23 Mar 2007
Handcuffed to Reality
[Editor’s note: This is the only completed story I have found that was written by my father, Earle Neil Kinder. I found this story typed on yellowed typewriter paper with many handwritten corrections, and decided to publish it on this blog. When I transcribed it I made the corrections he suggested but, other than a few minor changes, left the story as he had written it. It is interesting to see how different his approach and style was from mine. Earle had a passion for writing but was never able to get published; he had the desire but not the opportunity. I am in awe of how many great things God has done for me.]
A man with disheveled hair and a rumpled suit stood on her front porch. His eyes were glazed as if he had been sparring with a prize fighter, but he lacked the build of a fighter. He was tall and lanky, his face youthful. A briefcase was handcuffed to his wrist.
He rang the doorbell again. Mary waited a moment before opening the door. Conscience warned her, but she didn’t listen. She sensed an air of innocence about him. He asked if he could use the phone.
She could see he had been in a fight. A faint trickle of blood oozed from the cut over his left eye. His mouth was cut and bleeding. Grass stains marked the knees of his gray suit. He had loosed his tie. The neck of his blue shirt flared open.
Taking his arm, she helped him to the sofa in the living room. He was weak in the knees. Apparently, the fight had just ended. By the bruises and cuts on his face, she could tell he had faired poorly in the fight.
The phone rested on the hardwood end-table by the couch. The end-table and the early American couch and matching lounge chairs had been a graduation present from her father, who owned a small furniture store. The rest, an assortment of mismatched furnishings, had been acquired during her days at college. On the walls were several paintings that she had purchased from art exhibits at school.
As he dialed the number, she went to the bathroom for a damp cloth, bandages, and iodine. Returning as he was finishing the conversation, she paused at the doorway behind him and listened:
“No, the three men did not get the papers. I have them with me now…I will still be able to meet the deadline…I am all right…I am safe here…No one but you know where I am…Yes, I will call you when I have completed the delivery.”
He could be with the F.B.I, she thought to herself. Maybe the C.I.A. Her thoughts seldom wandered this far into fantasy. At the manufacturing plant where she worked as a secretary, she daydreamed of marrying one of the vice-presidents or even the company president. “That way I could escape the day-to-day world that trapped my mother,” she thought.
She timed her return with his putting the phone receiver back in place. She joined him on the overstuffed sofa and began at once to sponge the blood from his face with the rough wash cloth. He winced as she applied the iodine to the cuts. While she bandaged him, he looked at her face. Her features were cute, but not pretty, he thought. She had a wholesome air. Her brown hair was cut to her shoulders and flipped up. When the bandages were in place, she invited him into the kitchen for coffee.
Over coffee, he introduced himself as Rex McCormack. He lived in a three-room apartment in D.C., which was about an hour’s drive from the small colonial house she rented in Maryland. She shared it with Alice Maves, her girlfriend. Alice was spending the weekend with friends in Miami. Alice had invited Mary to go with her, but she had declined. All week her mood had been too somber for her to think of vacationing in Miami. She didn’t want to be a wet blanket on her friend’s good time.
“Miss Simmons…”
“Call me Mary,” she said.
“I hope you are not in the habit of taking in bedraggled strangers?”
“No. You’re the first.”
“I feel some explanation is in order,” he said. Mary just smiled at him over the rim of her cup.
“On my way to a meeting with a gentleman who lives near here, I was attacked by three rough-looking young men. They wore ski masks over their faces. One of them had on an army fatigue jacket. The other two wore blue wind breakers. They must have thought I had something valuable in the briefcase.”
Mary noticed that Rex still had the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. It was well-worn with use. The black leather was beginning to peel from the corners. The steel chain attached to the briefcase glistened in the sunlight that streamed in the kitchen window. The briefcase reseted on the red-and-white checkered table cloth inches from his gentle hand.
“A patrol car turned the corner and the muggers fled, but not before knocking me into the bushes. That’s how I got the cut.” He touched the bandage Mary had put over his left eye. She imagined how black his eye would be in the morning.
“The patrol car passed by without seeing me. A hedge blocked the view of where I was from the road. I rolled on over the grass by the hedge to try to recover from the beating. Stumbling to my feet…”
Rex continued his narrative, but Mary wasn’t listening. She was thinking of the everyday world of her mother. A world that Mary knew she would one day be trapped in, unless she could somehow escape. But how does a woman find adventure? Could this man be the solution to a life of mending clothes, changing diapers and drying runny noses? Mary could only wonder.
Mary remembered the time she had been in the high school play. She had had a minor role as a maid. Her mother spent hours making her costume. Mary tried to tell her mother the part she had wasn’t that important, but there was no way she could keep her mother from sewing.
The night of the play, Mary walked on stage and staggered through her ill-prepared lines. Mary remembered the tears of pride in her mother’s eyes. How could someone get that excited over such a little event? Mary wondered.
She didn’t wonder too long. Rex interrupted her thoughts with the conclusion to his narrative.
“The funny thing is,” Rex was saying, “there was nothing of real importance in the briefcase. I was late for work this morning and left my own briefcase on my desk in the apartment. This briefcase belongs to the law firm where I work as a clerk.”
Mary’s head reeled with Rex’s revelation. “A clerk,” she thought to herself. “Just like my father.”
“The firm uses the briefcase for transferring funds and stocks for clients. I just borrowed the briefcase to take some legal briefs to one of the senior partners of the law firm. Next time, I’ll just put them in a folder.”
Mary, her mind still on her mother, walked Rex to the door. As Rex reached for the door, he turned and asked if he might take her to dinner one evening next week. Her memory once again went back to her mother, this time remembering the warmth and the joy her parents shared. Their lives had been simple, but fulfilling.