyes and feel the love pouring from them. Lanny's eyes were so different, as though he felt nothing.

I held my breath at Lanny's approach. He laid his gun on the table and reached into his back pocket to pull out a large red bandanna, the kind boys tie around their heads in the heat of the summer. He tied it near my shoulder above where the bone was bare.

"That'll stop most of the blood flow," he said. "Sorry I can't do more." His eyes hit mine again and I noticed a change. The deadness was gone, replaced by something else – a softness – the same look I remembered on my fathers face when my little brother came home from the hospital after his appendix had been removed.

He picked up his gun and with head down, shuffled toward the door.

"Why have you helped me?" I asked. "You're disobeying your big boss."

Without turning his head and even glancing in my direction he said, "Just call it trench coat love."

I woke up to the sound of someone humming a tune I should have known, but my mind was too foggy to remember much of anything. I opened my eyes and the face of a nurse focused in front of me. She smiled and touched the sheets as if she wanted to make me more comfortable. I tried to sit up, but the pain in my left arm was incredible. I winced and fell back.

"My arm hurts!" I cried out. "Can I have something for the pain?"

"Which arm?" she asked.

"The one that got shot – the left one."

The nurse's face pulled back and re-focused at a distance. I noticed her staring into hands that twisted around each other. "Where does it hurt my dear?" she asked at last.

"My hand is killing me. The nerves must've been damaged."

She reached out and touched my leg. "You don't have a hand or an elbow or even an arm. The doctor amputated it yesterday." She jumped up on my little bed and rubbed my good arm. "I'm so sorry."

I didn't say anything for several minutes and the nurse disappeared and I was in my mind again. No one had ever told me that I thought too much. I was the sweet cheerful girl without a care in the world. But now all I could do was think. I didn't feel anything but the pain in my left arm that wasn't even real. So my mind raced and I was back at the school lying in a pool of blood watching Lanny disappear and listening to all the shouts and screams. I remembered a man in a dark blue suit gathering me in his arms. My blood fell on the deep dark blueness and messed it up. I remember thinking how ugly the red looked against the blue.

When I opened my eyes, the nurse was standing still as a statue, looking at me with water in her eyes. "How long has it been since it happened?" I asked.

"It's been four days," she said hurriedly, continuing. "People all over the world have been praying for you, sending you cards and letters and flowers." She pointed to the end of the room near a window that poured sunshine and I noticed the piles of flowers and boxes of letters, all for me. It made me feel good that people cared so much for someone they didn't even know. I thought about how terrible the killings were and yet here was something else, something wonderful. Love from strangers. I wanted to read some of the letters. Maybe later when I wasn't so tired.

"How many were killed?"

The nurse slid quietly over to my bed again and I felt her shadow fall over the arm that wasn't there anymore. "You don't want to think about those things. Think of how lucky you are to be alive."

"But, I want to know. I need to know. I'll find out someday anyway. Please."

So, she told me of the 66 deaths and the bombs that blew up the new cafeteria. Her cheeks were wet and streaked across her face like cracks on a mountain of granite. And my eyes hurt and I wanted to wipe them but I couldn't with my missing arm and the other one tied down by leather straps. So, the nurse wiped a tissue against my face and leaned over to kiss my cheek.

"What happened to them? You know, the ones that did it, who killed everyone?"

"They blew up with the cafeteria, all three of them."

"Three?" What about the fourth I thought, the one with the hood and the lightning bolts on his arm.

"Don't worry," she said with a cool hand on my forehead. "They're all dead. They can't hurt anyone ever again." She looked out the open window, eyes vacant, seeing nothing. "They were such young boys from good families. How can evil start from nothing? I don't understand it. Richfield is a good town. What could have caused this? It couldn't have just happened. Something must have started it. Otherwise, none of us are safe - ever."

She wasn't talking to me anymore, but to herself. Her mutterings under her breath were barely audible, but stabbed my brain. I lay right in the center of a tragedy and no one had any answers. Sixty-six dead and no reason for it. No crazed madman had started this. It had come from within, from a community as peaceful as any place on earth. It could have been Grand Rapids or Dolores or Pleasantville or any little quiet town.

But I had the answer - twin lightning bolts – a man in a hood, sneaking around somewhere, ready to strike again. Who was the mystery boss?

"I have a little ring somewhere. It's red, ruby red. Have you seen it?" I asked.

The nurse returned from her thoughts and searched for the fake ruby red ring from John. She found it tucked in a drawer filled with my clothes.

A few minutes later, she left me alone clutching the ring in my remaining hand. My life would never be the same, but I had a healthy mind and John of course. I drifted off to sleep thinking of John – true love – that's what we had. I would have walked across a bed of hot glowing coals for John and he would do likewise. That was the kind of love we had. I remembered talking about all the "what ifs" that might happen to us. We hadn't anticipated the killings, but almost everything else including hot acid over our faces. Our love was based on the spirit within and nothing else. I smiled peacefully, forgetting the pain in my imaginary arm, as I drifted to sleep.