I climb out of the car, shaking. Ott’s waiting for me but still looking at the building. He’s only a few inches taller than me and not nearly as intimidating as Tim. I decide what to do. I place my left hand on the door frame for balance and then, with all my strength, I thrust my knee up hard into his groin. He doesn’t see it coming and instantly collapses to the ground with a sucking groan. It worked! I slam the rear door closed, jump in the driver’s seat, and hit both locks with my elbow. As I reach around the steering wheel with my left hand to shift the gear selector into reverse, Tim comes running from the building at full speed, covering the ground so quickly that by the time I step on the accelerator, he’s already even with my door and he’s pointing his gun straight at me through the window. Time slows again, slicing the final moments of my life into small frames to be archived for the rest of eternity, decoupling memory from reality and reaching back to everything before-to the hands that bathed me when I was delivered from my mother’s womb and hugged me as a young child, to my husband, my family, my friends, my daughter…to the moments and the memories that had become Brek Abigail Cuttler. But just as Tim is about to fire, Ott lunges up at him from the ground, causing his gun to bark harmlessly into the air.
Suddenly there is life, and perspective accelerates to real time, to the blur of adrenaline and the desire to live. The car roars backward, toward home and safety, toward all we had created. I’m racing backward so quickly and the path is so narrow that I lose control and we careen into a tree with a terrible jolt. Sarah starts wailing. I slam the gear shift into drive and stomp again on the accelerator, steering straight for Ott, who is on his knees aiming his gun at us. He fires four shots. The car slows and becomes less responsive, and I realize he’s shot out one of the front tires. For a fraction of a second, I think of swerving to avoiding hitting him because he has just spared my life twice; but we are frozen in time, Ott Bowles and I, controlled by instinct and the will to survive. I accelerate straight for him but he rolls out of the way at the last second and the car plows into a manure pile. Determined to win our freedom, I rap the selector into reverse again and stomp on the accelerator. There’s a loud explosion and the rear door window shatters into a hailstorm of glass pellets. Ott is sprawled on the trunk with half his body sticking through the rear window, his gun pointing down at Sarah in the footwell, both arms outstretched and locked, police style. I hit the brakes and bring the car to a stop.
“Don’t make me do this!” Ott yells at me. “Don’t make me do this!” His chest is heaving, every muscle tensed.
“Do it!” Tim shouts from the other side of the car, his eyes wide and crazed, intoxicated by the violence. “Do it now!”
Ott hesitates, and in that moment of indecision I shut off the engine and hand Ott the keys over my shoulder.
“Take it,” I say, my voice quivering, just above a whisper, desperate to calm him down. “Please. She’s just a baby. Take it.”
36
“So, how long have you known Holden Hurley?” Ott Bowles asked the well-dressed, dark haired, bearded man seated across from him at the small cocktail table. He asked this question while sipping a beer and following the major league baseball game playing on a television over the bar.
“Two years,” the man said, exhaling smoke from a cigarette, uninterested in the game.
It was late afternoon, on a bright, summer Saturday, and the bar was deserted. Ott was not yet of legal age to consume alcohol, but Trudy, the owner of the bar built against a mountain on Route 26 between Huntingdon and Altoona, served her customers without regard to age and, for this reason, Ott had been there many times. Trudy was a large woman with flaming red hair, and this afternoon she sat behind the bar watching the game and waiting for customers. The man sitting across from Ott was obviously of legal age but he sipped club soda through a straw.
“Yes!” Ott said, clenching his fist as a runner crossed home plate. “Bottom of the ninth, and the Pirates just scored, they’re coming back!” He swallowed a gulp of beer and belched. “You got to admit, Sam,” he said, “that Hurley’s one weird dude.”
“He is a bit eccentric,” Sam said, “but he’s one of the most talented people I’ve ever met. He could build a computer out of cereal boxes and sell steaks to vegetarians.”
Ott studied Sam’s blue eyes and dark complexion and laughed. “That’s true,” he said. “But, I don’t know…I think he actually dreams he’s Hitler when he’s asleep. He’s got some pretty extreme ideas.”
“He’s not such a bad guy,” Sam said, taking another drag on his cigarette. “Everybody has dreams, and dreams sometimes become reality if you work at them long enough. He’s been good to me. I owe him.”
Ott picked up his beer and turned back to the baseball game. He didn’t like talking about Holden Hurley and wished he hadn’t even brought him up. He enjoyed the camaraderie of The Eleven enough, and the military training and the paintball war games they played-and the way everybody treated him like a celebrity because of his family’s past-but he couldn’t understand the president of The Eleven’s rabid hatred of Jews and blacks-it was just this kind of extreme racism that made people believe the Holocaust actually did happen. Sam’s defense of Hurley meant he was probably just as radical. “Where are you from?” Ott asked, changing the subject.
“New York.”
“No, I mean your family. What kind of name is Samar Mansour…French?”
“No, it’s Palestinian, actually.”
Ott examined Sam more closely. He could see the Arab face now-the steep nose, beard, and dark skin, but where did those blue eyes come from? Ott had never known an Arab, and he couldn’t imagine somebody like Holden Hurley doing anything to help one. Hurley hated anybody who wasn’t white and a Christian. Maybe it was because Sam seemed more European than Middle Eastern, with his aloof attitude, articulate speech, and pressed blue cotton dress shirts and black pants-more like a Londoner or a Parisian. “When did your family come here?” Ott asked, looking back up at the baseball game.
“My dad came over when he was about your age. He was one of the Palestinian refugees…his parents were killed by the Jews during the war in 1948.”
Ott glanced at him, then back at the game.
“Most Palestinians stayed in the Middle East,” Sam continued, “but after the war my father got a job carrying equipment for an archaeologist on a dig in Jerusalem. He was a professor from over at Juniata College; Mijares was his last name. I think he was Argentinean. In any case, he was very wealthy, and very generous, and he liked my father; I guess he thought my dad was pretty smart, because he offered to send him to college here, all expenses paid. My father accepted. He attended Columbia University, married an American woman, and stayed. I was born in New York.”
Sam waved for Trudy to bring them another round of drinks.
“Be right there, honey,” she said, pulling two glasses from under the bar, grateful for something to do.
“Just another refugee story,” Sam said to Ott. “Not very different from your own.”
Ott was thinking the same thing. He finished his beer, accidentally dribbling a little onto his t-shirt. “You know my story?” he asked, reaching across to another table for a bar napkin.
“I know all about you,” Sam said. “Brian and Holden told me a little, and I’ve done some research on the Rabuns too. I’ve spent a lot of time doing research in Germany, actually. People don’t realize it but Germans and Arabs have a lot in common. Das ist warum ich beginnen wollte, Sie zu kennen.”
A look of surprise flashed across Ott’s face. “Sie sprechen Deutsches?”