The Light at the End of the Tunnel (5 page)

“Yes?”

“I’d like to hear of your experience. Could
you give me a few minutes?”

“Yes, I certainly will.”

A half hour later, Nurse Waters ended with,
“What got me the most, the worst, was the baby’s expression. I’ve
seen and held a few babies…but I’ve never seen….”

“Yes, what?”

“Just before he tried to grab my boob, and
both times just before he urinated in my face, all three
times…!”

“Yes…?”

“He
smirked
!”

Chapter 9
Alone

Cassandra, also just two months old, lay in a
bassinet at a foster care facility. The search, failed, had been
made for relatives to take her. There were only very, very,
distant, relatives, most of them young, and none were interested in
the responsibility of an infant. Sometimes a volunteer would come
to the center strictly to hold young children, to love them, and
talk to them. And the volunteers did a good job, but it seemed the
same one never held Cassandra more than once. Every time she felt
warm arms around her and opened her eyes she did not recognize the
person. But then she was considered too young to know the
difference, and no real attempt was made to see that the same
volunteer ever held and loved the same child. And what difference
could it make? The volunteers were volunteers, not possible
adoptive parents, and management didn’t want even very young
children to get…attached, even for a moment.

Already it was noted that the little baby
girl did not cry. It was noted, but no deductions were made.
Evidently she was just a good baby, who didn’t cry and cause
problems.

Cassandra soon went to her first foster home.
Even though she didn’t cry she was a fussy child, and underweight,
and sometimes would turn blue for no known reason, so began a
series of return trips. First back to the hospital, then back to
family services—where volunteers again held her—then again to a new
foster home—where her physical ailments continued to plague
her—then back to the hospital to continue the cycle.

The little girl needed someone to hold her
close to a warm and loving body, continuously and regularly, for at
least a little while, so she could begin to absorb at least a
beginning of warmth from a familiar body, because without that
warmth, that love—even though temporary—she would not grow strong
emotionally. But that continuous warm and loving body never
happened, so little Cassandra developed a shield, a protective
coating that would prevent any one person from ever coming in and
loving her. She would never feel love, so would become quite
incapable of giving it

Chapter 10
Lay-down Comedy

After the execution of Les Paul, and loss of
the book, which maybe had never even existed, the chaplain
continued his work with the inmates on death row but no longer was
his heart in it. Even so he stayed for another eleven months, read
to the men, made sure their televisions worked, that they ate
right, and spoke the verses at four more executions. Normal
executions, murderers, yes, but none with the viciousness and
remorselessness of Les Paul.

Then one day the chaplain simply reached a
point, so took leave of his duties at the prison. Sometimes he
wondered if he even belonged in the clergy. If that ancient book of
Christianity didn’t even exist—
Christ! Even the locker doesn’t
exist!—
and was the book even Christian?—then maybe God had
not
spoken to him, and for the first time in his life he
felt unsure of even the existence of God, at least in the sense
that he had grown up with, that Jesus had come to earth
specifically to die for the sins of all humanity.

He still believed in God—that was he now
believed in
a
god—a superior intelligent being, just was no
longer sure of the personal god there anytime, anywhere, for
anyone. He had never been sure of that anyway, and had made sure
that he never
asked
God for something, specifically,
therefore had never had his faith directly
tested
.

Like the supermarket he was in: he never
questioned what was in the food he ate, he just ate it to fill his
stomach and quench the hunger pangs. He stared at the canned food
in his cart, at the bags of chips, the bottled water…he had read
somewhere that some of the bottled water was simply from the tap,
and being sold as spring water, or some other kind of water
especially good for one. How many kinds of water were there anyway?
He didn’t know, and didn’t care, and before recently had not even
wondered.

He guided his cart into one of the checkout
lines. A self-checkout line was free but he had never tried to
learn how to use it, and what the heck? He had plenty of time. He
didn’t have to return to the prison for a month, and still wasn’t
sure if he would return at all, leastways maybe
not
as a
chaplain. Maybe simple social work, or he could teach reading, or
whatever the inmates needed help with.

Like what most everyone did while waiting in
checkout he started scanning the books and magazines. He saw a
novel by Dean Koontz that he hadn’t read. He loved Koontz’s books
and soon had that one included with his groceries. He enjoyed
Stephen King too, and would have bought a second book, except there
weren’t any King novels on the stand. With a whole month off he
should have another novel.

His line moved closer to the checkout girl,
to the shelves that held the magazines and newspapers with
celebrity gossip, UFOs, two-headed sheep, and other stuff nobody
believed but loved to read about. A very large headline caught his
eye. He never read those supermarket rags, rarely even glanced at
the headlines, especially such as
The National Infamies,
but
this headline grabbed his attention and held it! From ten feet away
he read,
‘Lay-down comedy from baby thought to be only two
months old.’

Dear Lord. It can’t be.

It could not be. Even so, he left his cart of
groceries, walked to the newsstand rack, plucked
The National
Infamies,
returned to his cart, and first looked at the young
nurse in the photograph…brunette hair, very pretty, young, maybe
thirties, then began reading,
‘…Nurse Waters claims the baby not
only tried to grab her boob but peed in her face twice and smirked
each time…but only did things when only she was present, so nobody
else saw what happened, so everybody thought she was making it up,
but she wasn’t! It was all TRUE…!’

Smirked
. His memory flew back eleven
months to the execution of Les Paul and memory of that smirk the
man had given the warden. Why to the warden and not to himself?
Often he had wondered that. Eleven months ago. Two months old. The
amount of time was right. Or should his birth have been immediate
upon death? The theory of reincarnation was so uncertain—
of
course it’s uncertain!
Nobody knew what happened upon death!
Nobody!
Nobody
alive
anyway. The chaplain felt his
stomach leaving him. He read on, saw the baby had been abandoned at
the emergency entrance of St. Winston Hospital…clear out in
Nebraska? Of course! Les Paul had driven his birth family crazy and
they had gotten rid of him! Who were his parents? Would it be
possible to track them down? Could he get a DNA sample of the baby,
and prove it was Les Paul?

Of course he would need a sample of the
original Les Paul at the prison, but of course they wouldn’t
believe him either so would deny his request. But the warden was
retiring next month. Maybe the new warden would be more
amenable.

The chaplain’s mind began making plans. He
would track down the baby first.
No!
He would go to the
hospital first. He would interview everybody in that hospital if he
had to, and the whole town if need be. And he had to find that
nurse. She might have seen a car! A license plate! Certainly
somebody saw a car…something…he read on,
‘…baby’s cries were
heard just before midnight, December 19…’ Somebody saw
something!
He knew it! He would go to that town…where? He read
again, ‘…Wayne Ridge, Nebraska…’

Chapter 11
Foster Family #4

So that’s how Les Paul’s new life went. The
hospital kept him for a while, and even though he acted like the
perfect little charmer, they couldn’t keep him forever. The state
took over. Foster care was next, and one family after another gave
up after a few months. A year passed. Just fourteen months old and
already on his fourth foster family. Then he learned to walk. One
day he grabbed the leg of a stable chair and pulled himself up.

Now he would begin to control his life a
little more closely. Holding on he looked over where he was. A big
room with big furniture, a big television, a big stereo…of course
he didn’t know the names of these things yet but he knew what they
did.

His newest sister entered the room. She was
six, and blond, and kind of air-headed, and squealed, “Look at our
new baby! He’s standing up alone!”

Les Paul sent his most charming smile. He had
already learned well, that a smile could open doors to amazing
things, and hearts to the most important amazing thing of all:
trust.

This little blond girl trusted him
completely, and loved him as if he were her own blood brother. Not
so with the little blond girl’s
real
brother.
She
loved her brother, but Les Paul
didn’t
.

Enter the blood brother who was eight years
old, “Hi, Kelsey.”

“Hi, Scott.”

The charming smile disappeared from Les
Paul’s face. Kelsey was not looking. Neither were, and Scott,
innocently, walked past Les Paul, closely, glanced toward him but
did
not
touch him. But close enough. Les Paul let go of his
hold and hit the floor and started crying, screaming, screeching
his loudest. Kelsey rushed to him and picked him up and cuddled him
to her bosom, where he loved to be.

“Scott! You should be more careful around the
baby!”

Scott’s eyes were huge, “I didn’t touch
him…,” and became fearful when the father walked in.

“What’s happening in here?” the father
demanded.

Kelsey scowled and pointed, “Scott knocked
the baby down—he had just stood up for the first time and Scott
knocked him down!”

“I didn’t mean to!” Scott cried.

But the father took the side of the smallest
and his daughter and grabbed Scott by the arm and took him from the
room, “You will learn to be careful around the baby, Scott!”

For just eight years old, Scott’s mind was
racing, trying to remember exactly what happened. What was
strongest in his mind was the look on the baby’s face as he passed
him, a funny look, but Scott hadn’t yet heard the word
‘smirk’
and less would understand the meaning of it.

The father escorted Scott to his room, opened
the door, and pushed him in, “You can take a little time-out,
son.”

Les Paul, meanwhile, was cooing and enjoying
being cuddled by a six-year-old girl, something he would come to
enjoy more, and more, and more, as his new life went on.

Chapter 12
Partners

More months passed. The chaplain, no longer
dressed as a chaplain, had traveled to Wayne Ridge, Nebraska,
visited with the hospital staff and learned that, after making
national news—and the story being picked up by all major media, but
not researched further, because—after all—it
was
just an
inexperienced nurse’s word against that of a two-month-old
baby—Nurse Waters had been let go. Not fired, of course, but with
economy being what it was staff resources had to shrink, and Nurse
Waters was the first to go.

‘
Waters’
couldn’t be too common a name
so he first searched the phone book, found her name and address but
no longer at that address and no forwarding address, but, again,
‘Waters’
was not a common name. He went to the library,
signed on to FaceBook…nothing, then MyLife…again, nothing. He
searched every social network he could think of. Either Nurse
Waters was not into social media or she had left the country, or
maybe just stepped off the edge of the earth. Having had contact
with Les Paul, a worst-of-the-worst psychopath-criminal, even as a
baby, he wouldn’t blame her for disappearing.

So he searched on, and began a search of the
smaller towns surrounding the small city of Wayne Ridge. Days and
then weeks then months, went by. Long ago his month of leave from
the prison had ended, so he had called in, requested more time off,
was denied, so quit on the spot. Luckily, through his whole life he
had been very conservative with money, which rested in savings at a
bank in Bradleyville, the same town that gave the prison—where he
had worked for the last ten years as chaplain—its address.

A credit card seemed easiest to use in his
travels, so he set it up with his bank and credit card company to
make his payments automatically. Should his savings ever dwindle to
the red zone the bank would give him a call on his mobile. But of
course his savings would not last forever. But of course there were
the yearly rent payments from the farm his father had left him that
would continue feeding his savings. He would probably do okay. Then
his car, a weather-beaten 1997 red Ford Taurus…well, it would
continue running for a while.

So, if his car held out he would have money
to finance his search for quite some time. Also, since he had
stopped dressing as a chaplain, he was beginning to think of
himself less and less
as
a chaplain. Yet, religion had been
his calling from early on. For his entire adult life he had been a
man of God, so to speak, but he often wondered if a
‘man of
God’
would allow himself this obsession with finding a
criminal, who yet, probably, was not even a criminal…but the story
from
The National Infamies
stayed with him.