Michael Ludden's Blog, page 4

It’s pitch black. His hands are shaking. He points. They’re right behind you.

There’s an obituary about a guy who died right after his wife. They’d been married for something like 63 years. So you think, here’s a case where they spent their entire lives together. They didn’t wanna live apart. So I drive out there. See if I can write about it. I’m walking from the street to the house – it’s one of those old Florida ranch styles, a one-story brick place that sits about 50 yards off a small lake. The next door neighbor comes out, introduces himself.

We begin to talk. He loved these guys, best friends, knew em for decades. He’s filling my notebook with stories about how they met, how they courted, their lives. They used to sit on a bench in the afternoons and look at the water.

Asks me if I’d like to look around inside. We go in the back door. He’s grieving and it helps to talk about it. So he does. For hours.

I’m grateful. They sound like wonderful people. But it’s time to go. It’s getting dark. We’re sitting there in the den of this empty old house and he’s just getting warmed up. Emotional. Remembering the time. Now the sun’s gone. It’s pitch black in this house and he’s whispering now, tears streaming and there’s not a light on in the place.

He can’t believe they’re gone. He thinks mebbe they haven’t gone, not completely. He talks about their plans. How they wanted to be together, not just in life, but after.

Barely audible now. And then he looks up, lifts a shaky hand, points just over my shoulder. A catch in his voice.

“They’re right behind you….”

I stand, naturally. Move a little bit – away. It’s the fireplace. There’s an urn over the mantle.

Time to go.

How to date a witch… three easy steps…

Woman calls me one day, says a reporter has been rude to her… agonizingly rude.

I listen to her story, commiserate. She cools down. Then she warms up, to me.

You’re a very sympathetic personality, she says. It’s obvious you’re a Pisces. Mister Rude, he’s a Taurus. No question.

I hang up. I call the rude guy, John Glisch, who is actually one of the more courteous folks in our line.

Hey man, you a Taurus?

He is. And I’m a Pisces.

Whatev… chalk it up.

Next day, I get a call from the receptionist on the first floor. A woman has just delivered an envelope. I go down, grab it.

Inside, an invitation. From her.

One thing I forgot to mention. She’s a witch. She told me so.

Wiccan.

Asked me how I felt about it. Fine with me, I said.

Anyhow, she’s decided that she and I have a thing. Because of the phone call. We’re connected. And now she wants to proceed, take the next step.

But she’s playing it cool. Wants me to initiate. How that’s gonna happen is spelled out in the letter.

If you want to see me again, she says, just take a spider’s leg, put it in a glass of water, hold it up to the full moon, look at the moon through the glass (of water, with spider leg) and, boom, the phone number will appear.

Imagine my disappointment. Could not for the life of me remember where I put all the spider legs.

Escape from China…

He was older now, a generation away from the day he’d escaped. He was willing to tell me his story, but only if I agreed not to print it. Tell me, I said.

It began when they were boys. Two youngsters living in Fukien Province, the part of mainland China closest to Taiwan. Every day, after the sun set, they swam in the river near their house, training for the time they would dare attempt the 24-hour endurance test that could bring them freedom. It was 80 miles. Or more.

Every night… winter, spring, summer, fall, rain or shine, cold, hot.

For more than 10 years, they swam. They grew tall and strong. And then they began to swim in the strait. They knew how long it would take, how long to reach the midpoint, the place at which they would just have to keep going.

That night, the waters were calm. They said goodbye to their families and began. They were nearing the point of no return when his boyhood friend called out to him. He’d lost his nerve.

I can’t make it, he said. I’m going back.

He went on alone. After a time, he made it to New York, where he got work in a restaurant. He learned the trade. For years, he worked. And then he had his own restaurant. He’d done enough that he let someone else run it for him.

But every time a new restaurant opened nearby, he went in. He tried the elaborate dishes, the things that were difficult to get right. If anyone surprised him, he’d walk into the kitchen, introduce himself.

And then one day, he sampled something that caught his fancy. It was chicken, a nice sauce, something delicate. He walked into the kitchen, asked if he could meet the chef.

The man had his back to him. And then he turned. They began to shake, to cry. Stunned, they embraced. Decades later. Thousands and thousands of miles later. The boy who had gone back had not given up. He’d tried again, the next year.

They had ended up in the same country, the same state, the same city, the same occupation. The same skills.

But you cannot tell anyone, he said to me. People would never come to my restaurant if they thought I was a communist.

In this country, people will think you are a hero, I told him.

I cannot take the chance.

It was his choice.

Are you insane?… You can’t drive that truck in here…!

We have so many writers and photographers covering this next shuttle launch we need two big RVs to carry us all.

I get recruited to drive because this thing is about 500 feet long and nobody else wants to mess with it. It’s real big, real slow and you sit about roof-high. So we jam everybody inside, turn up the radio, stop for hot dogs, beer and potato chips. We’re gonna get there early so we need energy to keep going.

And these people are pretty excited. They’ve seen launches. They know what it’s like.

Remember when you put a firecracker under a beer can?

The can would pop up high into the air. But then it would fall. Not so this thing. After three minutes it will be a tiny glint in the sky, traveling 6,200 feet per second.

It’s the most ambitious technological undertaking in history. But this technology’s more delicate, less forgiving, than life.

Why you need all those writers. They’re specialists. Science experts.

Engine problems, tiles falling off, insulation peeling, temperature fluctuations, power surges, phantom readouts. It seems like most of the time, the Mission Control guys just have to stop, start over, push reset.

But this day, as they make final preparations, the sun is shining. Not a problem in the world.

I pull up to the toll booth.

The guy just stares at me, eyes bulging, jaw hanging. He gets out of the booth. Walks to the front of the vehicle. Now there are two or three other toll guys there. They’ve left their booths. They’re walking to the sides of the RV, looking. Talking to each other like a clique of NFL refs.

Something wrong?

This lane is not for trucks. He’s shouting now.

You can’t pull trucks in here.

Sorry. How much do I owe you?

You don’t understand. Still shouting.

You have about 1/8 of an inch on either side here. This lane is for cars. It is frickin unbelievable you got this thing in here without bashing the booth.

But they’re laughing now. A great story for the gang at the bar tonight. They take our money. We leave. No big deal.

Tell that to Peter Larson. I think it was Larson, the guy driving the other RV. The one right behind me.

He proceeds to wedge that puppy in between a couple of toll booths so tight he can’t move. He tries backing up, going forward again, as if he was stuck in the mud. He does this a whole bunch of times. The agonizing shriek of metal against brick. He’s shredding the sides of the truck, from bumper to bumper, tearing off the mirrors.

He finally gets it free. And it looks just like you’d expect it to.

Later, we need to take these fancy high-priced trucks back to the dealer.

Is there a place with big bushes we can park next to?

We drive to the back of the lot. Wave to the folks in the office.

Thanks again.

Let the boss handle this one.

The old woman had 50 dogs… said they were no trouble…

Got a call from a guy who lived near a woman who had dozens and dozens of dogs. All of em, living inside a trailer.

He was calling the cops, which he’d done a few times. But the guy was actually pretty sympathetic.

Maybe, he said, there’s something you can do.

I made my way from the driveway to the front door, which was not easy. The grass and the weeds were tangled, up to my waist. Couldn’t see the ground.

I knocked. We talked awhile. She didn’t want to invite me in, but she did, eventually. There was not a single place to step without getting it all over my shoes. There was no place to sit without getting it all over me. The stench was overwhelming. The noise, deafening. There was no way to count. They kept moving. But there could have been 50. That was her guess.

Some of them had jumped up on the countertops, like cats.

They’re no trouble, she said. No trouble at all. She said they never went to the bathroom inside. They were all trained. She would send them out in shifts and call them in, she said.

I’m gonna find homes for em. I just have a few that I’m real attached to.

Which ones, I asked?

That one and that one and that one and that one and that one. She wore a big bathrobe. Sadly, she hadn’t been able to find a place to sit either. She was old and she had hair that hung longer on one side and she was nervous.

Sometimes, she’d put papers on the floor. And then she’d carry em outside and burn em in a big barrel.

I could see the barrel in the backyard.

Later, I drove around the corner to the next street, stopped in to see the guy who’d called me. Nice place. Landscaping.

We walked outside to his back yard, to the pool. It was filled with ash, blown over the fence from her place.

The racket was pretty bad out here.

We have to keep the door shut, he said. And nobody in my family will go in the pool.

I wanted to go back, talk to her some more, but I didn’t. It just seemed like putting on a good face for company was more than she could bear.

Later on, he sent me a note. The health department had come out, with the animal control people. They’d left a few dogs with her, as many as the law would allow. She’d tried to pick out a few, I guess. But a lot of them were sick. I could picture it. It would have been her worst day.

They sent some people out to help her clean up the place. Somebody cut the grass for her. The neighbors were going to see what they could do.

It wasn’t the first time they’d tried. Before long, there would be more.

This guy wants to bring three moving vans full of stuff to Florida… wants you to pay…

A guy gets a job offer in Orlando. He’s in Indiana. So his new boss, the University of Central Florida, offers to pay his moving bill.

Little did they know.

Here’s a guy who thought he needed a snow shovel in Central Florida. And a bunch of other stuff you wouldn’t believe.

The moving van shows up. It gets filled. Then another. Then another. Three big trucks.

The list of stuff went on for 31 pages. Six picnic tables, rabbit pens.

A plow.

Reminds me of carting a two-year to grandma’s for the summer.

Somebody in Tallahassee saw the bill and said no. The university asked for an exception. It was only 57,560 pounds of stuff.

But the state auditor refused, said it looked like the guy had made “little effort to minimize…”

What did the guy have to say?

He didn’t think his household was especially large.

Everybody needs two swing sets, no? And nine desks. Did I mention… 20 bicycles?

And a bale of hay.

She died the instant she saw her daughter’s body…

Little town in Florida called Brooksville, where the houses sit close to the edge of the road. The kind of place where not much happens, and when it does, everybody talks about it.

So it was no surprise when folks got up and ran outside one night when they heard a wreck down the street. A couple of people got deputized to investigate. A 14-year-old girl named Karen, a few others. Karen wanted to be a nurse, sang in the chorus, had just bought her first dress.

The wreck was minor. It was late. The cops weren’t there yet. Somebody was out in the road with a flashlight, warning people to slow down. The cars in the fender bender had their flashers on. No one was expecting more trouble.

Then another car came roaring out of the darkness, moving fast, way too fast. The driver, a young kid, swerved to miss the jumble of cars. He’d been drinking.

Later, the cops would say… this is why we chase people away from accident scenes.

The kid’s car went up on the shoulder, airborne, hit a parked car. The crowd scattered.

But not that 14-year-old.

Back at the house, her mom was waiting. Heart trouble, diabetes, high blood pressure. Couldn’t work, but she loved to tinker in the garden.

The wreck was only a block away. Her daughter should have been home by now. It was all taking too long.

Mom went down. There was an ambulance, a lot of people crowded around the body. They held her back, but she could see.

They heard her scream.

“It’s my daughter.”

She took a long deep breath and fell backward.

A family comes to grips with the unthinkable…

A family on the coast, their little boy, kidnapped. Someone grabbed him after school.

It’s still sketchy. The cops aren’t sure, but it is unimaginably frightening.

Who knows why they agreed to this. But we had a writer who knew the parents. She was one of those sympathetic, genuine people who could talk to anybody about anything. So she asked them: What if one of our people came to stay with you?

For the next three days, Cory Jo Lancaster will live with the family. She’ll be there when the phone rings, when the police come, when they learn the truth.

It began with a photo in the local paper. Junny Rios-Martinez, a blond-headed, 11-year-old in a surfer’s t-shirt. Later, there was a message on the phone. A reporter thought the kid might make a good story. He showed up to talk. He had a photo ID.

Eventually, he would say he was no longer a newspaper reporter, that he’d left for a better job with a surfing magazine. And, now, he could probably get the kid some bling, maybe even some endorsements.

He ran a long string and the parents bought it.

The kid would get some money up-front. There’d be some travel. There were contracts to sign.

The boy’s mom didn’t feel completely right about it, but it seemed ok. The writer, Mark Dean was his name, always knew the right thing to say to put them at ease.

But they had some final questions. They needed to be sure. So they told Mark to come back.

That was the day their boy disappeared.

The cops didn’t know any Mark Dean. But they did know Mark Dean Schwab. And now the fear began to set in.

Schwab was just out of prison for molesting a kid. A kid he brought him home afterward.

The cops have a photo of Schwab. It’s him. Schwab’s been free for just three weeks, after serving three years of an eight-year sentence.

Cory Jo is there while the parents talk about their worst fears. She’s there as the phone rings, over and over and over again. Neighbors. Family. Police.

Night comes and goes. No one sleeps.

An FBI agent arrives. He’ll stay for days. His presence makes it all the more real. The fears are inescapable. The parents tell themselves… he’ll bring our boy back. Dad burns through cigarettes and Pepsi. Mom wants to talk with a psychic.

One guy knew all along it was too good to be true. A 12-year-old, the best friend. He kept saying, there’s no way this is for real.

Cops are in and out. Their faces tell the tale. The FBI guy’s advice — stop answering the phone. Get all these people out of here.

Hope, revulsion, emptiness, images of agonizing violence. What if he has AIDS?

A crisis counselor takes the parents into a back room.

It’s been four days now. Mom sits on her son’s bed, staring at the posters on the wall, the framed photo of him in that surfer shirt, the one that started all this.

Then the police call. They’ve got Schwab.

He’s alone.

It will be another two days before he leads police to the footlocker. Middle of the night, in a downpour, he relents, shows them the truth.

Cory Jo will quietly leave the house. In a few days, there will be a funeral and more than 1,500 people will be there.

Schwab was executed. Florida passed a law that prohibits molesters from getting early release. They named the law after little Junny.

This post was first published on April, 22, 2014.

 

This guy knows he’s gonna die, and it will take about 20 minutes…

You spend any time at all in a big room that has a cop scanner and you get to where you can tell right away if it’s important. There’s a tone of voice, adrenalin mebbe.

A guy is working on a crew digging a ditch alongside a road, putting in a big sewer line. There’s been a cave-in. He’s half buried.

They’re sending everybody.

This guy has been working inside one of those massive metal safety barriers, the thing with the big walls on either side of the guys working in the hole.

But Florida’s got some stuff that’s like quicksand, or worse. It sucks you down and keeps you.

As soon as this guy was in the clutches, his team jumped in there with shovels and buckets. No good. They tried a backhoe. No good. They tried pumping the stuff out. No good. They tried tying a rope under his shoulders and lifting him out. It was tearing him in half.

He was huge. And the suction was too great.

We’re talking dozens of guys, broad daylight, every kind of equipment you can imagine. They can’t get him out. Construction guys throwing their hard hats on the ground and bursting into tears.

Finally a guy got down there next to him with a pad and a pen. He wrote, as the guy dictated his will, his final messages to his family.

They kept trying until the end.

Thousands gather outside window of a paralyzed cop…

Listening to FM in Miami one morning. The jock starts talking about a young woman who’s just been shot.

She’s a police officer who was driving home to her apartment complex when she spooked some guys in the middle of a break-in. Now she’s paralyzed, inches from death. People start calling in to the radio station, talking about how they need this woman to pull through. Talking about life in the city… crime… endurance…

The station quits playing music. Hundreds of people are calling.

Shootings are not rare here. But as the word spreads, the switchboard at Baptist Hospital starts to jam. People are calling to offer money for her care. If she lives, she may be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. At the radio station, people are knocking on the door, leaving money. Crime victims from cases she’d handled long ago call in crying.

The outrage is building.

Off-duty cops are showing up in droves. Guys finish their shifts and keep working. Cheryl Seiden drove a charcoal gray RX7. The shooter stole it. Now cops are pulling them over, so many of them, half a dozen stolen charcoal gray RX7s get recovered.

A woman who drives one gets stopped seven times. People are calling the cops: I just saw one of those cars.

Friends of the radio jock finally drive him home. He’s been on the air taking calls for 26 hours straight.

The docs say Seiden is barely hanging on. People begin to assemble outside her window. This vigil will grow from hundreds of people to thousands. The entire city is calling out to her to live.

Five days after the shooting, cops get a tip about a car in a canal. It’s hers. They arrest two guys and charge them with attempted murder. One of the guys agrees to testify against the other in exchange for a lighter sentence.

The shooter will get life.

As for Seiden, she hung on for two weeks. In that time, she was not able to communicate. But she understood. She knew what people were doing for her.

(Photo: State Archives of Florida)