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Robert Morgansfield |
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Young Dax and the DCFS lady
An Excerpt From "Dax" A Nove By Robert Mansfield
Suddenly he could not breathe. With all his strength he tried sucking in air, he tried pulling in air by expanding his lungs, but all his efforts were futile, and the intensity of the heat from the flames he had inhaled caused intense pain which was matched with utter panic. Silently Dax screamed and screamed for his mother.
As Dax and his uncle were waiting on the bus that would take them to the North West side, he noticed a boy,
about his age, literally fighting with his mother. At least Dax presumed the lady was the little boy's mother.
The streets were filled with people in cars and trucks. Hurrying, to where Dax had no idea. The side walks were
filled with people. Mostly people that spoke with a language that Dax did not understand. There were hardly any
children about, Dax being a child noticed this right away. The only child that Dax noticed was this little boy
with his mother.
The boy was kicking and hitting the lady. The lady held on to the little boy by his arms, even though he was struggling
to be free. The boy was a thin lad and came up to even with the lady's breasts. The boy was not very dark in complexion;
Dax could not tell what race the boy was. His mother was about the same color. She was tall, she was seemed very
frail, but very pretty. Dax admired the blue jeans the boy was wearing. Dax had noticed them because they were
the same kind of blue jeans that Dax had asked his uncle to buy for him, but the pants cost much more that the
pants his uncle was buying for himself. The boy was wearing a blue tee shirt with a superman logo on it. Dax wished
he had a shirt like that one. He wondered why the little boy was being so mean to his mother. He wondered also
why the mother had not put the little boy over her knees and whipped his butt. Dax knew that if he had ever done
that to his uncle or even to his grandmother, he would have gotten a whipping where he could not have sat down
for days.
Suddenly the little boy wrenched free of his mother and ran into the street into moving traffic. Cars were honking
their horns and there were sounds of tires screeching as cars came to a stop to avoid hitting the little boy. One
car which had stopped right in front of the little boy, the driver, a burley looking white man with several teeth
missing, all in the front of his mouth, shouted curse words at the mother, about her "bad assed brat"
One of the stopped cars was filled with nuns wearing black robes with white head wear, one of them made the sign
of the cross and shook their heads in disbelief. The little boy kept running across the street as if he was not
aware of the traffic. The little boy ran into a car, but that did not stop him, he went around the car and kept
running until he was across the street. His mother stopped chasing him once he was in the traffic. It was as though
she did not want to cause him to get hit by cars. But he did not look back so he did not know that she was not
chasing him. After the traffic had all came to a complete stop the drivers all waited for the mother to cross the
street so she could retrieve her son. The traffic resumed after both the boy and his mother was safely across the
street. The mother was now right behind him trying to catch him as he had ran into a drug store that was near by
on the opposite side of the street from where they had been waiting for the bus. As she opens the door to go into
the drug store the little boy ran into her dropping from his arms bags of candy that he had, obviously grabbed
upon entering the store. He must have just taken them because he had not had time to pay for them. The mother held
the little boy by the neck of his tea shirt, as she escorted him back into the store with his loot. Immediately
they were coming out of the store again.
The mother had gathered the material of his tea shirt so the neck of the shirt was so small that the little boy
could not slid out of it as he was trying to do. She tried to pick him up and hold him close to her chest but he
hit her in the face. So she just pushed him along in front of her as she tried to get him back across the street
to the bus stop. The little boy sat down in the street and refused to move their light had changed from green to
yellow and to red and cars had started honking their horns trying to get the lady to move her son from in the middle
of the north bound lane. The little boy refused to get up and walk so the mother just pulled him and drugged him
toward the curb a head of them. A couple of men helped the lady get herself and her son out of danger of being
hit by moving cars. One of the men asked the lady if she wanted him to help her hold the little guy down so she
could whip his but. The lady explained to him that she would sure be glad if he would do that. After they were
safely across the street, the lady sat down on one of the ad benches and she and the man laid the struggling little
boy across her lap and she commenced to spank him with her hand. The little fellow was kicking and screamed as
if someone was killing him, all the time saying I hate you mommy you bitch, you bitch. The man pulled the boys
pants down so the woman's hand would be hitting bare skin. After a few moments of his mother whaling on his bottom
he stopped kicking and screaming. "I will be good mommy", he promised, "I'll be good". Immediately
the mommy stopped spanking him and let go of him so he could get up. At that moment some lady with a police officer
by her side grabbed the lady's arm and yanked it away from the little boy's body as the mother was in the process
of hugging her son. "I'm Mrs. Brown" this lady said "I am with DCFS and I am taking protective custody
of this child and you are under arrest for child abuse".
The lady tried to explain to the lady that the boy was completely out of control and he was in danger of hurting
himself and causing an accident.
"She is lying" the little boy said, "The bitch was hitting me for no reason".
The mother tried to appeal to the police officer but the police officer would not let the lady talk; he said "Lady
all I know is this is this woman's job. She said I am to take you and place you under arrest so that is what I
am going to do"
The mother: "But officer" The police officer jerked the lady and spun her around and pushed her up against
a near by car and ruthlessly pined the lady's hands behind her back and cuffed her. Other people were also trying
to explain to the police officer what had happened. But he was not listening to them. Suddenly there was a loud,
almost deafening sound of tires screeching and a loud echoing bang as a large Simi truck hauling gasoline, came
to a screeching stop jackknifing as it did so and almost hitting the lady and the police officer and the DCFS worker
as well as Dax and his uncle. As the truck was jack knifing it had struck a van that was coming from the opposite
direction. The police officer snatched his pistol from it's holster and turned pointing it in the direction of
the noise. People were screaming, many people, only women it seemed. People started running toward the police officer
-while the mother was distracted and unable to supervise her son, he had obviously tried to run back across the
street to the drugstore to get candy-. Several people had tried to stop the little boy, the startled police officer
fired into the crowd. There were several real loud bangs and people fell to the ground.
The truck had skidded close enough to Dax and his uncle that Dax could feel the heat from the trucks engine and
smell the loud smell of the diesel fuel it used, that smell was mixed with the smell of the burned rubber of the
tire as it skidded on the hard black topped street. There were other oily smells and probably the smells of thousands
of miles and of many years the truck had been traveling. But what struck Dax so cruelly and so mercilessly was
the devastating sight of what cause the truck to come to this stop in the first place, was the sight which would
never be obliterated from his mind, ever. That was when Dax saw that same little boy under the front tire of the
big truck. The truck had stopped on top of the little boy. As Dax looked at the little boy he could tell that the
truck had knocked the little boy down and ran over his left foot and traveled all the way up the little boy's body
to his chest stopping just below what must have been the little boy's neck and chin. It seem as if the little boy
was laying on his back but Dax could not tell, because the weight of the truck had pushed all of the boys insides
up toward his head and his entrails had been pushed out through a hole in his neck and through his mouth and nose,-
something deep within that mass was trembling and quivering . The part of the little boy's body that was not under
the tire of the truck was now like a big balloon. Bright red blood was squirting out of the little boys head area.
As the red substance exuded from the balloon the balloon seem to have been deflating. Dax could not tell exactly
where the blood was coming from because it no longer looked like a boy it just looked like a pile of blood with
brown skin and the blue tea shirt visible here and there. The tire of the truck covered most of the boy's body,
and there was blood all over everything about that area of the truck, and also on Dax and his uncle, the police
office as well as the DCFS lady and the little boy's mother. Dax could not take his eyes way. He wanted to, badly,
but his brain was trying to collect enough data to make sense of that mass of red and blue and brown, but it was
not successful. Its former form was not recognizable. The little boy's mother started screaming and screaming her
screams were louder than the sound of the trucks engine, then she clasped to the ground. The gang of people had
been coming to try to stop the little boy, help and the people that were hit by the truck, the people in the van
that was traveling in the opposite direction, that was hit as the truck went into a jack knife. The police officer
panicked and shot and wounded and possibly killed people who were just trying to help.
People screamed, "Help those people back there". Dax's uncle hurriedly pulled Dax toward the screaming
people at the back of the truck. It was then that Dax saw that there was a car that had crashed into the back of
the truck and the person, a lady, who was driving the car, half of the lady was lying in the streets and he could
not see the other half of her. There was some one on the passenger side also but the pretty shinny gray mini van
was so far under the back of the tanker truck that that person could not be seen except for a hand that was sticking
out of where the windshield was broken. If that person was sitting up when the impact happened then the upper part
of that person was now in the back seat with those passengers who were setting there. There was also blood on the
windshield where it appeared as though the persons head, on impact, had first hit the windshield. The top of the
mini van was peeled back as if some one was unwrapping something that was wrapped inside aluminum foil. Who ever
was in the other two seats of the van was not moving. Dax could not tell how many people there were.
The back of that car was smashed in because it was hit by a bigger van filled with people that looked, to Dax,
like they were all old people. The van also had one of those big doors for wheel chairs. Dax was not sure what
kind of van that was. That van was also hit in the back by a school bus. And all the children on the bus were screaming.
Dax's uncle suddenly yelled, "every body get the fuck outta here the car and the gas truck is on fire".
Dax felt him self flying through the air. His Uncle was pulling him by his arm so hard it was hurting him badly
-he felt that his feet was not touching the hard concrete sidewalk- and it turned him toward the commotion from
which they were fleeing. Dax could now see all the people that had been trying to help the people trapped in the
smashed vehicles were running over each other trying to get away from the fire and that fuel tanker carrying gasoline.
There was a flash of read light then there was nothing. There was nothing but pain. The pain seem to permeate his
whole existence. Dax was particularly aware of the intense burning, internally, from the back of his throat to
the bottom of his abdomen, as her tried to breath. Ironically although Dax was slipping into unconsciousness he
could see and recognize the D C F S lady running, creaming her cloths ablaze; someone ran and forced her to the
ground the black skin on her face, a large patch had been removed and the pink white skin underneath was visible.
Dax was aware that he had no sympathy for her. She was just observation. There was a face right above him, this
face was filled with concern, with solicity, he also knew that the face and with all that emotion was related to
him. This face was attached to a person who was also bleeding with the hair of it heads singed, but this person
has humane enough to stop to offer him help and was utterly aware of it. Suddenly he could not breathe. With all
his strength he tried sucking in air, he tried pulling in air by expanding his lungs, but all his efforts were
futile, and the intensity of the pain was matched with utter panic. Silently Dax screamed and screamed for his
mother. From some obscure place he was reminded of what his mother would always tell him. "If you need help
and there is none always call on the lord, Call on God." Suddenly, abruptly, with the quickness of a streak
of lightening on a black stormy night, there was peace. Dax was submerged with in a bright white envelope of light.
There was no fear; there was no confusion; there was no pain; there were no noise; there was no taste; there was
no smell; no discernible sensation. The awful smell of burning human flesh and burning asphalt and burning gasoline
and the burning smell of everything else consumable by fire was gone. And utter peace screamed so loudly one could
focus on nothing else but it. Ironic, is it not, that the darkest part of night is just before day, that the calm
in a hurricane could mean not only a welcomed end but also that only half of it survived, to be in the eye of a
hurricane is to know that the other side must yet be survived. A moving shadow in the light moved toward him and
rapidly became more perceptible as the image of his mother, his deceased mother. She also was submerged in and
was a part of this bright light. He understood that this light was the only source of this peace, and he was unmistakably
aware that this peace, though inexplicable, was not death. He knew it intuitively, but he did not know precisely
how he knew it, and this peace replaced all the sensations that preceded it, and this peace anesthetized him against
the fear and panic which had been upon him. The shadow came closer and closer to Dax and it happen quickly, but
things did not seem rushed. At once his mother was hugging him then she held him away from her and looked at him
from his head to his feet. Dax also looked at as much of him self as he could, from his chest to his feet to see
what she was looking at. His cloths were new cloths he had not seen them before, the same for his shoes. His cloths
were also white, but not as stark, almost unbearably, white as this place or the cloths his mother was wearing.
His mother was proud of him, she told him this, though no words were used, they communicated as if with intuition.
Although he did not know where he was he did not wonder about it, for now he just knew it held some wonderfully
mysterious importance, it bathed him in an incredible comfort, he needed to know nothing more. It was a strange
reality, however surrealistic, it was a place that held everything that Dax needed except what he need the most,
his other part, baby sister, but immediately that thought was gone, and he felt no need for anything, he was aware
only of what he could sense there with him, before him; he felt satisfied and experienced, spiritually, being blessed.
What had seemed to be balls of this light separating, from the mass of light, reminiscent of clouds separating
in the sky, were transforming into moving beings and Dax could now see them manifesting, materializing. There was
holiness here, or was this place, itself, holiness undeniable. If that was so then where was the father himself,
God? Dax was too fearful of seeming blasphemous to wonder that. But all of Dax question was answered, he was not
sure of how; the answers was there as if they had been there all the time. Dax was also able to relate to his mom
that he did not want to remain there. He had a little sister that needed him to be alive with her, to take care
of her, so that she could take care him. Dax was also inexplicably aware that his mom had to advocate for him,
to the powers that be, in order for him to be granted a return to where he came from. It was also made unmistakably
clear that, on his return, if he was not Christ like he would be recalled back to this place never to leave it
again. Then it was all gone. All the bright light, his mother, this peacefulness and serenity was all gone. Although
he had severely enjoyed the almost unbearably comfort and security of that place, Dax for some reason was relieved
that it was gone, for he really did not belong there. Then there was nothing.
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