The Kidnapper - A digression into the past

My mother was obsessed with kidnappers. She warned me about them constantly.  She checked every night that my shades were pulled down tight and window locked to keep them out. Was there something in the news around that time about a sensational kidnapping?  We lived in Michigan, a mid-sized City that became the site of the first outdoor pedestrian mall. That was later, when I was a teenager. The mall was an oasis for kids going from store to store with our friends, usually Anita Grintals, or Nancy Boers.  I had other friends as a teenager, but none who were interested in shopping.

You might say I had an eclectic taste, in friends, and in activities.  I was boy crazy with Nancy and still chased the large grasshoppers, big as locusts who populated our working class and yet very quiet and safe (and white) neighborhood with Anita.

My other friends were Sue Schneeberger, whom I giggled with in Latin class as we made up our own translations to the text, taught by the very thin and even more ancient Miss Mead, whose mantra was "I love Latin," said with a look of pure joy through a tight smile punctuated with pink teeth.

"Marcus look at the Queen; she is puking," we chortled behind our books. Miss Mead was not amused.

Later my friends were the the theater and newspaper crowd, and bookish Sharon Rothrock and Diana Henschel.  None of these people were friends with each other. Anita found Nancy frivolous and Sharon and Diana had no interest in either boys or the theater, certainly not grasshoppers or being irreverent in Latin class.  The theater crowd felt anyone not so inclined irrelevant.   

But this story is before all that, before any friends that I can recall.  Today there was just my mother and me.  And of course the kidnapper.

This happened one day when we lived on West Main Street. I must have been 4 or 5.  My mother and were walking to our favorite restaurant, the SuperBurger. We were not well to do. My father sold cars, flipped burgers and tried to carve out a niche for himself as a private detective.  Later my mother and I would accompany him on his stakeouts, hours in a cold car while he waited for a wayward deadbeat to return home so her could serve a subpoena.  No Dashiell Hammett my dad.  The only reason he kept his private detective gig going was because he kept flunking the test to be a cop.  Something to do with his hands.  He had some kind of a finger fungus, or so I remember it.

At this time, I also had a little brother, Glenn, my best and only friend for those early years before he got sick, and even after, when we moved to the new house on South Westnedge Avenue and made all those long car trips to Ann Arbor for transfusions, to prolong his meager life. What other friend could ever measure up to such a soulmate?

For some reason, it was just my mother and me on our way to the SuperBurger on this fateful day.  The brother, the father, somewhere else, but no doubt together, bonding over big Dad and small son activity at home.

Walking slowly along at first, on a warm spring day. Mom in a flowered dress. Me in braids and short skirt, frilly ankle socks, hand held tight in hers.  Then a tightening of her fingers, a tension communicated from mother to daughter. I turned to look behind me, my short legs working hard to keep up.

"Don't look back," my mother said through clenched teeth.  "Just hang onto my hand and walk fast."  I was already walking as fast as I could.  What could be going on. Was a big animal chasing us?

Faster and faster my mother moved toward our destination.  At some point, she let me know a kidnapper was following us. "But don't look back!" she warned. By this time, I was crying and running as fast as my little feet could go to keep up. A kidnapper had found me at last, despite drawn shades and locked doors and windows! The SuperBurger seemed miles in the distance. And the kidnapper was gaining on us! I could hear his footsteps. I could almost feel his breath on my neck. I held on tight to my mother's sturdy fingers, even though my own were cramped and painful in her steely grip.

We all but flew the last few feet to the door of the SuperBurger and dashed inside. Safe!  Surely he wouldn't follow us in here and kidnap me, with people all around!  Or would he.  My mom moved close to the counter, where she smoothed her skirt and dropped my hand. What if the kidnapper came in and grabbed me without her holding on tight? 

I dared a look behind me, but the glassed in door barely rattled where she had thrown it shut when we entered.  No one lurked on the sidewalk out front.  My mom indicated that I hop up on the stool at the counter, as she said to the man in the white paper hat on the other side, "Two SuperBurgers, please."