= THE DANGER REFUGEE
  By J. Michael Blue


Larry Michaels had been on the road less than seven hours, but the ball of panic he'd carried in his gut since the day he arrived in Miami had begun to shrink and fade away.  He felt better already.

"If you didn't walk around with every dollar you own, you wouldn't have to be afraid all the time," Angela had told him on the last day they spent together.  "This is a city, not some wide spot burg like the one you're from."

"I don't like having my money in one place and me in another," he replied.

"So go live in a bank vault, or buy yourself a big gun."

He hadn't told her about his new Kel-Tec 9mm automatic. She'd laugh at the peashooter size of it.  "Why do you want to stay here, anyway?  We've had four shootings within a mile of our front door."

"It's  a bunch of gangbangers!" she said.  "They ignore everybody but the idiots wearing the other "colors," and who cares if they all kill each other?"

"Tell that to Mr. Volstein.  They tore up his place and put him in the hospital.  I mean it, Angela, this town is full of animals."

She walked out on him without leaving a good-bye note, and though he should have been angry, all he felt was relief.  At last he could leave town and not look back.  "Good riddance, Bitch," he said as he slammed his front door for the last time.

* * *

The rest stop near the Florida state line had no food service so Larry bought coffee and a sweet roll from the vending machines and leaned against the front of his car while he ate and drank his afternoon snack.  He had parked in the only available shade, far from the comfort station buildings and the other cars.  The heat and the solitude warmed him and calmed his nerves.

"You got any money, Man?"

Larry had not heard anyone approach and the voice of the tall kid with the mirrored shades and the sideways baseball cap made Larry jump.   "Where'd you come from?" he said.

"From my ride, Bubba. Where'd you think?  You got any money?"

"What're you talking about?"  Larry slid off the car and took a half dozen steps toward the populated end of the rest area.

"Money, Man.  Bread.  Have you got any you can give me?"

"No. Why should I give money to you?"

"Cause I need it!  Why else?  Me and my posse're traveling a long way, Man, and we're broke.  Chee-cago, we got to get there by Friday."  The boy waved lazily to his left where three other teenagers stood beside an ancient Cadillac convertible, watching their cohort make his pitch.

Larry studied the trio and then turned back to the one who had approached him.  "You're from Miami, aren't you?" he said.

"Miami?  No." The boy shook his head.  "I'm from Dallas, Texas, man.  Big D."

"But you live in Miami."

The boy smiled.  "Do I know you"

"I know your kind.  I've got no money for you," Larry said.

The boy gave Larry a wide slow smile.  "I asked you nice.  You don't want to make a mistake about this."

"There's an armed guard up there by the rest rooms.  I can yell and he'll be down here in a New York second."

"It's a long highway, Man.  You're driving alone.  Got your car loaded down with all of your hayseed junk.  You look like you're moving back to some hillbilly heaven.  Somebody could lay for you, take all your stuff."

"Try it," Larry said, and he moved back toward his car.  The 9mm lay by the door against the driver seat.

The boy kept smiling as he raised his hands and backed away.  "You got a gun?" he said.  "That what you're going after?"

"Try something and you'll find out."

The boy kept backing away, angling across the street toward his buddies. "We'd like to have a gun," he said more loudly.  "You never know who you're going to meet on these highways.  What kind of gun you got, Little Abner? Some farmer gun?  A shotgun, maybe?"

"Stay away from me!" Larry shouted.

He watched them go, all of them laughing and staring at him.  The last one to get in the car gave him the finger, as they pulled out onto the interstate.

"Where do punks like that come from?"  Once again Larry was startled by a voice of someone who had come up silently behind him.  This time when he spun around, he faced a portly old man leaning on a cane and holding the leash of a small white dog.

"I didn't know anyone was here," Larry said.

"Little Irma and I took a walk around the edge of this place so she could do her business.  We came out of those trees."

Larry looked toward the trees and nodded.  "He wanted me to give him money."

"Don't they always?  Punks.  Lowlifes."

"I suppose I could have given him a few bucks to keep him off of me down the road.  Now I'm going to have to watch myself."

"Paying him off wouldn't have worked," the old man said. "He'd have wanted everything you have.  Where you headed?"

"Wisconsin.  I'm sorry I ever left."

"Know what you mean.  Where in Wisconsin?"

"A little town near Kenosha. It's on the lake just south of..."

"I know Kenosha, Racine, all that sauerkraut country.  We're from Green Bay."

"You are?" Larry stepped forward and extended his hand. It  felt great to meet someone from home.   "Larry Michaels," he said.

The man shifted his cane to his left hand so he could exchange greetings, dropping his leash in the process.  "Prophet Johnson," he said.  "My wife Hazel, and Little Irma here, and I have been on a retirement trip all over Florida."

"You can have Florida," Larry said.  "I'm headed back home where I don't have to put up with Florida crap anymore."

"I didn't think much of the place either," Prophet grunted as he leaned forward stiffly and recovered the end of the leash.  The dog had not moved from his side.

Larry looked down the road in the direction the boys in the Cadillac had taken.  Should he wait longer, give them more time to drive ahead, maybe forget about him?

"How much further you going today?" Prophet asked.

"I don't know.  I hadn't thought about it."

"Better stop early if you don't have a reservation.  The good cheap rooms fill up fast along this highway."

Larry turned away from the road and smiled at his new friend.  "Do you and your wife know the area?"

"We're stopping in Ridley. The Holiday Haven Motel.  Great food, and they let us sneak Little Irma into our room."

"I wonder if they'd have a room for me?"

Prophet scowled at the dog, and then nodded as though he'd received some sort of telepathic message.  "I'll bet they do," he said. "I'll bet they do. Let's go back up by the rest rooms and give them a call."

The Holiday Haven people did have a room for Larry, and he followed Prophet, Hazel and Little Irma  in their dusty and rusted Lincoln Town Car all the way to the front entrance of the motel.

Good folks, Larry thought, home people.  Not the kind you'd meet in Miami in a hundred years.

* * *

"What made you decide to go back north?" Hazel asked when they met in the motel restaurant for dinner.  She was as short and round as her husband, and like Prophet, she could have auditioned for a grandparent's role in a TV commercial.

"I hated Miami," Larry answered, as he cut his chicken fried steak into bite sized pieces. "I've never seen such a place for robbing and killing."

"We kind of liked Hallendale," Hazel said.  "Met some nice people there. They was from Minnesota."

"Larry had a bad time in Miami," Prophet said.  "He and his girl friend broke up."

Hazel shook her head sadly.  "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, Larry. "A handsome young fellow like you, I can't imagine."

"Larry told this girl, Angela, that he wanted to get away from the crime, but she wouldn't leave," Prophet went on.

"Did you say that, Larry?" Hazel asked.

"Pretty much.  I'd had enough of double locking everything, and looking over my shoulder every minute of the day."

"You can't run away from danger, Sweetie.  Not in this world."

"I tried to tell him that," Prophet said.  "I told him about what happened to our nephew."

Hazel nodded. "And he lives in Dubuque, Iowa" she said.  "Little city full of Catholic churches.  Been there all his life"

"Running away don't work," Prophet said.  "Moving around can be nice, but it doesn't change things."

"That's right," Hazel agreed.  "Look at us.  We found out there's no safety or security anywhere.  We worked for the same company for thirty-seven years, thought we had it made.  Got our profit sharing statement every January and figured we'd always have jobs, long as we needed them."

"So what happened?" Larry asked.

"Came to work one day and there's a lock on the gate.  Closed up. Bankrupt!  Guy that owned it cleaned out every bit of cash, including the profit sharing money.  Ran off with a woman from the Accounting Department."

"You're kidding.  He left everybody flat?"

"Skinned us all."

Larry looked from husband to wife, but saw nothing but smiles.  "What'd you do?"

"What could we do?  We sold our house, sold our other car, sold our furniture and took off for parts unknown.  We've been on the road ever since."

"And you're just traveling."

"Everywhere we can think of.  Everywhere we've never been."

"And how long will you keep going?"

"Until we run out of money," Prophet said.

"Or until we die," Hazel responded.  "Whichever comes first." They looked at each other and laughed.  Larry had never seen anything like it.

* * *

The next morning Larry went into the lobby gift-shop and found Prophet standing in front of the newspaper racks, his arms folded over his belly, and his face creased from concentration.

"I can never decide what to read anymore," the old man said.  "Local papers for places you don't live in are full of useless news, and I've never warmed up to USA Today."

"I gave up on newspapers long ago," Larry said.  "Nothing but heartbreak in any of them."

"Yes, and I'm afraid I'll have to give you some bad news today," Prophet said.

"What do you mean?"

"I saw that Cadillac and those kids who bothered you circling the parking lot when Hazel and I came down for breakfast.  They stopped beside your car, but as far as I could tell they didn't bother anything."

Larry shook his head.  "I thought I'd be rid of them by now."

"Hazel gets nervous if I push it much over fifty-five, but if you don't mind poking along, we could convoy it for the next day or so, give each other some company."

Protection from a grandmother, a crippled old man and a dustmop dog. Larry smiled.  "That'd be great," he said.  "But I don't want to put you and your wife to any trouble."

"No trouble, Son. I don't think those boys will mess with you as long as we're all together.  They're looking for something easy and uncomplicated. No witnesses"

Prophet had told the truth about his leisurely pace.  In more than five hours of driving that morning, his speed never topped fifty-three miles per hour.  It was hard to imagine that the hoodlums in the Cadillac would be satisfied with such a pace for long.

"Where would you like to have lunch?" Prophet asked when they stopped for gas at a Big Foot Store.

"I don't care.  I'd like to make it quick if I could."

"There's a picnic area in a little roadside park about six miles off the interstate.  Hazel and I've been there a couple of times, and Little Irma loves it."

"What would we do for a picnic?" Larry asked.

"I'll pick up some stuff when I pay for gas.  Don't worry about nothing. It'll be our treat."

The thought of a slow ride into the country and a leisurely meal with Prophet and Hazel held little appeal, but Larry felt obligated.  The old couple had been good to him, thoughtful and accommodating, and he didn't want to hurt their feelings.

Three exits up the road, Prophet turned off I-75  onto a two lane state highway, and at the second intersection, a gravel covered county road, he turned again. Larry was astounded.  Where were they going?  How had the old man found such a spot in the first place?

Dust rose from the rear of the Town Car and enveloped Larry and his vehicle like a blanket of fog.  Though his windows remained closed he soon had dust in his nose and his eyes.  All he could do was stay close and watch for brake lights and turn signals, so that he would know when and where to stop.

Finally, they turned left across the roadway, bumped over a narrow ditch, and pulled in behind a thin band of trees in the center of an old roadside park.  When the dust settled and the air cleared, Larry opened his door and stepped out beside a broken picnic table, the legs of which were buried in coarse wild grass grown two feet high.

Prophet stood a few feet away leaning on his cane, but Hazel had disappeared.

"What's going on," Larry asked.  "Why did you want to come here?"

"Like I told you, Larry.  We've used this place before.

"Do you really want to have lunch here?" he asked.  "Where's Hazel and your dog?"

"Little Irma's in the car, and Hazel's right behind you," Prophet said. "She's an expert with handguns and she has one aimed at the back of your head right this minute."

Larry started to turn.

"Don't move!" Hazel said sharply.  "Get your hands up high, and keep looking at Prophet."

"What is this?"

"This here is a real life hold-up, boy."

"You're going to rob me?"

"I'm afraid we're going to do a lot worse than that."

Larry staggered backward and shook his head. "What?  Why me?"

"Like that kid told you yesterday, we need what you've got."

"Those boys!  You're working with those boys?"

Prophet laughed.  "No. Those kids don't know what they're doing.  They're probably looking for trouble in Tennessee by now."

"But you saw them!"

"Guess I lied about that."

"You'd better stop talking," Hazel said.  "We have to get this done and get out of here.  Someone might drive past."

"I don't have enough to be worth killing me for," Larry said.  "For God's sake, Prophet.  Please."

"We never get a lot," Prophet said.  "A few hundred here and there, but this is the only game we've got."

"Come on, Father, get to it," Hazel said.

The old man sighed.  "She's right, Larry.  Let's go back there by the creek."  He took a short barreled revolver from his jacket pocket and waved it at a rail fence at the back of the park.   "Irma's got a shovel and we're going to dig a hole for you to lay in."

Larry's legs began shaking.  He held his hands straight out as though to push the old man away. "I trusted you people.  You seemed like my family."

Prophet shook his head. "We probably are a lot like them," Prophet said. "Except right now, they're sittin' at your home place taking it easy, and we're out here in Georgia, hunting for scraps."

"I was going home."

"You still are, boy.  No more danger where you're headed."


J. MICHAEL BLUE has published nearly 50 short stories, as well as 20 essays and articles during the past four years. His short fiction has won awards in a dozen fiction contests. J. Michael's first novel, Justified Crimes is now available from Blue Murder Press. He can be reached at www.jmblue.com.

Copyright (c) 2000 J. Michael Blue