Shame

started staggering toward the sedan. He couldn’t walk a straight line. But he went two steps forward, three steps to the side, and then he started forward again.
    The black car’s engine sounded, but it didn’t run him down. Instead it reversed and pulled away.
    Caleb suddenly found himself immersed in lights, but at first he couldn’t understand why.
    “Get out of the road, you idiot!”
    The shouting was coming from behind him. Caleb turned around unsteadily and was blinded by the headlights of a pickup truck. He could vaguely make out a man’s head outside the driver’s window.
    “Move it, would you? You’re in the middle of the fuckin’ road.”
    It took him a moment to make sense of the words. Caleb tottered over a few steps, enough for the truck to pass him by. Good advice, he thought. Get out of the road. It made sense. The black car could be coming back for him. By trial and error, Caleb made his way to the sidewalk.
    His coordination was coming back, as was his awareness. So many parts of him hurt that he found it hard to think, but he knew he needed to think like never before.
    Head back toward College, he thought. The commercial district was only about half a mile away. He could find a pay phone there. But who could he call? There wasn’t anyone. He’d call a cab, he decided, but then reconsidered. There was no safe place to go.
    Another siren. It sounded close. His appearance alone would be a magnet for the police to question him.
    Childhood fears overwhelmed him. The pack had always been after him. He’d learned to be stealthy, had spent countless hours figuring out how to avoid capture, how to escape being seen. He had to act before the bullies saw him.
    It was dark, but he could still see well enough to make out all the trees around him by their silhouettes. Caleb rejected the cypress, palms, and pines. A Pacific dogwood was too thin, and a box elder wasn’t leafy enough. There had to be a good tree. Enemies were coming.
    He decided on a California laurel, a tree that stood about fifty feet high. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. Adrenalinestraightened out Caleb’s senses long enough for him to trot over to the laurel and begin climbing the tree. Its bark was scaly enough to get a good hold, and he could reach almost all the way around its trunk. Most of the laurel’s branches weren’t thick, but they were close enough together for him to spread his weight over two or more limbs at a time. Two thirds up the tree, he decided, was high enough. He settled behind a particularly dense thicket of leaves but knew the camouflage was probably unnecessary. It was the rare person that looked up. People had their heads in the sand, not the clouds.
    Caleb tried to get comfortable. He wished he had his harness. That was one of the perks of his job. Hanging from a limb, secure in his harness, was better than a hammock. Sometimes, staring up at a canopy of green, he’d lose track of time and self. Usually he felt more at home in trees than he did anywhere else. But not this time. Now he had to face the enormity of his failure. He had been given a chance and didn’t know if he would get another. Dana certainly wouldn’t. Another innocent murdered. And this time he couldn’t say it wasn’t his fault.
    He assessed his wounds and scrapes, decided he’d live, but wished he were more excited at the prospect. His lips were chapped and his mouth was dry. Dehydrated already, and the siege was just begun.
    Sirens sounded nearby. They were coming closer. He felt like a bear treed by hounds. Death kept baying. Caleb remembered another tree, another time.
    Up in the big pecan tree, up higher than he’d ever been before.
    His mama said the tree was over a hundred feet high. It had been there all his life, towering in their backyard. When he was little he’d thought the tree stretched up as high as Mr. Moon. As a boy, he’d looked up and been sure the moon rested on the tree’s branches.
    The big pecan was the first tree he’d ever climbed. He had been six. In the five years since, Gray had gotten more daring, but he’d never been anywhere near this high before.
    It was windy. A storm was coming. Even though it was night, he could still see the storm clouds gathering. They were darker than sin. Maybe a twister was going to come down on them.
    Gray didn’t care. Far as he was concerned, the wind could blow their house to hell. That would serve his mama right. She hadn’t paid him no mind all day.