Everything Changes

need to find someone,” Jed says, ignoring him and proffering the cash to Baby-Face. “He’s golfing here now.”
    Below us on the green, the four golfers are still putting away, oblivious to the action developing up the hill. Even if it is Dr. Sanderson down there, the idea of approaching him under these conditions now seems iffy, at best.
    Baby-Face eyes the cash and looks at his partner uncertainly, but the larger man’s scowl ends the discussion before it can start. The driver pulls his radio off his shoulder and points it at Jed like a weapon. “These are your choices,” he says. “You can get in the cart and be peacefully escorted off the premises, or you can resist, in which case we will radio the police and then forcibly restrain you until they come.”
    “Why don’t we all just relax for a second,” Jed says, holding out his hands in a placating manner. “Take it down a notch.”
    “Choice two, then,” says the driver, reaching for the handcuffs on his belt.
    “Holy shit!” says Baby-Face, staring up the hill behind us, causing us all to turn around. And here comes Norm, tearing red-faced down the hill toward us in his undershirt, eyes crazed, hands flailing, with two security guards running behind him. One of the guards is clutching Norm’s red sweatshirt, which flaps in the wind behind him like a cavalry flag.
    “Let’s get him,” the driver says, and the two guards step into Norm’s path, bracing themselves to grab him. This is probably the perfect time for Jed and me to make a run for it, but the sight of Norm racing down the hill at high speed is mesmerizing, like a rare natural phenomenon, and we stand there transfixed as he collides with the guards like a charging bull, and the three of them go down, sliding a good fifteen feet in the wet grass before friction finally stops them just a few feet from us.
    “Now, that is something you don’t see every day,” Jed says.
    Norm is the first to his feet, looking like a swamp creature, his arms and shoulders caked with mud and wet mown grass. “Run for it!” he shouts hysterically before taking off down the hill again with all four guards in hot pursuit. “Holy shit!” I say as Jed and I belatedly run down the hill after them.
    He almost makes it to the green. The four golfers on the green stand frozen in place, staring upward at the approaching melee with mouths agape, forgotten clubs limp against their legs. The guards catch up as Norm hits level ground, and it takes three of them to bring him down. As before, they slide appreciably in the wet grass, a rolling tumbleweed of arms and legs. As Jed and I come flying down the hill, I can see the billy clubs come out, pointed briefly skyward before coming down on Norm’s prone, wriggling form, so there’s nothing to do but launch ourselves head-on into the fray, sliding across the green with the guards, trying our best to grab at their swinging arms, slimy with grass, to divert their blows. A slippery scuffle ensues, mostly a lot of grappling on the ground, since the slick grass makes standing up a great disadvantage. At some point, dialogue is reinstated as the guards shout at us to stop resisting while we scream at them about brutality and lawsuits. Jed and I are each faced off with one guard, while two of them are standing on either side of Norm, who is on one knee between them, his breath labored, his face flushed and splattered with mud. Something seems wrong with his posture, his head lolling uncharacteristically on his shoulders, eyelids fluttering spasmodically. “Norm!” I shout to him, tearing away from my guard. “Are you okay?”
    The guard makes a grab for me but then, seeing Norm, releases me. The guards back away from him, allowing me access. “Norm!” I call to him again. “Dad!”
    He looks up at me, and his expression momentarily clarifies as our eyes meet. “It’s okay,” he gasps, his voice nothing more than a rasp of empty wind. “I just need to catch my breath.” Then he grins at me, his eyes rolling up into his head, and says, “Fucking Nazis,” before collapsing onto the grass.

Chapter 29
    They take Norm to the infirmary, where Jed and I watch as the skinny black nurse helps him pull off his undershirt so that she can apply her stethoscope. There’s a long, raised scar down the center of his heaving chest, pink and cylindrical, ending just below his sternum. “You’ve had open-heart surgery,” the nurse says.
    “Eight years ago,” Norm