HB's Great Adventure Part 2- "Little Boy Don't Get Scared."

...HB ventures into his mission, his adventure. The point of no return is now passed.

HB did not know he was being followed. He could not have a clue because, in fact, his real stalker could not even see him, let alone be seen by him -- and did not need to. Although HB did not know it, his every move was being watched from every angle.

What was more, there were these three sets of two footprints each that only slightly deepened, but never widened at all  HB’s trail of tracks in the snow. The woman and her children had been keeping a discreet, yet constant distance - the one-block head start they had given him - ever since he had left the phone booth.  She had walked in front so that from any distance, the children following her were invisible to someone walking away.  There was only the non-threatening silhouette of this squat woman trudging through the snow.

At a point some four blocks from the phone booth, HB was perspiring lightly, so securely was he wrapped against the winter’s razor-like whipping wind.  He passed through the intersection, traveling south, and crossed the street.  Just ahead of him, a winter walker crossed in front of him, turning the corner from the right.  HB now found himself following in the footsteps of a tall man who had suddenly appeared before him.

The man was pulling a luggage carrier on wheels behind him. Unseen and unbeknownst to HB, the contraption had been fitted with a hidden motion-picture camera.  Not knowing his every move was being recorded and transmitted HB fingered the steel in his pocket now, and again felt reassured.

HB looked over his shoulder and saw the indefinable figure of someone laboring through the wind and snow at a distance behind.  Had he known that it was the woman from the phone booth, followed by her brats, he might have felt much less comfortable.

Had he been a bit more vigilant, HB might have noticed another woman in a heavy navy pea coat, stepping out of a doorway across the street, about half the distance between himself and the trio behind him.  He would then have known that he was not only being followed and watched, but that he was now perfectly surrounded by the buildings on his right and a triangular formation of confederates, in front of and behind him, and across the street to his left.

But none of this registered any concern.  HB had his mind on Marsha and the task at hand.  

Less than a mile away, a flat-screen monitor sat amid empty beer bottles and half-filled coffee cups with cigarette butts floating in them on an oilcloth-covered kitchen table.  Rings and wisps of cigarette smoke floated toward the ceiling as the people in the room looked to their host for instruction.  They had grown impatient with the tension of waiting.

The image of HB trudging through the snow, obliterating the wheel-tracks of the tall man’s luggage dolly was grainy but recognizable.  Pointing one tapered, long finger adorned with a garish red one-inch glossy fingernail, Marsha spoke:


‘Tha’s right, baby boy.  Come to mama.  Keep on being cool … “

And then Marsha began to sing to herself, almost inaudibly,

“When you see danger facing you
Little boy don’t get sca-ared
When you see danger facing you
Little boy don’t-you-get-scared …”

… because those were exactly the words she could see HB mouthing in the grainy video of his singing, swinging wintry sojourn toward his fate " and hers.   

“Aw’ll right  ch’all!  Let’s go.  We’re on!” she said as she closed her blue and yellow kitchen curtains.  She was ready to walk out into The Territory with her crew.