Novel Yancy

last chapter

Last Chapter





Yancy continued to work in the mountains as a a criminal investigator. He never let go of the fantasy of finding those who left him an orphan. He went over the possibilities that might happen when he finds the men. Would he be able to contain himself and bring them in for trail, or would he loose control and become the executioner?





Many of his nights were spent in torture. Sleep was not his friend. When he closed his eyes to sleep, he knew that it was going to be another night re-living the fire as a child. He never could stop the smelled of smoke, felt the heat, and worst of all he could hear his family plea screaming in pain from visiting him as he tried to rest. In forty two years, Yancy had not slept without re-living the night that his parents and sister died.





Though Yancy had always been healthy, he was more fatigued than he should be. Everyone knew when Yancy was in the area due to the continuous coughing. He would be fifty two in just a mere three weeks. He was not too worried about his health. Everyone in his family lived to be in their eighties and nineties. He was sure that he too had many years yet to live.





Yancy stares at the page. He could not believe what he was reading. There in a letter from his brother was the names of the men that had started the fire so many years ago. Was this going to be closure to the pain that he has felt through out his life?





“Brother,





I was contacted Joshua Timings. He was sixteen when our house had burned down. He said that he was friends with Theodore Red and Timothy King. They were his best friends, and that they had bragged to him that they had killed an 'Indian Lover with his squaw.'





Timothy King had voiced concern that two of half breeds had survived. The pair was afraid that the children may be able to turn him in. So his family moved south. He lived in Florida until three years ago. Then when he thought that no one knew who started the fire, he moved back home. Joshua did not know whatever happened to Theodore Red.





I knew that you would want to know this. I plan to visit with you before this year ends.





Yours truly,





Biziil,”


Yancy felt those deep angry feelings bubble up inside deeper than ever. He just knew that it would not be a social-able reunion when he found Red and Timings. He felt the same way as he did in the hospital when his uncle told him about his family.





“Sir,” the cashier/postal worker caught his attention. “Your total is $3.15.”





Yancy looked at the man behind the counter. “I'm sorry. I must have drifted away for a minute.” He picked up the brown bag of cough medication, smiles, and walks out the door.





He doesn't get five feet from the door, and he had a episode of coughing. Pull the handkerchief from his face, he noticed that it was covered with blood. He wiped is lips, and turns up a bottle of the medicine. It only helped for a few minutes. He knows that he needed to see a doctor for his condition, but everyone in his family lived a very long life. Surely this would pass.





Back at his office, Yance searched all the evidence, files, and storage boxes that he had kept updated about the fire. Month after month and year after year, Yancy had gathered every piece of gossip, every news article, and noted any other similar crimes. He had collected anything that would lead him to the ones who had killed his family someday. He wanted to find anything that would lead to the where-a-bouts of Red or Timings.





There on one age stained page of a notebook, was the address of trio of friends. Joshua Timings, Timothy King, and Theodore Red was three suspected teenagers who lived three miles up the street from the Lancer family.





George had arrested Theodore Red's father for moon-shinning. Though it was suspected that the one or all the boys burned the house down for revenge. It had not been proven. It was not a case of the highest priority. If George and his family were all white, the killers would have carried a reward on their heads.





Theodore Red lived at Stone Lane two miles from Yancy's old house. Joshua Timings was his neighbor. Timothy King would drift form from barn to barn sleeping. He had left his home after his father forcefully thrown the boy out of his parents house for setting fire to the barn while smoking.





After he had spent the evening reviewing every stained item in the boxes, he retired to sleep. He dreamed of family pictures with burnt sides piling over his head. Faces of the three young men begging for their lives as Yancy brutally killed them. One by one, he found each boy. He burned Timothy King on a wooden stake. Theodore Red tries to run, but this was Yancy's dream. Here there was no place for him to run. He was soon melted into a puddle of melted flesh by the heat. The next day he would find himself face to face with his family's killers.





Morning came slowly. He spent most of the night hours awake thinking about the pain he would inflict on those who caused all the pain that he had ever felt.





Though it was now a different time than when he grew up and computers were used, Yancy worked without one in a private office in his home. He hung his “be back” sign, and went the direction of Stone Lane.





The street had grown since the fire. There were few of the house that had once stood. Most of the buildings were businesses and parking lots. However, at the street changed very little near the dead end. There he found old homes that seemed to be forgotten from the past.





The last home was different than it had been. There where the little one story house once stood was a large elegant two story brick home. The lawn was well groomed Kentucky Blue Grass. Flowers lined the walk way. He noticed a child's swing set in the side yard. Yancy walked onto the large porch and rang the door bell. When all the wind-chimes surrounding the porch moved at once, he was not sure if the door bell rang. He pressed the button again.





A little girl who looked to be about six or seven answered the door. Stared up at Yancy with the biggest blue eyes he had ever seen. She had strings of blond hair waving from her braids. “Emma!” her mother scolds. “You do not answer the door!” She ushers Emma back through the house.





The woman stood behind the screened door as she asked Yancy about his reason for the visit.





“I grew up with Theodore Red, and I seemed to remember that he used to live at this address.” He studied the woman's expression. “I have not seen him since grade school, and I wanted to catch up with old friends.”





She informed him that her grandfather Theodore Red was in the nursing home about five miles away from where they were. She seemed to be happy that someone form her grandfather's past came to find him. She did not know, however, the truth of why Yancy came.





Yancy turns to walk off the porch. He then turns right back around. “Have you ever heard your grandfather talk about Timothy King. They used to be best friends?”





“Yes,” She said. “He is Uncle Timmy to me. He and Granddad used to hang out all the time. Timmy died three years ago. He is buried in the old grave yard at the end of town. It is sad really, he didn't have anyone to bury him anywhere else.” She hands Yancy a piece of paper with her grandfather's address and room number.








Yancy stood in front of the reception desk at the nursing home. The air smelled like body odor and rubbing alcohol. It seemed to him that he had been noticed by everyone except the staff. One after another the residents came up to him. Some wanted a cigarette to smoke. Others asked for food. There were a few who just mumbled under their breath as they passed him.





“May I help you?” The nurse asked almost as if he was interrupting her from the television program playing in the back ground of the reception area.





“Yes, I am looking for Theodore Red.” Yancy asked expecting her to walk him back to his room. Instead she turns her chair back to the direction of the programing playing in the background.





“He is in room 333 at the end of the hall.” She said as she turned.





“Thank you,” Yancy replies. She gave no reply.





Yancy walked past room after room. The elderly sat like zombies in front of their windows, radios, and televisions. Not one of them had laughed. Not one of them looked up to see who passed the room. Not one seemed to care what happened around them.





Finally the Room 333 was just one door down. “This is it.” Yancy thought. He walked into the room. There in the shadow of the window, sat a shadow of a little shriveled up old man.





Yancy felt the anger subside. He looked at the little man that sat in a wheelchair.





“Theodore?” Yancy asks.





“What?” he answers as he turned toward Yancy. “Daddy, why am I here?” Theodore asked as he look up at his visitor. Yancy looked back into the man's eyes. They were no longer the eyes of a bigot Indian hating teenager. They were the eyes of an innocent child much like those he remembered in the face of his baby sister. Yancy could not tell the man who he was. He started to leave the room with business undone.





Theodore reached out and took Yancy by the arm. He whispered, “I'm so sorry.”





Yancy turned around. Did Theodore remember the fire? Had he remembered his father George? “What?”





“I'm sorry, Daddy.” He looks up pleading. “Can I go home?” Yancy released his arm from the old man's grip. Yancy knew that this was not the true man that killed his family. The real Theodore had died years ago.





Yancy reached the exit when he began to cough again. This time the coughing did not stop. He became dizzy, and reached up to catch the railing in the hall. Yancy saw the nurses ran toward him as he fell to the floor. Yancy looses consciousness.





When Yancy woke up, he was in a hospital room. His mouth was covered with an oxygen mask, and IV bag dangled from a rod above him.





“Mister Lancer,” the nurse speaks to him. “The doctor is here and wants to speak to you.”





“Mr. Lancer,” Doctor Hill walks to his bedside. “You have Tuberculous. You have had this condition for some time.” He looks down at the x ray. “I could have helped you if you had come in earlier, but...”





“Where could I have gotten this from?” Yancy still not sure he believes what the doctor is telling him.





“ I suspect that you got it from helping with the sick two years ago. Some one in the camp. Did not have Pneumonia, they had must have had Tuberculous. You contracted it from caring for him/her.” Doctor informed him.





“We will try to make you comfortable, but you only have a couple of days. If you had come when the cough first started, you would have had about a year.” The doctor did not like the words that had to come from his own lips. He had known Yancy since he was a teenager getting burn scar treatments, and this is the only time that he had seen Yancy look weak.





Yancy looks at the doctor, “ There is an address here on this paper, could you contact him? He is my brother. We have not seen each other since we were both here as children.”





“I may not be able to get word to him in time.” The Doctor Hill said.





Yancy smiled, “I don't plan on going any where until I see my brother.”





Dr. Hill smiled, “ I believe you, Yancy. You are a stubborn man.”





When the doctor left the room, the door opened again. Sammy was standing at the bedside.





“I knew that you are an old man.” He jokes.





It was nice to see Sammy all grown up. Yancy had become a house guest in his house so that he could help keep things going for Sammy and his mother. Today it seemed a little different. Sammy seemed more grown up than he was just yesterday..





“Don't joke,” Yancy laughs. “You wont always be twenty.”





Sammy sits in a chair by the bed. “So what's up with you taking a vacation here at the hospital? Your not dying are you?” He laughed knowing that all Yancy's family lived to an old age.





Yancy searched his mind for an answer any answer except the truth. “You don't think that you can get rid of me that easy do you?”





The two men laughed. They sit still not saying anything. Both men knowing that they were family by choice not by blood. Yancy slowly allows the pain medicine take to sleep.





The nurse walked in just as Sammy was about to fall asleep from pure boredom.





“Hello” the blond nurse with Nancy RN on her name tage.





“Hi.” Sammy answered.





“How is Uncle Yancy doing?” he asked thinking that she would happily tell him that Yancy would only need a couple days in the hospital to rest.





“I can not tell you anything. The doctor has to talk to family when he returns tomorrow.” She replied as she pulled the blanket onto Yancy's chest.





“What do you know about Yancy?” Sammy asked hoping for a reason to introduce anyone to who Uncle Yancy really was.





“Not much.” She replies. “He is a lawman. An investigator, I think. He told me about being burned as a child. That is about it.”





Sammy began to whisper the story of Yancy to Nancy. “ I first met him when he came to tell mother that Poppa had died a hero with the bullet of a robber in his heart. Poppa had tried to stop a robbery and was shot. A few days later Yancy came to visit. He asked mother if she would rent out the extra room.” Sammy looked at sleeping Yancy sleeping sound. “He moved in, turned our utilities on, and we have not gone to bed hungry since. He said that he had promised my father that he would take care of me and mom. That he did. First he cared for me like his son. Then we became friends. Now we are partners in the same Criminal Investigation team. I would be nothing bu a thief trying to feed Mom and myself if Yancy did not walk into our lives.”





Nancy replies, “The two of you were lucky to find each other. I think that you became his only family, too.” She said as she left the room.





Sammy too fell asleep until visiting hours were over, and he had to leave.





As the doctor walked out of the room, Biziil walked in. Tears ran down the cheeks of the two proud men. Biziil took his brother's hand. “I love you, brother.”





Yancy was tired and wanted to go to sleep. “I love you too, brother.” Then he looks ahead. “Mother is coming.” He reaches out his other hand.





“Yancy, go to her.” Biziil said with tears flowing in sheets down his eyes now. “She has waited far too long for you.”





With those words, Yancy took one more deep gargling breath. His eyes widened and he fell into the eternal rest.





The air grows cold. Yancy's skin pimples with bumps from the change of temperature. He feels a presence of someone he knew. His chest hurt with every breath. He could feel his lungs tighten. Biziil's voice seemed to be far off in the distance.





Yancy wondered why the room was getting so bright. It did not seem that he was in a hospital room any more. An image was coming into view. “Mother?” he asks feeling less and less pain. He smelled her perfume. It had been so long since he had felt so calm.





“My Son,” The smile was one of her special ones. One that she carried when she would tell him a bed time story. “It is time to come home. I have waited so long for you.”





She takes hold of his hand. He looks down at it. The burns were all gone. It was as smooth as it was before the fire. So was Cheona. She had burned to death in the flames, but she had no scars. She looked the same as the night that she told the last goodnight story to her children. Her hair hanging down waving over her shoulders, but she was dressed in a shinning white skin of the albino wolf. Flawless feathers trimming the collar. He had never seen his mother dressed in such fine skins. He could not remember seeing his mother in any skins except when she visited her tribe.





Yancy walked out of the room with his mother, but he looked behind him. There on the bed was the burned and scared version of himself. “What is going on? How can I be in two different places?”





“That was the you who was filled anger and confusion.” She pulled at his hand gently. “We have to go.”





Biziil wiped tears from his eyes. The machines were beeping loudly when the nurses asked him to leave. Pushing Biziil and Sammy to out the door as they tried to save Yancy's life.





“Biziil,” It hurt to see his brother cry again. He could still hear his screams from the flames. He was screaming for his mother over and over. Yancy could not help him then, but he wanted to this time.“Biziil. I am here.”





“Yancy, Biziil can not hear you.” Cheona said. She continued to hold Yancy's hand, but looked lovingly at her son Biziil. Yancy wonder if she was seeing him as he as a grown man, or did she see him as her young son. “I will return to get him in about five years. He still has business on the Earth.”





Yancy and Cheona walked through the wall. “There were no way this could be happening.” Yancy thought. Then he looked beyond the light. He saw his father dressed in the head dress that the Cherokee used in celebrations. He was not a white man or and Indian. He was spirit shinning bright between the two worlds. George had become a guide. A guide that fought hatred that he had left the natural world, as he did in his life.





The air became warmer. Yancy could no longer see Biziil or the hospital room. He did not hear the machines. He felt no human pain or emotion. He only felt the calmness that only freedom could give.

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