Redemption

REDEMPTION

If you wanted to get to know Randolf Percy, you had to be willing to take a lot of chances. Because that was how Randolf Percy went--dicey and unpredictable and not always in control of his faculties. Leaning into the wind of an uncertain future, sucking the marrow out of every tortured step he might take, Randolf went about his business and his pleasure with a quasi-ridiculous fervor out of some demented tall tale you'd wish you'd never read.

Because there was in reality no tomorrow, he reasoned, there could be no regret for yesterday. And tomorrow was always about to happen.

Not necessarily fatalistic, but rather, philosophical.

As a child, Randolf Percy terrified his mother and nettled neighbors with his continual fence-walking, disaster-stalking, death-defying shenanigans. His father owned a hardware store from whence he fetched home a steady stream of goodies for Rand to play with; when Mrs. Percy lamented the importation of these somewhat dangerous items into the house, Mr. Percy patiently shushed her with small noises and paternal reassurances. He was that sort of man, the type who was always shushing his family and doling out paternal reassurances.

At the age of nine, Rand built his first go-cart, but his father (who was doting but not foolish) locked it up. So one night Randolf snuck out of the house and broke into the storage shed, ran his small vehicle out onto the Parkway, and began racing cars. A police cruiser pulled up beside him--Randolf gunned the engine and sped off down a side street. They caught him, and they brought him home, and his mother said "I knew it would come to this." But his father chuckled and glared and reassured his wife that it was simply boyish enthusiasm. "Not to worry, mother," he said.

His first day in the seventh grade the principal called home claiming Randolf had initiated a lunchroom brawl. When she arrived in his office, Mrs. Percy sighed and said to no one in particular, "I knew it would come to this," then she marched her angular son down the hall and out the front doors of the school. When his father came home that evening, he listened attentively as Randolf and his mother presented their respective cases, took a sip of the whiskey in his glass, ran a steady hand through his thinning hair, and demonstrated his paternal sagacity with, "Let's just all calm down and see what tomorrow brings, shall we? And pass the goddamn ketchup."

By the time he was set to graduate high school, Randolf Percy had gained something in the way of notoriety, lost something of his passion, become cold and calculatingly manipulative. His quiet mother knew it would come to that.

In the town of Rockport, he was alone and friendless. Sure, he hung around with other kids, but he didn't have any friends. You have to be able to give a little to have friends. He was a nice kid, mind, but not the sort of person anyone wanted to call friend.

He'd had a couple of girlfriends, but they, like many of the wiser local dogs and cats, soon began to shy away at his approach, sensing something dangerous, something untamed and out of control.

Randoph wasn't an evil kid, it's true--not so much a rogue on his way to the devil, but rather a zephyr wind, shaped by forces wholly beyond his meager understanding, blown this way, and now that.

His father was a husky man, father of three, with brown eyes and brown hair and brown shit that reflected his penchant for red meat. He was, and always had been, confused. Confused about his life, about his wife's life, about his work, about the failure of clothing manufacturers to introduce a men's pant with a Velcro zipper. Where did this family all around me come from? he'd ask himself. And from out the Void, no answer was ever returned.

Came Randolf's graduation day, and Mr. Percy was nervous as he never had been. While Rand was busy in the driveway washing the car, his father snuck into his bedroom to look for evidence of any upcoming prankmongering. If not for the few small drops of blood trailing across the dark blue carpet and into the habitual pile of dirty clothes on the floor in the corner, Mr. Percy might not have found it. Following the few rusty droplets to their source, Randolf's father began to go through the soiled garments one by one, using a baseball bat he retrieved from the closet to gingerly deconstruct the pile. The corpse of the young slaughtered pig lay near the bottom of the pile, loosely wrapped in a sheet of plastic, just beginning to show signs of rigor mortis, its advancing odor masked by the patently offensive smell of the dirty clothes heap.

Poking his head out the window of his son's second floor bedroom, Mr. Percy shouted, "Randoooooolf!"

In the driveway, wielding the garden hose like a retarded fireman, Randolf froze. He looked up at his father's harsh, unwavering visage and swore under his breath. There came a momentary silence, in which father and son regarded one another across time and space, neither one able (or willing) to divine the thoughts of the other.

Abruptly, Mr. Percy shook his head, as a horse trying to rid itself of an annoying pest, and gestured to the east where a darkening sky loomed on the horizon. "Looks like it might rain! Rinse the car off and come in and get ready to go!" When he walked out of his son's bedroom, he was chuckling and nodding to himself as he reminisced on his own youth. Behind him, the dead pig quietly mortified. Outside, it began to rain--torpid murmur on the driveway, the shingles, the leaves of the faded elm standing to in the front yard.

I met Randolf a couple of years after he graduated. It was an off-road bicycle tour in the Colorado Rockies. He was riding a Mountain Storm, a truly moly-chrome demon of a bike, made for the kind of terrain mountain goats train their Olympians on. I'm coming up over this monster mound of boulders, watching my front tire, the rocks, my feet on the pedals, when I get this feeling--says look up--and there he is, up on top of this ball-buster incline, stopped, feet on the ground, chugging water and looking like the Tempest King himself.

I hated him right off the bat. Not that I'm that kind of person. I'm not. Something odd went right to work on me--something reached inside me and touched a live wire to my sphincter and there was just this sudden craving to ride this particular guy into the ground. Just as soon as I caught up with him.

He looked down, saw me, and strapped his water bottle back onto his bike. Real casual, he took a minute to cinch his gloves, work a rock loose from his cleats, and then he was gone, just gone, down the other side of the hill I’d nearly crested. When I reached the top I got off my bike, and although I could see the trail continuing into the distance for a good half-mile, the ravenesque rider was nowhere in sight. My mood turned black, and the rest of the ride seemed a waste. I didn't know why. . .

I see him in a bar that evening. I'm sitting alone, using a glass of bourbon to ease my sundry body pains, when I look up at the sound of cleats on the tile floor and I see this guy; I don't like him all over again. There's a little black cloud hanging over his head, and lightning bolts come zipping out of it every second or two, hitting him square on the brow. He takes no notice, and neither does anyone else, so what am I supposed to do? Then he sits down next to me, and for a guy who's ordinarily more than a little bit stout-hearted, I get scared real quick. And I don't know why. . .

"Saw you on the trail today, didn't I?" he inquires, friendly enough.

Get a hold of yourself, I tell my trembling bladder. Then I turn and look at him, and I see a tough-looking guy, about my age (late twenties), black stubble on most of his face, a black ten-gallon cowboy hat pulled way down over his head. No scars, but loads of minute sweat runnels coursing downward from his brow, around his deep brown eyes, to his oddly uneven jawbone. “He’s not so mean”, my brain says to my fortitude, which replies, "Yeah. Right. My mistake."

"I think I recognize you--you were riding that purple and yellow Mountain Storm?"

His lips curve upward in something apparently meant as a smile. "Yeah, that's my bike. Like it?" And I think if I answer yes, he might deck me. I'm not sure why. . .

He glances at the bourbon in my hand, orders a Perrier, which strikes me as more than odd. The next thing I know, he's right up next to me, I can smell the sour sweat, but there's something more to it, like sulphur maybe, and as he leans into me, he speaks quietly. "My dad was an alcoholic. Stuff'll kill you, you know." That's when it hits me: It's all a gimmick. The guy is just one big facade, and I've fallen for it. Everybody's got one nowadays--some people have really big, imposing ones, and he's one of them--been working on it for years 'till it's just rock solid and dense as the flesh on m'lady's caboose. Like an inflated clown suit, it just pushes right up against anyone who comes close to him.

I've got one of my own--real well developed it is too. I use it with my friends, co-workers, even my family, which is commanded by an alcoholic father, thank you very much.

"Name's Randolf," he intones. "Randolf Percy." I figure he wants mine. "I'm Carter. Good to meet you." Then he's quiet, sitting next to me like I wasn't there, hadn't just introduced myself, and the rest of the bar goes on about its business, as though Randolf the walking demon were just a regular joe. And I wonder if perhaps they're right, and I'm just projecting my own ghosts.

"You riding tomorrow?" He startles me from my reverie.

"Yeah. Sure I am. You?" Seems like I've heard his name mentioned recently, but I can’t remember where.

"'Course. That's why I'm here isn't it?" He scowls at me now. I don't know why. . .

Another moment goes by, and I feel uncomfortable, and that's unusual.

"You live around here?" Randolf was the name of a guy in the news a while back, I decide. Nasty business. Wanted by the authorities--I think that was Idaho. Maybe Oregon.

"Not me. I'm just here for the ride." He doesn't want to say anything further--that much is clear by the hard look coming my way. Fine. I think I need to go now. I tell Randolf, "Thanks for the chat--I'll catch you on the trail tomorrow."

"Not unless you can find a new way to cheat." Funny guy. As I walked behind his bar stool I brushed up against the guy and even through my shirt I felt the frigid air wafting outward from his body, so I increased my pace and called to mind the Lord my God while reviewing everything I could remember from my last bar fight . . . .

Of course, nothing happened. Until the next morning when I wheeled up to the starting line for the days' race. I looked down the line of riders, fearing to see his face, and hopeful he would fall off his bike early in the terrain. A short guy, an ugly guy, an old guy, and then Perry, glaring at me from the depths of some otherworldly pit that only he was familiar with. I wondered then, for no good reason that I could descry, a whole bunch of things. Like--what the hell was this bozo's story? Why did he so scare the piss out of me? Why did he talk to me in the bar? Where had he disappeared to when I saw him on the trail yesterday? Why did he seem to have chosen me for his amoral target practice?

I didn’t know at the time that he would soon be dead at the hands of the federal agents who would come looking for him. Had I known, I am absolutely certain it would have made no difference at all. I was already far too curious--entranced really--to pay heed to any lethal G-men with fervent dedication on their minds.

When the starting gun sounded, the first wave of riders, with me and the devil-child riding the crest, broke upon the alpine tundra with a tainted gusto born of restless, post-industrial, suburban ennui. The pack headed up the first incline, a middling climb designed only to test each rider’s spirit. Then into a short level patch of cacti and desert paint, with a bit of fist-sized gravel strewn along the way just to weed out the rookies and the overconfident among us.

Going into the third mile, the pack had been thinned out nicely. About a third of the riders remained in a pack, the rest were strewn out behind, already in some degree of pain and no longer a factor in the race. Randolf was, of course, cruising along at the head of the pack, doing a convincing job of looking like the ride was hard on him.

I slowly realized that I had begun at some point to tune the other riders, the land itself, even my own bike, out of my consciousness, and my senses were oddly focused on Percy, and I was acutely aware of his every movement.

Why no one around me seemed to be in the least bit affected by this strange man I couldn't fathom, but spent little time trying to figure out. Sometimes somebody walks into your life and all you can do is stand and stare, slack-jawed and stupefied, as they snatch your attention and teach you a lesson--sometimes good, sometimes hard... sometimes both. It just happens. There's not a damn thing you can do about it. You cooperate or you learn nothing from life.

I didn't struggle against my preoccupation. I embraced it. I knew, down deep, that this race was Percy's, to win or to lose as he should choose. The other riders, myself included, were merely adornments, flotsam along for the show, which promised to be quite a hit for anyone paying attention. Watching Randolf Percy was like watching a ballet dancer—a gymnast, perhaps—touched by divine madness. I could see that one or two of the other cyclists had begun to notice a formidable presence in their midst; they glanced in his direction, squinted, as though trying to focus, then shook their heads in negation--of what, I'm sure they didn’t know. Nor did I. But something tickled the back of my brain. The tickling became more insistent. Soon my head was throbbing. I nearly plowed headlong into a boulder which sprang up out of nowhere. My hands kept slipping off the handlebars, too slick with perspiration.

The finish line was about a half-mile away now. I was completely exhausted, spent well beyond what was normal for me. I’ve been competing in these off-road races for a couple of years now, and I’ve gotten myself into pretty good shape during that time. Normally I’d be huffing and puffing a bit at this point... but now I was actually trembling, and I couldn’t stop. Every muscle in my body was aflame, crying out for respite. Something beyond the rigors of the race was at work on my stamina, and I was helpless in its grip.

I became more than a little afraid. The way you feel when it’s dark, and you’re in unfamiliar territory, and you just know there’s someone or something waiting for you around the corner, and it’s going to hurt you.

When I realized what was happening, I got mad. I mean, who the hell was this guy, to affect me so? I’m not the macho type by nature, but I’m a competitive SOB, and when it came to me that it was Randolf who was having this effect on me, that it was he who was somehow getting under my skin and draining the will right out of me, I just got really really pissed off.

We were coming up to The Razorback—a series of switchbacks down a hillside made of more boulders than hill. Just beyond was a congested stand of Douglas Fir, and then the final sprint to the finish. It was beautiful terrain we were racing through, and I noticed it not at all. All I could see was Percy just in front of me, beginning his descent down the Razorback, while right on my tail were three other riders with visions of first place trophies dancing in their heads.

I hit the first switchback with far more momentum than wisdom advised; my temper had a hold of me now, and was dictating my strategy to close the race. A voice in the back of my brain quietly but insistently announced that I was headed for the emergency room if I didn’t cool it. I ignored that voice, let go the brake handle, and risked taking my eyes off the boulders under my tires to spot Percy. He was thirty or forty yards ahead of me, just coming out of the second switchback, and suddenly he too raised his head to glance backwards at the competition. His gaze went past me, toward the threesome just behind me, and a wicked, unnatural sneer crossed his face. He shouted something unintelligible and did the unthinkable—he took his left hand off the bars and flipped the bird in their general direction. I heard a cry of dismay, a grumbling crumbling sound, and I knew without looking that one of the three had just gone down.

The fist gripping my midsection tightened.

We were a third of the way through The Razorback now. I shot out of the second hairpin turn and, against all good racing sense and all my better instincts, shifted up a couple of gears and poured it on. I gained maybe ten brutal yards on Percy, when once again he turned and sent an obscene message via his middle digit flying over my shoulder. I heard a second rider go down. The bastard’s whimsical arrogance and violent intent made my sphincter pucker. A red haze descended over my vision. Literally. I’d never experienced that before, didn’t think it was actually possible—I thought that was just some kind of metaphorical babble writers indulged themselves in when they wanted you to believe somebody was completely over the edge.

Silly me.

Suddenly, someone—some unseen presence—jammed a handful of needles in my right calf. I damn near screamed from the pain. The needles penetrated my skin, and then with each rotation of the pedals, they began to work themselves inward toward my tibia. Or my fibula? Or both –I didn’t care. I only cared about beating Randolf Percy. My internal endorphin factory kicked in to combat the cramps and the needles eased up just the tiniest bit.

In that instant, I knew I would ruin my body rather than lose this race. I wanted to cross the finish line and stop my bike and turn and see the look on Randolf’s face as he acknowledged my victory, and then I’d just smile, and spit on his bike or perhaps in his face. Mercilessly, and with extreme prejudice. At that moment, I was completely insane with a passion I’d never experienced. I hoped to God I’d never feel it again.

Randolf rode out of the last switchback at the bottom of The Razorback, and turned and flipped a final bird to the last rider left, just behind me. That rider crashed with an appalling thud, and I thought I heard a bone break. It might have been my fevered imagination.

Up to this point, my adversary—Satan’s emissary on earth, I was now half-convinced—had appeared to be totally in control. Halfway through the race he’d put himself out front, and now as we neared the end he’d casually eliminated the closest threats to his victory. But as I risked one more glance away from the terrain to spot him, I could see that the last few moments had cost him. He now put his forehead down to his handlebars, to avoid the approaching gauntlet of low branches provided by the dense crowd of fir trees blocking our way to the final hundred yards before the finish line.

The smell of pine filled my head, and a rampant energy entered my body. The fairies of the woods were with me, I was sure. I was suddenly lightheaded, and the pain in my calf was a distant screaming distraction, a minor detail I could deal with later by collapsing and falling into a deep coma. I was more than a little delirious. But rather than a hindrance, that state of mind became my boon, my gift from the woodland spirits which dwelled here and which surely had no love for a man such as Randolf Percy. Even Mother Nature surely wanted me to beat the bastard.

What was it about this guy that had such a rabid effect on me? I’d run into bozos like him before... we all have, haven’t we? We’ve all met those people who are walking advertisements for birth control, yes? Randolf just really got under my skin for some reason. That night in the bar I’d sensed a fairly intelligent cohort; even as he’d made his exit, wafting clouds of disharmony and repulsion with each breath and every step, I felt as though it was incidental—as though, unlike other people I’d known and disliked who I later discovered made it a point to be disliked because it served their purposes, one way or another—Randolf’s knack for casual alienation was unintended.

The FBI had caught up with Randolf the first time in Harper’s Ferry. This was ironic, because that small, antiquated town in Virginia had been the site of John Brown’s first, and last, attempt to free slaves by arming them. Randolf wasn’t trying to free anyone but himself. He, too, would ultimately fail in this endeavor, and is thus, perhaps—even now—having tea with Mr. Brown in some heavenly cafe for failed rebels.

They said he was dealing. Said they’d found 20 keys of Bavarian White stashed in his attic. I suppose that could be true. But that was no reason to gun him down that way. I mean, that was just uncalled for...

I wonder what it would take for you or I to get gunned down that way? We’d have to do something pretty damned offensive, eh? Or maybe not.

The finish line loomed in my vision. I was near the end now. Randolf was still in front of me. An observation by that most wise and witty comedienne, Lily Tomlin, rose unbidden into my consciousness: “The problem with winning the rat race,” she once said, “is that, when we cross the finish line victorious, we’re still rats.” I couldn’t let this monster beat me. He represented the dark side—he was Darth Vader and Grendel and Attila—and if he won... if he won this race, I felt something good and right would slip away, or something foul and loathsome be added to the mix... some aspect of the world would fundamentally and forever be tainted beyond repair.

You might apprehend my state of mind from the fact that I, a mundane and completely average sort of fellow, would attach such a bizarre and potent feeling of doom to such a routine event as another mountain bike race. It made absolutely no sense, and it made all the sense in the world. There are people we encounter in life who, be it destiny or serendipity, change us and mold our perceptions of reality and what is possible; occasionally, they do nothing more than hold up a mirror which we can gaze into and receive grace, should we find the courage to do so.

These ruminations came later. The finish line held all my attention as it approached, a mere 20 yards away. My front tire was inches away from Randolf’s rear tire. I dug down deep for whatever reserves I might still have left. That’s when it happened. Randolf flipped me off. My foot slipped off the pedal, which came flying around and gouged my shin. It took everything I had just to hang on to the handlebars. That moment of distraction was all my nemesis needed to add a couple of feet to his lead. The crowd was cheering, stomping their feet, wildly urging the both of us on. Time stretched out thin as a piece of silk wafted on a gentle breeze. My foot found its purchase on the pedal once more; I closed my eyes and pictured plague, nuclear Armageddon, the end of the world—I determined to kill myself to win this race. Literally. If necessary, I would become the human sacrifice should one be needed.

When I opened my eyes a second later, it was all over. I had won. But not because of my own efforts. I looked around, and there was Randolf Percy stopped just short of the finish line, grinning a Cheshire grin at me. Then he flipped me off again, lifted the front of his bike off the ground and threw it around the other way, rode off back down the hill we had just topped, and disappeared into the trees.

Winter reared her hoary head the day after that race. I woke to a dusting of snow, an alabaster tissue laid across the forest floor outside the cabin I was staying in. My body ached in places I couldn’t reach. I stood at the window and stretched and scratched and waited for the cobwebs to clear.

It was an oddly surreal morning. I turned and glanced at the nightstand where my first place trophy stood and I thought of Randolf Percy and suddenly the entire day was ruined. Shot to hell. Might as well crawl back into bed as endure a day full of the awareness that refuse such as he roamed the earth.

This was Randolf’s power over me: When he entered my thoughts, he turned the world bleak and hopeless and futile. There was no logical reason for it, but there it was—like a switch being thrown. Thoughts of Randolf would invariably lead to thoughts of other shitheads. One moment my cup was half full, the next it was half empty.

I thought of the next door neighbor I’d seen beating his dog. And I remembered the woman at the grocery store who damn near yanked her little girl’s arm out of its socket and told her to shut up when the girl kept pestering her for some ice cream. I thought of the guy in the Lexus who’d evidently obtained his driver’s license under fraudulent circumstances. Then I pondered the man sitting in the White House, or more likely on the back end of his pickup truck on his Texas ranch, who had his head so far up his hind end that it was only natural nothing but doo doo would come out of his mouth any time he’d call a press conference.

It was all of them, and none in particular, that ruined my mood. There are those who walk among us with very little capacity to filter out the noise. I’m one such. I sometimes feel like some sort of autistic empath. Most people just call me thin-skinned. I don’t argue the description. But somehow Randolf magnified the effect, somehow he cast a spell that took me from thin-skinned to downright depressed, almost suicidal.

Was Randolf Percy the devil in disguise, a creature of hell returned to walk the earth? Or was he just another beaten soul, another of life’s victims, a kindred spirit?

I decided to go for a walk through the quaint skiing village of Crested Butte. Surrounding myself with Blue Spruce, Ponderosa Pine, and Aspen stands always calms my soul. In the summer, this charming little town in central Colorado becomes home to events like the mountain bike races, various music festivals, hang gliding competitions, etc.; one of the perks of living in this Rocky Mountain state is having such places at your backdoor. In fact, it’s the perk, so far as I’m concerned. All around me rose the snow-covered peaks of Gunnison National Forest, some of them pushing over 14,000 feet into the cobalt sky. I’d vowed when I was a kid that I’d climb all 54 of Colorado’s 'fourteeners' (peaks over 14,000 feet), but as the years have slipped by I’ve decided I’ll be happy if I can make it up half of them before I die. That leaves only 9 to go...

I stopped in at the Paradise Cafe for a cup of coffee, took it outside to the patio, where I was sipping and watching the people go by when I saw Randolf Percy heading down the sidewalk, the little black cloud cavorting over his head and emitting lightning bolts every few seconds. Zip! Zap! ...I still hadn’t figured out just how he pulled that off.

When he spotted me, he made a beeline in my direction; he must have been a bit stiff from the prior day’s ride—he was hobbling a little as he approached me. “’Mornin’ big dawg, how’s the coffee here?”

I just blew over the top of my cup and gave him a slight nod—universal mountain man language for ‘good coffee’.

He got a cup from the waitress and planted himself next to me. “Look at ‘em,” he said, shaking his head in the direction of the handful of passersby, mostly tourists from the looks of their spotless cowboy hats, faux leather vests, and shiny cowboy boots. “What do you suppose they’ll be doing today? Hot air balloon rides? Golf for mom and dad, while the kids go for a horseback walk on Mr. Ed?” His tone suggested clearly what he thought of such activities.

“Yeah, I suppose. The rest will be forking over the last few vacation dollars they brought with ‘em to go whitewater rafting...”

“I oughta grab my videocam and head down to the put-in on the Gunnison river and see if I can’t charge a few of ‘em fifty bucks a pop to film their adventure for ‘em.” He winked at me. A lightning bolt zapped him in the forehead, but he didn’t seem to notice.

It hit me, then, just like one of his lightning bolts, that our mutual antipathy was nowhere to be found. It had vanished in the night. And it hit me, further, that I really had no evidence at all that Randolf Percy had ever had any antipathy toward me. Had it all been mine, then? I took the plunge and asked him, straight out; “Hell nooooo, man—in fact, I knew right away that you were a righteous kinda guy, Carter. I know I come off a little hard-assed, sometimes, but, well... I just didn’t have the greatest childhood, ya know?" He glanced down the street to where a midnight blue Chevy Suburban was parked all alone, its smoked windows giving no hint as to why he seemed to take an interest in it. "I know it left me a little rough around the edges but it’s nothin’ I do on purpose—‘s the way I am and I’ve long since accepted it. I don’t talk about it much just ‘cause I can’t stand folks that run around whining about how they deserve to be pitied now for what happened to ‘em way back when." Just then, the Chevy’s engine roared to life, and the driver pulled out onto the dirt road and came cruising slowly toward the Paradise Cafe. Randolf stared hard at the vehicle as it came, as though it carried either his next job offer, or perhaps just his next shot at redemption.

By the time the Suburban reached the empty bit of dirt road in front of us, Rand had set down his coffee and was inching his way backwards, away from the rail where we’d been standing watching the tourist traffic. I couldn’t have told you why—and in fact when the FBI agents questioned me later I couldn’t tell them either—but I began inching backwards, as well. It was then that pandemonium exploded around me. All at once the bullets were cutting the air, literally cutting through the air around us, and the screams and curses were barely audible because of those damned bullets that wouldn’t stop making tiny sonic booms inches away from my skull... I was terrified, but when I glanced over at Percy, he was wearing the most satisfied, downright jubilant smile on his face—I’d have sworn here was a man either about to come, or just about to go.

As it turned out, of course, it was the latter. His cranium exploded inches away from me, that smile frozen on his face, and he made not a sound. He crumpled over, and I reached out and took his hand as he fell, and I felt him squeeze it ever so briefly, and then he was gone. Randolf Percy was dead, killed by agents of the FBI who’d been tracking him for months, and had finally caught him and eradicated another dangerous sociopathic rebel from the ranks of orderly society. I reached across his lifeless body with my other arm and I gently brushed his eyes closed.

And as the uniforms and the badges swarmed over the railing and kneeled around his prostrate, lifeless corpse, it was then that my epiphany took hold. There, but for the grace of God, Carter... An oddly profound serenity washed across me then, in the middle of all that chaos—I felt an ironic beatitude settle over me, and I wished Randolf well on his next journey, thankful that I was still breathing.

If you wanted to get to know Randolf Percy, you had to be willing to take a lot of chances. I'd hardly known him at all, and while I don’t much hold with notions of destiny or any of that crap, if Randolf Percy had been meant to run into me, I would forever after honor his memory—whatever it might be worth—as the man who reminded me there are no free rides, no get out of jail free cards to be had—no enlightenment without the consequent burden of awareness.

I’d been redeemed, and it was Randolf Percy who had redeemed me, though he knew it not; we are each of us the product of our own travails, and were it not for a handful of random, happenstance considerations, that might just as well have been me who’d become the zephyr wind...

The next time I saw my neighbor beating his dog, I went outside and beat my neighbor... in honor of Randolf Percy.

The End