Reflections From a Hazel Eye

Mark Hooper Epting



Mark Hooper Epting is a former lawyer, former lots

of things, whose singular claim to fame is that he

played in �śMother McRee’s Uptown Jug Stompers”, but

wisely quit before they went on to become The Grateful

Dead. He went to Vietnam instead, where he was

loved by all even though his helicopter(s) managed to

get shot out of the sky five times before he finally

managed to limp home. As you can see, solid career

moves have always been his strong suit, and now he

hopes to make disgusting amounts of money writing

drivel, and surrounding himself with scores of

nubile, underage women. You can help. Contact him

at [e-mail].

©Copyright 2001

Mark Hooper Epting





She appears below me every morning, dressed in her old

housecoat, standing next to the mailbox, gazing down the hill,

sometimes for hours at a time. It matters little the time of year, for

she will be there without fail on those mornings when the harsh

summer sun beats a relentless tattoo through all who dare stand in

its path, as well as those mid- winter days when a frigid northwest

rain fairly cuts a channel of pain straight to the bone.

No matter.

She is always there.

Waiting.

I do not know this from constant personal observation, for I am

not there to see her every day.

I have a life, after all.

But I know she appears just the same, for I truly understand that

she has little choice.

She awaits the return of her thirteen-year-old daughter, her

beloved last-born child who was cruelly snatched away by an act so

monstrous that I am loathe to discuss it. Yet discuss it I must, and in

that respect I probably have no more choice in the matter than she

does.

I have a daughter too.

My study overlooks the lonely place where she always stands,

and I’m sure her eyes have a far-away look as she scans the horizon

for that golden moment in time that is never going to come.

I approached her for the first time, several years ago. I thought

maybe there was something I could do, some kind of Christian act

that would ease those endless cascades of sorrow, if only for a few

precious moments. We have a summer home up in the Ochocos, a

few miles out of Prineville. It is a quiet place, and in the early

mornings the mule deer come down to gently lap water from the

creek and the silence is so profound that even the occasional

chatter of a troublesome squirrel seems somehow out of place.

I offered it to her and her husband. Just a place to get away for a

few days, a chance to escape the crushing burden of a memory too

horrible to be real.

�śThanks Mac,” she said. �śBut what would I do if my daughter

returned and I wasn’t here?”

I didn’t know what to say. What would she do? Slip finally off that

precarious slope and into the fires of unconditional madness?

There was a burn last night on a lot that is just up-slope from me,

and the air is still sharp with the scent of incense cedar. I want to

draw the smell in, let it take me away so I walk through the glass

door that connects my workplace to the second floor balcony.

I wave to my neighbor but I know she does not see me. She is

the kind of person who would never fail to wave back.

A thought struck me the last time I observed her like this. In all

these years, even though the early morning mail delivery would

always be there by the time she arrived, I have never seen her take

it inside. Her husband invariably picks it up when he gets home

from his job as a shift foreman at a local aluminum plant.

The crime was a loathsome one as I have already mentioned.

Three young men snatched her virginal, sweet daughter as she and

a playmate were walking down a lonely country road. According to

one of these cretins in a later confession, they began to rape her in

the back seat of their car within seconds of the abduction. All three

tried her only partially matured body multiple times over the next

few days-showing little mercy and even less humanity-and when

they grew tired of her, one of them simply slit her throat.

They discarded her sad little form in a burning barrel, at a

campground deep in the Olympic National forest. They discarded it

like so much unwanted trash.

I was a detective in the Farmington County Sheriff’s Office then-

sixteen years served out of my pension-vesting, twenty-and once

the case was finally concluded, I simply quit. There would be no

pension, and I flat-out didn’t care. I had reached my lifetime quota

of dealing with the human detritus left behind by an ever-increasing

army of psychopaths, and I knew that even a single day more might

push me into a strange and terrible land from which I would

probably never return.

This was all a long time ago-seven excruciating years, and I can

still recall the three suspects when they were brought in for

questioning several weeks after the little girl’s body was found.

By that time, there were four more victims added to the list

I had the misfortune of doing the initial interview on one Jerry

Bob Sanders, a miserable piece of white-trash dogshit who was also

far and away the most beautiful man I had ever seen. There were

movie stars who would kill to look like he did. Strong, muscular

body. Thick black hair, high cheekbones, an almost feminine mouth.

Impossibly white, even teeth. And the cruelest, sharpest hazel eyes

there could possibly be. He was one of those people who knew the

effect he had on other humans, and he took every chance possible

to exploit it.

�śYou a bone-smoker, Lieutenant? I can usually spot �Śem a mile

away.”

He had a smug, self-assured look on his face, and, before I even

knew what was happening, somebody’s right fist collided with his

mouth and he was suddenly spitting out several of those previously

perfect teeth.

The fist was, of course, mine.

In a third of a second, he was only a fraction as handsome as

he’d been a moment before.

�śThose other two cretins are already giving it up, Elvis,” I told

him. �śTop man on the shitheap might not take the gurney ride

down at OSP.”

�śOooh. I’m shakin in my boots here.”

�śI don’t need you, Jerry Bob. Your confession would be the icing

that ruins the cake.”

He smiled at this, a bloody, missing-tooth smile.

�śYou’re stand-up, man, lieutenant. I mean for a queer. I like you.”

�śWell you’re a bag of guts,” I replied. �śAnd I don’t like you.”

He managed to maintain his smile, and what happened next took

me totally by surprise.

�śI’m gonna give you the skinny on how we did that little girl, Yo.

Dying don’t scare me.”

My job required...No. It demanded that I listen to him, even as

something inside was telling me this was a story I should never

hear, a story that no one with an ounce of humanity should ever

hear.

He knew that, and I know it gave him immense pleasure.

But then I’ve already explained what it was he said, what it was

those monsters did to that helpless child.

It does not bear repeating here.

When he was through with his vile tale, for the second time in

my 16-year career I hit a custodial suspect. This time I broke his

nose and when he was finally led away, he was laughing, a

seemingly uncontrollable, mocking laugh that, even now, haunts my

dreams on those nights when my subconscious mind taps into some

awful dreamscape.

And because we ultimately had them cold on a whole string of

murders, there never was a trial. And that confession never saw the

proverbial light of day.

My neighbor asked me about it during the time I worked the

case. She wanted to be reassured that her daughter had not suffered

too much. She deserved to never know the whole truth, so I lied to

her.

You see, she had some reason to hope, for shortly before they’d

slit her child’s throat, they had allowed her a call from a rural pay

phone. A call where she’d told her distraught mother that she was

okay. That she was not being mistreated.

And all the while they knew she was going to be dead within

hours, but not before they had the last of their sick fun.

I never knew Carlene, for I moved next door to her parents some

time later, and quite by accident.

But I know for a fact that she was a special child, a terror-stricken

young girl who surely knew the deadly horrors the future held for

her-but wanted a last chance to reassure her equally terror-stricken

mother that everything would be okay.

I gave up on God the day I resigned from the force. Truth be

told, I think they were glad to see me go. But then, when I think

about it, maybe that isn’t entirely true. Maybe I lost my faith the day

I learned that Jerry Bob Sanders had been assaulted by three

inmates in the license plate shop, and had had one eye removed

and an ear cut off-before he was set on fire. I figured if there

really was a God, He would have made sure the same fate had

come to the other two as well.

By the time my own daughter disappeared, my neighbor and I

had become close friends. Or as close as two people who shared

what we did were likely to get.

�śWhat’s happened with your Georgia isn’t likely the same as what

might’ve happened to my Carlene,” she told me one morning

recently as I stood watch beside her. It was one of those mornings

in the early spring when western Oregon often becomes a paradise

on earth. The heady smell of fresh pine wafted on a light breeze,

and the sky was a pewter blue that I swear you can’t find anywhere

else.

This was as close as she ever came to an admission of what had

happened to her daughter. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew

my personal fear concerning my own daughter’s fate was as

palpable as a brick chimney.

�śYou do believe that, don’t you Mac?” she continued in response

to my silence.

�śYes,” I finally said. �śI can’t stand to believe the alternative.”

�śIt’s not your fault, you know. Young people today, they can get

pretty headstrong. She’ll be back. When the time is right, she’ll be

back.”

Sure, I thought. Unless she blunders into a piece of shit like the

ones that stole your little girl. You see, that was the legacy we were

both stuck with. Our souls were forever seared with the

knowledge-not the �Śfive-o-clock news’ kind that most people have,

but instead the unshakeable variety that comes from bitter personal

experience-that the world was indeed an ugly and dreary place.

My neighbor knew what had later happened in my family, knew

how the cancer had torn through my wife like a runaway train until

it finally, mercifully, took her away.

My daughter was seventeen when her mother died and had cared

for her nearly 24 hours a day in those last months. And, as a result

of that strange, existential disease that often strikes even the closest

of families, we were able to offer one another little comfort after my

wife’s passing.

I came home one day to find Georgia’s closets and drawers

almost completely devoid of her possessions.

That was three months ago, and I have not heard a word from

her since.

�śTakes time, Mac. You just give it some time.”

I nodded and simply left, not knowing those were the last words

I would ever hear come out of her mouth.

My neighbor made good her escape from this world, last night

shortly before the clock struck twelve. She did this with the

competent help of a Smith & Wesson 357 Magnum, one of those �ŚL’

framed models, I believe; the ones with the long, full-lug barrels

that Dirty Harry always seemed to favor.

I heard the shot, but I didn’t call the police until late the next

morning.

�śWhy?” a detective asked, as we stood on the porch of her little

home. �śWhy did you wait?”

�śIf I told you,” I replied, maybe as seriously as I’ve ever been in

my life. �śI’d probably have to kill you.”

He didn’t think it was funny, but then, it wasn’t meant to be.

So now it is me who stands a daily watch in front of her little

bungalow, looking down the hill, towards the vast fields of

strawberries in the valley below that will soon fill the air with their

sweet, and aromatic scent.

I am waiting for my daughter, waiting for the day when I can

welcome her with open arms, for the day when I can explain to her

that the world is a wondrous and joyous place, a place where little

girls are �Śsugar and spice and everything nice’, and the Jerry Bob

Sanders of this world are safely locked away where the only harm

they can unleash is the harm they can bring upon themselves.

The creation of such fictions are the very least we can do for our

children.