June 20th- Angels Among Us by Spencer

PART ONE:  Somewhere in Quảng Trị Province, March 1972

The night surrounded Tommy Collins like a body bag, making it hard to breathe. In his mind, the rustling of the trees sounded eerily like a zipper closing up over his ears. Was it a premonition?  The Sergeant said they’d be heading up river in the morning. Straight into enemy territory.

“You gotta light?” Tommy asked his buddy lying in the next cot.

“What for? You don’t smoke,” Dave Starsky replied.

It was true. He promised his ma he wouldn’t. He promised her a lot of things. That he’d work hard in school. That he wouldn’t run off to elope with Jenny and deny her the joy of her son’s wedding. That he’d come back from Vietnam alive.

Up until now he’d kept his promises.  But that last was one he didn’t know if he’d be able to keep.  If he did manage it somehow, he figured his ma would forgive him for the cigarettes. He needed something to relax him, something to focus on other than the heat and the darkness and the fear.

“It can’t hurt now,” Tommy stated, the huskiness in his voice betraying him.

Dave shook his head but it was several minutes before he spoke again. “It’s gonna be okay.”

His voice was so quiet it might just have been a thought in Tommy’s head. Except that Tom’s were running in the complete opposite direction. But Dave’s words brought Tom’s racing thoughts to a halt.

“I’m scared.” There. He’d said it. He’d pointed out the elephant in the room. Or rather, in the tent. Spray painted its enormous hide with neon fucking orange. A beacon the enemy might spot for miles.

Tommy’s throat burned. The rations he’d eaten a hour ago threatened to come up.

What would Jenny think?  Or his ma?  Maybe it was like they’d said. Tommy Collins was nothing but a coward.  The memory of how he’d told everyone his black eye was from falling off his bike and not from Billy Peterson’s fist hounded him.  He’d avoided that fist the remainder of seventh grade by handing over his lunch money until the day Billy moved away.  The pattern of avoidance that had followed him the rest of his nineteen years.

Maybe if his father hadn’t left he could have shown him how to be a man.

“You’re not alone, you know,” Dave said.

Yeah, sure. Tom’s rational mind told him everyone was scared to some degree. You had to be looney not to be. But Dave meant something else, too. You’re not alone.  Somehow that eased the choking in his throat, the pressure in his chest. Because he knew he wasn’t.

That no matter what, Dave would be with him every step of the way. The way he’d been ever since boot camp. Helping him study the gibberish code book. Challenging him with just one more push up. Saying something crazy to make him laugh when Tommy felt the sting of tears.  He’d helped him be a stronger man, a better person.

“It’s gonna be okay.  No matter what happens, Tom.  It’ll all be okay in the end.”

How Dave could be so certain, he didn’t know.  Maybe it was his New York cockiness.  His almost childlike optimism.  But in that moment Tom believed he, too, could handle whatever came next.  Even if he was scared.  Maybe that’s what made a man.

“Well done, David,” Michael congratulated him.

High praise, coming from the Archangel himself, but Dave had other things on his mind. “Just as long as Tom gets back to his ma.  That he gets to marry Jenny.  Have a handful a’ kids who never have to wonder who they are.”

“There are no guarantees. You know that.”

“Then what am I here for?” The question held an edge of disrespect that Dave only partially regretted.

“You know the answer to that. To be a friend to those who need it most. To lend a helping hand. Or just to give a comforting word or touch on a long, dark night.”

David knew.  He knew that sometimes it was strongest of men who had the most fragile souls.  But it was that contradictory combination that made them so exceptional.  The ones who had the most to offer this crazy world. 

The leaves lifted on the trees like a sigh.

“You sound tired,” Michael said.

“You’re damn right. I’m tired of all the loneliness here. The confusion. The good men turned inside out.”

“I don’t blame you.  But I have to hand it to you.  You’ve never backed down from even the most difficult cases. But you can’t quit now. You’re one of our best.  Besides, we have a special assignment for you.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“You’ll understand soon enough.”

PART TWO:  Bay City, May 1979

Hutch longed to have frozen that moment in time.  Stop the momentum of the little plastic ball as it flew back and forth across the table.  Defy the laws of physics to suspend the white orb in the air, and have him and Starsky stay in that moment forever.  Happy. Carefree.  But he didn’t have the power.

Just like he lacked the ability to stop the high-powered bullets from entering his partner’s chest, piercing multiple organs, inflicting massive damage . . .

“Starsky, get down!”  The words echoed in his head.  Repeating over and over to mock him, to remind him of how useless he was.  Just when his life was starting to make sense, had everything they’d been through together been for nothing?

Hutch touched his forehead to the glass window that separated him from Starsky.  It was cool and hard against his burning skin.  A sheet of ice.  He willed it to melt so that he might flow into Starsky’s room like a stream.  Poor himself into his partner’s body and replenish the blood he had lost.  Breathe the breath of life back into his shredded lungs.

They say your life passes before your eyes in the moments before death.  If Starsky was the one who was dying, then why, Hutch wondered, was he the one reliving it all?  Had he and Starsky become so enmeshed over the years that the line dividing them had blurred like a sidewalk drawing in the rain?  Washing them one into the other so that it was impossible to see where one ended and the other began?

Except that Hutch was painfully alive while Starsky balanced on the edge of death.

Hutch had seen Starsky close to death before. On a rainy night in an Italian restaurant, Hutch had awaited the takedown of a mob boss while Starsky bled out in a back room, a bullet in his back. The situation had looked hopeless.

Hutch figured it would take a miracle to get them out alive. But Starsky had shown him miracles can happen.  Hadn’t Starsky saved him from a heroin free fall a few weeks earlier?  Now it was Hutch’s turn.  He’d be damned if he’d do any less for Starsky.

Hutch didn’t know where he’d gotten the nerve, but suddenly there it was — shooting like lightning bolts from the finger he’d pointed at the gunmen.  He’d stunned them no less than he’d stunned himself.  Then, as the minutes to midnight ticked down, Hutch pulled the trigger of an old gun that could just as easily have exploded in his hand as stop the mobsters, a prayer on his lips.

Amazingly, it all came together.  Hutch had saved them all.

Over the years they had taken turns saving each other.  From women who did them wrong, from thugs who wished them harm, and even from themselves.

There was the time Hutch had saved Starsky from a deadly poison with mere minutes to spare.  Once, he’d rescued him by deducing that a killer they’d thought was a man was actually a disturbed woman’s alter-ego.  He’d even chased down a disfigured actor to find Starsky, bloodied and groggy but still alive, in an alley.  When Starsky had been kidnapped by cultists, Hutch had entered into their leader’s darkest dreams to prove himself Starsky’s knight-errant.

Hutch always seemed to be his coolest, his bravest, when Starsky needed him most.  Or was it the reverse?

He remembered how Starsky had held him for hours while heroin burned through his veins like fire, until Starsky’s touch became more powerful than the drug.  How Starsky had found him trapped under a car — cooked by the sun, mocked by the moon, and haunted by the thought that he might die on that hillside alone.  But all the while, in the back of his mind he knew Starsky wouldn’t let him.  So he’d held on until Starsky came through.

Despite a smoking gun and a priceless diamond, Starsky had believed in Hutch enough to know that he hadn’t killed his ex-wife. And he’d sacrificed himself to prove it. Then came Starsky’s forgiveness for the ultimate betrayal — sleeping with a woman Starsky thought he loved.  It was as if Starsky was able to follow Hutch’s twisted logic, his vicarious way of needing to get even closer than they already were.  Flesh to flesh.  Soul to soul.

Who was stronger than whom?  Who needed the other more?  That night, they’d gone home to figure it out together.

Hutch watched and waited and remembered.  And thought of another glass window with something written across it in red.  Starsk.  Just one word held infinite meanings.  In the moment he’d opened his eyes and saw it, he had believed he could overcome anything.

When he was able, Hutch approached Starsky’s bed like one would an apparition, fearful and disbelieving.  That pale, inert form hooked up to so many tubes and wires scarcely resembled his vibrant partner.  Hutch longed to reach out and touch him the way he had a thousand times before. Afraid that if he did, his hand would pass through flesh into nothingness.

Life without Starsky was unimaginable. Hutch regarded the medical apparatus that held him earthbound with awe. How long could the machines that flickered and hummed hold him to this world?   As long as Starsky was still alive, Hutch figured there was one thing left he had to do.

He strode away to wash his face and grab his gun.

“Where’s he going?” David asked.  Rather than becoming hardened to his feelings of worry and concern over the years, he now seemed more affected by them.

“He’s going to get justice for you,” the Archangel Michael said.

“He can’t do it alone.  He needs me.”

“Does he?”

A thousand years ticked by.  Or perhaps just a millisecond.  The space of time between one heartbeat and then next.

“No, he doesn’t,” David realized.  “He only thinks he does.  You were right.  This one is special.  He’s been worth. . . everything.” 

“I’m glad you agree.  This world is a complicated place.  Even we don’t know all its mysteries,” Michael reminded him.  “Coal turns into diamonds when pressed down long and hard enough.  Atoms collapsing in on themselves become stars.”

“You got that right.  The man practically radiates.” 

“He does, at that.”

This thing called a human being is so fragile, Starsky mused.  Delicate tissues stretched over a framework of bone.  A heart that struggles for each beat deep within.  No one knows precisely what starts it, or what keeps it going.

“I guess my time is up now,” he said to Michael.  “Just tell me, does he do it?  Does he find who wants us dead?  Does he bring them down?  Will he be safe?”

“David . . .”

“I know, I know.  There are no guarantees.  But I was hoping just this once . . .”

“Humans are marvelous creatures, David, but you’ve seen how frail they can be.  Physicians might be able to heal a broken body but something more is needed to heal a broken spirit.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” 

“Over the years, you’ve given so much to so many.” 

“That must be why I feel so empty right now.  Those goons shot me up pretty good.  Turned my insides into hamburger.  But that’s not what hurts the most.  It’s something deeper than that.”

“You’ve carried the heartache of many humans, but have yet to experience their love.  Until now, you’ve only been able to skim its surface.  The full measure of it fills a body up to overflowing.  It eclipses everything else in life, no matter how painful.”

“‘S okay.  What I had was enough.  It was enough with Hutch.  If I got anymore of him, I don’t know that my soul could take it.”

PART THREE

Power comes in many forms. In physical strength, in money, in authority. In love that makes the impossible possible.

Hutch tracked down the man who’d ordered the hit on them, only to find that he was one of the most powerful men in the country.  James Gunther.  Someone who could hold the government in his hands.  At one time, Hutch might have been intimidated by that kind of power.  But not anymore.  He would go after him.

Then came a phone call from the hospital and the words, “Hutch, you better get down here.”  Gunther would get his comeuppance, but for now he could wait.  Hutch had another more important mission.

“You wanted to quit once, do you remember?” the Archangel said. “I didn’t blame you, but I told you you had a special assignment.” 

“Yes, I remember.”

“After all you’ve been through, all you’ve given, you deserved something special. A chance to feel what you have only just touched. David, haven’t you guessed yet?  You weren’t just sent for Hutch–“

Steps raced down a hallway.  A door pushed open wide.

“–Hutch was sent for you.” 

A heart brought back to life.

FIN