The Lovely Chocolate Mob - By Richard J. Bennett Page 0,59

to get away from this entry point as soon as possible. I didn’t know which way to go and didn’t care; I just wanted to put space between me and that flying spotlight. I leaned over and walked quickly, to the north I thought. Soon I found I had to crawl on all fours; these drains weren’t as big as they used to be when I was a kid. After about 30 yards, I took my shoes off and tied the laces together and hung them over the back of my neck, and took my socks off and tied them around my knees; at least this would give them some protection. I couldn’t hear the helicopter anymore, but oh-my-gosh Walter was a billionaire who just shot a helicopter out of the sky. Would this make him a murderer, too? And not only an anybody murderer, a cop-killer, on the scale of the FBI, which is a federal crime, for sure! The type to whom the courts show no mercy. I was crawling on my knees in the sewer, and Walter had blood on his hands. But I had been with him, which made me an accomplice. How low had we sunk?

The Tunnel

It was dark, and it stank. I was wet all over, especially my hands and feet. Good thing I had decided to wear jeans; any regular pants would have been ruined in no time. I estimated I had crawled the length of nineteen football fields, or 5,700 feet, or well over a mile. I’d been counting my knees; every time they touched concrete that was considered to be a foot. I was somewhere around 5,700, but I’m sure I had skipped a number or two. We hadn’t been too far from my part of town, in the RV, so if I had picked the right tunnels, perhaps I’d make it back to my own bed sometime in the next 24 hours. I was tired, it was slow progress, and I didn’t like being underground, not one bit. I wondered if it was the next day already, and decided to check the time, so I pulled my new cell phone off my belt to view, and it lit up the whole tunnel! I should have thought of it earlier; I’d use the telephone for light, shining a green glow ahead of me every now and then, because there were bound to be other creatures down there. Fortunately, I hadn’t run into anything bad yet. I supposed they scattered when they heard me coming. I was hoping I wouldn’t run into any alligators; if I yelled there’d be no one else down there to help; I was completely on my own. Isolated. And lonely.

It had been hours since I’d left Walter upstairs, and while crawling at a pace I could handle, I was hoping my nerves would settle down, giving me a chance to think clearly.

Maybe we shouldn’t have gotten involved in Helen and Franklin’s situation; after all, who were we to try to solve their problems? We could barely solve our own problems! We weren’t God, nor the church, nor the courts, nor the marriage counselor, nor their family; how could we fix what man decided to destroy?

While reflecting on this, I decided that the courts didn’t really fix anything either; that wasn’t their role. They just divided assets in a fair and equitable manner, or gave the appearance of it, when there were differences in divorce court. I supposed the judges tried to make sure a deserted wife and kids didn’t go without some support, or income, but why the heck was there so much divorce in our country, anyhow? It’s almost as though we’re children; we start something and somehow find that we’re not able to carry it on to completion. And it wasn’t a both/and situation anymore; all it took was for one person to act up, as Franklin was doing, to destroy a marriage.

My mind had plenty of time to wander while being buried underground. I considered this problem further, thinking that if we were to just sit back and let things play out, how would I feel about myself whenever I looked into the mirror to shave, brush my teeth, or comb my hair? Who would be looking back from the mirror? That’s something I’d have to live with. Would it be some coward who didn’t lift a finger to help preserve a family, to help keep some stability to the community, to keep a