Puget Chase

“I came out of the IGA with some bottled Budweiser, a few bottles of Chardonnay, Riesling, and Gewürztraminer and a couple packs of Marlboros for you; doggone I wish you’d would quit smoking.
Anyway, I wasn’t two steps out of the building when I heard this horrible scream to my left. I jerked my head and saw this gorgeous little brunette screaming, running into the woods, arms flailing, feet slipping, running as best she could as she tried with all her might to catch the shadow of a giant man (or at least it seemed) running away from her heading deep into the woods, carrying her son.
What could I do? Of course I dropped my shit and hauled ass.
I was just getting to the edge of the lot when I passed her as he disappeared down a ravine. As I got there, I looked down, saw he went left, and bolted after him. I took a hard cut and then promptly busted my ass as I toppled head over heels straight down tumbling, rolling, sliding forty yards the wrong way.
I finally stopped and looked up to see him topping the next hill. Picking myself up as fast as I could, I found high gear and started closing the distance fast. He was large and powerful-looking but wasn’t moving as fast as I was. I mean Jesus the guy had a kid to carry too. He was about 400 hundred yards in front of me when he suddenly stopped, set down the crying boy, and sat on a fallen spruce.
He hadn’t looked back once…odd I thought. I slowed and began a creeping pace to make as little noise as possible so not to tip him off that I was onto him. He seemed to be trying to comfort the crying boy.
I was in the initial stage of lunging onto his back when he turned and swatted me aside like a rag doll. Was it instinct or just pure dumb luck? Either way, I crashed into a Douglas fir, hitting my shoulder hard.
Pain instantly coursed through my entire right side, immediately followed with numbness. Rendering my right arm as good as useless, wincing in pain, I bent over and saw an equalizer at my feet, so I reached down and grasped the small boulder laying there.
The boy was bawling now, crying for his mom.
The large man drew to his full height, looking down at me and just gave me this dumb look. I had the softball size rock in my left hand; I tossed it to my right (cringed) and back again and began just tossing it back and forth when I started wondering if I really could do anything at all to free the boy with my arm like this.
Then, out of nowhere, the big guy said to me…“I can’t get him to stop crying. Would you help me, please?”
“What do you expect,” I shouted. “You dumbass. You scared the little guy half to death!” Then I dropped the rock and went up to the boy, leaned over and looked in his eyes. I saw a trembling scared handsome little kid of about 8 or 9 years old I’d guess.
Just then I heard his mom screaming, I turned to see her about 200 yards off. She was finally catching up to us. She scooped the lad up into a tight hug. So tight I thought she might squeeze the air out of him.
Then the kicking started. She was lashing out, kicking the big man all over, like a martial artist would. It was a sight to see as this seemingly 5’2” woman taking on what appeared to be a man about 6’9”.
He just let her, didn’t even try to protect himself but was whimpering like a child. Finally, her left foot caught him in the balls, so as he doubled over, she landed one on his neck right where it meets his jaw bone, and he dropped cold, unconscious.
I had to stop her as she continued kicking him as he lay there, all the while never letting go of her son. Wow, this woman sure had spunk.
By this time a county deputy showed up, examined the big man, and placed cuffs on him as he started to stir awake.
The deputy introduced himself as Jason Nashon, a local Native American who lived here all his 34 years, except for a stint with the marines in Afghanistan.
The big man he said is Leonard Little, a 4-time purple heart decorated war hero, and according to Jason, this was entirely a mystery because Leon (what he went by since first grade) he said had never done anything like this as long as he had known him. This, by the way, was his entire life. These two grew up buddies, went through kindergarten to 12th together, sports, scouting, then singed up in the corp. under the buddy plan, the whole shebang.
The woman’s name was Deirdre Trumpet, and it turned out she had just moved to Poulsbo three days ago from Westchester County, New York.
She was a fashion designer of some notoriety on the 7th avenue fashion district in Manhattan before 9/11 hit her like a ton of bricks. Hell, it hit us all like a brick, but she had lost her best friend and partner. Her husband Jim was a NYFD and one that gave his life after saving 23 others before being buried alive in the rubble.
She was pregnant with little Jimmy at the time but didn’t know it. Jim died never even knowing she was pregnant, a shame because they had been trying to have a child for almost five years.
Little Jimmy was her whole life. She cherished that boy more than anything. He was all she had left of her Jim.
As we were coming out of the woods, we ran into a news team from King 5 TV out of Seattle who had been in the area covering a birthday. Mrs. Sylvia Compton had turned 107 years old today, so the station was doing a human interest story on her.
A big crowd had gathered as the lookie-loos tried to get the gist of what was happening. The cameras from the news crew were rolling as Deputy Nashon led a docile and subdued Leon from the woods over to the cruiser. He had placed a jacket over Leon’s head to hide his friend’s identity.
Deirdre was barely able to carry on any kind of a conversation. It was as if she was on drugs, like she was loopy from a sedative. I assumed it to be shock, but she continued to cling too little Jimmy. She refused to speak to anyone other than Jason and myself and very little at that, so Anna Packard the newscaster turned her focus to me.
I was picking up my broken beer, wine, and was wiping off the smokes when the camera turned to me. Anna said with microphone in hand, “Sir, could you tell us what happened here? I’m told you are a hero here today. What can you tell us?”
I dropped the broken beers into the trashcan, wiped down Sheila’s Marlboros again, turned to Miss Packard, and said,
“Well Mam, first off, I’m no hero."