JARFAG

JARFAG

Trieger had known about the kid all along. For the past month or so, he’d done enough research to be sure of his whereabouts pretty much around the clock. Which is why he naturally counted on the boy, Ethan was his name, to be outside the scene. Trieger had forgotten all about him by early Friday evening. It was now only he and Daryl in a nicely isolated little pocket of nothing.
The countless hours spent monitoring social networking sites, hacking in to database records and, of course, the in-person observations had revealed that Daryl Windholm was 34, was separated from his wife, had one child and was currently semi-employed as a security guard. Ethan, his kid, was 9 and runty-looking and went to a private day school where his grandmother taught. From what Trieger could surmise, Daryl had full-custody if for no other reason than that the kid’s mom was something of a head case, seemingly prone to unannounced road trips and often gone for days without explanation. Trieger had actually lost touch of where the wife, her name was Cathy, had gotten to. Normally she lived with her own mother, the one who taught at the day school, but he hadn’t seen her around, even as Ethan would spend most weekends at the grandma’s house. At least he had for the past three weeks.
Trieger guessed the couple had been separated for about a year, but he couldn’t tell for sure. Most of the facebook messages detailing the situation came from the correspondence between the grandmother and Cathy’s sister who lived in another part of the state. Trieger had obviously gone the direct route first but hadn’t gotten much; Daryl had an both a facebook and a twitter account which he never visited and Cathy, herself an avid poster formerly, had taken down her page and hadn’t tweeted anything in four months. Still, there was enough data. The amount of information one could find out by patiently perusing the web, knowing how and where to look, who to monitor and method of approach, was ridiculous. If you mined away at the available info long enough, you usually got through to something you could piece together. It not only allowed Trieger to case his targets remotely, but it usually gave him, for free, all of the information he wanted to know and more. In any case, it gave him what he needed to know on this day: the window of time when Daryl would be alone.
The original plan was not an ambush, but a carefully configured confrontation which would enable Trieger to get more out of the verbal provocation. It was set up like a chance encounter, something he’d done before but without much success. At least he hadn’t felt the closure he’d aimed at, the satisfaction he’d thought would be there. And there’d been too many onlookers who’d no doubt witnessed the better part of the incident and could quite possibly pick him out of a lineup.
More precautions were taken on this go-round and Trieger knew he would have more time to get familiar and comfortable, if only because the logistics were conveniently self-accommodating. It was a perfect location for one thing. The rendezvous point was one where there’d be no outlying variables, no pedestrians, no cameras and nothing unforeseen to upset the occasion. Everything was brilliant, if for no other reason than that Daryl worked a job at which he was alone, remote even, for the duration of his shift.
The gated community he did guard duty at was not a residential one per say but a cluster of little houses intended for older people, the kind of place the more well-to-do made their bed in after retirement but before the nursing home. At present there were only were six standing houses with another ten being built and only two of the completed homes actually had full-time residents. Being a newer golf course community, the adjacent neighborhoods were likewise still going up and there were more impartial construction crews than homeowners, more contract laborers would couldn’t speak English, much less care about their on-the-job surroundings. Even more suitable was the fact that this particular subdivision was sectioned off from the more conventional, family-friendly houses by two or three elevated ridges of fairway. This not only secluded it further, but limited any direct line of sight. Absolutely no one was going to think twice about a white male in his early 30’s wearing a visor, sunglasses and turquoise polo driving a golf cart along the perimeter of the 11th and 12th holes at 7:30 PM on a Friday night. Daryl Windholm was certainly not going to think twice about something he’d seen a thousand times. At least, not until he took a second look.
Trieger had a gut feeling that everything would go according to plan. He was confident that the unforeseen variables, which he always accounted for if only for just the reason that they were unforeseen, were too far removed from the scope of this particular operation to obsess about. The work crews were over and done with by 6:00 PM at the very latest. The two home occupants, who for all Trieger knew still didn’t live in the house despite owning the property, would be in their homes and even if they weren’t, their houses were a block away from the guard house (property on the green being the priority and thus the positioning at the back of the subdivision). All of this begged the pleading question of why a guard would be needed at all, but Trieger had guessed it had something to do with the high cost of the additional fees involved with buying a house here. That, combined with the relative remoteness of the property, the delicate age of the residents and the fact that the highly publicized safety of the community warranted a visible security presence, helped appease any concerns.
Everything did go according to plan. Waking up to sunny weather on a mild April day, Daryl had taken Ethan to school in his white pickup and then returned home prior to reporting for work at noon for his eight hour shift and then, at around 11:35, had gone straight to his job.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The dispossessed on Daryl’s face as he drove by the first time was even more than Trieger had bargained on and it gave him a sudden boost of confidence. It was a look of boredom, but also of forlorn ineptitude; the guy had lost a lot of his energy for life. The simple nod, a brief glance and then back to some clipboard as the cart did a loop reassured Trieger even more. There was no recognition, not even the slightest connection in the guy’s face.
“Evenin’,” Daryl said as the cart rolled to a slow stop, this time on the other side, the side facing away from both the neighborhood and the golf course. Trieger kept still. With his eyes still hidden behind sunglasses and his brow concealed by the visor, he just looked at Daryl for a two count.
“Need anything?” Daryl said, now slightly less cordial.
Trieger just sat there. Daryl looked around a little after in the awkwardness and Trieger spoke up abruptly.
“What they payin’ you for?” Trieger finally said, emphasizing the you and making sure his lips moved as little as possible, trying to say the question as a statement. Daryl gleaned a brief but slightly annoyed half-smile/half-smirk and looked at the ground. Had he been lonely, Trieger knew that Daryl would have been more gregarious, probably welcoming the joke as a conversation starter. But Daryl wasn’t lonely. Guys like him weren’t lonely, just bored. Trieger knew that Daryl was something of a sportsman, into fishing and going out on his boat and working on his engine, and he didn’t let the implications of a fractured family keep him from his hobby. Right now he was probably thinking about his trip tomorrow, getting up around four and heading to the marina. Plus, he probably had an iPad or a tablet in his booth to keep him occupied.
Trieger also knew that Daryl never actually worked out; he’d never done any MMA. But he was a ready enough sort and wouldn’t back down from a challenge, not a direct one anyway.
“Keepin’ out the riff-raff,” Trieger said again, not unfriendly but with a measure of ambiguity thrown in.
“No, I make sure they don’t leave,” Daryl said, pretty rapidly too. He’d meant it as a joke. “Gotta keep the old people off the roads.”
Trieger nodded, not too eagerly. He counted to four and then said, “Where I know you from?” trying to say it tersely, his hand still resting in the same position on the wheel of the golf cart.
“Dunno,” said Daryl, this time a little less easy, but still professional-friendly, holding his gaze as he spoke the word for perhaps more than the split second he’d done previously. There was still no hint he knew who was talking to him.
“How’d you get such a crappy job?” Trieger said, changing the subject after a brief pause. He didn’t expect an answer and didn’t plan to wait for one either. But Daryl said, “It’s not bad, actually,” still even-toned, unafraid. “Easy enough.”
“You a ex-con?” asked Trieger.
“No, you?” Daryl said, laughing a little.
Trieger stared at Daryl. At this point, Daryl wasn’t scared, or even ruffled and wasn’t supposed to be. Trieger had planned it so he could size the him and also to see if he could detect any recognition. A lot of times, Trieger knew, that even if the other guy did remember him, he could conceal it pretty well. Now the routine was already getting old, though, and Trieger decided to get down to business.
“You married?” he asked, not expecting an answer.
“Why you wanna know?” Daryl responded, furrowing his brow slightly and locking his gaze with Trieger’s. He’d be sure to listen to the next thing Trieger said which was “Divorced?”
It didn’t look like Daryl would take the bait, at least not all the way and Trieger felt that the line must not have been executed properly. This was key too because the ball was in Daryl’s court now and, judging by his initial reaction, Trieger thought he’d gone about his little plan the wrong way. Then, with a delayed response, always a good sign indicating the guy’s lack of poise, Daryl said, “Look sir, can I help you with anything cause . . .,” trailing off at the last part with a thin lilt to his voice.
“You from this area?” Trieger asked, changing the subject again and giving the impression this time that he expected an answer.
“What’s it to you?” Daryl said, not put off.
Trieger could see him starting to suspect something but knew he either didn’t care or didn’t want to confront it. Daryl was still an irritable and gruff sort and didn’t like unnecessary hassles. He’d get annoyed at being needled and try to head it off, but he wasn’t gonna put up much of a fight, at least physically, unless necessity made it so he had to. Trieger waited a few seconds to see if Daryl would say anything else and when he didn’t, he got to the point.
“You lived in Oak Groves Terrace, on Pinion Drive.”
It took Daryl a few seconds, but then, very slowly, and with a wry grin, his mouth open a little, cocked his head a little and nodded slowly in kind of a circular pattern.
“You used to ride the bus to school.” Trieger said again. As expected, Daryl just kept nodding. It was a little too readily though. It gave away that the guy knew or at least was strongly convinced of something, though he may still be searching his memory for details.
Trieger knew that prolonged pauses had to be executed like anything else, in moderation. You did it more than once, it became silly and you lost ground. So he quickly added, “You like ridin’ the bus?” with what he felt was adequate precision.
Several things could happen at this point. The guy could recognize him outright, by name, saying it out loud and then waiting on Trieger to acknowledge the fact. Or he would remember the face but not the name. Or he would remember the face and place it with the name but keep it to himself and say, Why you wanna know? or What?. If the guy was scared, he might schmaltz it up and do a Fuck me or Holy Shit to ease the tension. Daryl wasn’t scared though.
“Look man, I don’t know what you want . . . or what? . . . or what’s up with your being here, but . . .” said Daryl, trailing off as he’d done before, but in the same condescending tone. He said it with pretty good authority and Trieger thought he saw a flash of something that had been there all those years ago. That smirk, a look of petulance and derision, a posture of presumption that goes with being too passionate and too impatient all at the same time. It was still there.
Trieger methodically rose from the golf cart at this point, making sure to grab hold of the side rail to emphasize his bulk, or rather to reaffirm the intentions which he hoped to make clear to Daryl. He had taken the chance that Daryl wouldn’t be such a pussy that he would actually call for help during this moment; even life’s worst losers had their standards of honor these days. And he didn’t. Expectedly he performed the man bit, even with no one around, standing up to face Trieger in the obligatory staring contest.
“Whaddaya want?” said Daryl, effectively standing his ground though his countenance was visibly altered from the respectable working man he’d been ten minutes ago. He was still giving Trieger the smirk, but there was nothing professional or even reserved about his demeanor now.
“Why would I want anything?” said Trieger, trying to adopt as unassuming a tone as possible.
Daryl didn’t speak. Trieger knew he wouldn’t and didn’t either. He waited for Daryl to make a move and when he didn’t, counted to five, and proceeded with, “What’s my name, motherfucker?” It was a calmly delivered line, Trieger changing his tone completely and voicing it with all the gravitas his throat could summon. It felt like it came out alright.
He and Daryl were about two feet apart now, both standing, Daryl with his arms crossed and Trieger with his hands on his hips. Daryl didn’t say anything.
“What’s my name?” said Trieger again.
“Dunno,” said Daryl, and then, a little too laboriously, he came out with a, “Don’t care.”
“You know it, c’mon what is it?” said Trieger.
Still shaking his head in condescension, Daryl now unfolded his arms when Trieger pointed his finger right at his face.
“What is it, say it!” Trieger said, still coolly thought with a deliberate tone to his voice.
“Look man, I honestly don’t know,” said Daryl, grinning, and Trieger guessed he was telling the truth.
Trieger took his hand away from Daryl’s face and put it back on his hip. He took a step toward Daryl, looking at the ground and quickly looking back up as he did so. Now they were eye to eye, with Daryl still wearing the smirk though with some effort. Trieger removed his sunglasses.
“I’ll start you off with a hint,” said Trieger. “It begins with the letter ‘J’.”
“Look I told you I don’t know . . .”
“Not my real name, motherfucker, my nickname, the one you gave me.”
Trieger could see Daryl vaguely try to recall something. He wouldn’t remember it; Trieger had bet on it, it wasn’t a scenario the other guy usually did remember. But he’d also known that Daryl would know something of it, or at least part of it.
“Think hard!” Trieger shouted it now, with swagger, keeping his body still.
“Hey man, fuck you!” Daryl said, emanating a pretty good sneer actually, and Trieger knew he could move in. He pressed his face up against Daryl’s. Daryl was actually about a quarter inch taller, but he’d still smell Trieger’s breath, a product of two-weeks without brushing. Trieger now slanted his finger, cocked and at an angle, into Daryl’s face.
“I’ll give you the first two letters, J-A. Now what is it dickhead?”
“Fuck off” said Daryl, confidently, his smirk returning slightly as Trieger began to feel himself losing ground a little. He pressed right up to Daryl so that their noses almost touched, his finger still there.
“J-A-R,” Trieger said, loudly and with as much deliberation as he could muster. It was a two count and then Daryl said, “Jarfag.” He said it quietly, and pretty coolly too and Trieger was a little surprised. He hadn’t expected Daryl to remember.
In the next instant, Daryl swatted at his finger, instead catching the underside of Trieger’s wrist. At the same time, Daryl lunged forward with some sort of kick or a knee which hit Trieger in the upper part of his thigh. It was enough of a jolt to push Trieger back a little, but it was also the incitement he needed to proceed. He struck at Daryl’s face with his left hand—he was actually right-handed but had learned to use his left hook pretty well, it didn’t quite connect with Daryl’s head, hitting instead somewhere between his neck and his shoulder. Daryl tried to bearhug Trieger’s at his waist in an attempt to get him down, but Trieger quickly got his hands in position and shoved Daryl’s face up and away from the ground and then lunged at him with a knee to the midsection which hit directly. It was good thing Daryl’s back was to the wall of his guard house, because that gave the blow the needed leverage to hit home. Daryl hunched over slightly and Trieger smashed him with an uppercut to the jaw and then did a leg swipe to Daryl’s right leg which hit right at the crease of his knee. Daryl tried to regroup. He used his left foot to push off from the side of the guard house, attempting to once again lunge at Trieger. Only as he did, Trieger landed a blow to his midsection with a left hook. Either the body blow hit better than Trieger thought or Daryl was just plain giving up, because it only took three or four more blows to the ribs and one side shot to the face for Daryl to curl up on the ground with his hands covering his head in the fetal position.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Trieger was disappointed. He felt deflated. He had wanted to get more of his aggression out before the guy was finished but it hadn’t happened. And there was the matter of Daryl’s verbal confession. In point of principle, Trieger felt that beating someone’s ass was an inconclusive means to revenge. There needed to be words spoken on the now new victim’s part to the effect of acknowledging his error(s). If he got knocked out or got so he couldn’t move, like in this case, he likely would be unable to speak coherently and may not get just what was happening to him and why it had to be done. The original plan had been to get the guy in a sleeper hold and pry the words “I’m a pussy,” or, in this case, “I am a jarfag” from the victim, making him say it enough times so the conviction was felt. But the initial attack had left Daryl too incapacitated to be coherent. It would take a few minutes to revive is senses enough to say anything, much less think about owning up to his past. He just laid there crumpled on the pavement, a mid-sized and slightly overweight man. He wasn’t writhing in pain, but he wasn’t out cold either; Trieger could see him still breathing and contracting his hips periodically. He’d be there a while. All there was to do now was leave.
There was always the urge to say something at the end, especially after a go-round like this one where Trieger’d been unable to extract an actual confession. But words were rarely necessary and were even ill-advised at this point. Had he been a better talker, he might have, but even then he didn’t know if he could pull it off. In past instances, and in his mind now, words after the fact never felt like they hit home, never carried quite the same weight as when you were enticing someone to action. Words, Trieger thought, often revealed something unsettled about a person. And Trieger desired, more than anything, to ensure that this score, as with all the other ones, was settled. He’d observed, on more than one occasion, that complete silence wasn’t such a bad thing when leaving the scene.
Daryl had been a conspicuous bully from Trieger’s past but certainly not the only really memorable one. He wasn’t the first one Trieger had targeted. As one of a long line of tormenters, Daryl was somewhere in the middle. He wasn’t a complete sadist, didn’t necessarily live to prey on others, but he wasn’t a one-timer either. He was just one of those kids, one of so many, who simply couldn’t suffer the fool.
Trieger’s folly had been on a day in September when he’d very innocently mistaken a set of condominiums for “condoms” as opposed to a “condos.”
“You live in a condom.” Daryl, three years older and two grades ahead, had said with the kind of gleeful pleasure only emitted by despots and kids living with an overindulgent, divorced mother and a disproportionate amount of child support. That kind of faux pas could never go unnoticed to someone like Daryl. “Douche Kid” was Trieger’s name until it was discovered that his mom put jars of milk instead of thermoses inside his lunchbox, hence the name Jarfag.
Had Kevin Trieger had anything going for him at that time, he still would have found his way to victimhood. He was small for his age and young for his grade. He was a slow learner and an even slower runner. He was the oldest kid of five, the only boy in a company of girls, with no one in proximity to check his unoriginality. He’d been to public schools, more than one, in his six years of formal education. But he’d also been homeschooled in a few intervening years by his mother, a hopelessly weak-minded woman, with a desire for things she had neither the capacity nor the competence to deal with. She was one of those who’d just wanted to have babies, and whose genuine tenderness was no match for her lack of strength, stamina and sense of limitation. Trieger remembered how desperate he’d been, even then, to get out of the house most mornings. Of course it only led him toward sturdier problems elsewhere he was ill-equipped to encounter.
Such was the sad state of affairs that day on the bus, as on great many others, when the treatment got the better of him. Things weren’t all terrible for Trieger. He had a few friends, kids from other subdivisions and parts of town he’d spend time with but nothing solid. With the neighborhood kids, he got much of the same feedback though never to the severity of an occasion like with Daryl among others. The fact wasn’t just that he was too dumb to run and too scared to fight, although he was most certainly that. It was that he accepted his fate so readily. Regardless of words or names or physical encounters, the conviction of his inadequacy never wavered, never offered a counter-argument. Maybe he would one day get it, what he needed to say and when, how to show aggression and when to push things to a head. But for now, he had no clue for how to confront such things, much less form a strategy as to how to counteract it. In the mean time, he was almost too paranoid to feel wounded, much less angry. There was so much he feared, so much he lacked, and it all just stayed put. It ate his soul.
And so on this day, turning to night, Trieger walked back to golf cart with an increasingly irritable frame of mind. He hadn’t seen for himself, hadn’t been satisfied with the results. Daryl’d been whupped but had there been any real contrition? Was there any atonement? Trieger’s previous two targets, a guy from a high school he’d gone too in a different state and a frat guy he’d been at college with, had gone much the same way. Both encounters, both fights had ended without that confirmation of recompense on the part of the original perpetrator. One guy, the one from high school, had tried to apologize, and had Trieger believing him until he’d said the one thing he shouldn’t have, wouldn’t have had he actually been sorry: “Hey, look man, I was just a stupid kid back then, I didn’t mean anything personal by it.” That was a phrase Trieger couldn’t and wouldn’t stand for. Everything was personal. At that Trieger had just locked his gaze on the man’s eyes and started pushing him in the chest, not speaking and ignoring any of the potential repercussions of assault or battery charges. He pushed him until the guy pushed back, then swung back with surprising vigor only to have Trieger parry the blow and fell the guy with a leg kick to the back of the knee. The guy then just covered up his face, got in the fetal position as Daryl had done and let his mid-section be pummeled until Trieger got up and left, too tired to coax some candor from the man.
The second guy, the frat dude, had been easy also if only because he was drunk at the time when he got out of his car in front of his apartment building. The guy hadn’t even pretended not to recognize Trieger. And he either must have been too drunk or too belligerent to care about owning up to the one night in college when he’d mouthed off to Trieger for no other reason than that Trieger had been walking alone outside the frat house. The guy had some of his pledges—it turned out it was one of the final hazing weekends of the year—rough up Trieger and then had himself urinated on Trieger’s head. So on a night nearly eight years later, Trieger had swiftly got him to the ground, had pinned him, had got him to say the “I am a pussy” bit about as intelligibly as he could and then, after a kick in the balls, had relieved himself in like fashion on the guy’s face, aiming for his mouth. But the noise from the incident had garnered too much attention and too many people had been alerted. One woman, presumably the leasing manager or just a brave soul, had determinedly walked outside intending to breakup what was already over. Trieger wasn’t sure if she saw his face. It’d been pretty dark when he’d made his getaway on foot, having parked his car in another lot a block away. Nothing had come of it, and though Trieger doubted anything actually could, he knew he’d need to be more careful in future.
It was this lack of closure that disturbed him now, the dusk now over and the gleam from the newly planted streetlights providing an eerie luminescence. In three hits, he’d avenged a few of the slights done to him. But had he? Daryl had gone down but anyone watching the scene would’ve noticed how he’d kept his dignity intact, how he’d simply been beaten physically but not emotionally. He’d wake up tomorrow remembering Trieger and the night before. He might recall the time in eighth grade when he’d made life hard for a vulnerable kid from the street opposite. He might even feel some sense of a comeuppance, might realize, with maybe even a little intrigue and resolution, how his past had caught up with him. Or maybe he’d think none of that and go to the police. No, he wasn’t gonna do that. The evidence and the circumstances were too vague in this case.
More likely he’d just move on with his life, just come and go as he did today. Furthermore, Trieger had the notion that he’d probably get past this little episode. That was what really gave Trieger pause for concern. Daryl wouldn’t be cowering in fear, or live with any kind of permanent defeatism. He probably wouldn’t even feel bitter for very long. He wouldn’t live that sort of subjugated existence Trieger did. Daryl had his problems, unenviable ones not to be dismissed lightly, but Trieger didn’t get the sense that his life was, despite all its hassles, all that miserable. And this night probably didn’t change too much about that. Daryl didn’t mourn his lot, didn’t feel his failures, his inadequacies, with the same striking magnitude that Trieger did.
And wasn’t that the real score. Not settled like Trieger had planned, but only revalidated. Daryl still had an identity. He might be a flunkie and a low-ender. But he wasn’t a loser like Trieger was still a loser. A reject was one thing. A failure was one thing. But a loser was neither of those things. A loser was someone who always gave ground to insecurity, who lacked the resolve to get past the past. A loser was also someone who lacked integrity, real integrity. It was someone who skulked around manipulating situations and circumstances to meet satisfy some abstracted product of his own emotional deficiency, someone who still let his own demons hurt him more than any one person ever could. These thoughts had visited him before, but nothing had come of it. He didn’t like who he was. He couldn’t like who he was. And so difference did it make if he pursued some sort of closure through confrontational means, revisiting those who, most of them, had simply just been mean to him.
These were the exact thoughts crossing Trieger’s mind the moment he looked up and saw the kid looking right at him. To say that he, Ethan, Daryl’s son, was in shock would have certainly been appropriate though it took Trieger several seconds to process the scene. The kid, Ethan—it took Trieger a long time to recall his name--was standing in the weeds near the edge of the development about 15 yards from the guardhouse. How long had he been there? Trieger didn’t know. Why was he here? Maybe his mother or grandmother had dropped him off for Daryl to take home? That was his best guess. He could’ve been exploring the woods behind the development before wandering back to get taken home. Had the kid seen his father being pummeled? Trieger couldn’t recall any indication of that. But he must have.
These concerns were secondary to what had pushed to the forefront of Trieger’s mind, however. In fact, all of the logistical reasons for Ethan’s being there hardly registered at all, for his brain was now assailed by one thing only. As he looked toward the boy, Trieger suddenly realized he had seen the look, the one Ethan had on his face now, once before. It had been when he was extremely young, maybe 3 or 4, and wasn’t a memory snatched from prior knowledge, but something suppressed.
There had been this other mother, a woman with a kid his own age, a daughter Trieger thought, whom Trieger and his mom would visit. The woman had been from the Midwest somewhere and wasn’t particularly attractive, or even matronly in any way. She was big and robust, and didn’t carry it well. She was emotional too, conspicuously so, often speaking much too harshly to her own kid and once to Trieger in that same over-reactive, dull-thinking shrill tone with no mediation behind the words, just a snap or a yell delivered in such a fashion as to totally override the reason for it. Trieger remembered she’d had sort of a desperate look going. In any moment of uncertainty, the woman would always look like she’d suddenly been stricken blind or deaf. It seemed to him now that she was one of those women, even weaker and more limited than his own had been, who couldn’t help but contaminate others with her insecurities. On this occasion, her own kid had been outside, originally on the back porch but now apparently in the grass of the backyard. Something must have happened to preoccupy both mothers temporarily because all Trieger knew when he glanced up after hearing the scream was the woman’s look as she gazed at her child being attacked by a German Shepherd.
The contiguous events of that day remained very vague. The attack must have been thwarted and the girl rescued because Trieger couldn’t recall any significant other memories. A death or severe laceration would have been something his parents would’ve talked about later. But that look. It went beyond shock, beyond fright. There was something preternatural in it, almost demonic, an expression so ravaged by fear and dread that it cut to the crevice of Trieger’s being as he watched the woman. The memory, being what it, is exaggerates or distorts moments of time but Trieger felt that the duration of him staring at the woman while she stood there, stunned with terror, must have been at least a four count. It might have been longer. That was the moment, Trieger now realized as he stared at Ethan, when he too became a version of what that woman was, what so many people are—unalterably exposed and defenseless. Perhaps the actual violence of the moment, his own reaction to the dog and the screams, had been factored into the memory, but he couldn’t be sure. Those were the kinds of experiences which disoriented one from any firm sense of reality. This was what Ethan was now, stunned, with not just a sense, not an emotion or a feeling, but a sickness, an actual disease which would override any joy, subdue any frivolity, destroy all mirth and suspend the feeling of security for a very long time.
To see your father, at no worse a steady dad and likely caring enough, and probably the only constant in a life of wayward parents and instability, be violated as he was by a menacing stranger, to observe this up close at such a sensitive age--this was the kind thing that clung to the young as they became older. It was the kind of calamity created victims.
Trieger looked at the kid. Ethan shuffled a few steps back in the grass, glanced down then back up. The look was still there. Trieger thought he might run, but then chided himself for the thought: the kid was too frozen with fear to move his legs. It occurred to Trieger that he shared similarities with the boy, more than a few, although he tried not to think about it. This kid would have problems, if not before then certainly now. He was physically small and fragile, but that wasn’t it. There was something deeper which resonated a certain doom. Trieger searched his mind, now largely hollow after such a rigorous emotional recollection, for some justification but found none. With he, himself now the perpetrator, no longer the victim, no longer the avenger, there was only one thing he could feel. But this feeling, this new pang of remorse, was not something he could bring himself to confront.
He didn’t want to look at the kid anymore. Trieger got in the golf cart, turned on the motor and drove away. This would be the last time he did one of these.