Take Out Some Trash And Take In A Little Paradise-On-Earth

I don't even know how to tell this story. ‘Cause when I’m done, you probably won't believe me. For a time, I couldn’t believe it myself. And I lived it. Looking back, I guess there were clues, hints about what was really going on, but, I don’t know, it’s hard to say. You really live in your own world when you’re a kid.  

I guess I’ll start with that summer. The summer of my 16th birthday. I had just broken up with Julia (not my first love, but I was pretty crazy about her), so I was really looking forward to getting out of my home town for another amazing summer vacation. My parents never failed to pick the most breath-taking places.  

That year it was Sardinia.   

As far as I knew my parents were photojournalists. We were going there so they could snap a few shots of Su Nuraxi, a Bronze Age archeological site on the island. Then we’d all frolic in the Mediterranean for a week. I was sooo hyped for it.  

On our third day there, I was soaking in the balmy waters at Is Arutas beach (a place so beautiful that it looked like a Roman goddess had carved it by hand. All around, gorgeous white sand gave way to warm, crystal blue waters). My parents were “meeting with their agent”, so I thought I had the dazzling place to myself for a few hours.  

The phone rang in the bungalow. I pulled myself away from the beach to answer it.  

“Hello,” I said.

“Mason, honey, thank god you’re there. I need you to listen to me very carefully.”  

“Mom?” I said. She didn’t sound right.

“Mason, I need you to go into the nightstand in our bedroom and grab the red bag that’s in it. Do it now,” she said.

“Mom, wait, what’s going on?”  

“Mason, just do what I say.”

“Mom –.”

“Mason!” she yelled.  

I was freaked. I could count on one hand how many times she’d yelled at me in the 10 years prior to that day. This wasn’t good.  

I went into my parent’s bedroom and grabbed the felt bag. I pulled the draw string open. In it were 1,000 Euros, a map and a folded up piece of paper.  

I raced back to the living room. “I found it, Mom, but –.” 

“Mason, I know I’m asking a lot of you, and I’m sorry that I’m doing this, honey, but you gotta listen okay?... Do you see the address on that sheet of paper? 

I unfolded it. “Yea,” I said.  

“I need you to meet us in Cabras, at that address. It’s 20, maybe 30 minutes, but it’s three turns at the most and you’re there.

“Okay.”

“Alright, be careful, honey. And hurry.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I love you,” she said.

I paused. “I love you too.” I said and hung up. A pit bloomed in my stomach. 

What the hell was going on?

I looked out onto the water. The idyllic scene that was there a moment ago had faded into something daunting, oppressive. I had no idea where I was. I was on a beach 4,000 miles from home, and my parents were… somewhere on this island; Mom sounded freaked and were my parents even okay? Was I gonna be okay?

I tried to calm down. I realized that spinning like this wasn’t going to help. I focused on our conversation and my mom’s voice rang in my head like a bell: “Hurry,” she’d said.

I changed into jeans, threw on my favorite Hawaiian shirt, slapped on my Ray Bans then jumped on the Vespa.

I wound down dirt roads lined with cork and juniper trees which blurred by in splotches of brown and green. I zipped past old shepherds with their bleating flocks; past horse-drawn carriages with weathered, aging men urging their beasts of burden along at a snail's pace. They slapped lax rope-whips on their steed’s backs and commanded them in their native Campidanese. It was like stepping into a time machine.  

After a half-hour of whizzing through the Sardinian countryside, I made it to Cabras. The small town was the closest thing to civilization on this part of the island. But it was also another piece of Italy trapped in time. Ancient ruins dotted the area all around. Squat buildings and time-worn churches sat up against cobblestone streets.  

I turned down a narrow street and felt the offshore breeze. It carried on it a taste of the sea, which sat in the distance, spinning its frothy waves. I pulled up to an old stable and parked the Vespa, got off the scooter and knocked on a worn, oak door.

My mom answered. “Mason!” she cried. She wrapped me in a vice-grip of a hug and spattered the side of my face with kisses.

And that was the hardest I’d ever hugged my mom, too. I don’t know why. I think I just hated hearing her so scared.  

“You okay?” I said.

“I’m fine, honey”.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Inside.”

I entered the stable. Time had had its way with the place. I could tell that it hadn’t been used to keep horses for some time too. Someone had converted it into a garage a while ago. In the middle of the space sat an old, beige Mercedes. It had distinctive 80’s style headlights and matching beige logos on its wheels. The rear passenger side door was open. I walked around.  

“Dad!” I said. His face was slick with sweat and his jacket had dark stains running down its side. He was holding a bloodsoaked rag over a wound in his shoulder. 

“You should see the other guy,” he said.  

“What the hell happened??”

My mom walked over. “Mason, your dad’s going to be okay. Listen to me. Right now, you need to get in the car.”

“What?? What do you mean??” I said. "What happened to him?”

“We don’t have time to explain, Mason,” she said. 

“Don’t have time??”

“Yes, Mason”, she said. “You need to get in the car.”

I stared at her. She cocked her head. “Any minute now some bad people are going to be snooping around this town,” she said, “people we’ve been trying to avoid for the last three hours.” 

“The same ones who gave me this little souvenir,” my dad said, nodding to his shoulder. 

“Why would anyone shoot you?” I asked Dad.

My mom sighed. “Just get in the car, Mason.”

“No, tell me what the hell’s going on.”

“This isn’t the time or the place.” she said. 

What?

“When we get out of here and get home we’ll talk about this,” she continued.

“Why the fuck can’t you just tell me?!”

“Mason!” Dad yelled. 

Mom sighed and ran a hand through her hair.

“Remember when we came back from the Maldives last year,” Dad said, “and the Turkish ex-Foreign Minister died of natural causes while we were there? Or the year before that when we were in Fiji and the police were running around like idiots looking for the people who killed Bergine?”

I eyed them both. I was waiting for the punchline. They offered none, so I wryly threw one down for them. “So, what, are you, like, assassins or something?” 

Mom looked down and brushed a clutch of brown curls over her ear. Dad cocked his eyebrows and looked at me silently. 

“C’mon,” I said. “Did you guys lose it? Christ, why can’t someone just tell me what the fu –.”

A pop rang out in the space. I looked down. A wisp of smoke was whirling from a silencer attached to a gun in Dad’s hand.  

“Holy shit! You were serious?!”

“Are you done?” he said. "'Cause we gotta go."

I was stunned, flummoxed. I was a little light-headed when I got in the car. Mom started the engine. I stared at her: mom, the killer??  

I was bobbing in a sea of confusion when she hit the gas and we headed for the hills.

************************** 

The green slopes of Barbagia rolled by my window. Mom was restless behind the wheel, continuously checking her mirrors. Dad was shifting and uneasy in the backseat.

I stared at the ridges of the ancient island hoping for answers. I struggled to piece together the shattered image I’d had of my parents. I stewed on it. And an inner heat began bubbling up. I broke the silence that had commandeered the car since the garage.

“Assassins?” I said.

Mom looked at me. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know this is a lot.” 

“You kill people… for money.”

“And for pleasure,” my dad said.

“Gil!”

“What? It feels good to bag these assholes sometimes.”

“Jesus, Gil, you’re not helping. It’s not what it sounds like, Mason.”

It’s not what it sounds like??  

I shook my head and stared out the window. 

My parents were Gil and Nancy Howard, freelance photojournalists from Aurora, Illinois. They weren’t killers. My dad had a stamp collection for chrissake. What kind of stamp collector kills people?? This was nuts.  

“Why?” I said.

“It’s a long story,” Mom said.

“Cause the world is a screwed up place,” Dad chimed in. “And sometimes you have to do bad things to make it better.”

WTF?

I looked out at the hills, trying to make the pieces fit.   

My dad shifted in the backseat and moaned. I turned to him. The towel he was holding over his wound had turned several shades of crimson now. 

“What?” he said. “I must look like a king back here in all this red, huh?” 

“No, Dad, you like shit.”

He chuckled, then winced.

“How long?” I said.

“How long, what?” he said. My eyes were locked on his. He peered up at my mom. She was busy keeping her eyes on the road.

“Since before you were born,” he said.  

I turned back around. I put my feet on the dash, and stared out the window.  

My mom reached over and placed her hand on my lap. “I know this is crazy, sweetie. I don't know, hopefully, you’ll understand one day.”

Not likely.

“Sooo, where are we going?” I huffed.

“To Uncle Jack’s,” Mom said.

I turned to her. “Does he know about your… real jobs?”

A silence blossomed in the car again. “He’s not your uncle,” my dad said.

Pfffft… Life was unraveling right before my eyes. This was some bullshit.

I was thinking about how I was going to say my piece, you know, really speak my mind, when something shot through the back window and shattered the rearview mirror. Glass flew everywhere, cutting my face.

“Jesus!” my dad screamed.  

Mom swerved in a huge arc, then got the car back under control. She looked at me and threw the shoulder harness of my seatbelt over my head, leaving the lap-belt attached. Then she shoved my head between my legs. She leaned on the gas pedal, pinning it to the floor.  

“Gil!” she yelled.  

I could hear my dad already lowering his window. He popped off a few rounds from his Glock, then there was a series of clicks. “Shit, I’m out!” he screamed.

My heart was thumping against my ribcage. I gulped mouthfuls of air as the seatbelt squeezed my waist like a vice.

“Faster!” my dad screamed. 

Mom whipped the car to one side and slammed on the brakes instead. I peered over the dash to see what was up ahead. We were closing in on a hairpin turn, a gnarly one. Beyond it was a cliff, and it looked like a long way down from where I was sitting. 

“Mom!” I screamed.

“Hang on!” she said. 

She swung the Mercedes into the bend. The seatbelt caught me before I could tumble into her lap. Dad let out a scream as he crumpled into the opposite corner of the car.  

She pushed the car to its limits, then pulled it out of the turn. As she did, a current of dread rippled through my belly. A horse, possibly the laziest one in all of Sardinia, was ambling down the center of the road with a cart filled to the edges with potatoes. It’s enormous ass swung to and fro while the driver, completely unaware of the two-tons of aluminum and steel bearing down on him, languidly arced a rope-whip across the steed’s back.

Mom shifted gears and swung the rear of the car around. Dad’s feet kicked my headrest as he somersaulted back across the seat. I watched the steed rear and kick frantically, spilling the cart, the hapless driver and bushels of potatoes onto the road.  

Mom drifted past the horse, then straightened the Mercedes out, leaving a plume of smoke in her wake.  

“Is everybody okay?!” she said.

I turned to check on my dad. He was holding his shoulder and gasping for air. 

That’s when I saw it: a black SUV barreled around the bend behind us. Its wheels spun fiercely struggling to catch the pavement. Then they cut at a sharp angle when the horse reared again. I could see the driver’s face the moment he knew what he’d done. The car zigzagged wildly then careened off the road and sailed into the gorge below. 

A loud and sickening crunch followed. Mom downshifted the Benz and sped past a row of cork trees. 

She continued down the road for a while, still vigilant for pursuers, until she finally pulled over by a line of Rosemary bushes in a quiet valley.

Twilight was coming. The blues and pinks of the sky were beginning to blend together over the horizon.

“Are you sure you're okay, sweetie?!” she said, looking over the cuts on my face.  

“Yea, I’m fine, Mom,” I said. 

I got out and opened Dad’s door.  

“Still hangin' in there, Dad?”  He was lying with his back propped up against the opposite door.

“Ahhh, I should’ve let them shoot me,” he said.

He was a mess. He was clammy and pallid, and looked completely worn out. 

Mom got out of the car and leaned into his window. She gave him a kiss. 

“Nice driving, miss,” he said.

“Good job not dying,” she said.  

Mom looked at me, and gave me a tentative grin. She walked to my side of the car. “Oh God, I’m so sorry we got you wrapped up in this, sweetie,” she said. The guilt in her eyes brought a lump to my throat.

“It’s alright,” I said. “I survived.” I smiled at her. She kissed my forehead and wrapped me in a hug.

************************** 

I found out later that Mom was the de facto driver in their little, clandestine duo. And the kind of driving she did that day, the kind that shaved years off of your life, well, that wasn’t uncommon for her.  

She drove at a much more sensible speed to Uncle Jack’s place, getting us there sometime after 10pm. Uncle Jack’s place, by the way, was a safehouse in Olbia. Also, Uncle Jack was my folks’ handler. That’s why we saw him every year on our “summer vacations”.  

I’d known the man my whole life. He’d always had gifts for me when we saw him, sweets, toys, that sort of thing. I just thought he was family. I had no idea that he was part of a syndicate that kept tabs on the megalomaniacs of the world.  

I guess Uncle Jack’s ability to conveniently materialize anywhere on the planet was just another one of those clues I’d missed. Just goes to show you that when you’re a kid, you really do live in your own world. 

I’d thought that we hit all of these exquisite spots because they were mind-bogglingly beautiful. Turns out they were mind-bogglingly beautiful places so that’s where well-connected sociopath-types liked to kick it for vacation, you know, autocrats, war profiteers, sex-traffickers. And every trip was a quick one-two punch for the Howard cleaning crew: take out some trash and take in a little paradise-on-earth.

This particular trip hit a bit of a snag, but there were no more baddies the rest of our time there. A doctor at the safehouse tended to Dad’s wound (it was a flesh wound, thank god). And after a few days, Uncle Jack got us on a military flight home out of Rome. 

I don’t think I said two words on that plane ride. I don’t even think I tried processing what happened. I was just… numb.  

The people who had held me as a child, raised me, taught me right from wrong killed people for a living. That took a few years to chunk down into bite size pieces and get down my gullet, know what I mean? But I did do it, over time. 

The last thing I remember before nodding off on that plane over the Atlantic was my mom’s voice. I had my head against a window and she was resting hers on my shoulder. 

“We love you, sweetheart,” she said. 

And I knew they did. And still do.  

And I love them too.

It just took me a while to finally forgive them, but I did. And my mom was right: over time, I did understand. 

Well, like I said, I don’t know if you believe me, but, there it is: the craziest summer of my life! 

It was bonkers then, but now it’s one of my fondest memories.  

You know, I take that back: that was the craziest summer of my childhood, because things have gotten a bit crazier since then.  

In fact, I just booked a vacation with my wife and kids to Dalmatia on the Croatian coast. A nationalistic billionaire is funneling money and guns to some extremist groups in the Balkans. My folks have retired from the Howard family business, but after training me up, they handed it to me. So, I’m gonna clock in and do a little work while I’m out there.

Then get some R&R.