"Kenneth Banaczyk!" a voice commands behind Ken. He turns around on his chair to face a group of men in suits. The one that spoke is holding a badge in his open hand.
" U.S. Marshals. Please stand up."
The sound of the handcuffs snapping around his wrists in the pilot' s lounge, under the eyes of his fellow pilots and chief pilot, the unsavory degradation of being escorted out like a criminal, like the criminal he was, to the waiting cars outside, the surprised faces of his coworkers behind the windows, that humiliation will haunt Ken for the rest of his life.
Inside the car, between marshals, Ken sees himself inside a thick and oppressing burlap bag, hands and feet tied by the strongest of steels and a heavy chain choking his neck, and he ready to be dropped into a cold and bottomless sea.
Part II.Twenty Years Later
Rise and Shine
The clock radio goes off at six o' clock in the morning and the DJ' s familiar voices fill the room. Debbie stays in bed while a song plays and gets up with the commercials. She shuts the radio and goes to the tiny bathroom in her one bedroom apartment. She hops on her one right leg. The left one is missing from the knee down. She flops on the toilet and the sound of piss falling on water is long and strong; She is not the one to get up in the middle of the night for a bathroom break because her sleep is steady and she has learnt to leave her worries in the threshold to her night rest. She knows that there is plenty of time during the day to worry about bills and money and the minutia that somehow manages to grow into a spawn of evil, ready to cut her down to pieces.
Her two cats, Munch and Ernie, come to greet her and both try to push each other away from her one leg. She scratches their heads and they meow. Debbie knows that those sounds of pleasure are also demands for breakfast. Having cats is like being married again, some hairball always in need of something from her. At least Munch and Ernie are honest in their affections.
She wipes, stands and flushes, and with a short hop she is in front of the basin. The face in the mirror has sunken lips because her dentures are still in a glass full of water and cleanser. The accident in Dallas had taken her leg and her front teeth, plus three years of her life at the Gatesville State jail after she was convicted of vehicular homicide, reckless endangerment and reckless driving. She had gotten five but served only three. It' s hard for a cripple to be a troublemaker so the parole board had let her go without much fuss.
After washing, putting make up on and gluing her dentures to her gums she hops to the bedroom where her prosthesis waits standing next to her bed. With great deftness she readies her stump and fits the artificial limb, a hinged marvel of plastic and titanium, a far cry from the cheap peg leg she got at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Hospital in Galveston as a courtesy of the State. At least the peg had been better than crutches. Later on a charity got her a better, second hand – or as she had joked, second leg – prosthesis that had not fit her well but at least had looked like a leg, with afoot to put a shoe on.
At the beginning of her jail sentence she didn' t have any teeth because the State of Texas considered dentures a luxury and not a medical need the taxpayer had to pay for. She limped through corridors and yards and halls in her wooden peg and with her mouth sunk over her jaws, her head slung low and avoiding talking to anybody so her gapping mouth would not make them laugh. Those were hard days; her body still reeling from pain, both from her scars and from the chemical withdrawal she was going through. Drugs could be had like in any other jail she had done time in before, but this time she had decided to go cold turkey, the hard way, without counselors, support groups or nurses.
Her mangled body and the presence in court of the husband and the two little girls of the woman she had killed had made an impression on her. Suicide had been in her mind many a time during her stay at the hospital, handcuffed to bed, like as if the law were expecting her to stand up on her still whole but broken leg and hop away to Mexico, toothless and banged up beyond recognition. Suicide had flashed through her consciousness like a lit highway message board many occasions afterward but time and her innate will to survive had made such appearances less frequent and duller. Twenty years more or less, and still counting, and she had managed to stay clean. Alcohol and cigarettes don’ t count as such in her list of past and present addictions.
The same charity that got her the leg paid for her first set of dentures. Her toothless reflection in the chromed plastic panels that passed for mirrors at the jail disgusted her beyond measure so that first donated set of dentures felt godsend, like gold teeth instead of the cheap composites they were. They ill fitted her even after the jail dentist had fixed them up the best way he could. She had to watch them or they would come flying out of her mouth and she had to be very careful when chewing, but at least she could smile and talk without feeling like she was showing her wind pipe to the person she was talking to.
Since then Debbie has measured her life improvements by using the quality and fit of her dentures and prosthesis as a yardstick. This morning they were her most priced material possessions. The cats were her most priced emotional ones.
Debbie in jeans and a polo shirt walks into the kitchenette followed by Munch and Ernie. Her steps are firm and there is no trace of a limp. She stands in front of the sink and the sunlight alights her face and her pretty dimples. She is not a young girl anymore but an attractive middle aged woman, a little bit worn out in places and on the scrawny side. Her pony tail is a natural dirty blond color and there are a few white strands by the exposed roots around her face. Her attractiveness is not bought at a beauty parlor but comes from a natural, girlish look and her big brown eyes, and the dimples, of course. But she smokes and her skin has a dried up and eroded texture, and Denver ' s altitude and dryness doesn' t help it. She is cutting back to five smokes a day. She has her first after eating a bowl of cereal on the couch while watching the early morning news.
The cats are fed and now lie satisfied on the sill of the living room window under a shaft of sunlight, licking their paws. "Bye guys," she says to her pets before closing the door and stepping out into the breeze way. She descends the stairs and a keen observer could have noticed the slight and odd way in which she bends her left knee. She gets in her Geo Metro, cranks it up and puts her dark glasses on. A few minutes later her little beater merges with the rush hour traffic in the street. Another day, another buck.