Saving Jason (3 page)

I took out my phone and started snapping pictures.

There were too many vehicles to record each one; I would have been there all afternoon. Instead I took samplings and a few long shots for both scale and sheer numbers. Every few minutes I stopped taking photos and emailed them to myself. The moment I realized what this very private piece of property was being used for, I felt an urgency to be on my way back home. The collection of evidence was a necessity, but I did not want ever to have to come back. I had enough to bring to Virgil; he could pass the matter on to the compliance department. My part was done.

I had just turned off the floodlights, casting that end of the barn back into a murky darkness, when I realized what was missing. Guard dogs. I had never seen an auto junkyard without a huge bloodthirsty mastiff or pit bull, or even a short-haired shepherd. By some luck I had arrived on a day when no one was there working, stripping parts or packing them up. But surely they must have had some kind of security. The fencing might have kept out army tanks, but it hadn’t stopped me. The urgency to be on my way increased by a factor of ten.

The thunk of the lights going off sounded much louder than turning them on. I made my way to the small door and pushed it open. The hinges sounded their shrill protest again. The sudden changes from light to dark and back again left me blinded as I stepped through the doorway. I was in a hurry, but I stopped and took a second for my eyes to adjust.

The realization that I was not alone came in strobe-light flashes. The first was a sound—a cough. Not exactly a cough, but definitely an exhale. A human could have made the sound, but probably didn’t. There was also a smell that hit me just a moment before my eyes focused. It was a wild smell, like what you might get if you crossed a cow with a bear.

My eyes cleared. I was facing a herd of bison. American buffalo. Four very big fellows with horns were standing in a semicircle not twenty feet away. They were blocking my access to the road. My line of retreat. One of them made the coughing sound again. It could have been an expression of anger, or merely impatience. He stamped a hoof on the ground. Anger, I decided. In a group, more to the right and slightly farther away, were eight female bison. Though they were smaller and the horns they wore just a tad less lethal looking, the real clue to their gender was that six of them were swollen and gravid, while the other two hung back, protecting two spindly-legged calves, who watched me with both fascination and fear out of slightly protuberant eyes.

I tried to convince myself that I was in no danger. I was no threat, therefore they had no reason to treat me as anything other than an oddity. An amusement. I would have to pass between two of the bulls to make my escape, but if I showed no hostility they would let me go unmolested. I took a step forward.

The cough this time was considerably louder and its intent and meaning quite clear. I froze. The doorway was just a few steps behind me, but I had read somewhere—probably in
Outside
magazine while waiting at the dentist’s office—that bison were among the fastest land
creatures, able to run for some distance at forty miles an hour or more. And, they could reach full speed instantly. I turned and ran. I must have hit full speed instantly, too. I was through the door and back inside in a flash, the door hinges screaming.

I let my breath come back slowly. I had been holding it from the moment I saw the bison. My hands were clammy and I smelled like fear. I peered out the door. There had been no movement. The little herd was still there. I watched them for a few minutes and realized that I could easily see them but they could not see me, and so I relaxed. But if I let the door make the slightest sound, they became immediately alert and the bulls took turns coughing in my direction. We were at a standoff. I was stuck until they lost interest—and I would still have the problem of opening the door without making a sound to tip them off—or someone showed up to assist me. Or arrest me. Or worse.

In the waiting game, I had the advantage. The bison were out in the sun on the hardpack in front of the doors. The nice grass and the shade were elsewhere. I had nothing to do but wait. They had to wait and wonder why they weren’t waiting somewhere more comfortable. Eventually, the difference began to tell.

The bulls went first. The male of the species always has the shorter attention span. This is why football has halftime. The biggest went first—the one who had first snorted at me and stamped his hoof. He walked a few paces off and began to trot down the field to a bare, sandy spot, where he rolled over, legs in the air, and enjoyed a dust bath. The other three bulls looked like they wished they had thought of it first, and a few minutes later they trotted along after.

There were some huffs and snorts from the cows when the bulls left. They weren’t happy about it, but no one went down and tried to shame the boys into coming back. I eased the door open bit by bit, knowing they couldn’t see me. If there came a moment where I could escape, I was going to take it.

The calves went next. The two began to stroll back toward the shade. Their mothers, instead of herding them back to the group,
followed them. That left six hungry, hot, very pregnant females alone on guard duty outside the barn. A few minutes later, as though by unspoken agreement, they all left at once and headed to the trees.

I inched the door open a bit more and put a leg through.

I almost made it.

—

OOOOOOOGA! OOOOOOOOGA!
A loud horn, the kind you hear on a ship leaving port, sounded twice, sending my heart into my throat and my testicles up into my stomach. I leapt back inside and heard a loud buzzing from an alarm. What the hell had I touched to set that off?

The front gate swung open, red lights flashing, revealing a long flatbed truck that began to come up the road toward the barn. But before I had time to fully panic, or to look for a hiding place, the truck rumbled past the doors and continued down into the field beyond. I heard a muted rumble of hoofbeats and poked my head out. The bison were all following the truck, which slowed after it passed the sandy wallow. The passenger door opened and a lanky man in a denim jacket and ball cap swung out and up onto the truck bed. It was loaded with bales of hay, which he began unloading off the back. The bales hit the ground and broke up into square pallets. The bison began to eat.

That was my chance. The men were busy. The truck and the bison at least three football fields away. With a bit of luck I could get to the fence before they even noticed me. I pushed the door open, dashed through, and began to jog down the road. The door swung shut behind me. The hinges shrieked. I began to run.

I was not a sprinter, never had been, but I was sure that I could cover two hundred yards in thirty seconds. Thirty-two, max. A voice called out and I ignored it. There was no way those farmhands would be able to get the truck turned around and cover the distance to catch me up in time. My fear was the bison.

I did the math. There were too many variables, too many possible rounding errors, but numbers had been my life. If I was going to die,
trampled to death by a vestige of the Old Wild West, then I was going out counting.

The truck was a long way down the field from the barn. At least three hundred yards, and more likely four hundred. So I used four hundred because, with the two hundred yards from the barn to the fence, that added up to six hundred yards, or just over one-third of a mile. If the bull started running the moment he saw me—and I knew his eyesight sucked—traveling at a maximum speed of forty-five miles an hour, he would arrive at the electric fence at the same time I did. My heart was threatening to burst out of my chest and I was gasping for air. I still had half the distance to cover.

That was my worst-case scenario—at the full four hundred yards. If the distance was even a bit shorter, I was going to be roadkill any moment. On the other hand, forty-five was a good clip for a healthy bison on the open range. How fast would one of those lazy Long Island bisons move? Over rough, pitted, and rolling terrain? At thirty-five mph, I’d have been able to slow up and jog the last few yards, laughing over my shoulder. The front brain thought this was very funny. The back brain, the place where all the primitive stuff resides, found nothing to laugh about. I ran faster.

The gate was coming up and was, of course, closed. I made a slight turn and ran through the long grass for the fence. That’s when I heard the sound of hoofbeats on the roadway. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help myself. Two of the bulls were already passing the barn, and the truck was finally turned around and was barreling after them. I found that math had abandoned me. I could not do the estimates or calculations. My brain had joined the rest of my nervous system in focusing on one thing only. Keep running.

The electric fence was a dozen strides in front of me. Then ten. Eight. Six. Would the damn animals stop? They must have weighed a ton each. Why would a single strand of wire stop them, regardless of the electric charge? Four. I could feel the pounding of those hooves on the ground behind me. Two. I dove under the wire, sliding through
the tall grass, imagining I could hear the crackle of thousands of volts running over my head. I scrambled to my feet, took the last three strides to the outer fence in two hops and a jump. I jammed my toes between the links and climbed as fast as I could.

One of the bulls managed to stop before hitting the fence, skidding to a halt, hooves grinding a pair of parallel trenches in the dirt. The other bull, less experienced or merely more aggressive, hit the wire at full speed. I was already approaching the top of the fence and still climbing, but from the corner of one eye I saw the animal hit. The wire gave way like a rubber band, but there was an immediate crack of discharged electricity and the two-thousand-pound bison flew backward as though fired from a giant slingshot. Every hair on my body stood on end and the mixed odors of ozone and burnt flesh were overwhelming. But I kept climbing.

The bison was down and on the ground, but it was moving. As I threw my leg over the top of the fence and started down the far side, I saw it roll up onto unsteady legs. A long red welt ran down one side of its body. The other bull was already racing up the field. But the guys in the truck hadn’t quit.

The truck was tearing down the drive. It would take precious minutes to open the two gates and follow me. I could be in the car and long gone before they would be out. I jumped the last three feet to the ground and turned to run for my rental. I thought I was safe.

Halfway to the car, I looked back over my shoulder. The truck had veered and was now leaping and bucking over the field, headed straight for me. I knew they wouldn’t be able to plow through the fence, but that farmhand would be able to climb it and chase after me. I had a good lead, but the truck was eating it up quickly. I had seconds to spare.

Of the few things I did right that day, the most important may have been to leave the car unlocked. I jumped in, started it up, and swung it into a U-turn, bouncing on, off, and back on the pavement, fishtailing slightly in the sand. The truck was coming up inside the fence, but I was on firm, smooth asphalt. In seconds I was pulling away, as they
continued to bounce through the field, keeping just clear of the electric fence. The end of the property line—and the corner of the fence—approached. I kept my right foot to the floor and raced away back through the woods toward the lesser hazards of the L.I.E.

The usual westbound slowdown at exit 39 had caused a backup to 41. Creeping along at an average of eight miles an hour gave me time to readjust my adrenaline levels. Fear and aggression became annoyance and exasperation and, finally, acceptance. I could think. I marveled that a spray of relatively small trades had led to me being chased, and nearly exterminated, by a creature almost extinct in the wild. Too bad I couldn’t also read the future and see the long list of ills that were to come. That in just a few months my son would be lost in the desert, and that I would face death saving him. And, once again, there would be a death on my conscience.

S
keli, the light of my life, the woman of my dreams, and the mother of my unborn child, was sitting across from me in a booth at the Athena Coffee Shop on Amsterdam. She was having a Greek coffee shop version of a salade Niçoise—no potatoes, and red onion and cucumber instead of green beans. Skeli was plucking the curls of onion out and putting them on her bread dish. She was long past the morning-sickness stage of her pregnancy, but food in general had become an issue. Smells and textures had become strange, and things she had once loved had turned toxic. Raw red onion was one of the most virulent of past loves. Mostly she got by on yogurt, lettuce, and a few bites of fish or chicken. And midnight binges of chocolate hazelnut gelato.

“Buffalo?” she said with a teasing grin.

“Bison,” I said. I had just finished telling her of my adventures that day.

“I’ve always pictured them as noble and stoic.”

“They’re also territorial, protective of their offspring, and really big.”

“Why would someone use buffalo instead of guard dogs?”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re not taking this seriously? I could have been killed.”

“When I told you that I didn’t want you to be involved in anything dangerous, I meant no guns or people trying to drown you, and stay away from people who want to beat you up.”

“It’s not like I seek them out, you know.”

“You climbed over the fence, Jason. Weren’t there warning signs? Like ‘Keep Out’ or ‘Danger—Guard Buffalo’? You invaded their space.”

I was beginning to feel surrounded. “Guard bison.”

I waved at the Kid. My son was having dinner in a separate booth across the dining room, accompanied by our good friend Roger. Roger was a retired clown, a practicing alcoholic, and an often rude and uncouth companion whom I had met and befriended years before my troubles with the law began. When I got out of prison, he picked up the friendship as though there had never been a break. I owed him a lot, not least for introducing me to a woman named Wanda Tyler, whom I had nicknamed Skeli. She had been his sometime assistant, when he performed at Park Avenue birthday parties or corporate sales meetings. Jacques Emo and Wanda the Wandaful.

The Kid did not wave back. He blinked. That may have been an important message, but I couldn’t be sure. My seven-year-old son, named for both his father and grandfather, had unusual methods of communication. And he refused to be called Jason. The sobriquet was his idea. He occupied a block on the autism continuum, shifting his exact location often enough to keep me and his teachers on constant alert. His mother—Angie, my ex—had never been able to connect with him and it broke her fragile heart. She died protecting him.

It was the autism that defined where we dined. The Athena had demonstrated an acceptance of some of my son’s more bizarre eccentricities, such as screaming “Poo” at the top of his lungs when he saw me put mustard on my corned beef, or flying into a screaming tantrum whenever James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” played on the radio, a reaction that, in my opinion, was a tad operatic but thoroughly justified. I had frequently contributed to the waiters’ retirement funds with hundred-dollar tips to ensure our subsequent welcomes. So far, it was all working.

Roger was performing an act of supreme generosity by eating dinner with the Kid in order to give Skeli and me a few minutes to enjoy each other’s company. Dinner with the Kid could be harrowing to the uninitiated—it could be harrowing to the experienced, too.

“I outran a maddened wild creature to be here with you,” I said, giving in to the spirit of her taunts.

“I thought you said you had a quarter-mile head start,” she said.

“Not quite.”

She laughed. I liked her laugh. It was free and uncomplicated, and I wanted to make her laugh all the time just like that.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though not sorry at all. “I’m sure it was scary, but I’m having too good a time picturing you doing the hundred-yard dash and scaling a ten-foot fence in five-hundred-dollar shoes while being chased by a cow.”

“Bull,” I said. “And it wasn’t a bovine, it was—”

“A bison. I know. Isn’t a bison a bovine?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“What’s the difference?”

“Cows commit murder a lot less frequently than buffalo.”

“Ha! Even the world’s greatest expert can slip and call a bison a buffalo.”

She was having fun, and I was having fun watching her. She could tease me forever as long as she kept up that laugh.

She switched gears on me. “You haven’t asked me about my day.”

“True. But I thought being chased by a bison trumped the breathless excitement of a physical therapy clinic.”

Skeli had been working on her doctorate when we first met. It was the beginning of a second career—or third if you counted the time she spent as Roger’s assistant. With backing from me and other moneyed friends, she had opened an office in SoHo, which now took up a lot more of her time than I had expected. That wasn’t exactly a problem—I was happy for her success—but I did miss lazy Saturdays and long, relaxed dinners together.

“No, there were no mad bison running around the treatment rooms. We did get another new celeb client today, though.” She dropped a name even I recognized. New Yorkers try hard to be unimpressed
with fame, but a few signed celebrity photos in the waiting room were good marketing. People would flock to Skeli’s office on the slight chance of running into a Broadway legend with sciatica, or an opera diva with a twisted ankle.

“How did she find you?”

“Another referral from Paddy.”

Patrick Gallagher was both a Wall Street wizard and a theater producer. He was also one of the friends I had convinced to back Skeli’s business.

“Very nice. So business is booming.”

“Do I hear a touch of mixed feelings there?”

“Not really. I’m very happy for you.”

“And you know it won’t always be this way, right? The start-up is the hardest part. Six months from now, the place will almost run itself. I’ll have normal hours and we’ll have lots more time together.”

I laughed in spite of her earnest wish for me to believe. “No, I don’t know that. You love being fully engaged. You love helping people. You feel important, and that’s a good thing. I don’t mind. But in six months, you are going to have a baby to add to the mix and life will get exponentially more complicated. And that’s a good thing, too.”

We smiled at each other in contemplation of our lives being turned upside down by the arrival of another family member.

“Maybe we should just get a dog,” I said.

“Too late, bud. You should have thought of that months ago. What kind of cheese is that?”

I was eating a grilled chicken Caesar salad. When Skeli had started gagging at the smell of coffee or the sight of a rare and bloody steak, I had stopped eating anything that she wouldn’t eat—when she was present. If I needed a pastrami fix, or a good burger, I found it on my own time.

“It’s Parmesan. Isn’t that what you put on a Caesar?”

“That’s not Parmesan. It’s Asiago. It smells.” She gave a half grimace, half smile. “Sorry.”

“No problem,” I said. “I’ll have them wrap it up. Maybe they’ve got some saltines I could munch on.”

She laughed again and my heart soared.

“No. Eat. Eat your dinner. Please. If you send it away, I’ll only feel like a crazy pregnant lady and start crying—or screaming. Oh, damn, Jason. I’ve been sitting on bad news all afternoon and I’ve got to tell you or I’m going to explode.”

Roger and the Kid, with the impeccable timing that good friends and children always seem to have, arrived at our table. “We’re heading out,” Roger said. “The Kid wants ice cream and I’ve been sitting long enough. We’ll meet you back at your place, okay?”

“’Nilla,” my son said.

“That’s great, Roger. Thanks. You’re sure?”

“I got it,” he said.

I held out my hand for the Kid to sniff. He gave a rare smile and held his hand out to me. He did not like to be hugged, kissed, or even touched, usually, but we had discovered this mutually acceptable form of communicating affection. “You take care of Roger, okay? Don’t let him eat too much ice cream.”

His brow furrowed as he processed this. Roger never ate ice cream. Therefore this gave onto two possibilities: (A) I was losing my mind; or (B) I was making a joke. He weighed these for a moment and responded. “Funny.”

They said their good-byes, and Skeli and I watched them trundle off together.

“That’s so great,” she said. “He’s learning to trust Roger.”

The Kid did not give his trust easily, but his circle was expanding. It
was
great.

“Ahhh,” I sighed in a descending coda. “So tell me your news. You heard from the co-op, right?”

She nodded. “They called. The secretary. What’s-her-name? She didn’t have to. She said there’ll be a letter.”

The realtor had warned us. We had been denied by the co-op board.
For the past two months we had been using every spare hour—and there had been few and those hard-won—to hunt for an apartment that would hold our combined family. The Kid and I shared a large one-bedroom with alcove in the Ansonia, a co-op run like a residential hotel. Skeli lived in a rambling wreck on 110th Street in a building that was owned by her ex-husband. She fully expected an eviction notice to arrive within weeks after the birth. Neither apartment would work. The Kid had to have his own room. We needed a three-bedroom.

“Did she say why?”

Skeli didn’t exactly answer the question. “She was nice. She voted for us, but it didn’t matter.”

It wasn’t financial. I was being paid close to a million a year and I had an ironclad contract. We had references from Wall Street, Broadway, and even a letter from an FBI agent. The fact that Skeli and I were not married—we had both been married before and shared a distrust of the institution—would not have mattered in twenty-first-century Manhattan, nor would it have if we were multiracial, gay, or members of a Satan-worshipping cult. They didn’t know about the Kid’s condition, because I had not considered it to be any of their goddamn business, and it would have been illegal for them to consider it anyway. But the one line on the application that asked
Have you ever been convicted of a felony?
had been inescapable. And damning. In some circles, I was famous. Or infamous.

“We could look at condos,” she said. “Or check out Queens.”

“I grew up in Queens,” I said. “I’ve got nothing against it, but I’m not going back.”

“Or farther out on Long Island.”

The devil’s choice. The Long Island Rail Road or the Long Island Expressway. I would rather be drowned in Asiago cheese.

“Or New Jersey,” I said.

She laughed. “Now you’re being mean. Cut it out. We’ll figure this out.”

Real estate in Manhattan. The shared obsession that binds us all. I
wondered if people in Hong Kong, or Singapore, or Paris spent as much time as New Yorkers did sharing horror stories of finding, maintaining, losing, or surviving in the quest for the perfect two-bedroom. They probably did, I thought. Paris, for sure.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s catch them up. I’ll buy you a frozen yogurt.” I signaled for the check.

“You sure know how to treat a girl,” she said.