…continued from Accept & Proceed.

Clinton Hayes enlisted in the Marine Corp. the day after he graduated from high school. Four years later he returned to Winston-Salem, married his high school girlfriend, started a family, and took a job driving a fork truck for Big Tobacco.

Unfortunately, Big Tobacco was no longer the American dream that it once was.

The Agreement with the States led to rationalizing, downsizing, right sizing, and even if the rumors of wholesale layoffs never materialized, opportunities for advancement were few.

So when Clinton’s buddy from the Corp. called and offered him a job as a bail bondsman in Tucson, he did not see any way he could refuse.

The base pay was better than driving a fork truck and the bonuses were something they could really live on. But Carla Hayes would have no part of moving half way across the world, away from her mother.

After a week of arguing, cajoling, bartering, and negotiations, it was decided that Clinton would head for the frontier. If he struck gold, he would send for his family, otherwise he would return to not-as-Big Tobacco.

At the outset phone calls home were like: “I miss you so much, I can’t wait to see you.”

By the second month they were more like: “What are you doing? The kids are driving me crazy.”

In the third month came the ultimatum: “Come home now, or never bother.”

But Clinton found the work exhilarating and the money was better than promised. Once a month he sent a check to Winston-Salem that matched his take home pay as a fork truck driver.

The checks home continued long after the phone calls stopped altogether.

When Kirby and his sister Samantha were small, the fork truck stipend was sufficient, but when they started to wear basketball sneakers and take dance lessons, money got tight.

Clinton had no way of understanding these economics because in his mind, the kids would always be in disposable diapers.

In fact, the years between diapers and diplomas passed quickly for Clinton, with no first days of school, no lost teeth, no holiday plays, no chicken-pox, no recitals or soccer games, and no proms or graduations, to serve as benchmarks in the timeline of fatherhood.

During these years, his buddy’s bail bond business, which specialized in illegal criminals from south of the border, expanded across the south, with offices in Chula Vista, Tuscon, El Paso, Laredo, Mobile, and Miami. Clinton Hayes was the front man in the expansion, moving eastward with the opening of each new agency.

With the south covered, his boss decided to work up the east coast, and the opening of the Charleston office, brought Clinton back to the Carolinas, and thoughts of reuniting with his estranged family.

***

As the last few days of the year were winding down, the wheels of justice were turning even slower than most other times of the year. Clinton Hayes was concentrating on cleaning up some outstanding no-shows on bench warrants and other minor offenses. The most valuable bond out was $5,000 on Bartholomew Lumpkin, a suspected petty drug dealer, arrested on a small possession charge, who failed to show for his preliminary hearing.

His public defender did not know where to find him and the last known employment was a place that rented boats and jet skis in Mt. Pleasant. The manager at the rental office said he had not seen Bart in a few weeks, but heard he was sailing with one of the cruise companies.

Across the peninsula at Spirit Cruises, no one ever heard of Bartholomew Lumpkin. But Clinton picked up a flyer for the New Year’s Eve Cruise, and using his law enforcement contacts, he secured himself a pair of tickets.

He had a hunch.

###

This story will continues with Dixie Bombay.

2016 Kirt Van Buren