Charles Rammelkamp

THE FATAL WOUND

"She was beautiful. This was not her opinion; it was as close to being a fact as beauty can be.” – Jo Nesbo, The Leopard


When the police arrested Crawford and his stepdaughter
at the Mexico border, they’d been convinced
they’d pulled off the perfect crime.

Crawford’s wife – Belinda’s mother –
had been stabbed to death in Columbus
by a panhandler to whom she’d offered a ten-dollar bill,
while she and her husband waited at a stoplight.
The panhandler held a sign that read,
“Please help me feed my baby.”
A woman with an infant stood nearby in the rain.

Crawford rushed his wife to the hospital
but she couldn’t be saved.
“The woman actually said, ‘God bless you,’”
the tearful widower told the cops,
but something about his story sounded fishy –
details, like the location, kept changing.

The story made the national news –
Oprah did a cautionary feature story.
Everywhere people started throwing trash
at the people standing at streetcorners
holding “Homeless” signs,
convinced they were swindlers, conmen.

When Crawford fled with the stepdaughter,
driving away with everything but a “Just Married” sign
trailing from the bumper,
authorities sent an alert out all across the nation.
The Texas highway patrol stopped them
at the Brownsville border, Crawford breaking down,
looking at Belinda through tear-blinded eyes.
“She’s just so beautiful,” he sobbed.


Charles reads "The Fatal Wound":



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Charles confesses: "In Baltimore, recently, a man and his stepdaughter tried to frame a homeless person in the murder of the man’s wife, which the man – a convicted bank robber – had committed himself. A nationwide backlash against the vulnerable homeless followed. The man and his stepdaughter were arrested trying to cross into Mexico."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore and Reviews Editor for The Adirondack Review. A chapbook of poems, Jack Tar’s Lady Parts, is available from Main Street Rag Publishing. Another poetry chapbook, Me and Sal Paradise, was recently published by FutureCycle Press. An e-chapbook has also recently been published online Time Is on My Side (yes it is).